And Then They Were Five

We have now been home for one week! We seem to have worked our way into a new schedule and everyone is sleeping through the night. I must say though this is the most scheduled I ever remember being. I decided to go ahead a use a schedule though until Lexi gets adjusted to her new life here. I am not really the type of person who likes so much structure on my time, but for now it is working out beautifully. I'm starting to feel rested!
I have removed the password from our adoption journal now. I feel like since we are now Lexi's legal parents and we are safely back in the US that there is not really a need for the password.
Our days this week have pretty much all gone something like this: wake up around 7-8, Breakfast around 8:30, 2.5-3 hour morning nap starting between 10:30 and 11:00, lunch as soon as Lexi wakes up, play time, afternoon nap starting around 5:00, supper at 7:30, and bedtime is between 9:30 and 10:30. Lexi is a very content and happy baby in the mornings. She crawls around happily entertaining herself and I love it! Afternoons not so much! I have no idea why, but after lunch Lexi is not able to entertain herself. If I sit and hold her or if the children get down on the floor and play with her she's ok, but otherwise she is very fussy in the afternoons. Rae and Shane have so much more to do than just play with baby toys all afternoon. I bought them an 18 inch snap set pool on Tuesday (my first outing with 3 children) and they love it. I can hardly make them come in and entertain Lexi all afternoon and I don't really feel like just sitting all afternoon either. So far we have worked it out where I hold her part of the time, the children play with her part of the time and she crawls around fussing part of the time. Hopefully given time she learns to be as happy in the afternoon as she is in the morning, but that would be perfect and no one is perfect!
Jeremy's parents have a move day set up for the second weekend in July. I'm thinking it will only take us 2-3 weeks to have the old place repainted and re carpeted so that we can move in, so sometime early August we just might actually move into our new place. My plan is to put the girls in one room and Shane in another. That means that my only child who actually knows how to and enjoys sleeping in will get woke up every morning by her baby sister. How unfair! I mean it's summer and she has to go back to school way too soon anyhow! The whole, no more sleeping in again, has me in a tizzy and I want to defend my daughters rights to sleep in too! I may just allow her to sleep with Shane until school starts back up this fall. Or should I say late summer.
Tomorrow we will finally get to go to church again! We only missed three Sundays, but it seems like so much more.
I still haven't touched the pile of mail from while we were gone except to add to it each day! I think between that and the laundry today we may have an extra fussy afternoon here, because I really need to get some things done here and little Missy is just going to have to entertain herself for a little while. Maybe I'll be speedy and get most of it done during her 3 hour morning nap. LOL

Videos

Tuesday Morning in Hanoi

Tuesday Afternoon in Hanoi

Wednasday in Hanoi

Bath Time Saturday

News!!

A few weeks ago I posted about "No News". Now I have so much going on I hardly have time to think. We made a trip to Kansas a couple weeks ago. I spent a little over a week there. Shane stayed with me, but Jeremy and Rae came home after just a few days. Jeremy had to get back to work and Rae needed to be back in school. We have very good friends who were willing to help out with Rae in the afternoons and took care of her until Jeremy got off work.

I'm now back in full swing making bean (technically corn) bags for Corn Hole games. It is something I can do here at home so I don't need child care for the children, but I'm still able to bring in a little extra income. Last week about half way through the stack of bags I was sewing up for the week my machine quit working! I ended up having to get my old one out and use it. It works ok, but I'm spoiled. I like all the extra features on my new one and the old one takes me so much longer. The sewing center that works on sewing machines here in Greenville was closed last week. They opened up again today and I took the machine by there. Unfortunately it is not the brand they sell, so they can't order parts for it if something is broken. They are just going to clean and service it. Hopefully that fixes it.

Rae only has 6 more days of Kindergarten left. She is so excited. She wants to stay up late and sleep in every day. She definitely takes after Jeremy and I. I could easily stay up until 1:00 or 2:00 every night. The thing is I want to be able to sleep in until 10:00 the next morning. That doesn't work to well with school. This past fall was a huge adjustment for us. Jeremy is the same way. He likes to stay up late, and if he doesn't need to be up at any particular time the next day can sleep until noon! I usually can't sleep much past 10:30 or 11:00. Shane, poor little bugger , is not like that at all. He is tired by 9:00 and ready to be awake at 8:00 the next morning. He drives the rest of crazy with abundance of morning energy.

Today we finally got the call about our travel to Vietnam to finalize the adoption of our little girl. To read more about that visit our adoption site. You will need a password, so leave a comment with your email address and if/when I find the time I will send it to you.

Life is in full swing and we are loving every minute of it!

I Want My OWN Ice Cream Cone

I don't like to hold babies. For those of you whose jaws just dropped let me clarify. I don't like to hold other people's babies. This odd quirk goes way back. As a young girl after church on Sunday's when all the other girls my age would make a mad dash for the mothers with babies as soon as church was dismissed I was left wondering what all the excitement was about. Three-fourths of the babies who were snatched out of their mothers arms would start crying. The others were either drooling or smelled like spit-up. And as soon as the baby you were holding started to cry three or four old lady's around you would turn toward you and say "What'd you do? Did you pinch that baby?" Even the first time someone used this little joke on me I didn't find it funny. The day my first daughter was born this changed. I couldn't hold her enough. She was so sweet and soft and she fit in my arms so perfect and naturally. This was a relief for me considering my past experience with babies. I had babysit quit a bit and knew HOW to hold a baby, but still it was my job. I didn't really bond. I bonded instantly with both of my children. And now I'm impatiently waiting to be able to hold my third child, and yes this time I want desperately to hold her.

Now on to the ice cream cone from my title. I've been trying in my mind to find an analogy as to why this odd quirk of mine has gotten so much worse ever since we started our adoption. You would think that longing to fill my arms with my daughter would make me want to hold any baby I could get a hold of, but actually just the opposite has happened. Today after listening to my children argue in the back seat of the van about "Hold my ice cream cone for me while I get situated." it came to me. I have been standing in line waiting on a chocolate ice cream cone for 20 minutes. I can see behind the counter that it has been made, but they are checking over the recipe to make sure no important ingredients have been left out. Meanwhile someone else walks up to the counter and orders a vanilla ice cream cone. Within the very normal amount of time, 2 minutes (aka 9 months), they are handed their beautiful vanilla ice cream cone. I now look back behind the counter again and notice my ice cream cone is starting to melt. I feel desperate to have permission to go get it, but they still need to check just one more thing. At this point while I'm still so focused on my chocolate ice cream cone the lady with the vanilla cone turns to me and asks if I would like to hold her vanilla ice cream cone. Now do you think I really want to hold her vanilla ice cream cone?! I want my OWN chocolate ice cream cone!!

"Pop" Party

I know I write mostly about my children, but between laundry, cleaning, balancing the check book, cooking and sewing there isn't much entertaining here besides them.

The other day Rae asked me about "pop" party's. I explained that as far as I know there is no such thing as a "pop" party.
Rae- "Well then what do you call the party after someone dies?"
Me- " A funeral."
Rae- "Uh, I know about funerals MOM. What is the party called?"(lots of girl attitude)
Me- "There is no party, just a funeral."
Rae- "Well when someone dies they go to heaven, so why is there no party?"
Me-" umm, I don't know?" I use this answer a lot. No wonder they think they're smarter than me so much of the time.
Later Shane explained why it should be called a "pop" party. Because you die and "POP" you're in heaven. I would be inclined to agree with them if it were not for the fact that those of us left behind are going to miss the person who has "popped", and don't usually feel much like a party. Amazingly at the ages of 6 and 4 they have not yet experienced someone close to them "popping".

According to the dictionary- pop: to go, come, enter, or issue forth suddenly or quickly.

Spring!!

What a week! We could not have asked for nicer weather. It has been sunny and warm all week long. It's supposed to rain tomorrow, but if everything is going to stay this beautiful green color then we will have to endure a few rainy days. The grass has just turned the most beautiful shade of green in the past couple of weeks. It almost needs mowed.

We have a small fish pond in our backyard that Jeremy dug and lined and stocked himself. It has three or four different kinds of plants and several fish. They pretty much have followed God's command to be fruitful and multiply. We put three ordinary goldfish in there a few years ago, and now they are many. They have gotten quite large for goldfish.

Shane absolutely CANNOT stay away from the pond. It's only around two feet deep so I'm not really worried about him drowning, but the water is disgusting. Especially this time of year. It needs emptied and refilled. Earlier this week the children discovered the frog (he's pretty big!) that lives in our pond. They have tried and tried to catch him to no avail. They are constantly scooping buckets full of water out of the pond and making huge mud lakes to play in. All of this behavior is a big no-no, but Shane just can't stop himself. They also love to throw rocks in, the bigger the rock the bigger the splash. The problem with this is that the pond is lined with a rubber mat that can get holes in it if a large enough rock smashes into it, so after 100 (I really don't think I'm exaggerating here) times of telling the kids to stay away from the pond I finally punished Shane yesterday for once again playing in the water. I know, I know that should have happened after the second time of telling him to stay out of the pond, but as a parent that is my biggest fault. I wait until the 100th time and then, " Aahh! I've told you a hundred times to not do that!!" He's probably going to end up with worms or something from playing in it. This morning guess what I found him doing. You guessed it: playing in the pond. This time though he had found a new way to play in the pond. He got out one of the fishing poles (it even had a hook and weight on it) and was fishing very patiently out of the little decorative fish pond we have in our back yard. As soon as I had composed myself from a fit of laughter I called trough the window to him "Shane, I thought I told you NO PLAYING IN THE POND." He turns around and answers "Well Mom, that was yesterday. Today's a different day"

No News

I haven't updated this blog for a while. I feel like I need to have something to write about before I start, so I'll write about no news. Our proposed move to the country........No News. Our adoption........No News. Our updated home study........ well, we almost have that done, but not quite. So I guess........No News. More corn bags to sew.............No News.


One smidgen of news. I still haven't filed my taxes!!!!! I'm waiting on one more form from Jeremy's employer. We should be getting it soon. This is probably boring you all even more than it is me. I'm going to go read my book.