Mommy Work

Most of our friends and family know by now that Jen is going back to work tomorrow after staying home with Grace for over a year. Grace knows that I leave every morning to go to work, she has even been there a couple times so I think she makes the connection. We have been trying to prepare by asking her where Mommy is going to work next week. So every one in a while she will tell us "Mommy Work" so we think she gets it but I don't thing she fully realizes what it means for her yet. We are pretty confident that she is going to do great though. She isn't starting daycare for a couple weeks so she will be splitting time between Gram's and MeMe and PaPa's.

Jen, on the other hand, is not doing so good. We have had couple bouts of spontaneous crying and we have been very busy running around getting everything ready. Jen tried to make the most of her last week home last week as well. Monday was my 38th birthday so we celebrated when I got home with a nice dinner and cake.

On Tuesday Grace and Jen went to the beach with MeMe and the MKs for for her last beach excursion of the year.

On Wednesday the girls came into the city for lunch with daddy. There is a nice park not too far from where I work so we had ourselves a little picnic. On Thursday Jen and Grace met up with Carrie and Annika for a playdate at a park up in New Hampshire.

Birth Culture

I came across an interesting article in the Boston Globe today about embracing birth culture with adoptees. I thought some of the adoptive parents who read our blog would find it interesting.

The article is written by a Taiwanese adoptee who warns parents not to go too far with celebrating or idealizing their child's native culture or it may have damaging effects. Back when international adoption started to become more common in the 70s and 80s adoptive parents were told to bring their children up as "American" and not to confuse them with their birth culture.

When these adoptees became adults social workers realized that not teaching adoptees about their birth culture was damaging to adoptees. Some adoptees felt that because of the way they looked they did not really fit into American culture and they also did not fit it with their native culture because they know nothing about it.

So adoption experts switched gears and social workers now stress (as ours did) the importance of birth culture in our children's lives. The author of the article warns adoptive parents not to just focus on the fun parts of birth culture like food and music. But to also to discuss the more difficult topics like racial stereotypes and bullying.

Overall though the author advises adoptive parents to just "relax". Find a happy middle ground and give your kids the space when they need it. Grace is a bit young to start with any real birth culture type stuff but is nice to have articles like this to refer to for later on. If you are interested in the article it is linked below.

Boston Globe

Firsts...

It was really hot here this weekend so on Saturday we decided to go to the local mall to get out of the heat. While we were there we decided to take Grace on her first trip to Build a Bear Workshop. She got a gift certificate for Christmas and we figured she is old enough now to appreciate it.

Grace selected the spotted snow leopard and named him "Kitty"

Watching Kitty get stuffed.


Washing Kitty with Mommy

I love my Kitty

We also took Grace to see her first baseball game this weekend. We didn't quite make it to see the Sox play the Yankees but we did see their Single A affiliate The Lowell Spinners. The Spinners have a nice little park, the tickets are cheap and the games are really kid-friendly. It was a little warm out but we enjoyed ourselves anyway.

Another Homerun!!!!

Three hats are better than two

Story Land

We took off on Tuesday for a trip with the Shahs to Story Land. This was Grace's first time at an amusement park and she had a blast. We stayed at this themed hotel called Adventure Suites. Most of the rooms had some sort of theme, except ours. The room we stayed in was called the Owners' Quarters, it seemed to just have all of the leftover decorations from the other rooms. But it worked out for us since it had two bedrooms, a sitting room, a living room and a kitchen. So after the kids went to bed we got to stay up and catch up a bit. The bedroom we stayed in had a bunk bed and Grace slept the whole night in the bottom bunk. This was a pretty big deal as it was the first time that she has slept through the night not in her crib or with us.

We had a little bit of rain at Story Land but we made the most of it. There were a couple rides that Grace was not tall enough for but most of the rides seemed geared toward small kids. Some pics from the week below.

I Rock!!!
Bunkin' with the girls

The Kings

Ridin' the whale

Family Portrait

Milestones

I haven't posted in a while about some of the new things that Grace is up to so.....

• 2 Year Molars - Earlier this month Grace had a week or so that she wasn't sleeping well. We didn't think much of it at the time. Then last week Jen noticed that Grace has one of her two year molars about half way through. Guess we have a few more to look forward to in the upcoming months.


• Potty Training - We started noticing lately that Grace has been really interested in all things potty. She knows that when mommy and daddy go into the bathroom it is for pee-pee. With all this interest we decided to introduce her potty seat. We have a couple of those kids' seats that just go over the toilet seat, the regular potty seats kind of gross us out. So we started sitting Grace on it before her bath at night and most of the time she will pee. She has also been telling us lately when she has to go poo-poo so that makes it really easy, we just bring her into the bathroom as long as we are home. The whole potty thing took us a bit by surprise, I think it will be a while before she is completely trained but she is pretty good about it. Jen went out this week to get some panties so I guess that is the next step.


• Possession - Lately Grace has picked up on the fact that certain things belong to certain people. It is pretty cute when she points out Mommy's chair, Daddy's chair, Grace's chair. Or Mommy's car and Daddy's car.


• Sentences - Grace has started using three word sentences. Some of our favorites are: Git Dow Oo-Tee (Get down Lucy). Mama Ba ba Pees(Mama Bottle Please) and I la lu (I love you).


• Independence - Grace has also started showing is she has quite a mind of her own lately. Sometimes it manifests in a temper tantrum. Unfortunately she has had a couple lately in restaurants so we have to be a little more careful of when and where we go out to eat. She has also started needing to pick out which clothes and shoes she is going to wear for the day. Makes for some interesting outfits but mommy is glad she has a girly-girl who usually prefers to wear a dress.

I am on vacation this week so we have some fun stuff planned. I will try to do a mid-week post with some pics since I haven't posted any lately.

The Kid's Got Rhythm

Ignore the guy lounging in the background