As if our life is not CRAZY enough!

We feel the Lord leading us to go back to China to adopt! Its not at all what I expected...or anticipated! I completely believed we were done adopting from China, but apparently we are not.

Sunday night as I was rocking Megan to sleep, I began praying for our "missing" daughter. I was reminded of all the reasons DH has said we need to wait (M's sleeping problems is the biggest one! But him feeling too old to do this again being another). Then I know it was the Lord that asked why not an older child from China? I have always said if we went back to China it would be for an older child (10-13 yrs old). In China, once an orphan turns 14, they become ineligible to be adopted into a family. This option "overcame" all of DH's concerns as she'd be older so we would not likely have the sleep problems...although we'd have a whole host of other potential problems (like her extremely limited English and our almost non-existent Chinese skills)...and it addresses his concern of having a younger child in his "old age". I knew EXACTLY the agency we wanted to use and emailed them that night. I did more research on their website and saw some of their waiting children. There are 5 little girls on there...but one of them COMPLETELY caught my eye...not only is she beautiful, but she's 12 and needs to be adopted before Sept 2011 (A little faster than DH was thinking!!!). One of my "musts" was that she has to love younger children...knowing how needy my Megan is with older girls!!! Well, there was very little information on the "description", but it did say something along the lines of loves to play with younger children. We both feel this is our daughter. We've contacted the agency saying we want to adopt this little girl and have begun the paperwork to bring her home. She will be home in about a year. My hope is that we will travel in April...then all my children will have joined our family in April!

I ask that you begin praying for our new daughter (who we are calling Sister at this point, because we want her to have a say in what her forever name will be). I also ask that you pray for God to open the storehouses and bring the funding to bring her home. If you remember, God brought incredible miracles when we began the journey to bring Megan home. He brought us $22,000 in a span of about 6 weeks. While I certainly don't expect to have the funding in 6 weeks, I do believe that God can bring the money we need to bring this precious little girl home, too.

Megan has been asking for a sister for several months. I asked her Monday if she wanted a big sister or a little sister and she said "big sister". Of course, since then she's saying "little sister"! So, I asked her if she wanted 2 sisters and her response? "No, just 1." (and she will frequently remind us she "just wants one")! This kid cracks me up!

Pics

A few of my favorites from the past week or so..

Such a little lady...and big girl. Her new favorite way to sit (modeled after mommy, of course!) And notice the flip-fl0p tan lines on her feet! She's SO TAN already!

My little fashion-esta! She is completely in love with these boots lately! We've worn them to the post office (but didn't get out of the car) and the mailbox a couple of times. I don't know how she can stand it! It's been SOOOO HOT down here!

Kota's turn with the crown...

Irish's turn (it's a "new" one)

In case you think only the dogs wear it...here's Megan's way of wearing her crown!

And now it's June

Oh man, I can't believe it's June and I have not even posted one time yet this month! And it's half over. That's bad, especially considering that I am using this as her "baby book" to keep track of things she's doing. I've been so busy working on my dissertation, I have time for little else. My goal is to have stage 1 done by July 1st; propose by the end of July; then I need to have everything written by October 1st in order to graduate in December. As you can see, this is major undertaking and to complete it in 3.5 months...well, may be just crazy. I honestly don't know. I just know I can and I must be done with everything by December. If I don't officially get to graduate until May, that's fine, but I simply CANNOT pay tuition for a semester past fall! I just can't bring myself to do it!!!

So, back to Megan...here's a quick list of some of the cutest things happening right now.

• Sleep is still an issue. Some days are better than others, but overall, its still not good. We've been using melat0nin, which has helped, but the little stinker has figured out to push past the exhaustion it creates (like she always has). And I'll just leave it at that.
  
• She Loves, Loves, Loves Punchinello (a character of Max Lucado's). I found a movie at a garage sale and she repeatedly asks to watch it. It seems to have replaced Elm0 (my heart is not broken). At any rate, she loves to "act out" and "repeat" so many things from the movie.
  
• One of her favorite 'repeats' is: "can I come, too?" I mean for everything! If I'm going in the bedroom, she says "can I come, too?" It's so funny. And the way she says "too"...it's more like "TUuuuu".
• She has gotten into movies. Kind of. I mean she'll watch Punchinello, as well as another of Max Lucado's story lines, Hermie the Caterpillar. In the last week or so, she's started watching Clifford, the big red dog. But, no telling if that will last! She still loves Super Why.
  
• It seems like there's always something I'm laughing about that she says every day! She's so fun.
• She started sitting on the floor and opening a book and "reading". She looks at the book, turns the pages, holds it with the book balancing on her hands, then she puts it away.
• She's still sitting in a booster seat with a belt at home. At some point during the meal, she typically asks to sit next to dad. At which point she repeats the rules "if you stand up, you have to sit in the buckle chair". Of course, all you can really understand because she talks so quickly and softly is "stand" and "buckle chair".
• She likes to tell the dogs to go into the bedroom (they, of course, don't listen) and she likes to put them in the bedroom. So, we have to tell them (and sometimes have to herd them as well) with her closing the door. Sometimes she likes to go in there with them and shut the door despite the fact that we're getting ready to eat and need her out with us.
• She tends to order the dogs around. A lot. She likes to tell them to "Stop barking, Irish. Stop barking, Kota." First she says it loud, then she repeats it softer as she gets close to their face.
• She loves to "walk with them" (aka the dogs). Irish tolerates her standing next to him a lot more than Kota. Kota has figured out that if she just lays down, then Megan will tell us what she wants to do requesting we make Kota stand up. Then we have to explain that Kota doesn't want to walk right now.
  
• She likes to play with the dogs with their toys. Sometimes throwing the toys and trying to get Kota to fetch (which is only does when SHE wants to!).
• She likes to put things on the dogs heads. For example, she's gotten into this princess crown. She loves to wear it on her head and put it on the dogs head. Her favorite is to put it on Kota's head. I took a picture of it on Kota's head. I'll have to upload it. One day. Sigh.
• She loves to spell words. Nothing new there.
• She's sleeping with bring one of her stuffed dogs when we go to the store. She's named two of them "doggie Chris".
• She loves to roll the ball.
• She loves to wear dresses.
• She loves to open the doors...and lock them. If you know where we live, you could easily into our back door (we've hidden a key outside b/c she's always locking us out!).
  

That's about all I can think of right now.

My Beautiful Girl

There are no words necessary...I don't think!

Megan Painting

Here is Megan painting, but she calls it "hand prints". For good reason.

Zoo Trip for Birthdays!

Megan's & Bethany's birthdays are 2 days apart. So we moms took them to the zoo to celebrate our girls turning 3.

Bethany is so darn funny! She HAD to bring her binoculars to the zoo so she could see the animals. That girls CRACKS me up!

The zoo has this river play area in the Children's part. It was pretty hot on Wed when we went, so we ended the day in the water.

Sleep

I've been wanting to write another post on sleep describing what "problems" look like for us. But, it's not an easy thing to explain. At all. Well, there's a website that we've followed since we started waiting for Megan. It's about all things China adoption. The author wrote a wonderful, very descriptive posting on sleep. Interestingly enough, her description of sleep problems for her daughter "GlitterGirl" are almost identical to what we deal with every night. Some nights are better than others, but right now we are definitely in a difficult time. You can read her post HERE.

And no, my idea hasn't worked all that well to get Megan to sleep overall. She will recite the "eat healfee, drink water and sleep good", but she's still having a tough time going to sleep.

A funny story

Yesterday we went to the zoo with friends to celebrate birthdays. On the way to the zoo, we got behind a truck with serious pollution problems. I said to Megan 'Boy that car is stinky!' What was her response? "I think it needs to go poop." I lost it. Since she hadn't napped, I had to pull it together VERY quickly or I would have had a crying little girl...but I'm still laughing as I think about it!

Birthday "Party"

We had very small gathering today in honor of Megan's 3rd birthday (which is Tuesday). I made these SUPER CUTE, super easy (albeit time consuming) cupcake flowers. The petals are mini marshmellows cut cross-wise, then dipped in sprinkles (or colored sugar). They were really yummy, too!

The cupcake experiment!

The soon-to-be birthday girl.
She did not get the bike (it was a hand-me down from the neighbor, but in very good condition), but she got the helmet & training wheels.

The pictures are deceiving, she is sitting on the bike while we push it (or it rolls down the hill that we live on). She does NOT push the pedals at all. We're working on it, though.

I can't believe she's going to be 3!! sniff, sniff

Sleeplessness Answer?

The verdict is still out...we just started it today...but in a very early moment of quiet before 5am, I'm fairly certain God gave me a great idea.

I've said for a very long time that Megan is afraid to go to sleep. I mean, she'll be almost ready to doze off, yet she will wiggle, clap her hands, kick her legs, sign mom & dad, whatever it takes NOT to fall asleep. It's been taking anywhere from 60-90 minutes every night. We've missed several naps, despite being absolutely exhausted. If there is one thing I KNOW about my sweet, precious daughter and sleep, it is that when we get into the cycle of not enough sleep, it is very difficult to get out of that cycle. Its vicious. And often feels never ending. She's been getting about 8-9 hours of not very restful sleep a night and many days refuses to nap. So, we are talking about a child who behaves absolutely horribly! Hitting, yelling, deviance, challenging and pushing all of my buttons.

We're back to waking up at 5am again. I so thought we were past this. But, she's getting her final 2 year molar (FINALLY!) so it could be contributing. Who knows. The other part is that she's yelling out more nights than not, at least once, if not every hour all night. By yelling out, I mean she'll thrash about, cry and yell something (typically, "Megan can do it" or "I need to go potty" or "Mommy do it" but her most common one "NO! NO! NO!"). It took me a few nights to realize she does this 100 percent in her sleep. One minute you think she's awake, the next minute she's snoring. Literally.

Okay, so back to the potential solution. I got this idea this morning...telling her that to grow big she needs to: eat healthy, drink water (another problem we have...not drinking!) and sleep. We've been talking about it all day. At nap time, she was asleep in 5 minutes. She hasn't done that for quite a while. So, tonight when it was time for her to go to bed with daddy, I said, "you need to sleep good tonight"...and she said "so I can grow!" So, maybe we've found the s1lver bullet? Boy do I hope so!!! Guess we'll find out in a few days!!

Growing & Stuff

I love this pic! It's at the park, Megan LOVES the park. The pic really shows her excited expression about being at the park.

One day last week, Megan didn't take a nap. My contingency plan when she has no nap is going to the zoo. We are members, so we can go for free. On this day, she was so excited about going to the zoo that she put her hat and sunglasses on as soon as I said we were going. She sat in the chair watching W0rd W0rld while I got everything together to go.

We made brownies together for the first time. As you can see...tasting the batter was a necessity!

Our friend's son turned 1, so we went to the party. She also decided not to nap this day so we really were not sure how it would go. But she did pretty gosh darn well. This is such a cute pic of daddy & Megan. She's wearing daddy's sunglasses.

She has started moving her chair away from the table before climbing in to eat. She likes to put her feet up on the chair...like such a big girl!

This was taken on Friday, I believe. She's gotten so big. She looks so grown up here. She's holding a specially painted hand print she did at school for me for Mother's Day.

A couple more things she does that I've noticed recently...and if I don't get them down on paper, I will completely forget!

• She JUST started opening doors. I've been waiting for the day...of course it makes life so much more interesting, but I'm glad we've finally accomplished this feat. She doesn't entirely remember that she can do it, so we're still somewhat "safe".
• She says "shepherd" instead of "special" more often than not. On occasion she'll get it right, but typically she doesn't. It's really too entirely cute!!!
• She also says "soldier" instead of "shoulder".
  
• To get her to motor, I often play the "I don't think she knows how" game, which she LOVES to prove me wrong and do it without drama! (Yay for me!) She's started saying it herself now "I don't think she knows how!" then she does say "oh! oh! oh! Wait! She DOES know how to do it." I guess that's what I must say? I honestly don't know. But she even does it when she's looking for something then finds it "Oh! Oh! Oh! Wait...here it is!" She's so gosh down smart!
• She's also started wanting to carry a purse like me. Of course, it's almost always empty. Details. Details. Most often it gets left in the car b/c she forgets about it, but sometimes it has to come with. Too cute.

That's all I've got!

Megan Update

Oh boy, it's been way too long since I wrote anything about what Megan's been up to lately. She seems to change every day. So, here's a quick list of things that I want to remember, one day:

• She's talking ALL THE TIME. Oh my gosh. She loves to run around the house making up words. Her favorite is one that sounds like Donkey Kong...but its more like shonkey dong. She also loves to add "dee" at the end of all of her words...mommy-dee, four-dee, no-dee, etc. It's just really too funny.
• Making up new sounds all the time
• She says "no, I don't think so" or "No, I don't" or just plain "NO!" to pretty much everything. If you ask her if she's cute, her response is "No. (pause) No, I'm not".
• She loves to say "You little stinker" and shakes her finger right by her mouth. I don't know where this came from. She also loves to say "stinky", but there's a southern twang to it and it sounds more like "st-Ankee".
• Another favorite word is "funky" (emphasis on the UN--fUNkee). We have no idea where that came from!!!
  
• She tells the dogs to "stop barking" and "come here. This way." (as she's attempting to herd them in a particular direction). She also loves to "play" with them. She goes to their toy basket, mutters something about what toy to play with, then tries to get them to play with her. She also loves to crawl in the dog crate with Dakota and shut the door. Dakota isn't so fond of this new playtime experience for Megan!
• She's waffling back and forth on whether she wants to nap or not. I think she's prefer not to, but she's still getting up so cotton-pickin' early she just can't make it without some nap. She's still getting up between 5:30 and 6:30am every day. She's going to sleep around 8pm, unless she doesn't nap.
• She can do 24 piece puzzles with very little guidance.
• She loves to do "hand prints" aka finger painting, except she does NOT paint, she just likes to put the paint on her hands and press (okay, really bang) her hands on the paper.
• I know we're a bit behind the curve, but she's now eating her cereal with milk.
• She loves to sit on the "big girl" chair (no booster), but she really just loves to push the envelope and stand (when she's not supposed to).
• She's doing all pottying by herself, but still wants us to go with her. She rarely has accidents now.
• She's spelling words like crazy. There are very few 3-letter words that she can't spell. It's nuts, actually.
• She's starting to follow with her finger the words in books that we are reading.
  
• She MUST climb into the car by herself. And she must get into her car seat by herself (and her time line, of course!).
• She sings the words to so many songs (Twinkle Little Star, Jesus Loves Me, Zaccheaus, and ABCs come to mind)
  

That's the best I can do right now...maybe I can come up with a few more in a few days.

It's the end of the semester, so things are really super crazy for me with 41 students each turning in 2 papers ranging from 4-9 pages each! Plus they have weekly discussion posting requirements that I get to read. Add to that I need to write my proposal for my dissertation by late May. The plan is to propose by mid-June and finish up over the summer and defend my dissertation in the fall. This would mean I graduate in December! Definitely do-able...assuming things don't come crashing down! I'm just trying to keep my head above water daily.

The move..I have mentioned that on here, right? The house is still for sale, the job hunt is still...hunting. Although, there is one lead that's got great possibilities. So, we'll just wait and see what happens with it all. I pretty much keep my nose in my work as I've got plenty there to keep me busy, that's for sure!

Bluebonnets

The lighting was perfect today (a bit rainy this morning, but just cloudy this afternoon) so we headed out to a patch of bluebonnets down the street from our house.

Goodbye, Ian

After a very rough night and incredibly long day, we said goodbye to our precious Ian 6 years ago today. In fact, the day was spent holding our breath while waiting for my mom to arrive. My favorite part--if there was a favorite part of such a sad, horrible day--was the afternoon. He was in very bad condition, which wasn't a good part, but he would only hang on if I was holding him. So, I got snuggle time for the last almost 2 hours of his precious, short life on this earth. Time I will never forget.

Oh, how you'd be such a great big brother to Megan! We miss you!!

Happy 6th Birthday, Ian

It's hard to believe, but Ian would be 6 years old today. Oh how different our life would be if he were still here with us. We'd be preparing for kindergarten graduation! I cannot even think what that would be like...

We went to the zoo yesterday. This afternoon we'll release balloons in his memory.

Boy, do I miss my boy.

Our favorite story

Here is Megan reciting David & Goliath. You may need to listen to it a few times, she talks so fast!

It's been 2 years!

Two years ago on Wednesday (March 31), we held Megan for the first time. Boy has time flown by. I had planned on doing a post showing pics of when we were in China and today, but I couldn't get it to work! Then I got wrapped up in teaching, dissertation, Megan's school...well, life and I completely lost track of time! That has been happening a lot lately. Anyways...I don't even have pictures on this computer to upload. I'll have to do it tomorrow. Or maybe the next day. I also just recorded some cute video tonight with Megan reciting the story of David & Goliath. One of her all-time favorite stories. I plan on uploading that tomorrow and will post it.

Megan has gotten so verbal. In fact, last night as she was supposed to be going to sleep she said "I told you...stop...barking." Oh my gosh. I almost burst out laughing! One day earlier this week she was in a very tired mood and was upset by a choice she had made. She said to me "All done choosing!" She's also been known to say "All done listening!" in the midst of a fit, of course. She is just too funny!

Pics

Megan loves to vacuum when we do...it's just too precious!

Is this adorable or what?

School pics yesterday...this was right before we walked out the door.

A funny & all grown up!

We tried the solo pony yesterday afternoon...I had already fixed her hair 3 times, why not 1 more!?!

Front shot

Side view...yes, her hair is THAT long! You just can't tell as the curls have gotten curlier!

A funny story...The other day I was barefoot. We had just put her socks on...and I hadn't gotten mine out of the drawer yet to put on. She said "mommy's wearing just her toes". Yes, Megan was wearing her socks and mommy was just in her toes. How cute is that!?!? "wearing my toes"...I wear them everyday sweetheart, and so do you! (Of course, I didn't tell her the last part! And I was stifling a laugh, of course.)

Pics

oh my gosh...she is just too cute!
I have no idea why she's wearing her sunglasses while in her pjs, but never-the-less

trying on daddy's sweater (her idea!)

Since it's starting to get warm, I painted my toenails. She's been fascinated with them, so I painted hers for the first time. (I tried last year, but she was not interested at all.) She forgot about it the first day, until she got her pjs on. Now, she's constantly telling me "I want to look at my pretty toes"...and off go the socks! Oh well...they do look pretty cute!