| Our trip to China to adopt our daughter, Grace in the summer of 2006. | |
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Grace's first haircut
So right about here is where I should have the adorable picture of Grace sitting up in the salon chair with the little cape wrapped around her looking all cute and sweet, which really is what she looked like, but since I'm a third-time mom, the battery in the camera was dead and I had already turned down the offer from "Snip-its" to purchase the "first haircut picture package" which I'm sure was a complete rip-off, but in hind-sight would have been really nice. So there are no pictures of her first haircut, nor are there pictures of her with the new haircut because the camera battery just got recharged last night, and as yet we have not taken any new pictures. Such is the life of a third child.
I wasn't sure she was ready for a cut, but it does look much better. And when I, rather rhetorically, asked her, "Do you want to get your haircut, too?" she responded with a resounding nod of the head accompanied by much pointing at the chair. They evened out the back so that it is almost up to the level of all the bangs in front that are growing out and she has a nice little bob right around the bottom of her ears. I was torn about cutting bangs or letting them keep growing, but there are enough little wispies at her forehead that I think will grow out into bangs, that I thought I would avoid the syndrome of cutting bangs too early and then ending up with them starting about halfway back on the top of her head. Perhaps I'm not explaining that well, but I know exactly what I'm talking about and I don't want her hair to look that way. So there. There is such a limited time for me to take ownership of this issue that I am asserting myself now, before I have no more say in the matter.
Sophie and Lily also got cuts, as well as ribbons and braids respectively. It was quite a successful trip, until we had to leave, and Grace had to leave behind the fun light-up toy they had given her to keep her occupied in the chair. She was devastated and cried all the way home in the car. Remind me to pick up a hand held See-N-Say the next time we're at the store!
School has started again and we are getting back into the rhythm of life which that entails. Swimming lessons on Mondays, parent's meeting at church on Wednesdays, speech therapy for Grace on Thursdays and everything else in between. Grace is almost back to normal. We are currently on stage 3 baby food for one more week, then we can start soft finger foods. We'll be back to see the Dr. at the end of this month to see where we go from here. I think the next year will just be concentrating on speech therapy before there are any more procedures to face.
She is definitely understanding most everything we say to her. Her only real word is still "Mama," but she's identifying many more things by pointing when we say them and still picking up signs as fast as we can learn them and teach them to her. She watches everything that Sophie and Lily do and wants desperately to do them as well. At night we often give the girls piggy-back rides up the stairs, so they stand on a chair in the front hallway to jump on our backs. After I took Sophie and Lily up one day last week, I came back down to find Grace standing on the chair, waiting her turn. She looks forward to seeing the guinea pigs at Lily's school when we drop her off and has made up her own sign for them by combining the signs for "cat" and "pig." She starts doing the sign when we pull up in front of the school and keeps doing it and pointing until we get into the classroom where she can see them. She's also started doing more abstract signs such as "soft" and "hungry" and her understanding of how our household works is improving as well. She loves to "help" me load and unload the dishwasher and yesterday I found her hanging up a dishtowel on the bar under the sink all by herself. Yesterday Dave said he was looking for the diapers and said absently, "Now where are your diapers, Grace?" She walked out of the room and came back with a diaper and the box of wipes.
So slowly but surely we're getting back to normal. Other exciting family news is that after three daughters and three nieces, we finally have a nephew! Dave's sister had a little boy named Jacob Miles on Monday. All six girl cousins will have a great time babying him. None of us have any idea what to do with a boy, and of course our army of pink clothing, dresses and tights will be of no use, but we're all very happy for Lori and Bob and the new big sister, Ally!
I am working on getting a video I made about our trip to China linked to this blog. It is already posted on Google Video under the name "Trip To Grace" so if you really want to see it, you could search there. Eventually I would like to have a link right here so that anyone reading the blog could view the video at the same time. I'll let you know if that works out.
Happy winter to all of you out West. To those of us here in the temperate Midwest and East, here's to seeing some snow before March!
Cheers,
Susan
I wasn't sure she was ready for a cut, but it does look much better. And when I, rather rhetorically, asked her, "Do you want to get your haircut, too?" she responded with a resounding nod of the head accompanied by much pointing at the chair. They evened out the back so that it is almost up to the level of all the bangs in front that are growing out and she has a nice little bob right around the bottom of her ears. I was torn about cutting bangs or letting them keep growing, but there are enough little wispies at her forehead that I think will grow out into bangs, that I thought I would avoid the syndrome of cutting bangs too early and then ending up with them starting about halfway back on the top of her head. Perhaps I'm not explaining that well, but I know exactly what I'm talking about and I don't want her hair to look that way. So there. There is such a limited time for me to take ownership of this issue that I am asserting myself now, before I have no more say in the matter.
Sophie and Lily also got cuts, as well as ribbons and braids respectively. It was quite a successful trip, until we had to leave, and Grace had to leave behind the fun light-up toy they had given her to keep her occupied in the chair. She was devastated and cried all the way home in the car. Remind me to pick up a hand held See-N-Say the next time we're at the store!
School has started again and we are getting back into the rhythm of life which that entails. Swimming lessons on Mondays, parent's meeting at church on Wednesdays, speech therapy for Grace on Thursdays and everything else in between. Grace is almost back to normal. We are currently on stage 3 baby food for one more week, then we can start soft finger foods. We'll be back to see the Dr. at the end of this month to see where we go from here. I think the next year will just be concentrating on speech therapy before there are any more procedures to face.
She is definitely understanding most everything we say to her. Her only real word is still "Mama," but she's identifying many more things by pointing when we say them and still picking up signs as fast as we can learn them and teach them to her. She watches everything that Sophie and Lily do and wants desperately to do them as well. At night we often give the girls piggy-back rides up the stairs, so they stand on a chair in the front hallway to jump on our backs. After I took Sophie and Lily up one day last week, I came back down to find Grace standing on the chair, waiting her turn. She looks forward to seeing the guinea pigs at Lily's school when we drop her off and has made up her own sign for them by combining the signs for "cat" and "pig." She starts doing the sign when we pull up in front of the school and keeps doing it and pointing until we get into the classroom where she can see them. She's also started doing more abstract signs such as "soft" and "hungry" and her understanding of how our household works is improving as well. She loves to "help" me load and unload the dishwasher and yesterday I found her hanging up a dishtowel on the bar under the sink all by herself. Yesterday Dave said he was looking for the diapers and said absently, "Now where are your diapers, Grace?" She walked out of the room and came back with a diaper and the box of wipes.
So slowly but surely we're getting back to normal. Other exciting family news is that after three daughters and three nieces, we finally have a nephew! Dave's sister had a little boy named Jacob Miles on Monday. All six girl cousins will have a great time babying him. None of us have any idea what to do with a boy, and of course our army of pink clothing, dresses and tights will be of no use, but we're all very happy for Lori and Bob and the new big sister, Ally!
I am working on getting a video I made about our trip to China linked to this blog. It is already posted on Google Video under the name "Trip To Grace" so if you really want to see it, you could search there. Eventually I would like to have a link right here so that anyone reading the blog could view the video at the same time. I'll let you know if that works out.
Happy winter to all of you out West. To those of us here in the temperate Midwest and East, here's to seeing some snow before March!
Cheers,
Susan
Wednesday, January 03, 2007
New Year
Just wanted to write a quick post to let everyone know that Gracie is doing much better. She is able to eat baby food now and is plowing through containers of it like it's going out of style. Her mood has improved drastically and she only occasionally gets upset when her sisters get to eat something that she doesn't. Otherwise she is truly returning to her happy little self and we are all very grateful for that. The surgery went well in general. Although a small hole did open back up, her doctor said it is not in a critical spot for speech and if it doesn't heal over itself, he will be able to fix it at her next surgery. Otherwise everything looks good and we will be starting speech therapy next week.
We've had a really interesting week with all of the funeral goings-ons for President Ford. Today we all walked up the street to watch the funeral procession go past. We wanted the girls to see it as a moment of history that they would hopefully remember and appreciate later, but trying to explain all of the various aspects of a funeral and a president to the Kindergarten and younger set is not always that easy. First they were convinced that it was John Kerry's funeral since that's the only "president" we've talked much about in our house. Then there were the inevitable questions about death: how does one get to heaven? Do babies go there, too? Do they have toys? And from Sophie, "How do they separate the head and all that other stuff to put the body in the coffin?" It took some time, but we finally realized that she was assuming "body" meant "torso". Then there was the big question: "Mom, what's a government?" Now there's a question worth pondering.
Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas, as we did. I have to go now. If I don't clean up every night, we might all drown under the weight of all the My Little Ponies and Barbies in our house.
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