The events of "Day 5" in Congo are now posted. Enjoy!
2 months ago
Sunday, April 14, 2013
Thursday, April 11, 2013
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
Congo: Day 1
 |
| Luke is officially a Daddy's boy. |
Thursday, March 21, 2013
The Superman Club is Going Private
 |
| A Kenyan schoolgirl. |
For those of you reading our adoption blog, "The Superman Club", we will be making the blog private until the boys join us. With reports of children going missing in DR Congo between adoption and going home, we feel it is better to be safe (and I want to be able to share photos of our trip!).
If you would like to view our blog while it is private, please email me at the.superman.club.family@gmail.com or post a comment below. Thanks!
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
Moments of the Month
This month...
Claire got up about 20 minutes after we had put the girls down for bed. Her excuse? "Mom, I'm tired." Hmm... didn't think that one through.
Claire loves to say the prayer to bless our food or for bedtime. She is also two. So she will begin her prayer, then stop and look at me wondering what she should say next. I will offer a suggestion, to which she will immediately yell, "No! I do it!" and then copy what I said. Then she will pause again and sometimes even whisper, "Help me," before hearing my response and yelling, "No! I do it!" and the cycle continues.
Gabby thinks that going to French school is the normal thing for a kid to do. I recently had the following conversation with her:
Gabby: Is [my friend from church] going to be at my school next year?
Me: No. He will be at a different school.
Gabby: A different French school?
Me: No, it's an English-speaking school.
Gabby: [Jaw drops open.] But he already knows how to speak English! Why does he need to go to English school?
Claire decided to color on her face recently. I know - I have seen worse pictures of other kids and she can't compete. But this was the first time in my years as a parent that my child has colored on her own face, so I had to document. I managed to keep a straight face and told her that I would take a picture so she could see what she looked like in the viewer. I just love the mugshot she gave me:
The best part is that after she decorated her face, she said the following in her dinner prayer, "We are thankful that I could color on my face."
Claire talks a lot. Especially while she is going to the bathroom because she knows she has your undivided attention. Here is just a tiny snippet of how she carries a conversation from one topic to another all on her own: "If you drink tea, you will die. And then turn to dirt. Flowers grow in dirt. Worms are wiggly." (No, we do not tell her that she will die if she drinks tea... she came up with that one all on her own.)
Gabby loves skirts and dresses and insists on wearing them almost every day. In fact, she is so into them that she has begun tucking her shirts into her skirts so that she can "see them better." She refuses to cover one inch of skirt from her viewing pleasure.
Claire has been having many playdates with her friend, Reese, while her mom and I swap childcare. The two of them are so alike that they tend to fight over the same toys, but they always walk away loving each other. The last time that I picked her up from Reese's house, we had the following conversation:
Me: Did you have fun at Reese's house? What did you do?
Claire: [Silent pause. Then determined voice.] I am not going to tell you that I hit her.
February
 |
| The girls and I enjoying the flowers that Jason brought home on Valentine's Day. |
In February, Gabby had a week off of school and we spent time at various museums, trampoline spaces and play areas. Claire had fun trying to catch these balloons that blew around in the air. And both girls loved being able to meet up with friends.
For Valentine's Day, Claire enjoyed a party at playgroup and we all really enjoyed the chocolate-covered strawberries that Jason brought home with the flowers. Gabby had her party at school, complete with a card exchange. Last year, I ordered Valentine cards in French for Gabby's classmates through the school's Scholastic book order. They arrived the day after Valentine's Day. That was a bit of a disappointment last year, but it sure made things easy for me this year! Gabby worked very hard to decorate her cards herself and was excited to finally be able to distribute them to her friends. The night after Valentine's Day, Jason and I enjoyed dinner with friends and went to Cirque du Soleil's Amaluna - such an amazing treat.
Claire has been loving her ballet class lately and always comes home with the newest move.
Gabby has taken on a new passion for play dough. (Which means I have had to take on a new passion for sweeping and scrubbing....)
Claire's big excitement is that she can now fit her hair into a ponytail. She will randomly announce this fact to strangers.
On Saturday (okay, it's a March date in my February post, but I might as well be caught up), the girls had three different birthday parties to go to. According to Gabby, it was the best day of her life. One was a pirate party and the girls went around speaking like pirates and looking for treasures the rest of the day.
Saturday, March 9, 2013
Congo, Here We Come!
 |
| A view of the African savanna. |
Sunday, February 24, 2013
Reflections
 |
| A Ghanaian girl with Buruli Ulcer. |
Friday, February 22, 2013
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Embassy Delays
I am afraid the newest post is mostly bad news. (But there is also some very good news at the end of the post if you can make it through the whole thing....)
Monday, February 18, 2013
Resubmitting Documents
 |
| My research partner and I in Ghana with two of the girls from our village. |
Click here to read our newest post on The Superman Club.
Sunday, February 10, 2013
Questionable Lab Results
I have posted to The Superman Club blog. Click here to read it. By the way, many people have asked why we titled our adoption blog The Superman Club. A while ago, I saw a t-shirt that said something about Superman being adopted that I thought was cute. Actually, he was more than adopted - he was internationally adopted. If Superman can do amazing things, so can our boys. It's a pretty good club to be a member of.
Wednesday, February 6, 2013
Family of 6!
I suppose it is about time to announce on this blog that we are adopting two boys! I have stalled because I wasn't really sure where to start and I am still in disbelief that this is all really going to happen. When someone finds out for the first time that we are adopting, they usually have many questions for us and I have so much to tell. I am not good at abbreviating our story yet and I often find myself boring innocent question-askers to sleep because I forget that they may not have wanted to hear every detail of the last year. So instead of explaining everything in this post, I have created a separate adoption blog, thesupermanclub.blogspot.com. I still have more to add, but most of your questions can probably be answered there.
I want to record this experience for me to remember and learn from, for our boys to have as a journal, and for others interested in adoption to have a resource to pull from or relate to. Boyer Blurbs is not searchable, but since the adoption website will show up in search engines, I am keeping that one anonymous and using pseudonyms to protect the kids. When I post to The Superman Club, I will try to remember to put a link on this blog, so that you can check it out.
Oh, yes... the boys! Their names are Andre (age 3) and Luke (age 1) and they are from the Democratic Republic of Congo. The court system in Congo has legally approved us to be their parents (woohoo!) and we are just waiting for the last couple of documents before we can leave the country with them, which should be very soon. We are so excited to welcome them into our home! The girls talk about them as if they are already part of our family and ... well... they are, so we hope that we can hold them in our arms soon.
This is a photo of the girls before we sent the boys a care package that included these two cuddly animals.
Moments of the Month
The photo above shows how I know that my girls are awake in the morning. While I am getting ready in the bathroom, they stick their limbs under the door. And no, I do not have four children (yet), the girls are sticking both their fingers and toes under the door at the same time.
A favorite line around our house lately has been, "Somebody needs a nap today," (with the word "somebody" drawn out for emphasis). But the line doesn't come from the parents. The girls say it to each other if one of them is being whiney. As you can imagine, the whiney child loves being told that by her sibling.
Claire is our more adventurous eater. She loves vegetables (she has been known to finish off entire bowls of broccoli while our backs are turned) and will try just about anything if she is in the right mood. Recently, she wanted to try salsa and upon discovering that she liked it, she began eating it alone by the spoonful.
For Christmas, Gabby received some Hello Kitty underwear from Target. As I was folding a pair recently, a word caught my eye and I read what one of them said: "I am as heavy as three apples!" Excuse me? Did I just read that right? Indeed, I did. It repeats that phrase over and over on that pair of underwear, with a picture of a kitty holding three apples. I am not even sure if being as "heavy as three apples" is a good thing or a bad thing, but I know it is a weird thing. Who comes up with these phrases?
A week-and-a-half ago, Gabby was kneeling on her chair at the kitchen table and we suddenly heard a loud clunk of a child falling. We are used to this sound, so it didn't really phase us, but we turned around to see Gabby laying on the floor and crying a bit louder than usual. I distracted her and within one minute, it was over. Five minutes later, she was asking for ice to put on her shoulder. Strange. (How does she even know that ice helps wounds?) I asked her to raise her arm and she couldn't without pain. I called our in-house physician over and after a pricey evaluation, he gave me the look - "it's broken". We could feel the bone sticking out a bit. Luckily, she is young so the recovery shouldn't be too bad, she just needs to wear a sling for a while. That night as I tucked her into bed, she said, "Mom, will I have to go to school in a wheelbarrow tomorrow?" It took me a minute to realize that she meant a wheelchair, but I was able to reassure her that no, she would not need a wheelbarrow or a wheelchair. :)
January
We have already been enjoying this new year! Here is some of what we have been up to in January....
We began the new year by letting the kids stay up "late" to ring in 2013 as we watched the celebrations in Times Square. (They have no idea that we actually did a search for last year's celebration on You Tube and celebrated at 8:00pm.) They enjoyed the countdown, the sparkling cider and couldn't get enough of saying, "Cheers" and clanking their paper cups together.
We enjoyed some fun parties: a gender reveal party for two different babies (both boys!), Jen hosting book club, and Sarah's baby shower. Here is Sarah below with her two hostesses and twin boys almost ready to see the world!
One of our friends had his 40th birthday and a group of us went to a place called Suncadia to celebrate in some "cabins" in the snow. 25 kids in one place meant a whole lot of food and fun together.
Gabby went tubing for the first time. She was reluctant at first, but once she went, she had a great time and wanted to go again! She wasn't even traumatized by the fact that her hat flew off half way down the hill and that she took down a friend at the bottom.
The kids weren't the only ones to have a fun time. This is us after enjoying the (indoor) swimming pool and outdoor hot tub, but before the karaoke madness.... So many laughs and memories!
The girls had a fun playdate with one of Gabby's friends from school. They decorated cookies and enjoyed playing with a house full of toys other than their own. I love that Gabby doesn't even have to look at her cookies as she frosts them. A true pro.
The kids supposedly put on a show for us, but there were a lot more costume changes than scenes.
At the end of the month, B came to visit! While he was in town, we all went bowling. The girls had great scores, thanks to their bowling ball slide.
(At least I know by looking at these two pictures what my husband will look like in about 25 years... not much different.)
These girls sure do love their grandpa.
I just thought Claire was cute in her bowling shoes.
On Saturday, we went on the Seattle Great Wheel - the huge ferris wheel on the waterfront.
Gabby was a little nervous to be so high over the water, but she got over it pretty quickly.
We were glad to finally have an excuse to go check out one of the largest ferris wheels in the US and it did not disappoint!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)