CHRISTMAS!

I know this post is late, but things were sort of hectic around here! My parents and one of my Aunts were here for 9 days, so time just seemed to get away from me, I guess!!! We got to spend Christmas Eve with Brady's Uncle Eric, Aunt Pam and cousins Preston and Ashley!! Christmas Day was spent with my parents, Aunt and brother in the morning and then the rest of my family came over for Christmas Dinner, so we had a total of 15 here!! Needless to say, Brady had a great time celebrating with all the family!! Being the good boy that he was all year, he ended up getting a TON of presents....a word he quickly learned!!! He did get a bit overwhelmed at one point, so we actually saved a few gifts for him to open later, which he gladly did. He was also a great help passing out the presents to everyone too!

Here are some pictures of Chrismas morning ( I was very bad and didn't take any pictures Christmas Eve or later in the day on Christmas)

Brady in his bounce house!

Playing his new drum...and lovin' it!!

Using his new lawn mower, which he LOVES!!(of course, because it's the loudest toy we gave him!!!)

Brady's reaction when we first saw all of his loot!!

All of Brady's loot!

A FEW FUNNY THINGS!!

I thought I would post about a few funny things that Brady has been doing lately!! My favorite thing is his pretending to sleep!! He even snores!!! Yesterday we were at AC Moore (which is like a Michael's or Joann's) and the check out lady starting talking to him and I guess he didn't want to talk to her because he put his head down, closed his eyes and started snoring!!!! TOO FUNNY!!

If Chelsea gets too close to me, he comes over and BACKS into her to make her move out of the way!!! This gets very tricky in the bathroom!!! The other thing that he is doing to Chelsea, which isn't particularly funny, but worth noting, is when she's laying down, minding her own business, he walks over and scoots his feet under her, which of course makes her get up and move!!! Poor thing!! Obviously, Alan and I are working on this!!!

I'm not sure if most almost 2 year olds fall a lot, but Brady does. I'm always asking him, "are you okay?", so lately when he falls, he immediately says, "K" before I even have a chance to ask!!

He dances to music randomly!! Meaning, he'll be playing in the family room and a commercial will come on and he'll stop what he's doing, dance for the duration of the commercial, and then go back to playing when it's over!! Also, when we're at the mall and we go by stores like Abercrombie and Fitch who have their music BLARING (I must be getting old, to say that!!) he dances (as much as he can in the stroller) for the walk by and then immediately stops!!! I really need to get some of this dancing on video because it has "improved" since the last time I uploaded video with his dancing skills!

This is just today...his butt is itchy ( I think it's dry skin), so I put some lotion on him and told him that mom made it better, so now he's walking around scratching his butt, saying "boo boo" followed by "mom"!!!! It's really quite funny!!!

And just the past few days, all animals growl!!! Last night we were looking at a book and I asked him what the horse says and his response was, "roar"!!! 

Brady is still LOTS of fun as you can see, but we are definitely approaching the terrible two's and I am NOT looking forward to that! He's quite stubborn and definitely knows what he wants, so I think we've got some interesting days in front of us!!! He continues to talk up a storm and amazes me with his association of things....for example the other day he was playing with a Happy Meal toy and he pointed to Ronald McDonald, so I told him who it was. Well, he proceeded to put the toy down and go over to his other toys and he came back with his Old MacDonald tractor and animals!!! Often when I'm talking to my mom and I tell him I'm talking to Grandma, he then says, Pop Pop (which is what he calls my dad)!! On at least 2 occasions I have been talking to Alan and I've said, "your dad" to him, and Brady will say, "Gung Gung" (which is what he calls Alan's dad)!!! He also knows which friends belong to which mom... If I tell him we're going to meet Kayla and Kyle, he'll say "Kristi" or if I say we're going to see Blake, he'll say "Margi". I have no idea if this is normal or above normal for an almost 2 year old, but nonetheless, it completely amazes me that he comprehends all this!!! I do talk to Brady A LOT, so maybe that is part of it, I don't know, but whatever it is, I think it's amazing!!!Of course all of this means, that I've REALLY got to start watching what I say in front of him!!!

I NEED/MISS MY MOM!!

You see, my mom usually helps me decorate for Christmas at least the first year we're in a new house, and as you all know this is our first year in this house, but my mom is NOT helping me!! Now, granted we live a lot further away than we have in the past so it's not so easy this year, but I NEED HELP!!! This is a big house and this year we have to keep in mind that there's a little someone who lives here that is VERY interested in things and likes to touch most of those things, so that kind of eliminates some of our decorating possibilities. Not to mention that we started off the holiday season by realizing that the tree we've had for the past 3 years, that is AWESOME, that we both LOVE, didn't fit in this house!!! So, I actually bought 3 trees and we picked the best one, but it still doesn't fill the shoes of our old tree!! Anyway, back to my mom, I wish we had planned better so that she could have come up here to help me out. She's one of those types who doesn't allow any breaks until the job is completed (if she were here, I CERTAINLY would not be on the computer right now!!) and makes me get things done.... there is no procrastinating  when she's around!!! To prove my point that it's not as easy without her I've included some pictures of my disastrous living room and undecorated tree!!!

bins, bins and more bins, everywhere!!

My goal is to have it all cleaned up today!!! So, I guess that means I need to get off the computer and go get to work!!!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!

We spent Thanksgiving with Alan's family at his brother's house. We had a really nice time and of course the food was spectacular! Brady had fun playing with Gung Gung and Po Po and his cousins Preston and Ashley! Lucky for us, the dog didn't get any of Brady's toys this time!! (the last time we were at their house, we had a near fatality with Mr. Bear!!!) We all have a lot to be thankful for this year!!

back row l. to r. Eric, Alexander, Alan, Beth

sitting l. to r. Gung Gung, Ashley, Brady, Po Po, Preston, Pam

Cisco and Brady behind bars!!!

Ashley and Brady playing with the light switch!

Preston and Brady playing with the light switch! (Brady was a little obsessed with the light switches for some reasons!!)

SO CUTE!!!! Brady and Cisco waiting to go outside!!

Brady and Alexander

Alexander was here for Thanksgiving, which was really nice!! He and Brady get along so well and really enjoy each other's company, it's really nice to watch them together!! Here's a few pictures of them fooling around.

CHELSEA!

I kinda feel like Chelsea has been getting the short end of the stick lately, so I thought she deserved her very own post!!! Lately if Chelsea gets too close to me, Brady will come over and back into her to get her to move out of the way!!! (um, should I start telling him now that he's going to have to share me with a brother or sister sooner than later???) And he's also started going up to her and shuffling his feet into her to make her move even when she's no where near me!! He's really quite jealous and I find it pretty funny.  Chelsea is really very good with him, but every now and then you can tell she's just tired of having him around!! Alan and I are trying to give her some more one on one attention just so she knows she's still our favorite girl!!!

Chelsea hanging out on the chaise, which she's not supposed to be on!!! This is another place that Brady will "evict" her from!!! He'll be playing across the room and see her up here, so then he'll come over and climb up so that she'll leave!!! 

She's not looking too pleased here...I probably woke her up to take the picture!!!

She was "dressed" for xmas early, but most of her bells have fallen off, so we've got some repairs to make for her now!!

YUMM!!!

Today Brady had a play date with Blake (and his mom, Margi) here at our house. Margi and Blake were nice enough to bring over left over pizza and cupcakes from big brother Ty's birthday party. As you can see from the pictures, Brady liked his cupcake!!! (he also managed to eat 2 pieces of pizza and some applesauce!)

GO BUCS!!!

Just so that everyone back home knows, Brady was properly dressed for yesterday's game... even though we didn't get to watch it. It's weird because Sunday football was always such a "thing" for us, but up here, Sunday's during football season are just Sundays because we NEVER get the opportunity to watch our Bucs. Maybe next year we'll have to look into Direct tv!!! OH, and I guess I should mention that I have taught Brady to put his arms up in the air and yell "GO BUCS"!!!

SELF-PORTRAITS

Just a few mommy and Brady self- portraits from yesterday. Brady's pretty funny because he totally seems to know what to do for these self-portraits and even more, he seems to really like doing them!!!

Giggling!!

Just a little video of Brady and I messing around today! If you want to hear the giggling, remember to pause or turn off the music on the left!

AGENCY NEWS!

We've had a few conference calls with our new agency in past few weeks so I thought I'd fill you in on what's going on at this point. 

The good news is that they have finally received some referrals (that's adoption speak for the info on the child that will become yours), 2 to be exact and there hadn't been any referrals in several months!! They believe that things are going to be moving along quickly from here on out, so we're excited about that. I also found out that there are about 30-40 families in our program and we're some where around 10-15th on  the "list that doesn't exist". The thing we have going for us is that we have said that we're open to either gender, so that should/could speed things along for us.

The not so good news is that several things have changed since we went through this with Brady. The biggest (in my opinion) is the fact that we now have to be "paper ready" before a referral will be presented to us. At this point we are not paper ready, so we've got some work to do.  We only have one thing left to do to complete our homestudy, so that's good. Once I go to the doctor on Friday we'll send our paperwork to our social worker who will write up the homestudy, then we'll have to have it approved by our Agency before it can be finalized. Once it's finalized we can then apply for Immigration approval to be able to bring an orphan into the United States. Once we get that approval, we then get an appointment to be fingerprinted at the federal level, then we'll be paper ready!!! I'm guessing that we should be able to get this done by sometime in January or February. While I understand this new change I'm a little annoyed by it because we literally did nothing for a good 3 months because I didn't want to rush out and get everything done just to have them expire before we completed the process because then we would have needed to get all of these things renewed, which, of course, costs extra!!! But, what's done is done and I can't change their minds, so we just have to go with the flow and get moving!! I am hoping that since we've been fingerprinted once already on the federal level that perhaps it won't take as long to get an appointment this time, but that could be wishful thinking on my part.

As always, stay tuned and I'll keep you all posted with new details as they come in!!

BEAR FEET!!! (no that's not a typo)

Brady's friend, Liam gave these super cool slippers to Brady!!! At first Brady wasn't so sure about them, but now he LOVES them!!! They're great because the bottoms are non slip so they're perfect for the hardwood floors and tile now that it's cold. Most of the time he's walking around the house in them, I'm laughing!!!

A closer look at "bear feet"!!

UMMM....

Okay, so this is NOT how I put Brady to bed for his nap, but it is how I found him when I went to get him!!! It was so funny to me, that I told him I'd be right back because I had to go downstairs to get my camera. I think he thought the whole thing was funny too, because even he was laughing!!!

I just hope this isn't some new fashion trend!! This is Brady saying "cheese" for the camera!



Brady can be such a goofball, but I love it because I spend a lot of time laughing at/with him!!

*In case you can't tell what's going on with his wardrobe...he managed to get his right arm out of his long sleeve t-shirt (that's an undershirt  you see) and he took his socks off!! Funny boy!!

FALL FUN!

Yesterday Chelsea, Brady and I had fun playing out back with all of the leaves!! It's a toss up as to who had more fun!

This was the best I could get of the two of them "together"

Brady seems completely fascinated with sticks lately!!

Chelsea waiting patiently for Brady to throw her frisbee

Just checking out the leaves

running through the leaves

HALLOWEEN

Again the order is reversed....sorry. Anyway, a few pictures from our Halloween that was definitely a success!! All the neighbors, both young and old loved Brady in his cow costume. If this text printed in blue and all underlined, I apologize for that too. Not only is blogger doing weird things, but we also got a new Mac and I don't know what I'm doing with it just yet.

Towards the end of the night.

Truckin' down the sidewalk for some candy!

Posing in the backyard before we left the house.

NOT THE MORNING WE HAD PLANNED!

So, this is how the morning was supposed to go: 

I was to head out to Kmart to use a 50% off coupon on a few toys for Brady (for xmas) and then when I got home we were all(Chelsea included) going to go to Great Falls Park for a photo shoot for xmas cards and a picnic lunch as well as some hiking. I had made the lunches last night and put everything that was to be packed in the bottom drawer of the fridge to make things as easy as possible for Alan. The diaper bag was packed, extra clothes we packed etc.  All he had to do was get up, shower, wake, feed and dress Brady and be ready to go around 9:15.

This is what actually happened:

I did get to Kmart and got 2 toys for Brady for xmas. I called Alan around 8:30 to say I was on my way home but he didn't answer. I figured he was busy with Brady, which he was. As I'm pulling in the driveway Alan calls me back to say that Brady is getting ready to eat and he thinks they're on schedule...it's about 8:50 at this point. I get into the house and Brady is still in his pj's walking around with bacon watching Yo Gabba Gabba(not really my idea of on schedule given the time). Before you know it, it's 9:15 and Brady and Alan are still not dressed, so they come upstairs so I can dress Brady and Alan can get dressed (clothes were laid out last night). We get that done and Alan goes downstairs to do some last minute things and I start to head downstairs with Brady (at this point I'm totally annoyed that we aren't closer to leaving) and he wants to go down the stairs by himself, which can take FOREVER so I decide to pick him up and carry him. Of course he doesn't like that and starts crying but I distract him and we get downstairs and I go to put him down and he gets all jell-o like so I pull him up by his hands to get him to stand and he starts crying again. He carries on for longer than usual so I start to freak out that I dislocated his shoulder when I pulled him up. Then I try to convince myself that's not the case and we continue to work on getting out of the house...we put Chelsea in the car and the last few things in. Brady's still kind of crying and now I'm noticing that he isn't moving/using his right arm so I'm getting more freaked out. We get Chelsea out of the car and say we're going to the ER, then Brady starts acting fine, so we put Chelsea back in the car, but no sooner had we done that when Brady pointed to his arm and said, "boo boo". So once again I get Chelsea out of the car and we head to the ER...this time for good. The whole time I'm completely annoyed that our perfect day had been ruined, not to mention that I'm freaking out that we'll never be allowed to adopt again. Of course I'm feeling like a complete idiot/moron/stupid parent for picking him up like I did because I know better. Anyway, after about an hour and forty five minutes at the ER we were told he had "nurse maid elbow", which is essentially the same thing as a dislocated shoulder only with a tendon in the elbow (now, I'm not a dr or nurse so I'm sure that's not completely accurate, but it's the easiest way to describe it). We saw the check-in guy, the triage nurse, another guy who escorted us back to a real room, a nurse, another check-in lady who was more "official" and then a tech of some sort who finally pressed on Brady's elbow (the inside joint area) and twisted it until it "clicked" back into place and *POOF* he was all better!!! So, after all that time there, I think we were with a hospital employee for only about 10 to 15 minutes of that time!! Of course the good news is that Brady is back to normal and using his arm with no issues.

The whole thing just stinks because as I said before the weather was PERFECT today!!! Sunny, about 70 degrees and the trees all look amazing!!! I checked the weather for tomorrow and unfortunately its going to be 20 degrees colder so we're going to attempt to go this afternoon when Brady gets up from his nap.

The real lesson is that I knew that it was bad to pick kids up by their hands, but I always thought it was because of their shoulders, not their elbows, so at least I learned something!! You can bet that I won't be picking him up like that again for a LONG time!!!

OH and of course my camera was in the car in the bag that was packed for the park, so I don't even have any pictures of this momentous occasion!!!   

PUMPKIN CARVING!!

First let me apologize for the order of my pictures. I'm having a problem with blogger in that it reverses the order of my pictures after I upload them. (I'll work on figuring out how to correct the problem!)

Last Saturday we carved our pumpkin and had fun for the most part! Brady certainly didn't seem to mind taking the "guts" out or anything, but we couldn't find a comfortable place for him to stand to be able to reach inside....I guess we'll work on that for next year!

the finished pumpkin on the front porch!

standing on the table so he could reach inside to get the guts

studying the guts

standing on a step stool wasn't quite high enough

the process begins!

TAGGED!!

For those of you that don't know, "tagged" is something that happens in the blogging world. It means that someone from another blog, in this case it was Shana from The Giroux 5, "tagged" me to reveal 7 weird/interesting facts about myself and then I am to tag 7 others to do the same on their blog. So, here goes:


1. When I make chili, I prefer to eat it over elbow macaroni. Yes, it has to be elbow macaroni, not just any type of noodles. (weirder still, this is how Alan prefers his chili too...it was one of those weird things we found out about each other while we were dating)

2. Another thing that Alan and I realized we had in common while dating was that we both love the chocolate cake donuts that have glaze all over them from Dunkin Donuts. Aside from those neither of us is a big donut eater.

3. I don't like cake. I haven't liked it since I was a kid. It's the one dessert that I will pass up every time. At my birthday parties growing up I always had a Carvel Ice Cream Cake!

4. I've always loved to travel and did some growing up with my family, but since meeting Alan my travel opportunities have been amazing. I've been to Denmark, Brazil, Italy, Switzerland, Canada and I've gotten to go on cruises free (or at "vendor" rates, which is like $400 for 7 days) so I've been to lots of countries in the Carribbean. I recently figured out that I've been to at least 75 cities in 17 countries! (I think there's more, but I haven't gone digging through old itineraries yet!)

5. For our honeymoon we went on a cruise to Alaska! I only mention this as "weird/interesting" because of the curious remarks I get when I tell people that's where we went. I guess most people associate honeymoons with a warm place, but I really wanted to go someplace Alan had never been and that didn't leave many options and I had never been on a cruise before then so it sounded like a good idea! For the record, we loved it and I would go back in a heartbeat!

6. As I said above, I had never been on a cruise prior to 2000, but since then I have been on at least 10!! That's what I come up with off the top of my head, so I might be missing one or two. Again, this is thanks in big part to Alan's job!!

7. My high school retired my soccer jersey the year after I graduated and I was also inducted into the school's Hall of Fame in 2006 for my achievements during my 4 years on the team. I scored 106 goals in 4 years, which at the time was a school record and a county record. The previous school record was 79 (I think) and the previous county record was 88. My record has since been broken by a fellow teammate. I also have to add that I only scored more than 3 goals in one game on 2 occasions because the coach we had for my first 3 years had a rule that once you scored 3 goals you were either moved to defense or taken out of the game. (those 2 occasions...once she forgot how many I had scored and the other time was my senior year with a new coach who did not have that rule).



Okay, so per the rules of "Tagging" I am to tag 7 people so they are:



Katherine
Karin
Rob (who I doubt will participate, but you never know!)
Stefanie
Joyce
Angela
Michelle

BASKET(S) FULL OF FUN!

These are some pictures from a few weeks ago and I just think they're funny.

Brady checking out his books. I'm not sure what the facial expression is all about, I've noticed he's starting to make this face more often though....maybe it's a toddler thing!?

I guess Brady thought that since I put his books in a bigger basket he could sit in it and read.

Okay, so I'm not really sure what he was thinking by getting into the toy basket!! Oh, and I'm pretty sure I had to help him out of this one!!