Thursday Thoughts

This is a post I started last week. I never posted it..... Jack has a friend over and they are upstairs making all kids of noise, very loud. Ella is at the bottom of the stairs in her walker just looking up the stairs and screeching. I know she wants to play with them so bad. Once this girl figures out how to actually move I am in trouble. I am not looking forward to putting up all the gates again. They are such a pain in the butt. Ella does pretty good with sitting and playing on her own these days. Her favorite thing to play with is a container filled with toys and balls. She likes to pull them all out or even dump them out. Then she bangs on the container. Once she falls over it is just a roll fest. She goes all over. From time to time she does get up on her knees, but quickly falls again. I think this week she may master the sitting up from a lay down position. She is almost there. She just gets stuck on her arm and doesn’t know how to bring it closer. UPDATE TO TODAY... Ella is now an inchworm. She can totally get across the room. She pushes with her toes and then her butt goes up a little then she army crawls with her arms. It is very cute, but it takes her a while so she seems to give up a lot! So she still isn't sitting up on her own from the lay down position. She is still stuck in that tripod position. I know she will get it any day now. Looks like I will be doing lots of baby proofing this weekend. She is already starting to get a little temper. She knows what she wants. She loves the remote. When I tell her no and hide it she starts to grut and get mad. She also does this when you feed her. I don't think she is a big fan of the baby food anymore. She just stares at us when we have our food. Then I give her this stuff on a spoon and she is like what the? She gets so mad too. Here is what she does. This is from my iphone which is why the video is skinny.

My new Look!

So what do you think? I wanted something springy and flowery! Thank you to The Cutest Blog on the Block for designing my nice header and the free background! I have don't know how to get the post title color to change. I would think it would be somethind simple, but I can't find it. I also have to figure out how to change the picture when I want to!

Jacks New Room

I re-did Jacks room on Tuesday. Previously he had trucks on the wall. It was really cute. But he needed it done for awhile now. Since he is into hockey, we decided on a Blackhawks room. However, Jack didn’t want his room repainted. Score for me!! The paint still looked good except where we had to take down a few things. So my dad came over to do a few touch ups. My mom bought Jack the Patrick Kane Fathead and Blackhawk logos for Christmas. Yes I know it is March, I have a baby remember? So finally my Mom and Dad came over to help. Mom watched Ella while Dad and I went to work. We rearranged the whole room. It looks so much bigger!! We needed to find more space since Jack will have to keep more toys up there once Ella starts crawling. Then we hung all the Blackhawk stuff. I need one more picture for over his bed and maybe a shelf. It looks very cool. My son is a horrible pack rat so I was able to organize a few things and get rid of some. He didn’t know I was doing it on Tues. When he came home from school I said “do you want your surprise?” He said yes (of course) and held out his hands. So I said follow me. As we started up the stairs he said “oh I know, Blackhawk stuff!!” I have a video of his reaction which I have been trying to get to work but I can't so I will try again later. That evening as he was getting in bed he was so excited to sleep in there. He just said “ I feel like a king!” How cute!

Ok I think I got the video to work

A New Beginning!

I decided to start blogging again. I went back and read my whole blog back to 2007 and loved the things that I wrote about Jack. I want to be able to remember those fun things about Ella. So even if no one is reading this, I have it captured for me. I actually found a place that can print out your blog into a book. So everything before this post will be in a book. It is so cool!

Well since my last post, our family has grown. We now have beautiful Ella Rose who was born on July 27, 2010. She is an absolute joy to our entire family. I can’t imagine HER not being our daughter. Our 5 year rollercoaster journey led us to her. Ella was meant to be our daughter. I will detail our journey in another post.
This is her 7 month picture!

She is really starting the fun stage; sitting up, rolling all over and just talking up a storm. She is such a happy baby. She will be 8 months next week. She loves her walker and those baby puffs you eat. I keep saying she is like a dog. If I kept feeding them to her she would just keep eating them.

Jack is in 1st grade and as much I he says he doesn’t want to go to school, I know he loves it. He loves to play with kids. He of course hates homework. We have had Jack in hockey the last year. He really likes it. Our fall season just ended and we are starting the spring season in a couple of weeks. We ended our season with a Mother/Son game. That was so much fun!!! I have to say us Moms did a pretty good job!

I am having a new design done for the blog. It should be completed soon!!!

Happy New Year

Ok so bad blogger! I should really try to update this at least once a week. I guess I just wasn't into it for a while. Nothing really exciting happens around here. We had a great Christmas. We all had a cold but not bad enough to ruin anything. New Years eve we just spent at home doing family things like Bingo and playing the Wii.






We have a new dog named Kasey. She is a Shih Tzu. Murphy died suddenly the beginning of Oct. It was so tragic and sad. A friend of my moms had Kasey (Muffin at the time) and had some medical issues and couldn't care for her anymore. It was perfect timing for us. I was really missing having a dog. So a month later we had a dog! She is 10 months old now and doing great. We love her to pieces. I just need to train her a bit more. Jack just loves her. She pays a lot more attention to Jack than Murphy did. He won't leave her alone.




Our adoption issues are just ongoing. I don't even know where to start. Technically we are still logged into China..but our immigration paperwork has expired. We are on a list for Korea. When I wasn't feeling well I had to put us on hold so that put us back at #10. There have only been 2 girl referral since so the wait will be long. Figures. Plus the fees for Korea keep going up so we just don't think we have $25,000 for this. We have also been signed up with our domestic attorney that we used for Jack. It has been a year and so far no girl. We are going to start advertising on a website to see if that generates anything. It is just hard since we want a girl. Many birthmoms don't know what they are having.

There are many days that we are so settled into our lives and Jack is becoming so self sufficient that it is hard imagining starting over again. It would be nice if we could get a 2 or 3 yr old. I even called DCFS about that but I just don't think that process is right for us. To get a child that age we would most likely have to foster first. I don't think I could care for a child and then have them taken away if the situation changed. Something needs to happen in the next few months here. I just can't take this anymore.

1st Day of School

Well today was the 1st day of school. Jack had a VERY hard time getting up and was angry with me. That is really nothing different than how he was in preschool. We will work on getting him on an earlier schedule to bed so that should help. Once he was down and got a little breakfast in him he was more awake. He seemed very excited to go to the bus stop and when he saw the bus coming.

Ready for school

The walk to the bus stop

Getting on the bus


Jumping off the bus

My mom came by today to see Jack get off the bus. Right after he got off the bus he said "Kindergarten was great Mom!" Now that is what a mom wants to hear. He has never been one to talk about school so I didn't get to much out of him. It is just going to be so weird having him gone every morning.

Last Days of Summer

We have been busy trying to fill our days with some fun things to do before school starts. We have had many play dates with friends we maybe won't see as much when school starts. Going to parks and the pool. Last week we took Jack downtown on the Metra train (he still loves trains) and we went to the Shedd Aquarium. Then we headed over to Navy Pier for dinner and a walk. It was a great family day.

The Air and Water show was that weekend so on Friday when we went they were practicing. We got to see quite a few jets.

The lake front

View of Navy Pier

The day before Grandma and Auntie came with us to the zoo. They had a dinosaur exhibit there this year. It was very cool. They moved and roared. They looked pretty real, but Jack wasn't afraid of them at all. He said "those can't be real because dinosaurs are extinct"

I can't believe that Jack is starting Kindergarten on Monday. We had our open house on Wed and he got to meet his teacher. She seems nice and she is young. They even had the buses there for the kids to take a ride on. I thought that was great so they wouldn't be so nervous about it. Jack loved the bus but said it was a bit bumpy! LOL