Pea had a great 3rd birthday on April 11th. We celebrated with a family party at our house. In fact, it was the last party at our old house! I still can hardly believe he is three already! What happened to my baby? Well, he's still my baby, though a very big one! He had his three year wellness appointment a couple weeks ago and he is 40" tall and weighs 38lbs. This places him in the 97th percentile on US charts. It's amazing to think that he was only in the 10th percentile for the first 6 months of his life. I am afraid of what my grocery bill is going to be when he is 14!
Pea has such a loving, sweet spirit and is so full of fun and adventure. He is so inquisitive about everything and his imagination has exploded! I love watching him explore and come up with new adventures. He keeps us busy catching sharks, climbing volcanoes, fighting fires, fishing, going on train rides, and more. Who knew we could do so much in one evening?!?! What a fun, fun age (so far!).
One of pea's many obsessions is sea life. He initially wanted a Barracuda cake, but...thankfully he changed his mind to a whale. (Remember when he REALLY wanted to be a giant clam for halloween?!?!?!)
Pea and his boy cousins. They have so much fun together running wild.
Checkin' out the birthday loot.
A bike!!! Doesn't he look GIANT on this bike?!?!
The bubble maker was a huge hit!
Playin' some birthday golf.
And...my mom and her broken elbow. She actually broke her elbow a few days before pea's birthday. She was carrying pea and tripped on the sidewalk. They both went down hard. Pea was okay though he went through a period of shock after the chain of events (possible minor concussion) and my mom ended up in surgery the following week. She is on the mend, but it will be a slow process. Can you believe it? (Well, given that pea is already about half her size, it's really no surprise he could take her down!)
We are FINALLY done with move #1!! We are currently renting a duplex until we get possession of our new house, which will hopefully be in 6 or 7 weeks. So, everything you see in the garage is staying in the garage until move #2. We are living out of boxes and living simple right now. Hopefully move #2 will go a little smoother and a little quicker since most of our stuff is already packed. And, hopefully this will be our last move for a very loooooooong time. Pea has been amazing throughout this moving chaos! He has taken it all in stride and the transition has been virtually seamless for him. I think he is handling it much better than we are! Pea is a pretty laid back and easy going boy. I wish I could attribute these qualities to our amazing parenting skills (hehehe), but it is just his personality. He finds fun and adventure in whatever we are doing.
So now we are just going to take it easy until round 2 of the moving frenzy. We are also taking the next 6 or 7 weeks to get our adoption profile completed so we can move forward with the adoption once we are settled into our new house.
Hang in there with us! I may not be updating as often this summer, but I will do my best!
Please don't abandon us...we're still here!!! The last few weeks have been CRAZY at our house!! As you know, we sold our house and then I was presented with an amazing opportunity that would have meant a new career and relocating across the state. It was an opportunity we had been waiting on for a very long time, but...after much stress and deliberation, I decided to walk away from it. We were so excited about the idea of moving to a new place and I was very excited about this career opportunity, but the timing just wasn't right. After the initial waves of excitement, we started to think about what we would be giving up...family, friends, great jobs, our community, and more. Being faced with the chance to walk away from everything we have right now, made us appreciate and value even more the life we have built. We're just not ready to give it up. It was an extremely difficult and stressful decision, but we made the right choice.
After making this decision, we frantically started the house hunt! That in and of itself was nutty! Our realtor found a house for us that was not even on the market, yet, and it is PERFECT for us!! We made an offer last week and it was accepted. The catch...we will not have possession until the end of June and we need to be out of our house by May 1st. AAAACK!!! At this exact moment, we still don't know where we are moving on May 1st. AAAAAAAAAAACK!!!!! We hope to have that all figured out in the next couple of days. If anything, we can always move in with my parents!
As if we aren't busy enough, we attended our state required two day adoption training this past weekend so we are well on our way! WOOOOHOOOO!!!! Life is crazy hectic right now, but life also feels better than ever. Life feels really, really good.
And...the highlight of our weekend...Pea turned THREE on Sunday!!!!
We sold our house!! Well, we haven't closed, but we are under contract. We are amazed and incredibly lucky that our house sold so quickly. We will be moving out by the end of April and, at this point, we have no idea where we are going. YIKES!!! A lot has been happening over the past month that may mean some unexpected changes for our family, though we are not sure how it is all going to work out at this point. We should have more answers over the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, the packing has commenced. We are excited, a little freaked out, and a lot stressed right now!
to a big boy bed. Well, sort of. We decided it was finally time to take down the crib railing. Sniff. Sniff. Pea has been climbing in and out of his crib for quite some time now, but we just weren't ready for that next step! We have been very lucky in that he always stays in bed when it's time to sleep so why mess with a good thing, right? Well, I kept having images of a broken leg or arm so we figured it was probably time. Plus, we are going to need the crib for the new baby so we might as well get him transitioned out of it soon.
He was so excited to see his "new" bed. He kept sneaking in and out of his room on his tiptoes to look at it. It was very cute! Here he is right before he jumped off. Sigh...there still may be a broken leg or arm in our future with the way he jumps on his bed. Getting ready to snuggle in for the night. And, yes, I am happy to report he has stayed in bed!
Now we need to start thinking about getting a real big boy bed!
In our family, the beginning of spring is marked by my birthday! Woohoo! Spring is definitely my FAVORITE season. Having been born on the first day of spring, I like to think of myself as a breath of fresh air! Hehehe! Actually, my parents claim it snowed on the day I was born. Definitely more fitting. :) We celebrated a day early at my parent's house tonight and it was a great party. My mom cooked my favorite meal and we topped it off with homemade tiramisu. Yum!!
Me and my pea (with his first sidewalk scrape of the season. check out his nose!)
Licking the candle ends. The best part! Pea definitely thought I needed lots of help opening my cards.
Little pea is definitely a rough and tumble boy. He loves all forms of trucks (especially firetrucks!), likes to get dirty, climbs like a monkey, thinks body slamming is funny, and already throws like a little leaguer.
But, my rough and tumble little boy also loooooooves princesses! He frequently asks to watch the Dora princess episodes and begged me to buy him a princess toothbrush last week. "PaLEEEEEESE, mommy! With a cherry on top?!" (whoever taught him that is EVIL!)
So, whenever pea pulls out the blocks, it usually involves building a princess tower. Today's princess tower had a super "cool" garage for the princess's car.
Mr. Cheesy. He is definitely into making a cheese face and immediately saying, "Let me see the picture!"
And, as much as pea enjoys constructing his princess towers, he enjoys destroying them even more. Thank goodness the firetruck was close by to "put out the fire" and clean up after the destruction.
We have had a lot of snow this winter! At least it has been sticking around for awhile. And, we have all been suffering from some serious cabin fever. I am ready for spring, how about you?
So, until spring arrives, we enjoyed a little time playing in the snow last weekend. It was finally warm enough to be outside without getting frostbite or windburn and the snow was perfect for snowballs and snowpeople! Pea LOVES being outside regardless of the weather so he had a blast.
He especially enjoyed body slamming the snow. No joke. He literally threw himself on the ground attacking the snow. He is extremely physical and he has definitely taken it to a new level lately! He especially enjoyed sticking his face in the snow. Is there a WWF for toddlers?
Snow angels. Grrrrrrr....the Abominable snowman!
On top of the world! (or at least on top of frosty's body!)
It was a fun afternoon, but I am not sad to see the snow melting! Come on spring!
Finally, after much searching and reflection, we have decided on a new domestic adoption agency and are moving forward! Initially, we had decided to stick with our first agency, but we kept putting off the application. I kept telling myself it was just because we were busy focusing on other things, but I did not have that pull, that motivation to get it submitted. Now I know that my heart was sending me a message and holding me back for a reason. Our child is meant to come to us in a different way. We had a notion of what our next adoption would look like, but that is starting to change. As I have said before, adoption is truly a journey of the heart. And, this adoption is already proving that as we are opening our hearts once again. Even though we have moved in a direction we didn't expect, it feels RIGHT. My heart feels at ease and that pull and motivation returned instantly after connecting with our new agency. I just know this is where we are meant to be. It is exciting and scary and full of unknowns, but our hearts are opening wide and we are ready!
The next step in our process is to attend our agency's training in April. At that time we will be matched with our social worker and our homestudy process can begin. I anticipate we probably will not be "active" until mid to late summer. We are excited and we can't wait to see what kind adventure and miracle is waiting for us this time around.
WOOHOO!!!! Thanks to some awesome advice, I was able to recover all 500 lost pictures!!! I used a card recovery program online and it worked wonderfully. I had no idea that was even available! So, let's redo this FFF thing...pea thought it would be a great idea to suddenly start coloring on everything but paper right before we listed our house. We were all in the basement cleaning when pea found a permanent red marker and started coloring all over a rug (thank goodness we were getting rid of it) and he colored on the panels of a cabinet. Jason took some Goop cleaner and the red faded a little so it is not as noticeable, but STILL. He just HAD to color on something right before our house was listed!
In this picture, you can see he managed to color all over his hands and face. He also colored on the carpet in our basement. Good grief. At least this time he was using a washable marker.
So, you think coloring on the wall is bad...
Pea enjoys "cleaning" in the basement with an old long feather duster. The other night I decided to exercise (what????) in the basement while Pea was playing. I was in the middle of this very important obstacle course when I heard some interesting noises behind me. I turned around and there was water all over the carpet. I walked over to discover that pea was dipping the feather duster down the sewage drain and sprinkling the lovely smelling water all over the carpet and the cement floor in another area of the basement. DISGUSTING. And, of course, this was JUST after we had finished cleaning everything up in order to be prepared for any short notice house showings. Needless to say, sewage is not really the smell we want to greet potential buyers when they walk in our house. Oh, I was mad! And, to be honest, I was more mad because I finally decided to dedicate some time to exercise and it was interrupted! Luckily we were able to get it cleaned up quickly and the house is back to smelling "normal."
So, I inserted my memory card to find the perfect picture for this week's FFF theme. And, I found it! Pea had managed to color all over his face and hands with a green marker. It was priceless. And now...it is gone. Forever. Sniff. Sniff. Sniff. I have no idea what happened, but somehow I managed to delete my entire memory card. Gone in an instant. All 500 pictures. Luckily, I recently uploaded a vast majority of them, but I lost all of November, December, and the few I had in January. Yes, that means Christmas. I have maybe 3 or 4 pictures saved from Christmas Day at our house. How depressing!! Sigh....
So, here are two pictures from LAST January since I don't have any from THIS January to share. Sniff. Sniff.
It's amazing how much he has grown! These pictures were also taken with my old camera and they look awful compared to the quality of my current camera! Who knew?!?!
It's official! Our house is on the market and we already have a showing scheduled for Friday! Of course, we realize this could take awhile so we are not getting too excited, yet. We spent the entire weekend cleaning, organizing, and decluttering. My parents were a TREMENDOUS help! Our house looks amazing thanks to them! Now we just need to figure out how to maintain our clean and organized house with a wild two year old who enjoys destroying the house in under 2 minutes. So, we busted our hineys over the weekend and now we wait......
Adoption news...or really, lack of news. We are currently reevaluating our choice of agency. We have not been getting the warm fuzzies from them and we also received some negative feedback from someone on an adoption forum. Granted, that is one person's experience, but we have already been starting to feel a little uneasy about our choice. So, we're thinking our gut feeling may be pointing us in another direction. This feels all too familiar because this is exactly how pea's adoption journey started. And, it worked out perfectly. So, we are going to be calling a couple of the other agencies that were on our initial list and then make a decision. And so it begins!
It's Friday! Woohoo! This week's theme is close-ups, but I am going to do my own thing. A couple months ago, my siblings and I arranged a family photo shoot as a Christmas gift to my parents. We all went to the park for the afternoon and the photos turned out great, though pea was not very cooperative so we only have a couple good shots of him. There was just too much space to roam in the park and he was not at all interested in sitting still, or even walking for that matter! Even so, it was a lot of fun and my parents ended up with a beautiful photo book of our photo shoot. Check out some of the other FFF posts on Hannah's blog HERE.
I know. I know. It's been pretty quiet and boring in our little corner of the blog world. But, a lot has been happening and we recently made some big decisions. Jason and I have been planning on moving for several years. Not just moving across town, but moving from our current town. Away from family. Away from the place where I was raised. In fact, I never, EVER, imagined that I would even move back to the town where I grew up. I couldn't wait to go off to college and get the heck out of dodge! And, I did for about 10 years. Then, on a whim about 9 years ago, Jason and I decided we were tired of only seeing our families 2 or 3 times per year, at the most. So, we moved back to my hometown, to the place I had vowed to never live in again. But, after a couple of years, we were feeling the itch. The itch to live somewhere else and that became our plan.
Then, suddenly, things started getting in the way of our master plan: jobs, graduate school, building a family, the timing just didn't feel right, etc, etc. Through it all, however, we always talked about moving and our conversations would often be, "well, maybe we shouldn't do x, y, or z because we may be moving next year." Consequently, we have never really felt fully settled where we are because we have always planned on leaving. What we have slowly started to realize (yes...I said slowly!) is that our master plan (the plan that never seemed to materialize) has been holding us back. We stopped pursuing other goals and plans because we were so focused on this other plan and uncertain of our future. It was keeping us from building roots, making connections, and feeling grounded where we are. And, we realized we were growing weary of waiting for something to happen that may not happen for a long time, or may never happen. In many ways this realization was a great relief, in other ways it was a bit stressful because this is something we have been thinking about and planning on for a long time. Suddenly, our "master plan" seemed to be evolving...significantly.
We have finally admitted that our "master plan" no longer feels right and it's time to let it go...for now. So, what does that mean? We have a new plan! Ha! We have decided to stay we where we are and settle in for awhile (notice the noncommittal time frame!). In fact, we are getting ready to list our house so that we can look for another house to build some roots, a house with room to grow. Truly, this has been a huge decision for us and one we have been deliberating over for a few months. As you may remember, we were going to list our house last spring with the "plan" of moving away. Well, the market just wasn't in our favor so we decided to wait. And, during that wait, we did a lot of soul searching and it led to this recent decision. With that in mind, we are ready for a different kind of change. Sort of like a new beginning.
So, we have been busy getting our house ready and hope to have it listed by next week! We are excited, though we realize there are no guarantees in this market. My parents are helping us this weekend with a power clean so that everything will be ship shape! Wish us luck!
So, I am trying to clean off the video camera so here is another video of pea! He has been taking swimming lessons for the last few months and has come a very long way since our first day in the pool! You may remember he screamed and had a death grip on me for the entire lesson! No more! He absolutely LOVES the water. For the most part, he doesn't really care what the rest of the swimming class is doing. He just swims around doing his own thing most of the time, testing out his new skills (including beating daddy with the noodle). Enjoy!
Pea and I were enjoying some hot chocolate together yesterday as it snowed outside and we were talking about some of his favorite things. I grabbed the video camera to capture a little bit of our impromptu interview. I just love hearing what he has to say! And, don't worry, we do not give him tires for breakfast. :)
Happy Holidays, everyone!! We had a very busy and FUN holiday season. So much so that the blog had to take a backseat for a little while. We did A LOT of baking at home and with family and friends, we gained some weight, we visited a train museum and rode a small steam engine train, we spent time with family, we went to the zoo to see the lights, watched Christmas shows, opened lots of presents, and just enjoyed being together. Here is a glimpse into our funfilled month. I hope you all had a wonderful holiday!
Wow! We have been busy already this holiday season! This past weekend was full of holiday activities. We started off with a visit to Santa. Pea was not so sure about Santa this year! He would not sit on Santa's lap and wanted me right beside him. He did manage inform Santa that he wants a fire truck, ambulance, and police car for Christmas!
A quick pic of pea with Santa.
After visiting with Santa, we headed out to the Christmas tree farm. This was a tradition in Jason's family when he was growing up so we are continuing that tradition with our family. We had a lot of fun trying to find the perfect tree.
Pea decided it was more fun to race in and out of the trees...
to play hide and seek with daddy.
BOO!!! Pea LOVES hide and seek and wants to play it ALL the time! He just laughs and laughs.
"Wait for me, daddy!" Or, as pea often says..."Daddy is getting away!"
We had our little family tree decorating party on Sunday and it was more like a "who is the grumpiest" party! We were all feeling under the weather and nothing seemed to be going "right." But, the evening ended perfectly and I only need to replace one strand of lights on the tree...;)
