This past week I was looking back at posts to see what we were doing at this time last year (my favorite part about blogging – I would never remember any of this stuff if I wasn’t blogging it). Last year we had just found out we wouldn’t be traveling to the Phils before Thanksgiving and we were scrambling to make our plans for the long weekend. We were sad (actually, the word I used was heart-broken. Oh how I hated that wait). I also got super sick the weekend before Thanksgiving. I chuckled at my descriptions, and was thankful for feeling healthy. Then yesterday happened. I went to sleep on Friday night with a headache. And woke up with a migraine on Saturday morning. I felt awful, and had a mild fever and spent most of the day laying around. I finally felt better in the evening and feel back to 100% today. It’s a bit embarassing, but I think I had a sugar hangover. Friday was a naughty-food day for me and I took full advantage of it. Luckily I have a Dave who picks right up where I left off. He rocks my socks off.
I posted a bunch of new videos to our YouTube channel. Go check it out when you get a chance. You.Tube is finally streaming my videos straight to the blog when I post them, check it out on the right-hand side of the blog —-> I posted one of my favorite ones below. It’s a bit grainy, but I still love it. I’m pretty much the luckiest lady alive to have all of these guys (Gus the Dog included) in my life.
Today we have our first Thanksgiving celebration with Dave’s family. I’m excited for it today. I love watching Ezekiel play with his cousins, and I really love eating the nummy food that Dave’s family makes. They are all such good cooks. Right now I’m listening to Ezekiel cry while he’s sitting in time out after disobeying his daddy. It made me remember that Ezekiel won’t get a nap today with all of the festivities. *sigh* We may be in for a long day.
A boy and his dog - they were playing together so adorably yesterday
I spied on my two most favorite guys in the whole wide world, and caught this on video…
Last night we were being silly once again, and I started snapping pictures of Ezekiel. I would give him an emotion, and he would do that emotion with his face so I could take a picture of it. He giggled and giggled each time I showed him his picture, and I thought you’d all get a kick out of it too…
Confused Face (although I'd call it his pensive face)
Angry Face (he cannot make an angry face to save his life, he just looks stinkin' cute and then giggles)
Surprised Face
Love Face
Sad Face
Funny Face
Today when I dropped Eze off at Katie’s house, he had a bit of a rough start. I even had to give him one time out before I left – not a great way to start the morning. When I picked him up, though, he was in a great mood. We got in the car, and started chatting about his day. I asked him if he was kind today, and it went a little like this:
M: Eze, were you nice and kind today?
E: Yah.
M: Did you get anymore timeouts after I left?
E. Yah.
M: How many more timeouts did you have?
E: Ee-ee one, two, whee mime out (Eze had one, two, three time outs!).
M: Three time outs? What did you get a time out for? Did you hit somebody? Or did you throw something at someone?
E: Yah, Ee-ee frow big big big big big lellow car.
So apparently Ezekiel got three more time outs today, and one of them was because he threw a very large yellow car at someone (although he couldn’t tell me who). I’ll have to corroborate the story with Katie…
After nap this afternoon, we played in Ezekiel’s room for a little while and read some books. He picked out his little picture Bible, and we read through quite a few stories in there. We got to the story about Zacheus, and it had been quite a while since we’d sung that song together. So we sang the song together. Then Ezekiel started pretending to look up into a tree and see Zacheus. He was saying, “Dadeah, you come dow!”, then it turned into, “Dadeah, you come dow. A Mommy day do (cuz Mommy says so). Come down a pway choo choo a Daddy, Mommy a Ee-ee (come down and play trains with Daddy, Mommy and Eze)”. I never knew that’s what Jesus told Zacheus before.
This morning I was feeling pretty impatient with Ezekiel. He was dawdling, as usual, and I couldn’t get him to finish eating his breakfast of Cheerios and milk. I finally just picked up the spoon for him and started feeding him (which is sometimes what he just wants us to do). As I was guiding the spoon to his mouth he said, “Tee too, Mommy a cooking a yoyo” (thank you Mommy for cooking cereal). It broke my bad mood for that moment and made me giggle.
Lately Dave and I are getting to watch Ezekiel play pretend more and more. This boy’s imagination astounds me. Tonight he took blocks that look kind of like a microphone, and went behind our couches where we couldn’t see him and started singing a song we’d never heard and dancing. We peeked at him through the couch cushions until he saw us. So so so cute. Earlier today I was cooking supper while he was playing with his trains. Suddenly I heard him say, “No no, choo choo, go home to Ahconia (that’s how he says the name of the town we live in)” As he was saying that, he was moving super fast trying to switch the direction of the train, and get the tunnel ready for the train to go through. Suddenly he waved at the train and said, “Bye bye, choo choo! Come back!!” Every time we go anywhere, we talk about how we’ll always come back home, so that’s always a part of his good-byes to people (and apparently trains).
For the past two days, he’s been wearing a “back pack” around the house. Really it’s one of my old purses that he slings around both of his shoulders like a back pack. He puts random things in there, and pretends that pieces of paper that he stuffs in the bag are keys, or tickets, or ice cream cones (random?). He is starting to scribble and color on paper, and make more shapes lately, and will tell me what he’s drawing. I have a cute drawing he made on Saturday that I need to scan onto my computer one of these days so that I can get it on the blog. Oh, and he’ll also talk to puppets or stuffed animals when we make them “talk”. It’s my favorite because we can get him to answer any question that we have for him as long as we have a puppet ask the question. Makes me giggle because he is totally serious about his conversations with us them.
Tonight he was hyper, but not in the way that he sometimes gets when we can tell he’s overstimulated which can be overwhelming for all of us. Tonight he was FUN hyper, and in such a good mood. We sang pretend songs, and rapped pretend raps and danced silly dances. It was a great time. Dave and I remarked to each other that it is so much fun to watch his personality coming out even more. We thought we had seen most of his personality already, and we are amazed to watch him open up to us even more almost one year after we became a family!
Eze and his "Kakee" (Katie) - who's house he goes to every M,T,Th morning
We bought Eze new socks the other day. They are way too big, but he LOVES wearing them like stockings.
Watching his favorite Abbie (Katie's oldest daughter) open birthday presents
The sight I woke up to Saturday morning - my boys eating "caycakes" (pancakes)
YUM!!
A back shot of the back pack/purse
And a crazy-boy-front-view of the back pack/purse
A big boy in his airplane seat
My sleepy boys
Ezekiel's favorite toy that my cousin Jessi brought by - velcro fruit and veggies that you can cut with a wooden knife. Cutest toy ever!
Loving playtime with Auntie YaYa
Howdy
Eze LOVED this cup. He was obsessed with cacti, so he really enjoyed drinking out of this cup.
Taptah (Cactus) cup!!!
Whee, Uncle J!
Roller skating stroller pushing - we're safe parents like that
A cute little behind
Eze emulating Uncle J
Wearing a Bampa Lu hat
Eze chillin' with the Bampa Lu duo poolside
When we retire, my sisters and I want to winter near each other. These two are like two peas in a pod and started brushing up on their shuffle board skills in anticipation for that day.
Like father, like son (my grandpa and my dad)
Me and Mama Lu
I love our agency contact, Karin. Seriously. I know of other agencies our friends have used that make them feel like if they ask too many questions, or ask for too many updates, they are a huge burden. We’ve never felt like that from our agency. And during our different wait times, there were periods where I felt like a crazy person and thought I would spaz if I didn’t hear something soon. Each time that happened, I would e-mail Karin to tell her how I was feeling. She would send me a message back super fast re-assuring me that I wasn’t crazy and that yes the wait is crazy hard. She has adopted as well, so she gets it.
We are currently STILL waiting to get our finalization papers from ICAB in the Philippines. I’ve e-mailed back and forth with Karin a couple of times about it over the past few months, and she’s great at checking on what we need and getting back to us quickly. The other day I was feeling anxious about the paperwork b/c I’m seeing more and more families who traveled weeks or months after us who have received their paperwork. Dave called Karin to see if she’d heard any updates from ICAB, and she filled him in on what all had been done to see where in the heck our papers are.
Side note: Some people don’t understand why we can’t just call over to the Philippines and demand that something be done immediately. In the US, if something isn’t being done the way we want it to, it’s easy to just make a phone call and talk with the person. In the Philippines, though, they don’t necessarily have all of the handy resources or personnel needed to finish things like this paperwork up quickly. Plus, when you are talking with people from the Philippines, you want to be careful not to sound like your are accusing someone of not doing their work. In the US, it’s easier to call someone and discuss an issue you might have because there aren’t usually big cultural differences in how people are going to take certain tones, though there are different personality types. Also, their timeline is just different from ours. Karin and the other staff at HIH are sensitive to this, and know exactly what TO say, and what NOT TO say when talking with government officials in the different countries they deal with.
So anyway, Karin gave us some relief yesterday by describing more of the timeline that will happen once we get the finalization papers. The reason I’m kind of freaking out about these papers is because we need them to finalize the adoption in our county court in order to claim the adoption tax credit the government has for adoptive families. We probably wouldn’t be able to afford to adopt if it wasn’t for that credit. We had adjusted our taxes for this year to account for the credit, thinking we’d be finalized well before the end of the year (why let the IRS hold onto our money interest-free!?). According to “normal” timelines, we should have received those papers in September and been finalized by now. But when have we ever been normal? She recommened calling our county courthouse to explain our situation to see how quickly we can get an appointment for finalization after our paperwork comes in. And she’s also contacted our social worker at ICAB, who isn’t in charge of our finalization papers, but now knows that we are still waiting, and she’s told Karin she’ll make sure it gets done. It (of course) makes me nervous that something came up that they don’t like about us, and that they’ll demand Ezekiel be removed from our home. But that’s just my crazy imagination running wild, and I’m sure everything will turn out just fine.
We have the cutest shirt for Ezekiel to wear on Finalization Day, and we’re going to throw a bash to celebrate being done. I can’t wait for that day!!
…rock. All of them. But tonight I wanted to talk about my sisters’ husbands in particular…
R is a veteran, so today I’m thankful for his service to our country. I love living in America. After visiting the Philippines, I feel incredibly blessed to be living in the USA. THANK YOU R for helping protect our country!!! (On that note, I’m also thankful to my grandpa, my father-in-law and my grandpa-in-law for their service to our country)
J is a photographer. A very talented photographer. This past July he took photos of our little family of three. When we saw them this past weekend, he gave us a CD of the pics. I’m so excited to post some of them on here, and to get our Christmas picture cards printed. I’ve never sent Christmas pictures out before, so I’m excited for that this year!
Reading his own book while Auntie YaYa reads to the girlies
A mirror image
I think he looks like such a sweetie baby in this picture with Auntie YaYa
Size 9 month flip flops - I love his Fred Flintstone toes
Wheeeeeee!
Peek!
One of my all-time favorite shots
My friend Jonny's car is in the background of this one - a Dodge Corvaire (I think?)
Driving our imaginary cars
This is the furthest Gus ever sticks his nose out the window - I love that J captured that
LOVE
