Teeth

Or the lack there of! It seems that for awhile Spitfire and Bebo where neck and neck with teeth falling out. Bebo had lost two before he had come to be a part of our family. As soon as Spitfire had loose teeth it seemed Bebo's teeth started to wiggle. He lost a bottom tooth and she lost her two front bottom teeth. He then lost a front tooth. A few months went by and no one lost any teeth. Bebo lost his "odd" shaped tooth right after Christams and I'm waiting to see how it is going to grow back. Now they are back to "competing" again! LOL Spitfire lost her first front tooth a couple weeks ago and it has changed her little smile so much. Both have other teeth that are ready to come out. They are keeping count how many each have lost.

Twink's teeth are nowhere near ready to come out. She will come to me wiggling when she sees the other kids doing it to their teeth.

Going Through The Motions

Not very well either I might add!

Happy Birthday!

My niece, Special K had her first birthday party this past weekend. Just look at how cute she is! We had a great time at her birthday party as did the kids. SK is already signing to her mama thanks to Baby Signing Time Videos. I love to watch her sign, it's so sweet!

Enjoying the first couple tastes of her cake. I'm SURE she did not sleep that night due to all the sugar! LOL

She loved the feeling between her little fingers. She worked at it until it was tiny little piece.

The aftermath! ;)

Bebo loved these glasses. He is one silly little boy!

Twink enjoying her juice and trying not to get wet!

See what I mean when I say she was trying not to get wet! LOL This is Spitfire who LOVES the water.

Umm, yeah this was my idea! hehe Poor Jewel went swimming.

Racial Identification?

The look from Twink is about how I feel when we received a letter home from our local school district. The letter/form title reads Student Racial and Ethnic Identification. It states in this letter that they have adopted a new policy that requires them to collect this information. The information will be used for the following:

- Report information to the State and Federal Education Departments
- Plan educational programs and make sure that they are readily available to all students.
- Study the movement of students in different ethnic groups as they move from school to school.
- Analyze differences in academic performance, attendance and completion of school.

If this form is not filled out a student records officer from our school or the district will be required to identify the group to which the student appears to belong, identifies with, or is regarded in the community as belonging.

Does anybody else see this as wrong? I know people who do not have children of a minority race see no problem with it but I just do not see why this is REQUIRED! We have already given this information once when we register the child for school so why do have to do it again?

I can tell you that both of my children from China are register with the school system but do not attend the schools. One goes to a deaf school and the other is in the preschool program. We are moving out of the school district but I am disappointed that they have decided they needed this new policy.

What are your thoughts?

Who's The Boss?

 Twink signing to Spitfire "Stop"!

If you answered either Spitfire or Twink than you must know that these two little girls are making us crazy lately! They both think they are the boss of the house. Between the tattling, yelling and face making we need to keep them separated. Only problem with that is they look forward to playing with each other when they get home from school. Spitfire is the culprit for most of the problems, as she like to be the instigator. Boy does she know how to get under Bebos skin!

Apparently Miss Twink thinks she is the boss at school as well! I received a note home stating that her speech is exploding. Not only that she is bossing her teacher around and tattling on the other children. I'm sure they think it's cute but we don't. I'm going to have to make sure they do not continue to allow either behavior.

We really can't put our finger on when Twinks language took off but she is really talking up a storm. She is talking in sentences and we can usually understand what she is saying. We saw three different older children that we had not seen since last fall and when they heard her talk they were shocked. The first thing they said is, "She can talk now?" Can you imagine how proud I was to say yes! :) We're loving it but holy smokes this child can yell momma for a long while!

Goal!

We had a busy weekend of soccer! Both Spitfire and Bebo play Saturday mornings, usually back to back. This past week Spitfire's soccer game was first. She played great once we were able to get her out onto the field. See, the child is extremely shy and needs to warm up to people. If there is a crowd of people it makes matters worse. I could never see her doing dance! LOL She would just stand on stange with her arms folded a crossed her chest.

Here she is fighting for the ball down near her teams goal.

 Celebrating her first goal of the game!

Running to her coach after her goal.

Bebos game was right after hers. In fact we had to leave her game fifteen minutes early. It really didn't matter as I had watched her kick in 6 goals! She has really blossomed into a much better soccer player this year. Dad and Spitfire came to Bebos game right after and informed me that she scored two more goals for a total of eight goals for the day! WOW!

Bebo did really good as well. He played really hard and almost kicked a goal in. He loves to play soccer but he needs to build his stamina and remember to look up even when he thinks they are not playing. It will come in time. It was only his second game. The kids on his team are great as well as his coaches. We have been really blessed so far.

Look at him run!

Oh so proud! (Love that smile!)

Waiting for his turn to go back in.

Both kids would love to have a practice or a game every night but this mama is happy we don't ! LOL I do love to watch them though.

It's Back!

The stomach bug that is! Oh please make it go away. I'm begging here. We have all had some form of it but if we have to actually vomit then we still have three more family members to go. I think I'm going to lose my mind if anyone else gets sick between now and the time we leave for China. Keep those prayers coming.

Could you also pray that it will stop snowing down on the poor mid-Atlantic? Our agency (friends and family) is in the heart of these storms and has not been able to go into the office to finalize the last of our travel details. We are awaiting our passports and airline tickets as well as a few other items. Did I mention we leave next Wednesday?

Spitfire's class has been learning about Chinese New Year and made this cute banner. We hung it up on our front door and it looks great there. They also sent home a great ABC book and it described all the things Chinese people do to celebrate CNY. It is a really neat book and you can find it here.

I'm off to prepare for our upcoming trip! :)

Piggy Back Rides!

Dash has become the master at piggy back rides and the girls love it! You should hear them giggle as he runs around the house. It is quite cute. Both girls adore him and love to play with him. Can't wait to throw Bebo into the mix! :)

She's Done!

When we came home from China almost two years ago we had no idea Twink loved her paci! They told us in the Civil Affairs building on adoption day that she liked a nipple but we had no idea what they were talking about. We tried the bottles and different types of pacifiers but she didn't want any of them. Looking back I think she was just plan mad that day. Twink would down bottle after bottle just to comfort herself while in China as we did not have any clue she had a strong desire to suck.

When we returned home we developed the pictures we sent to her orphanage the first thing we noticed was she had a paci in her mouth in almost all of the pictures. Jet lagged we went out to find a paci that looked similar to the bottle nipples we were using. We found some and have being using them ever since. The first couple weeks we were home we let her have them whenever she wanted them. Then we noticed she really only wanted them when she went to sleep. Twink has used her paci to help soothe herself to sleep for the last two years here and probably a year plus in China. As you can see though she has been chewing on them to the point where all I have to do is pull on the tip and it comes off.

She has been paci free for three nights. The first night she cried maybe five minutes but we gave her a silky blanket to love on and she has been fine since. She does "ask" for one but as soon as you give her the blanket and run her hand over it she is fine. Now we had to hide them because her big sister Spitfire has become her best friend and protector. She would search high and low for one and when found give it to her! So today I am throwing all of them away! WooHoo!

Maybe we'll have to tackle potty training soon. LOL

Our Kera

I took a billion this picture yesterday of Spitfire. It is beautiful in color but I loved it even more when I turned it black and white! The lighting was perfect and she was more than willing to participate. Well there was a cookie incentive thrown in there! ;) Now if only Twink would sit still long enough.

Pneumonia

Took Spitfire into the doctor yet again yesterday and he sent us for a chest x-ray. Her lungs sounded fine but he said sometimes it is hard to hear pneumonia in children. Better safe than sorry. Sure enough, he was spot on! I'm glad we didn't wait the weekend to see how she did. She will have to go back in 6 wks for a re-check as the area where the pneumonia is tends to come back.

Thank you for your prayers!

Fall Sports End

Jewel had her last field hockey game last week. Unfortunately her team lost all of their games. They had a very new team with only three girls returning from last year. Most of the girls were not motivated to move and Jewel became very frustrated with her team. She worked very hard and scored two of the three goals of the season. That is right, their team only scored three goals the whole season.

She has been asked by the JV coach to play summer ball and to talk to the varsity coach (her math teacher) about the details. The JV coach told Taylor that she like her "game". Jewel had wished she tried out for JV but I do think this year allowed for her to grow and gave her a lot of playing time. Something she may not have had on the JV team this year. She has turned into a great field hockey player.

Spitfire will be done with soccer next weekend. Last weekend she scored her first two goals of the season! We were so excited. She has really grown this soccer season. Unfortunately she will not be able to play in her game this Saturday as she is actually doing worse. Her fever is getting higher not lower and her cough is non-stop. We are going into the doctor AGAIN today. PTL, no one else seems to be sick in the family.

Sick Kiddo's

I know I've been around much these days but half of my crew has been sick. They all went to school on Monday but Spitfire came home from school that afternoon and you could just tell she did not feel well. One look at her eyes and I knew she was running a fever. Sure enough she was 102.2 and all she wanted to do was go to bed. Jewel complained her throat was hurting and she ran a temp of 100.5.

Our schools have been hit HARD with H1N1, strep and the stomach bug. The school nurses office should have had a revolving door from what I heard. The student parking lot at the high school looked like it does after school with just a few stray cars. Jewel is back at school today and Spitfire is still out and probably will be tomorrow as well. She is still running a fever.

She was just sick a couple of weeks ago with fevers as well as was Twink. Many of you know how nervous we become when Twink has a fever. We were very blessed the last time as she did not have an seizures with her high temps. Normally that would have sent her into one. It seems the medication is working. We are praying that this flu season is easy on her little body and the rest of the children. No more sickness!

Hope the rest of you are staying healthy!

School Pictures

I completely forgot to upload the kids first day of school pictures. One week late is not bad, right? Everyone is staying very busy and here I thought life would slow down a bit. HA! I do know busier families and I don't know how they do it.

Jewel is playing field hockey again this year. We just don't know if it will be modified or JV. Seems they may not have enough girl to form the modified team. She is also learning sign language with us.

Dask is our least busy child (as well as Twink). He is not doing a sport until winter but he is learning sign language with us. I think that is enough to keep him busy. He is doing very well at it I must add. He also does AWANA one day a week.

Spitfire is playing soccer again. She seems to be doing a tad bit better and is loving it. She is not doing the sign language class but her K class does learn the alphabet and colors in her class. Pretty cool if you ask me! She also does AWANA one day a week.

Twink is just happy to tag along to a game here and there. She is not doing the sign language class either but will gain a ton from our use of it. :)

So as you can see we are not overly booked but enough to keep us hoping and one of us driving! The adoption is coming along. We are officially waiting for LOI with a couple weeks under our belt. Feels good to finally be able to say that.

Thank you to those who share some yummy recipes! I can't wait to try them.

Wordless Wednesday

Our Skin

Spitfire asked me a question the other day that kind of surprised me. It really shouldn't have but it did. She asked me if her skin was like Twinks?

Spitfire is "getting big". She notices more things. I left my answer simple and told her YES their skin is the same. Twinks skin bleeds like hers, will sunburn if she does not wear sunscreen, and will wrinkle in the bathtub with her if they are in for too long. I told her Twinks skin is just a bit (ok made a little more) darker than hers. I also told her that no one has the same exact skin color. I held my arm up to the two of them and showed her my coloring. I do believe with that she was happy and off she ran.

Many times people will comment on how beautiful Twink is or how beautiful her skin is. I wonder if Spitfire is picking up on those comments. All of our children are beautiful and we tell them that all the time. Now if only everyone would remember to tell ALL the children that then maybe we wouldn't receive these questions.

Sweet Birthday Girl

Spitfire turned five this week! We can hardly believe how fast time is going by. It won't be long and she will have all of her school shots and start kindergarten. She has her party next weekend and I can hardly wait to see her expression! I'll post pictures when all is said and done. It is a big surprise and we can NOT have any leaks.

Wordless Wednesday

Fun Weekend

We had such a busy weekend but was so much fun. We have family in from out of state so we were able to enjoy their company this weekend. All of our children are around the same age. The only time I was not pregnant with my SIL was with her oldest and my youngest (Twink). We either were pregnant together or ended up pregnant soon after one had their baby. I must tell you the same thing has happened with Bebo. :) Are families are expecting. Their family will receive their bundle of joy before we will. Could you all keep them in your prayers. She has developed a complication with her pregnancy and I'm sure would appreciate all the prayers they could receive.

Here are some posed pictures from the weekend. I'll post some of the candid ones later this week.

Twink did not want to be in this picture but with the help of her uncle we were able to snap this picture! :) Great job Uncle Mark!

Are these girls not beautiful! My niece is an amazing young woman! I wish I had a video to show you. On Sunday in church she signed and sang to the beautiful song. I wish you could have seen her. There is so much joy and emotion in her when I've seen her do this. God has gifted her with such a beautiful talent and I am so proud of her.

Wordless Wednesday