Long time no see

I had completely forgotten about this blog until a friend made a comment on a Facebook post of mine.  And then I remembered.  I remember it was so ..... calming ? .... fulfilling?  .... rewarding?  ..... it was some nice feeling that I can’t name .... to document our adoption journey and the time after EasternStar came home.  Maybe it’s time to res erect this thing. 

I feel the pulling to do something.  Sometimes I think it’s a calling to go back to work.  To have a purpose beyond the redundancy that is this house and it’s dust and dishes and dog hair.  And then I think of the logistics and I just laugh.  Maybe it’s a calling to go back to school so when the next does start to empty out I can start a new path.  And then I think of the logistics and I start to laugh.  Though not has hard.  A class or two might be doable.  Maybe it’s a calling to just channel some energy into something that is just for my enjoyment but doesn’t take up as much space/ materials as crafting.  We’ll see.  

I feel like the last few years have just been about trying to make it through the day.  Survival.  Living in crisis mode. You know, like after you’ve just had a baby and you are sore and sleep deprived and your hormones and emotions are rollercoastering through highs and lows and you don’t quite know how to handle it all?  

Like every morning you are sleeping peacefully in your bed but your bed is really a cannon and unbeknownst to you someone lights the cannon and you go from innocent slumber to flying through the air and you have no idea if you put on a parachute before you went to bed.  Or what direction you are going.  Do you have a parachute?  Even if you do, will it open?  Are you going to sail safely to the ground?  Will anyone be there to help you fold up your parachute and give you a ride back to town?  Will you be all alone with no supplies? 

Are you going to splat into a brick wall?  Like an egg.  Will you slowly slide down the wall after hitting it full force?  Broken and oozing with no hope of being put back together? Will you even see the wall coming or will it just appear out of no where?  

Which way is the cannon pointing?  Is it shooting you closer to where you are supposed to be?  Is it sending you backwards and you lose all of the ground you fought tooth and nail with bleeding fingertips to climb yesterday?  Is the wind going to blow with you and propel you even further down range?  Will you fight the wind the entire time? 

Like that. Only for like 10 years.  

Taekwondo Tournament

The girls have been taking Taekwondo for 2 weeks (can't you picture how cute RainbowBaby is running around in her little uniform) and they were over the moon excited that there was a tournament this weekend that they could participate in.  I can't believe how much they have learned in just 2 weeks!

I've been trying to get EasternStar to memorize her address for months ….. apparently she just needed the motivation of getting a stripe on her belt 'cause she nailed it in 2 days.



Here is some video of EasternStar from today:

Speed Kicking:




More speed kicking:



Her form:




And seriously the best part - her board breaking:



So proud that she broke her board into 3 pieces!!


Here is RainbowBaby:

Form:


Speed Kicking:




And how awesome is it to see a 3 year old break a board??



Last but not least, TinyDancer:

Yellow board:


Orange board:


Speed Kicking:



And some pictures of them with their medals:

Best quote of the day

We decided to give potty training a try for RainbowBaby. We use the potty training in three days method. There is a e-book out there that explains it. Except we don't do it for naps or nighttime because ..... Frankly I need my sleep. Trust me. Everyone in my family would agree. Three days with reduced sleep for me is not fun. For anyone!

Anyway, day 1 ended today with three incredibly successful ....... Releases..... One of which included done poop. Which resulted in my favorite thing of the day -


RainbowBaby - look I popped a banana!

Me - why yes. It does look like a banana! Good job!!


However it was flushed before we could get a picture. Aren't you relieved there is no evidence? 8 )

Cat Jammie's

Check me out in my cat Jammie's and kerchief!

The plague

I'm pretty sure that the plague has descended on our town. Almost everyone we know has been sick or is sick. Five sixths of my family has had a cough, fever, or runny nose since thanksgiving.

All I want for Christmas is for this raging headache to go away!

Zoo

Testing the blogger app.....

We took the girls to the zoo yesterday. Here are some pics -

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween to all of our family and friends out there!  I hope that everyone is having as much fun as my four mermaids and my mer-King!!


Here are some pictures of our Halloween:

All of the mer- People ready to go!

One of the many reasons why I love my husband!

I'm still supposed to be pregnant and I've wanted to wear this costume forever.  I was so excited that I was finally going to preggers on Halloween so I could wear it.  Since Firecracker is going to be our last it's now or never.  I was going to go all out and make a fancy shirt.....but then Halloween snuck up on us so we made it out of tape instead:

Baby in the tummy skeleton

4 Weeks and 4 days

The blog has been neglected over the past few months because we've been too overwhelmed to put coherent thoughts together.  What an overwhelming and incredible summer / early fall that we've had.  Here is a brief summary.


- We moved our family 5 hours and 3 states away
- Stranger started a new job
- TinyDancer started 2nd grade at a new school
- EasternStar started preschool at a new school
- RainbowBaby started going to preschool two days a week at a new school
- Gave our unborn child a blog name - FireCracker
- Had one member go on bed rest for 6 weeks
- Had a baby 2 months early
- Celebrated SleepingAngel's birthday



Did you catch that second to last one?  Our last baby - FireCracker was born 2 months early on September 19th due to placenta abruption. She had a brief 3 week and 3 day stay in the NICU at the Children's hospital where Stranger works and now she is finally home.  Here is a shot of her at roughly 4 weeks old:

Passed out after my afternoon bottle

For whatever reason, we decided that FireCracker's room was going to be the first room that we finished in our new house.  Since she isn't supposed to be here yet, we feel that we finished the room right on time!  In reality, we finished it about 2 or 3 days before she came home from the hospital.  We are really proud of her room because it has a lot of handmade elements in it.  Here are some shots:

Looking in from the hall.

Bedskirt made by Grandma.  She also made a cribsheet, but
that was barfed on  right before the photo shoot.

Curtains made by Grandma.

Dressers spray painted by Stranger.

Mobile made by me and EasternStar and RainbowBaby.

Artwork painted by TinyDancer, EasternStar, and RainbowBaby.

Toy shelf (painted by Stranger), Button letter made by her sisters, Button flowers made by me.

Blanket made by Grandma. Rocking chair painted and recovered by Stranger.

Lampshade made by me.  Note, it is not that easy to use a glue gun while on bedrest!

The button letter, button flowers, and artwork were inspired by - http://www.madeitonmonday.com/2012/08/button-embellished-letter-art.html.  Each of the other girls have asked for a letter for their rooms as well.
The tutorial for the chair cover was found here - http://www.kenjiandjen.com/p/tutorial-recovering-glider-chair.html.
The mobile was inspired by - http://projectnursery.com/2010/01/butterfly-mobile/.
Spray painting tutorial found here - http://alittleofthis---alittleofthat.blogspot.com/2011/04/how-to-spray-paint-furniture.html


And some more baby pics:

10 - 4 - 12

10-5-12

10-14-12

10-15-12

10-15-12

I love our new digs!

So, we've been in our new location for almost 3 months now.  Stranger and I agree - not only do we love our house - but we love the fact that it is August 22 and we CAN NOT go swimming!  It is too cold at night and during the day it is only getting up to 84 or 86.  We are itching to get in some swimming before the pool closes...... but...... we can't....... It's getting down to the 50's at night.

I have no idea if this is typical or not - our July certainly was abnormally hot - but - LOVE IT!  8 )

34

Today is my birthday!

The number beside my name now says "34".  I can't believe that is true.  Math must not be working today.  No way can I be that old!


Anyway,  happy birthday to me and my Mother-in -Law!!!

Lowes vs. Home Depot

Today on the way to pick up TinyDancer from school, EasterStar asked Stranger -

"Are we going to Home Depot?"

Stranger replied "No."

EasternStar - "Good.  Home Depot is boring!"

Stranger - "We are going to Lowes."

EasternStar - "I love Lowes!  Lowes is fun!"

Stranger - "You know they sell the same stuff, right?"

EasternStar - "Yes."

Stranger - "So......they are basically the same store...."

EasternStar - "No.  Home Depot is boring!"

LOL


Proof that our kids have opinions about everything!

First day of second grade

Success!  Today went off without a hitch and TinyDancer had a full day of second grade today.  She had a blast and was very excited to finally start the year.

Here are some photos:

First Day of School - FAIL

Hello there friends!  Did you think that we had fallen into the abyss?  We did.  Kind of.  We've been in 'we just moved our family partially across the country and all free time is spent unpacking boxes' mayhem!

So much news to share - I might do some posts after this and schedule them to appear later in the week.

The point of this post though - today was supposed to be TinyDancer's first day of school.  That was a big FAIL.  We had a big rainstorm on Sunday night and apparently there was water damage to the building and school was canceled for today.  TinyDancer was *so* bummed!!  The last I heard we are "on" for tomorrow, so we'll see!  If it is successful, I'll post a pic of her in her  uniform.  Assuming I can find the camera of course.  I don't think that we've used it since we moved!

You might be moving if......

We are in the process of moving across the country.  Ok, not quite.  We are moving 5 hours and 2 states away.  However, any move, now matter if it is cross country or across the street, just plain sucks.  

Here are a few quick things that I've noted.

You might be moving if.....

- your kids say they are hungry and you tell them to go and scavenge in the kitchen to see what they can find.  I'm pretty sure that my kids had ice cream, pieces of a chocolate rabbit from Easter, and cream of mushroom soup for breakfast this morning.

- your house looks like a bad episode of hoarders.  We aren't quite that bad yet.  We can still walk through most of our rooms...and you can see some of the floors.  If I was any more pregnant though, I probably couldn't get into our office.  Or to the washing machine.

I have more but my dear husband just informed me that he isn't sure how to secure our front loading washing machine and I need to figure out how to do that via yo.utu.be.

Re-Adoption

One of the things that we liked about our Russian adoption is that when EasternStar came home, her name had already been legally changed to our last name and she had a Russian birth certificate to prove it.  However, the only problem with having a Russian birth certificate is that no one can read it!  Every time we have to give someone a copy of her birth certificate we have to make a copy of her certificate and the English translation.  Things have gone smoothly so far, but I just know that eventually someone will give us a hard time about it.

We've gone back and forth over the past few years about should we do the re-adoption here and get her birth certificate from our state (which is the only benefit to doing it....that we see at least...) or should we just continue as we are.  Since we are getting ready to move out of the state, and we found a VERY generous lawyer that donates her time to help complete the paperwork, we decided to go ahead and complete the process.

It is amazing how fast this process has gone.  I was expecting to wait weeks and weeks to get a court date.  However, we turned in all of our paperwork on Wednesday (5/16) and we have a court date set for May 31st!


EasternStar is starting to understand a little bit about her adoption.  We've told her multiple times that she was born in Russia and that we brought her home on an airplane and that we are so lucky that we got picked to be her mom and dad.  But really, how much does a 2 or 3 year old understand.  With the girls talking about this new baby in my tummy, and TinyDancer stating that she was born in Texas and RainbowBaby knowing that she was born here, I think that she's started to understand a little more.  She says now that she came from someone else's tummy and that her first mommy couldn't take care of her.  That she was somewhere safe until we found her and that we brought her home on an airplane.  I'm sure that she still doesn't completely get it and that this will just the first of many conversations that we have.

I continue to be in awe of the process of watching her (and my other girls) develop and change and grow.  She is getting to be quite the little helper around the house, and quite the little mommy to RainbowBaby - despite our reminders that she is only in charge of herself.  8 )  She continues to be our little comedian and while often pretends that she is clueless as to what is going on around her, she is one sharp cookie that doesn't miss anything.  People sometimes remark that she is lucky to have been adopted - but I continue to believe that WE are the lucky ones.  I know that God made her for us; and us for her.  We are so lucky that we were entrusted by the Russian courts to be her parents and there are no words that could show how incredibly grateful we are.