My great sleeper.....is no longer my great sleeper.....

Dearest Paul -

You used to be my great little sleeping boy....I used to brag you up to all of my AP friends. Sadly times have changed and you now appear to be rebelling against your afternoon nap. You seem to think that you no longer need it but I beg to differ. The big tip off is that you end up falling asleep in the most unusual places and at the most inopportune times. I assure you that if you start taking your afternoon nap again we will not do a single fun thing while you are sleeping. This will ensure that you miss absolutely nothing while you sleep. Come on little man and throw your momma a bone on this one.

To prove how silly (and inappropriate) it is that you try to make it through the day without an afternoon nap, we took some great video at dinner tonight. Just so you know, you are not supposed to fall asleep at the dinner table. Oh, and things went downhill after dinner. You were so over tired and didn't want to listen to anyone. There was a meltdown of epic proportions that was also caught on video but your daddy made me promise not to post it.

Here's hoping that my little man will start making good naptime choices.....

Love,
Momma

Just gotta sing!

Our local zoo has a cool winter program called Zoo Tots. It is meant to break up the monotony of the cold winter weather for 2-3 year olds. Jason and Paul went to their first session today and had lots of fun. Each session is about an hour long and has a different theme. Today's theme was Animal Tracks so they focused on the footprint that different animals would leave behind. There is craft time, story time, snack time and then they get to meet an animal.

On the way into the Discovery Center - checking out the fish. Hey, there's Nemo!

Craft time consisted of making a duck - paper, foam duck feet and cotton balls. Someone was clearly proud of his creation!

A little coloring to loosen up....

Story time with the kids - evidently we might be buying this book as Paul really enjoyed it.

Snack time brought graham crackers with icing used to stick the ducks onto the crackers.

Eating his creation!

Oh, and a juice box.....we aren't really juice people and on the infrequent times that Paul gets juice it is most definitely extremely watered down. So, this was like pure sugar in a box for him. I cringe a little, but in the grand scheme it won't kill him.

And the grand finale was a live duck for the kids to pet.....unfortunately Paul was a little frightened of the duck and wasn't all that excited to pet the duck.

I am looking forward to hearing about their next adventure to Zoo Tots!

On the way home from dinner tonight, Paul was singing like crazy and totally cracking us up! The video is terrible as it was shot in a dark car, but don't watch and just turn your volume up and listen. A few things to note:

(1) Paul doesn't care that it isn't Christmas anymore - carols are always appropriate in his world(2) Paul is clearly easily distracted - he can be in the middle of a song and completely change the subject - you'll hear about "too many campers" and a "railroad signal"

(3) If singing is fun, then singing at the top of your lungs is a complete riot!

Hot cocoa and helicopters!

We had a wonderfully lazy morning - EVERYONE stayed in bed (or on the floor near their bed) until after 8am! We watched a little Max and Ruby (Paul's new favorite program) and then had some breakfast. It was a hot cocoa kind of morning so Paul bellied up to the counter to help make our breakfast treat!

Everything we need to make our hot cocoa including a snow man mug!
I'm gonna put the whole bag of marshmallows in my mug!

Slurp, slurp, slurp.....

Aaaaahhhhhhh.....that was good momma!

Our breakfast was followed by some serious playtime including pulling out Paul's JD tractor. I was in the living room and heard "Momma, I am cleaning my tractor" coming from the bathroom. Not sure why I had a delayed response, but a few minutes later when it occurred to me that I had better check it out....I found him in the bathroom with toilet paper wiping off his tractor. It could have been so much worse since there was still plenty of toilet paper on the roll rather than on the floor!

Then he dragged the tractor and his cleaning tools (ie. the toilet paper) out into the kitchen for some serious tire cleaning. If you look really close, you can see all of the dog hair stuck to the wheels.....lovely, right? Maybe the kid is onto something about needed to clean those darn hair covered wheels.

We spent the day furniture shopping and generally have a nice time - nothing special, just fun. A little pizza for dinner and then some more fun flying daddy's helicopter. Paul has a love/hate relationship with this thing. If it gets too close, he gets a little scared, but he kept asking daddy to fly it. It's pretty delicate so Paul doesn't usually get to touch it much....but tonight he got to hold it and the remote....he was on cloud 9 for sure.

Not sure what we can do tomorrow to top the fun of today, but we'll give it a shot for sure!

How to build a fort - Paul style!

We had a very nice and low key weekend - it looks like Paul might be coming down with a little bug so we just stayed close to home. Lots of playing and movie watching!

Paul has a new favorite show - Max and Ruby. It's a cute cartoon with bunnies. We only have a few episodes on the DVR so we end up watching them more frequently than we would like but Paul really enjoys them. Happily, Jason has ordered a DVD filled with episodes to arrive on Tuesday! Here's Paul sacked out on the sofa watching his beloved bunnies.Then it was on to the building of a fort. It's a pretty specific process you know and each part must be done just so. This fort had to be covered not only in a large sheet, but also several clean towels (not so clean anymore) and other random laundry.

Momma, this one goes RIGHT THERE!

Let me give this thing a try......anyone in there?

I see 2 feet....

A trip upstairs to get yet another blanket......can't have too many layers on our fort you know!

And I need just one more big sheet......

The Bears played today and I decided to make a big pot of chili. And of course we need corn muffins to go along with chili, right? So Paul perched on his stool and helped me mix the batter and pour it into the muffing tin. He was such a good helper and seemed to really enjoy being a little chef today! And here he is enjoying the fruits of his labor.....

Ever since the holidays, Paul has been obsessed with orange jello. We have a special family recipe of an orange jello mold with mandarin oranges and some orange sherbet mixed in. It's not a lot of work, but I would like it to be considered a little more special than the every day. Instead, we bought some packs of sugar free jello - the regular kind and he seems to like that as well. Isn't it amazing how the little things can really make a kid happy.

I've got to get ALL the jello out!

Hhhhmmmmm, is there any left?

Momma, I love me some jello!

I also had made some pudding with whipped topping for our real dessert tonight -nothing special, but feels like a nice treat.

Wowie momma - check out my whippie!

BIG bite!

What are you lookin' at?

Here's hoping that our little man wakes up feeling better tomorrow. He's got a dentist appointment - his second one in his young life. He did well at his first one, but I think they are going to actually try to clean his teeth so he needs to be at 100% to make it all go well! Fingers crossed......

Thomas, Fire trucks and Noodles!

Hard to believe that we are a week into 2011 already - I am amazed how quickly time seems to fly when you have a toddler to chase after! This weekend brought a visit from Gram and Pa before they hit the road for a trip to warmer weather. Needless to say, Paul had lots of fun. Today we visited our friends Erin and Niels to meet their new baby....well, sort of new baby - he was born back in October but for some reason we have all been too busy to find a time to sit down for a visit! They literally live 15 minutes away - but I guess that is life sometimes. Paul was super excited to see baby F as well as their girls R and E.

Hey Paul, who is on your shirt?!?
I've got to take my Thomas bag in the car with us! Come on momma, let's go...I need my coat!

We made a stop at Staples to buy a new desk chair for Jason's office. Paul got bored and wandered over to a bargain bin....everything in the bin was $1.50! He was drawn to a very large package with fire trucks. Turns out it was a bulletin board kit for teachers to put up for Fire Safety month. He was not leaving that store without his beloved fire trucks so it came home with us. He had fun popping out a few of the fire trucks.

And then proceeded to play with the fire truck on the floor.

Paul was adamant that he wanted noodle soup for dinner.....so we obliged. He was eating like a fiend and clearly loving his noodles.

Leaning over his bowl.....

Slurp, slurp, slurp.....

And you gotta drink the broth at the end, right?!?

It is so much fun to hear Paul talking about his baby sister. It comes up at unexpected times. Sometimes in the car, Paul will talk about sharing something with his baby sister. Sometimes he will tell us that baby sister is coming home in an airplane. This weekend we received some books that I ordered for baby sister and every time that Paul saw the books, he would tell us that they are for his baby sister. It warms my heart that he is opening up his little heart for a baby sister that we don't even know yet! I am sure this will rock his world when he truly understands what it means....but for now he seems genuinely excited for the idea. We know that Paul will be an unbelievable big brother.

Our Singing Boy

Dinners at our house are lots of fun....they are LONG affairs due to our pokey eater, but lots of funny conversation occurs over dinner. The little man has been singing up a storm lately - we hear loud renditions of Jingle Bells in the morning and lots of ABCs throughout the day - he is even making up songs with existing melodies and other random words (one time he sang the poo poo song which was clever). He is certainly enjoying using his voice - both in speech and in song. It is so funny to me that we were worried when we brought him home that he would be "behind" in his English language skills after hearing only Korean for his first year of life. I am not even sure what "behind" really means, but I am quite sure that Paul is right where he should be! He is quite the jabber jaw and we love to hear the things that come out of his mouth.



Hey daddy, are you talking to me?

Did you want to see my belly?

You mean THIS belly?

It's the kind of belly that makes you want to give zerberts....or spooboos as Big Daddy's family calls them. I just love that belly!

Here's our version of kiddie karaoke after dinner tonight. I will admit that the precision of the ABCs is lacking when we are doing the "LOUD" version - twice! And I was completely laughing at how "merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily" sounded in Row Your Boat - Jason thought it sounded like smoothie. This kid is a riot and we are blessed to laugh with him every single day.....even the days when he doesn't take a nap (three days in a row now) and is a little temperamental if you know what I mean.

Our adoption community

When we started our adoption journey back in the fall of 2007, we merely thought we were adding a child to our family. Boy were we surprised to find out that God had so much more planned for us....we have been blessed with a wonderful community of friends. We will never meet some of these friends in person but it does not diminish the amount of love and support we receive from them. And then there are others that we have been fortunate enough to meet in person and some will be lifelong friends.

The beauty of this adoption community is that we all have some basis of understanding of various thoughts and feelings that are unique to the adoption process. It doesn't really matter if you are adopting a boy or girl, a little one from Korea or Ethiopia or domestically from the US, a baby or an older child....many of the feelings are the same.

The other thing about the adoption community....I have never seen a group of people rally around those in need in such a compassionate way. When a momma has a question about a troublesome sleeping issue with their little one there is ALWAYS a lot of advice and support.

We have a new CALL TO ACTION.....a wonderful family with a very open heart is nearing their travel call for a special little girl they have named Emi Faith. This is their fifth child and their second little one coming from Korea. Due to some special circumstances with their daughter, her momma will need a travel companion to help on the return trip (daddy has to stay home to take care of their other children). This additional travel cost has proven to be difficult and this wonderful family is prayerfully asking for financial help. You might ask yourself why you would give to some random family that you will never meet.....and that's a great question. From our perspective, we feel so very blessed that we are financially able to fund the cost of both our first and second adoption. So many families not only take the leap of faith of becoming parents but also have to figure out how they will fund the process. We feel called to pay it forward to this family - we knew we wanted to give as soon as we read their story.

Please prayerfully consider a donation of any size to this family. All of the funds raised will assist them with their travel costs. They have already seen a large outpouring of support from across the country so let's keep up that momentum!! A link to their blog is below.......

http://www.ourpromisedson.blogspot.com/

Thanks for sticking with me through this heartfelt blog. It would be so meaningful to me if somehow my post was able to raise even an additional $5 for this family. I can't wait to see the pictures from their trip and their first family photo with Emi Faith in their arms!