When Mommy's Away....

Jen was away this weekend for her annual getaway to the beach with her good friends from college. This was the first time I have had Grace on my own for more than one night. Things went surprisingly well. I was most concerned about her sleeping as she has been having some rough nights lately but she slept 12+ hours Friday and Saturday without waking up once.

Grace is also coming into her almost-twoness. She is really getting a mind of her own now. She wants to do things herself, wear what she wants and lets us know when she is not happy with little tantrums. Jen had been telling me about them but I had not experience one firsthand...until this weekend.

The first tantrum was because she did not want to sit in her highchair Saturday morning. She won that battle as I pulled out the booster seat which seemed to appease her. The second tantrum was caused be me putting the bubbles away because she was eating them. I won that battle but I had to hear about the bubbles for about five minutes. They were both pretty minor actually, I have seen kids in the supermarket have worse tantrums than that.

The weekend was great for Grace and I to bond. We started out Saturday by meeting up with Gram, Aunt Melinda and cousins James and Sam for some strawberry picking. Grace got more strawberries in her mouth and on her face and clothes than in the basket but she had fun. In the afternoon we went to visit Unky B, Kathryn and Karina who were also sans mommy for the weekend. We commiserated and said hi to Unky B's parents who were lending a hand.

The rest of the weekend was spent taking walks. bike rides and wagon rides. We made it through injury free which is a plus. Unfortunately I didn't take too many pics this weekend as I had my hands full but we do have a couple from the week.

Happy Father's Day

Hope all of the dads out there had a good day. We went out for lunch today to celebrate. Below is a pic of Grace and I modeling our matching "Life is Good" t-shirts that I got for Father's Day. Life definitely is good!!!!

And our family picture below

Grace and Pa Pa

I got my self something special for Father's Day. Since we are down to one income we have been holding off on making any big purchases but our old vacuum broke twice in the past couple months so we were looking to get a new one. All of the reviews I read recommended the Dyson so when we saw that one we were looking at was on sale we picked this one up.

I didn't really intend to spend Father's Day vacuuming the house but it is amazing how much dirt and cat hair this thing picks up. The only issue is Grace keeps trying to get a ride on it like our old one.....Think this might be why our old one broke?

Catching up

The past couple weeks we were being a bit nostalgic with our "One Year Ago" posts and neglected to post any current pics so I will make up for it tonight. Not much now going on here otherwise. We have started the process of checking out daycare providers for when Jen goes back to work in September but I will post about that later.

Grace, Jen and Me Me took a trip to a little park earlier this week. Grace had a blast. We are still in search of a nice park in our area, we have found a couple but most are kind of hike to get to.

We have resurrected Grace's play table for now. We bought it for her this past Christmas but she kept climbing on top of it and falling off so we put in in the basement for a while. Now that she seems to be past her climbing stage we are probably safe. We just hope our walls survive the crayons.

First taste of steamers and she seemed to like them.

It was a little cool out on Saturday but we stopped by the beach for a few minutes to play in the waves. The water here in New England is very cold and it is very early in the year but I don't remember the water ever being this cold. I could only stand being in the water for a few seconds, I must be getting old. The cold water didn't seem to bother Grace one bit.

One year ago today.....

Over the past few weeks we have enjoyed looking back at the pics and videos we took while we were in China. At this point last year we were home and attempting to settle in. One of the major hurdles we had to overcome was getting ourselves back on US time. Those first couple weeks were a blur, we don't really remember much from that time but luckily we have some video. To get Grace back on US time we were trying to keep her up an hour later each day. As you can see from the below video our efforts were failing.

The difference a year makes...

Just about one year ago to the day the below picture was taken on a red couch in the White Swan Hotel in Guangzhou, China.

Yesterday we hosted 11 families from our travel group for our 1 year reunion/picnic. The weather held out and we spent the afternoon marveling at how much our girls have changed in a year. It has been a pretty amazing year for all of our families and we are so lucky to have these beautiful little girls in our families.

One year ago today......

We became a family. One year ago today we were handed the cutest little baby we had ever seen. We were far away from home and we fumbled through our first couple weeks as parents but eventually things started to click.

Last night as Grace was having trouble falling to sleep. As I rocked her I recounted the story of our "Family Day". After the story I asked her if she was ready for bed. She proceeded to give me a big hug, grab me by both cheeks and planted two little kisses on my lips. Finally a family!!!!

To commemorate our family day Jen put together a little video with highlights from our first year as a family. The pictures are in chronological order so it's really cool to see how Grace has changed over the past year. Enjoy....

One Year Ago Today...

We boarded a plane bound for Beijing China for a trip of a lifetime. It would be a trip that would change and enrich our lives forever in ways we would never imagine. We left home with bags packed and the below picture close to our hearts.....

We were scared and stressed and excited all at the same time. In just a few short days we would be meeting our daughter for the first time.

Pic post

Just posting a couple quick pics tonight.....

Happy Mother's Day

Hope all of the moms out there had a great day. This was Jen's first year celebrating Mother's Day with Grace home. Last year we had Grace's referral picture but Jen had to wait a couple more weeks to see Grace in person. We spent the day yesterday visiting with our Moms.

Me-Me, Grace and Jen
Gram, Grace and Steve

This morning Grace game mommy a special present and slept in a little so mommy had an extra hour of rest. Then Grace gave Mommy her gift. A new watch.

We headed out early for lunch in Salem and then to see the Mahjong exhibit at the Peabody Essex Museum. I think it was a pretty good day for mommy. Some pics below from Jen's day.

Free Lifebook Course

I received an email today from Adoption Learning Partners regarding a free online lifebook class that they are offering until the end of May. If you aren't familiar with Adoption Learning Partners they offer web-based adoption resources and classes. We took a couple of their free classes while we were waiting. The classes are pretty quick to go through and for certain classes you can pay an additional fee to get a certificate of completion.

The description of the course from their website is below:

A Lifebook is a book created for an adopted child that tells his story, before and after adoption. The Lifebook helps all children place foster care or adoption in the context of their life experiences.

The Lifebooks Course helps adoptive families:

• Understand the purpose of a Lifebook and the need to start or to continue to develop one.
• Learn the difference between baby books, scrap books, and Lifebooks.
• Identify the components of a Lifebook.
• Identify situations that may benefit from employing Lifebooks.
• Develop some pages of your adopted child's Lifebook.
• Understand the importance of Lifebooks as a lifelong project.

You can sign up for the course at the Adoption Learning Partners website here.

Pic Post

Just a picture post tonight....

Loving Spring
Helping Daddy

Not what I had in mind.

Olive you.

Stuck

We had a little crisis over here last night. Nothing too major, everyone is fine but I guess it is just one of those things that new parents need to go through.....

The night started out normal enough, I gave Grace her bottle and then put her down for bed. She seemed a little more wired than normal so I assumed that it was going to take her a little while to fall to sleep as it sometimes does. So I headed downstairs to check my email and listened to her babble for about 10 minutes on the baby monitor. After a few more minutes the babbling turned into whining and then a bit of crying so Jen decided to head up and check on her.

As soon as Jen got upstairs she yelled down to me to come upstairs. Before I even was on the stairs she was calling me again, pretty frantically this time so I knew something was up. When Jen got upstairs she found Grace with one of her legs stuck past her knee through the slats in the front of the crib. She wasn't too upset at this point she just kept repeating "stuck stuck stuck". Jen and I both tried to pull her leg out but it was indeed stuck.

So we tried moving Grace into different positions but it wasn't coming out without hurting her. The more we tried to move her the more upset she got. Grace is normally not a crier so we knew she must have been in pain and we felt pretty helpless that we couldn't get her leg out for her. Luckily her legs aren't as chubby now as they were before she started walking but there is still enough girth there that we weren't going to just be able to pull it out.

My first inclination was to just break the slats of of the crib but Jen talked me out of that which is a good thing as I probably would have hurt her by splintering the wood. So we decided to try get her pants off to give us some room to work with. Getting her pants off was not so easy at this point as she was was crying as hard as we have ever seen her cry. We briefly considered cutting her pants off her but figured that may upset her more. After a minute we were able to finally get her pants off and saw her poor little leg starting to get all red and bruised from all of our pushing and pulling. Jen ran into the bathroom and got a soapy cloth to lube up her leg and we were finally able to slide her leg back through. Once she was out Grace and Mommy had a good cry but luckily no damage was done. The whole incident probably only lasted a couple minutes but it felt much longer to us, there is nothing worse than seeing your baby in pain.

After the fact we realized that this incident was reminiscent of a conversation we had in China with a couple families in our travel group. I don't exactly remember the context of the conversation but it had something to do with us imagining bathing Grace in a sink and her sizable hips getting stuck. Our overtired minds for some reason found immense humor in the need to butter her thighs to get her out. Who would of thought that almost one year later we would need to butter (or soap up) Grace's thigh because she was stuck in her crib.

Tired Daddy

This weekend was another Daddy weekend as Jen went away overnight for a girls' weekend. She left around noon on Saturday and was back around 1:30pm so really she was only gone a little over 24 hours but I am wiped.

My plan was to keep really busy and tire Grace out so she would sleep well so we started Saturday with a bike ride and a walk. The weather hit 80 degrees this weekend for the first time this year so it was great to be outside. Saturday night we went to have dinner with my mom and then headed home for bed. I think Grace took a little pity on me and slept right through the night, something she hasn't done in a very long time. When informed Jen of the great sleep night she gave me an incredulous look, when she realized I was telling the truth the look turned into daggers.

When Jen got home this afternoon we decided to check out a local park we have heard about. It has a small playground and lots of trails so it looks like it will be a great place to take Grace as she gets older. Below some pics from the week....

Contemplating the slide

Catch me Mommy!!!

Swingin' with Mommy

I love my kitty!!!

But Kitty doesn't love me....

This isn't really a recent picture, it was part of the Easter/18 month pictures we had done. It was a special order so it just recently came in and I just got around to scanning it. We really like how it came out so I figured I would post it here.

First Haircut

Grace's hair has been getting pretty unruly lately so Jen decided to take her down to the beauty salon for her first haircut. We weren't sure how it was going to go but Grace did really well, she didn't even shed a tear.

First Snips
Almost Done
Pretty Girl

Profile shot

Hijinx with Lucy

I just had to post this......

Happy Easter

Happy Easter to all from our little Easter Bunny in her Easter dress

A Very Good Day

Today was one of those days that will stay in our memories for a very long time. I took the day off work because we had an appointment at our local probate court for Grace's re-adoption/finalization. The process is really just a formality since we already adopted Grace in China but the process allows Grace to get a US birth certificate which will make things easier for her down the road.

The local courts like to make a pretty big deal about it as they are used to dealing with criminals and people suing each other so it's nice when they get to see a happy family. So we had to be at court at 9am where we met up with Grammy, Grandpa, Gram King, Aunt Melinda, Uncle Jim, James and Sammy. They called us into the courtroom around 9:30 and we went back to the Judge's Quarters where we met Judge Manzi and the rest of the court personnel. Of course they were all enamoured with our Grace. Grace got to sit on the Judge's lap and help sign the paperwork. It was all pretty informal but everyone there was so nice and we could tell they really enjoyed being a part of the finalization of our adoption. After everything was signed we took some pictures and Grace got a special picture taken on the judge's chair.

We all went back to our house afterwards for coffee and donuts and then we took everyone out for lunch at a local restaurant that we like. It was a very cool day and we were so glad that our families got to be a part of this special moment for our family. Some pics of the day below.

Wee Ride

Back when Jen and I had free time we used to often go for bike rides. Grace is still a few years from a bike of her own but we knew she would enjoy coming along with us. We started looking around for a kid carrier for our bikes a couple weeks ago. We didn't like the idea of those old-fashion seats where the child sits behind you and you can't see them. One of our neighbors has one of those trailers that he pulls his twins around in but I am not sure how safe those are for riding on uneven pavement. Then we found the Wee Ride Kangaroo seat and we really liked the concept. The seat mounts to the top tube so the child is right between your arms and legs for protection. It also has a three point harness so it seems pretty safe. It came in last week and when the weather warmed up today we took Grace out for her first ride and she loved it. It is good for kids up to 40 pounds so we should get some good use out of it.

I wasn't sure how comfortable it was going to be for me as you need to bow your legs out a little bit so your knees don't bump the seat. It wasn't too bad, a little more work going up hills but that is to be expected with an extra 25 pounds along for the ride. Grace doesn't really like wearing a helmet but the giggling all the way down the hills proved she didn't mind too much. Some video below of our first ride.

One Year

It is hard to believe that it was one year ago today that we got the call from our agency telling us we have a daugher. A few hours later we saw the most beautiful face we had ever seen.

That day was one of the most exciting days of our lives. If you want to relive the day with us you can read about it here and here. We were on such a high that day and that high has continued to this day. It has been quite a year, it seems to have gone by so fast yet it is hard to remember what life was like before Grace.

Jen went out with some friends today so I got to spend the day with just Grace and I. At one point today I was sitting on the couch with Grace sleeping on my chest, reflecting on all that has happened in the past year. It was a pretty surreal thinking back about how much our life has changed and how much it will change in the years to come.

Busy Weekend

This has been a crazy week in our household. I had a couple days toward the end of the week where I had meetings after work so I got home after Grace was already in bed. When that happens I don't get to see her at all since she is usually in bed when I leave in the morning. When I finally did see her on Friday it seemed like she looked just a little older. The good thing is we had an action-packed weekend and got to spend plenty of time together.

On Saturday we represented our Adoption Agency at a local adoption conference. The conference had a workshop for families considering adoption from China or waiting to adopt and we were asked to bring Grace and talk a little bit about our experience. Talking about our agency, our adoption and Grace are our favorite things to do, so we couldn't say no. We had a good time at the conference and I hope we were able to help some of the families trying to decide which path to take and helped ease the mind of the waiting families. We really know what they are going through as just a year ago we were in their shoes. Hang in there!!!!

After the conference we visited with some of our travel mates from China--Zoe and family. The girls had a great time together. K cooked a wonderful meal for us which Grace enthusiastically acknowledged by literally licking her plate clean. It was great to get together and catch up and see how great the girls are doing. Some pics from the day...

Today we went to the local mall to get Grace's Easter/18 month pictures taken. After the pictures we decide to go for a visit to the Easter Bunny which let's say did not go so well. Grace wanted nothing to do with the furry guy so we hopped out of there as fast as we could. I guess we should have known how it would go from the look on her face in the picture we took while waiting in line.

We made up for it by taking a ride on the carousel which seems to make everything better in the world of Grace.