January, 2009

Today has been a wealth of Miriam-isms. Since they are too cute, I'm going to share!

Miriam was playing her toy violin (which will play 18 different songs) over and over and over at the top of the stairs trying to get Grandpa to come up and play with her. Right now the batteries in this toy are almost gone so it doesn't sound the best at times. Miriam was whining about this when she turned to us and said "Ooooooh, it's the sound of mourning!" George and I had to agree that it did indeed sound like mourning. To be fair, she could have meant "morning", but it was really too funny the other way.

Conversation between Grandpa George and Miriam following reading a book about a goldfish.
Miriam: "My fish aren't goldfish."  (This is true. They are Beta fish.) "They are red and blue."
Grandpa: agreed with her
Miriam: "They like to look at their selves in the mirror."
Pause
Miriam: "Maybe they are self-fish!"

Seriously, I love this kid!

We are so blessed to get a new picture of Katie yesterday! It is only two days (or so) old, and is the best quality to date. I'm not going to post it publically on here because we have not been told offically that it *is* Katie. But let me just tell you what a balm to my Momma's heart that picture is! She is so beautiful. She looks happier then before and still healthy and well taken care of. AND, she has HAIR!! Oh, and she is so cute.... so very cute. In the words of her Jie Jie (big sister) this morning, "Momma, I want to go get baby Katie NOW!!" Me, too, Miriam, me, too.

Update: Here is that picture!

Praise God we got our “Letter Seeking Confirmation of Adopter”  (also known as the LOA) today!! What does this mean? This means that China looked at all our paperwork and all of Katie's paperwork. This means that they have matched it all together. This means that we will travel to get Katie in 5-8 weeks.

AHHHHHHHHHHH!! Did I say we are traveling in 5-8 weeks??!??? AHHHHHHHHHHH!!! I have WAY to much to do!! AHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

It snowed today!! It snowed today!! Yay!! Yay!!
Appropriately enough we are reading/using "The Snowy Day" for preschool this week. SO today we read two books about snowy days and talked about them. THEN we put on all our snow stuff and out we went!! Aunt Jen was over, and we built a cute little snowwoman. Miriam had a BLAST running around kicking snow and throwing snow "piles" (they weren't really snowballs!) Evan had fun for awhile, but then he was at the wrong end of a snowball, and it was over. Poor guy would take one look at snow in someone's hand and run to Momma. He wanted "Up!! DONE!!! Hooouuuseee!" Hot coco cheered him right up, thought!! :)

Wednesday evening we sat down to our evening meal as a family. As with almost every Wednesday evening, Grandpa George and Aunt Jen were also there.  As Brian thanked God for our food, he paused to also thank Him for bring our whole family together. In that moment, it hit both of us that not one person of the six sitting at that table was biologically related to another. Yet, we ARE a family. We are a family by choice. But then really, when you think about it, love is aways a choice.

Evan has the most wonderful, mischievous sense of humor and the best laugh EVER! It has been a lot of fun watching it develop over the last year.  

This morning I told him to go find his sippy cup and get in his chair for breakfast. He walked out of the living room holding up Cookie Monster and grinning at me with his little devilish grin. I decided to play along. "Evan, that's not your cup!! That's Cookie Monster!"  He laughed, dropped Cookie and picked up the dog's bone held IT toward me grinning. I said, "Evan, that's not your cup!" He starts giggling and says, "NO, bone!"  He ran into the living room and returned hugging a toy truck, face full of mischief and shaking with silent laughter.  "Evan, that is not your cup!!" He shrieked with laughter and run off and finally got his cup.

He has also recently developed a new laugh. He laughs like the French Peas from Veggie Tales!  It is seriously TOO funny. I really need to record it before he moves on! In the interest of full disclosure, while the children do watch Veggie Tales, they do not watch them THAT often!

Well, we finally had Evan's speech evaluated. He has always been one of those kids whose speech plateaus, and just when you get worried he makes a big jump. The problem with Evan is that the jumps are not big enough to really put him ahead, they just get him up to low normal... then he plateaus again! Brian has been after me to have him evaluated, and I finally agreed just to see were he is at.

So yesterday Early Intervention did a full evaluation. It actually took the full 2 hours and the evaluator had to start looking up certain parts of the test because she never gets far enough to have to do them! She actually finally just stopped because it was obvious that he was developmentally AHEAD, not delayed! I don't have the full report yet, but they called to say that he does not qualify for services since there is no issue except for speech and that is not delayed enough. The evaluator actually said she thought that if he "were around a group of his peers, he would catch right up!" i.e. put him in preschool.

Thanks, but no thanks. If not being in preschool is the only reason my son's speech is in the low normal/slightly delayed range, then I don't think we have a problem here. It's like when they told me that Miriam's gross motor "problems" were caused because I "held her too much". Um, yeah, sure. That's a "problem" I'm not too worried about! My mommy gut tells me that one day in the not-so-distant future my son will start to really speak. And when he does, his vocabulary will quickly reflect the fact that he spends his day talking one-on-one or one-on-two with his college educated mother. And just like his sister, with her 3-4 syllable words, he will blow by his age-mates who spend all day with their peers.