Crazy October....

It's been a crazy and busy month! Christopher is fast entering the "terrible twos" and keeps me running all day! He is in the process of transitioning to one nap a day which leaves me even less time to breathe, and his new favorite "game" is to up end every bucket or bin, and pull out every dish, pan, toy, or book he can reach as he runs by. I spend most of his nap time putting the house back together. Don't get me wrong though, I wouldn't change it for the world!

He is such a cool little person!

This is a pretty typical day at our house now!

This month started out with the tail end of our vacation to Lexington, Kentucky to see the FEI World Equestrian Games. It was this event that I purchased tickets for the very morning we received our referral last year! It was such a strange feeling to be there with our son when we bought the tickets not expecting to even have been matched by now. It seems crazy that we have had him home for over 10 months! So surreal! Christopher was such a great little traveler; we are so lucky that he likes to ride in the car!

The next weeks included trips to the petting zoo and the pumpkin patch -where we took this picture - my new favorite!

I can't wait for Christopher to carve his first pumpkin (an activity we traditionally save for Halloween day).

Phil and I had a date night out to see the Lord of the Rings live with the GR Symphony and left Christopher with a teenage babysitter for the first time. It was great that it went so well, but I felt pretty old when I was explaining to the babysitter that she had to be careful where she put things on the counter because Christopher has "go-go-gadget arms" and she looked at me like I was nuts...obviously that reference is a little before her time lol!

We took a trip to Wisconsin via the ferry across lake MI to see some dear friends and their children. I am not a huge fan of boats in general as I suffer from pretty severe motion sickness, but with the help of a Thomas the Train DVD (yup, I have become one of those mothers) I was able to stay seated with my head down and made it without vomiting - Yeah! ;o) We went to the children's museum in the morning and spent the evening at Boo at the Zoo in Milwaukee! It was so much fun, and Christopher made the cutest little lion ever!

Can't you almost hear the roar? (ok ok, I know he was yawning, just humor me! )

Yesterday Christopher finally had his hernia surgery (which was previously postponed due to illness). He was such a little trooper and it turned out to be quite large, so I'm glad we were able to have it fixed. Once the surgery was over we were holding him as he was sleeping off the anesthesia and they announced over the loud speaker there was a tornado warning! Yikes! All the nurses hurried to move the kids and their monitors and cribs into the halls and closed all the doors to protect from flying glass just in case. The hospital staff was so great. They kept the little ones busy with games and toys and bubbles - what an amazing person you would have to be to work with sick kids all day! The crazy part was that a total of 5 (yes FIVE) times they came on over the speaker and announced the warning was now over and was back to a watch, only to come back on a short time later to say it was a warning again! The first two times the nurses had already moved most of the kids back to their rooms and they all groaned in disbelief that they had to do it all over again. We were lucky enough to still be waiting to move when the second warning came, so we just stayed in the hall. They obviously couldn't discharge him during a tornado warning, and since they kept changing the status, they just had us hang out most of the day (in the hallway with all the others). I can't complain though...they really took good care of him! I finally have a chance to update the blog since he is still exhausted from the anesthesia.

This is how Christopher passed the time waiting for the surgery to start...good 'ol cozy coupe saves the day!

Have you ever seen such a cute little hospital gown?

If that wasn't enough excitement for one month, we will finish the last weekend of October with an overnight whirlwind trip to Washington then a little trick-or-treating! We can only hope that November will be a bit more relaxing.....but I won't hold my breath! :o)

Wordless Wednesday - World's Most Tolerant Cat

Wordless Wednesday - Kentucky Horse Park

One Year Ago

September 25th, 2009. A day I will ALWAYS remember. I can see it very clearly in fact. Phil was giving a CE course at the University Of Minnesota so we decided to make a get-away weekend out of the trip. It was a rainy Friday. I spent the bulk of the morning in the hotel room scrambling online to buy tickets to the FEI world games in Kentucky for this year. The tickets went on sale at 8am, and I spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon in my pj's watching tv - a rare treat! Since it was a crummy day, we decided that once his course was over, Phil would pick me up at the hotel and we would head to the Mall of America for a little shopping fun. Trying to leave down town Minneapolis on a Friday afternoon at 4:30 was not the greatest plan, and we ended up completely stopped in traffic gridlock on the highway. Bummer. At 5pm Phil's phone rang. He answered.... "Oh Hi Ann" (our social worker)......I froze...."you're kidding, that's great news"......my heart stopped. We had been matched...it was a BOY! I had a SON! This was the moment we had been waiting and worrying about for so long. We were finally going to be parents! It should have been the single happiest moment of my life. I remember during the long wait before this moment I envisioned just how the call would come and wondered what I would do: would I scream, would I jump for joy, would I cry?

In reality however, my actual reaction was something I had never anticipated. I did start to cry, but it wasn't the cry I expected, it was a totally panicked "oh no ...they made a mistake .... I'm not ready.... what if we made a mistake" kind of cry. Then I was horrified at my initial reaction which made me cry harder! I was a wreck, and I think my poor husband was in shock because of it! It took about ten minutes for him to calm me down and for me to actually compose my thoughts, but it wasn't until Phil pulled the referral picture up on his phone that I took a really good look at Christopher's face that all the fear went away. When I think about it now, I am ashamed that I ruined that wonderful moment for Phil..... and for myself.

Thankfully, by the time we called our parents to tell them the good news, I was over the moon! We celebrated with a lovely dinner over which we discussed boy names and spent the rest of the evening looking at every boy related toy and outfit in that crazy mall!

When I look at Christopher now, I can't imagine him not in my life. He is my son. I love him more than words could ever describe...even on his worst day! ;o) He is the light of my life, the joy in my heart! It makes me sad to this day, and I still shake my head when I think about how I panicked.

Wordless Wednesday-Daddy hugs make everything better!

Wordless Wednesday - Corn On The Cob!

It's Official!!

We finally had our day in court last Thursday, and Christopher's adoption is now official....and he is officially a US citizen!! Whoo hoo! It was a great day! Our judge was great. We took lots of photos afterwards, but to my total embarrassment, Christopher hit the poor judge on the side of the head in attempts to get his glasses! He was a great sport about it though, and just laughed. If you look closely at the photo with the judge, you will notice that Christopher was "petting" him! When I realized what was happening, I tried to stop him but the judge just laughed and said it was "ok", he was just curious. The judge pretended to let Christopher beat him up afterwards and it had our little man in a fit of giggles. It was great that he was such a kid (or crazy toddler) friendly person! We had a small group of family members join us at the court house and we all went out to dinner afterwards. I can't even begin to describe how relieved I feel to finally be his "legal" parents...even if we have know for a long time now that we are a family and there is nothing that will ever change that!! We took advantage of the fact that we were all dressed up for once to have our first professional family portraits taken that evening. What a great way to remember such a wonderful day!!