This cracks me up!

Since we moved The Bean's room, her "ameeuhls" (stuffed animals) are arranged under one of her windows, with a couple facing out. When we pull in the drive way and I look up to her room, ths is what I see and it never fails to make me chuckle. I'm easy I know. I just think it's funny that the Duck and Panda are on the look-out for our return.

A favorite place

Bean loves to go to the library. She really had no chance to be anything but a book lover in this house and the Library is just another facet of that. She loves to go to Story Hour(even though the inabilty of the other three year olds to sit still drives Bean nuts), she loves our Library Ladies, she loves the books...most of all I love the way Bean gets absorbed when we are there. They have been doing a re-model on our Library and it was closed for awhile which was distressing for Bean, now it's back open with the books in a different area and she was all put out and wanted to know why "those 'struction guys don't work at night to hurry and get the books back home, where the be-bong". They better be glad that she isn't the Site Supervisor- because when I tried to explain that they couldn't see to work at night, she said, "let's give them fashyights- I have a fashyight and two lanterns they could borrow".

The Bean Jumps

First let me explain the outfit.... Bean starts everyday in a coordinated outfit but throughout the day, she adds pieces and removes pieces until she is in some strange mix of things. I roll with it, it's easier. Though she does wonder why I take over her wardrobe when we are going out in public. Secondly, yes we allow furniture jumping ( I know Chris, these pictures may be upsetting for you ), I never thought I would be the type of Mom who allowed, nay, endorsed furniture jumping! But, when your kid is a chronic jumper, you gotta give besides it always looks like such fun.

Time at the playground

The pictures and video say it all I think.

Yeah, the videos are a bit blurry, that's my fault I shot them the wrong way. I think you can still see what's what though.

A Video

This is just a video of those tiny hands doing her "schoolwork"

Gunk

Have you ever just turned around and realized that you were living in sqaulor?? Oh come on! It happens to the best of us. Just recently I became aware of whisperings in the night, at first I thought it was maybe the Voice of God and that I just wasn't tuning in well. Sadly I realized it was that gunk on the bottom of my dish drainer- the Gunk was becoming prescient and vocal, by the way it was saying things like "listen lady, a little hot water and suds wouldn't hurt" and I wondered if cleanliness WAS, indeed, next to Godliness, now I just wonder why the gunk was advocating it's own demise. Suicidal gunk. OK not good. So I cleaned the damn thing already.
The problem is, when you de-gunk one thing, the rest of the gunkies think that they need to be seen and amended as well. Sigh. Stove, walls, trim, fridge (wjo keeps spilling milk anyway), microwave- fun fun fun. Well it was fun for Bean, fun in the " you mean I can really dip this cloth in the water and slosh it up on the walls and it can drip to the floor and then we can mop?!?!?" kind of way. Have I mentioned that my kid is a clean freak and loves to clean, mop, vacuum and dust? Plus playing in water is her second favorite thing.
Now we actually have curtains down and in the washer. YIKES!! It's not even close to the move and I am washing curtains? I need a hobby.

Big A-little a

We have started to work on letter and number recognition around here. I was having trouble getting Bean interested until I pulled out a book that my friend Jodi gave to Bean awhile back. It's a pre-school learning book and it has practice pages for learning to write the letters. Bean worked the other evening on the letter A and now she sees A's everywhere!! She is so happy - we told her that this was the first step to reading and now she is always asking to do her "school work". I got a few pictures of her and you can see how proud she is.
I think I have mentioned before how Bean is not really into the crafty stuff, occasionally I can get her into painting or work with markers, she has never really liked crayons and I was beginning to dismay that I would lack that certain "toddler in the house" refrigerator art. Well, she just started coloring about 2 days ago, on her own with no suggestions from me, and she loves it and I am on my way to a fridge full of art!!! I am quite proud of her coloring skills, I especially like the multi-colored blast on the rocket.

Crafty Girl

For Christmas, Bean got a great book form her Aunt Rae. It is called Kid Concoctions, it's full of cool goops and doughs that you can make at home. We got busy with some "crafty dough". We decided to make some pink and glittery beads for Valentine's Day bracelets. We had a lot of fun! Bean was being weird about the cornstarch smell for a bit ( she has a very sensitive nose and can detect morning breath from 70 paces, I am not even going to tell you what happens with the varied aromas from the litterbox)......anyway, this was our first project out of the book, and we will definately be trying more! The beads turned out great and Bean also made a few sculptures, a couple of hearts and some things that she called "poo poo smiles"-strange and wonderful kid.

Thanks Jodi!!!!!

moar funny pictures

This web site has been a real time killer AND side splitter- who knew?? So this one cracked me up for , like, hours.

Mama, Papa tell me again 'bout when I was born...

This is the phrase the Bean uses when she wants us to tell her something about our trip to China to get her. We have this book with that title written by Jamie Lee Curtis. The book is good and Bean requests it frequently. Though in the book, there is a domestic adoption and things are a bit different form our story, it's still relevant to us and I read it whenever she asks for it.
Lately though, she will just say that line and the wait to see what we will tell her. Leslie usually lets me so the telling because he says that he never really knows what she wants to hear ( I think that it's just a bit harder for him to vocalize the emotions of that time ), he always participates and adds little facts in too. The other night she said this to us right in the middle of cooking dinner, she was at the table chatting away while we were working on dinner together...so we stopped what we were doing and looked at her. Honestly though, for the first time I was at a complete blank as to what to tell her, so I said "I don't know Les, what should we tell her", he goes, "tell her about how you lubed her all up with her lotion that first night". So that's what I told her about. I told her how we snatched her up and took her down the long hallway in the hotel to our room and locked the door to keep her in and keep her safe. I told her how I just couldn't believe that she was mine. I told her how beautiful I thought she was and how little she was. Then I told her about getting her lotion out and starting to rub it on her and how she was like " hey lady you are touching me" at first and then how her whole tiny body just sort of softened out and relaxed and how she stared at my face the whole time, with that completely unreadable expression. I told her how I just kept using lotion so I could keep touching her. The whole time I was telling her this story, again she just watched my face the whole time, this time though, as she watched my face, a blind man could have read her expression- she was smiling from ear to ear and her face was glowing, she was all lit up and happy.
Les picked a good moment to tell her about because as I look back on it, those first moments of trust were the most precious gift I could have ever been given.


****Update I should mention that the photo up top is one taken on that first night, right after the lube down and a bottle. I always loved those polks dot jammies and still have them put up because I just couldn't part with them.

The end of an era

The crib is out. I think that I am the only person in the house that mourned it's passing. Don't get me wrong, I am glad that Ev is growing and maturing and I am so proud of the little girl that she is, it's just well, no crib. We have her toddler bed all together and put in her room. OH yeah we also had a room change. The bower at the back of the house with it's three outside walls and no insulation was just a bit too cold with the colder weather. So we talked to Bean and switched her to the smallest and warmest room upstairs. She handled the change pretty well and even helped in hauling all of her stuff from the old room to the new room.
I am really quite proud of Bean. She is three and a half and this is how bedtime goes around here: Around 8 or 8:30 pm, she will say "well, let's get this kid to bed", then she will go into the bathroom, wash her face and hands, brush her teeth, use the potty, put a pull-up on, change into pj's and come out of the bathroom. Then she will say "I'm going up now, let's go read a story", then we will all go up, Billy as well, have a couple of stories and then we will kiss her and hug her and talk about what the next day may bring and then we switch off her light and she goes to sleep. It's very nice. To be honest some nights I will forget a step, like lip gloss or a cup of water and then she will call for me and I will complete the forgotten portion and everything is cool. She will also go thru phases where she thinks it's okay to call me upstairs for the silliest thing, a couple of times a night but we just try to be patient and remind her that it's bed time , blah blah blah- eventually she stops that and we settle back down to our norm.
Overall she is a good sleeper and loves the bed time routine. This really makes me proud and happy because sleep issues in the adoptive community can be gruesome. Actually right after China and up until we had Ev home for a year was quite gruesome for us, but Les and I had talked and we knew what we wanted as far as bed time and sleeping and we just used ALOT of patience and understanding to get here. It wasn't easy, we had some rough times, there were nights when I did not leave that crib side until the wee hours when she finally settled down. Again it's not all roses around here, we have rough nights too, it's just that overall, things are good and I am glad of that.
I thought that I would post a few pictures of her "new" room, same old stuff, different location.

Insomnia Run-on

I am not sleeping.
Again.
This is something that I struggle with on almost a daily/nightly basis. I have inherited my father's insomnia- thanks ever so much Dad. Now, if you don't have insomnia and can just sleep when you are supposed to or when you want to or when it's appropriate- you will have absolutely no idea what it is like for someone who simply can not sleep. It's not a lack of tiredness, because you can feel the tiredness pulling at the back of your mind and thoughts, it's simply an inability to follow up on that tiredness. It's now 6:14 am, I finally fell asleep last night at around 1 am, at 3:30 my mind went from being sound asleep to completely and utterly and irreversibly alert, in a split second and there has been no going back. This is very typical. It is so frustrating to lay there minute after long minute, being hyper-aware of every little thing that is happening, leg itches, sounds, your soundly sleeping spouses breathing...... Your mind will start to wander, you will try to plan your future, solve world problems, review your past, eventually your mind runs out of nice things to think of and you start reviewing bad or scary or anxious memories and that is not conducive to sleepy brain- so then you start to try and relax and turn your mind off, impossible. Is it too hot? Is it too cold? Is it the bed? Is it the cats? Nope. It's just your brain mis-firing and there you are, tired, so tired that you would weep if that wouldn't wake your spouse, and sleepy yet sleepless and awake. Awake really isn't the word for it, your BRITTLE, you are just there between two mental states and one is winning out for some insane reason and you are denied rest.
Admittedly, I have always been a "night owl". Fine. I have always been the kook that will clean out cupboards at 1 am or read until 2. That worked for me. I have friends that tease me about sleeping alot, but really even when I was sleeping at night my sleep time was 7 to 8 hours , it just started later than the rest of the world. OK. I could deal with that, I even liked being a night owl, I like being up at night, it's a different world. Before I was a mother I could indulge in that. Not so much after we got Ev. I did successfully switch my schedule and was all turned around, an upright citizen of the "in bed at 10 and up at 7 crowd" that lasted for a few months. Then it all went horribly wrong..... The insomnia started.
The thing with this is that, eventually my mind will turn off or want to turn off and my body will want to follow in the most desperate way, but by then, it's day time (anywhere from 8 am to 11 am) and I have a family and a life that I want to enjoy. It's tough. I try. My husband is so understanding of this. He feels so bad for me sometimes that I think the concern on his face might bring me to tears.
So OK. Solutions. Self induced sleep deprivation in order to re-set the internal clock - this DOES NOT WORK. I have tried that at lest twice a month for months and months now. Ummmmm, rigid schedule with no naps, and lots of exercise- nope that doesn't work. Alcohol intake, nope PLUS I get the added bonus of a headache in the morning. Pills. hummmm pills are tricky. 800 mg of Motrin will help me sleep alright, but I get a nice, "groggy and grumpy all day Motrin hangover". Ditto with Tylenol. The OTC pills that are for sleep give me very hyper dreams and light sleep with weird and twitching legs. I could really go on here but I think you are getting the picture. I have insomnia AND strange reactions to pills- thanks again Dad :)
So I will away to the local quackery next week. I have been on an Ambien trial, Ambien = too strong or either ineffectual. And will now try the newer set of sleep aids like Lunestra or something. Wish me luck.
Until then, I will have to try and grab sleep where I can. So now all of you know why those "Dillon Household Naps" are so damned sacrosanct.

Swordplay?

Just so you don't go thinking we are never wild around here. Sometimes a girl MUST attack her father with a foam sword, you know?

Again with the rain...

Yet another rainy and miserable day. Something had to be done. So, we loaded up in the car and drove to one of the North Carolina State Aquariums. We have been to the aquarium several times so there were no big surprises and I even left the camera at home, however, we still had fun together and we were all glad to have a day out of the house. After the aquarium, we went out for dinner and had some Sushi- yum yum yum. Then the drive back home in the rain while Bean slept and Les and I chatted along the way. All in all - a good day, despite the cold and rain. I will say that the whole time we were at the aquarium, Bean could not wait to see the octopus. these area couple of pictures from our last visit- in October.

It stopped raining!!!

Finally, after a week long bout of cold and rain, it was dry enough to get outside today. I abandoned all housework, Ev and I grabbed a soccer ball and out into the yard we went. We had some fun, we swung, we played soccer, Ev got her car and played "drive thru" and "Mama pushes the car until her legs fall off". It was good to get out and run and be silly, I think we were a bit stir crazy. Of course, our orange friend was glad to have us out and about as well. Oh and we even went down to the "Itty Bitty Store" and had a snack on the porch as we watched the world go by. Now Bean is tucked up in her bed (still the crib) and napping. We needed a good day outside, it's like someone hit the re-set button.

Outtakes

I tried to get some pictures for Chinese New Year today. Here are some out takes. See? Getting good pictures of a 3 year old can be challenging.

For those of you that don't know....

Ballerina dolls poop.

A lot.

They really do a lot of pooping!

And they do it in pumpkin buckets.

Let me explain. The other day while at what Bean calls, The One Dollar Grocery Store, I got one of those grab bags for girls things to keep Bean occupied on the drive home. Inside was a little rag doll Ballerina. To my surprise, Bean liked her. She has been playing with that doll since the moment she saw it BUT the only thing that damn doll does is poop! I have no idea why, but Bean just keeps playing "ballerina doll poops" over and over again. I get graphic descriptions of the smell and the mess, it's truly weird but harmless (I think, I hope). Since Bean has been prohibited from playing at/around/with the actual potty, she has a little bath room set up in a corner of the tv room, and the potty is a pumpkin trick or treat bucket that has been floating about since October. At least there's a lot of hand washing too!
God help me.

Home time

We have been having lots of play time here lately. Here are a few pictures I snapped during some serious rug vacuuming by The Bean (she loves her play vacuum and uses it for every bit of dirt that she can see). The last picture is Billy sleeping after a long evening of playing with his new pounce mouse- how did he get that back foot up under his head anyway?

Chatty Chatty Girl

I have to confess that maybe today I wasn't the best mother that I can be- sigh. We started out ok , I mean Bean did sleep in until 9 am and then we had some jelly toast for breakfast while talking about our day and a bit about how the move will go. And let me just say here that our upcoming move is nearly always on Bean's mind, she's not stressed too much I don't think, she is just incredibly curious about the logistics- more on this later.... Anyway the morning chugs on and Les and I decide that it is high time we take the Christmas stuff back to the storage unit and just go ahead and clean the unit out and organize it. OK great. We get there and Ev is playing about in all of the stuff, completely occupied but talking and talking and talking the ENTIRE time, so much so that I now have no idea what we decided to keep and what was getting tossed, I hope that Les was able to keep track. Then we had to go to the grocery because this house was a barren wasteland, all of the way to the store and through the store and back home and putting the groceries away and afterwards- she talked and talked and talked and talked. Now if you have never met Ev or seen her in what I call "In Full On Chat", well, then , you have no clear understanding of exactly how much this kid can talk. Les and I have not been able to say more than two or three words to each other all day! Now don't go thinking that I don't appreciate her for what she is and that I don't love her or hold her dear, it's just that 5 seconds all together of quiet today would have been nice. I was as patient as a mother with raging hormones can be but then I started to get a bit edgy and even though she noticed (and made comments on it) - she was completely unable to settle down and breathe a bit. Thus I greeted bed time tonight with undisguised glee and I am about to settle down on the couch and completely veg in front of the tv for a bit. Some of her comments today?

* "I am sorry that you are so grumpy but this IS a wonderful day"
* "Mom I can totally smell that chicken!"
* "Are we going to move into Aunt Rae's house?"
* "Will we move the potty?"
* "Don't forget, we do need jelly, the red kind, I really like that red kind , not the purple kind, I like the red kind, the strawberry stuff. It's right there, see it, on top, to the left Do we have bagels? They are right over there if you need to get some."
* "Are we going to live at Grandma's house when we leave Hatteras?"
* "Will we move out trash can with us?"
* " If we have fireworks (at Chinese New Year) then I will have to come in"


Oh how I love my silly talkative little girl. Maybe I should go get her? NAH!!!!! It's so blessedly quiet now, there's always tomorrow.

Bean

Well, well, well

This blog has been a bit quiet lately. We have all been recovering from what we will now call " The Holiday Trip That Almost Ate Us Alive". I had no idea how exhausted you could get travelling, I think the only other time in my life I have been this tired was during and after our trip to China.
I am fully aware that at least on my end of things, the exhaustion is partly psychological. I am dealing with quite a bit for this upcoming year and I think I am going into classic shutdown just to have some blank time in my mind for preparation.
What IS on Michal's mind? Hum, do you really want to know? If not, don't bother reading this post, tune in at a later date for more Adventures of The Bean, when my wit and sense of observation/humor have returned, no one will be the wiser.
First it is that wonderful time of year when I have to face the fact that I have lived yet another one of my years stuck in a layer of blubber. This is getting critical, I seem to be loosing who I feel that I really am, to this apologetic, rounded , watered down version of myself. I am letting it all sink in and trying not to fight the feelings of disgust and aggravation - maybe if I get REAL sick of myself I will continue past Feb with "good intentions". I have started things off right since we have been home. I have drastically cut back on the diet soda with the eventual goal of being completely done with the stuff ( my inspiration is my Dad who has stopped drinking regular coke after years of drinking it freely ). I have begun and exercise routine , yes Virginia there are thigh muscles, and hope to stick with that as well. I really want to loose about 30 pounds before we move, wish me luck. This is going to require a whole battery of changes and Les is right with me on this which is awesome. Also I am aging. That sucks!!! I always wanted to be the kind of person who "aged gracefully". HA! F that noise, I am going to go down fighting people, fighting to the bitter end.
Then, we do have the aforementioned move ahead of us. For me, this is the hardest part, these weeks of waiting and wondering and trying not to freak out, the possibilities, the knowledge that every part of my life will change for better or worse and I will just have to ride the waves. We can not plan a SINGLE thing for this coming year because we have no idea where we will be(well I know that come hell or high water , we will be at M- Farm on May 31st with Dan and Cherie). I know that it may not sound that stressful but, believe me, it is. Ironically when we get the news and I know where we are going, some of the stress will ease up. I will be able to start penciling in an idea of how our year will go, start researching the place that we are going to: in short I will be able to feel like I have a bit of control, the unknown will become known and we can move forward. OH! And with the move, comes the stress and work of intense cleaning and , as Les puts it "going through our things with extreme prejudice- this can take weeks.
Now also we are wanting to jump back into the world of International Adoption. YIKES! We really want to have another child in our lives and our reasons for adopting from China and not domestically have not changed, as a matter of fact we feel even more strongly against Domestic Adoption - for us as a family, not in general, since we started the process for Bean. I am not sure if any of you follow this world and know what is going on, but let me say things have gotten pretty bleak on this front. China has slowed WWWWAAAAAAYYYY down on referrals, the requirements have gotten much more strict and there is a terrible air of uncertainty with China now that was never there before. I am hearing tales of referral times stretching out to as much as 4 years. The thought of this makes me nearly senseless with frustration and worry and aggravation and disappointment. These negative feelings and worry are not just for me , but for every single family in the middle of, beginning of or at any stage of, adopting from China. I think about these families every day, I read their blogs, I feel their pain. I have no idea why we feel so compelled as a couple and a family to jump back into this, I just know that we do and that following these types of feelings are what lead me to Evelyn, so I will go along again when the time is right, no matter what the rumors and waits are. Is that crazy? Probably because I could eliminate an entire city block's worth of worry by just making the simple decision to not adopt again. Yet, I can't seem to make that decision, hell, I could hardly type it out! There is a bright side though, there are schools of thought out there that think when we are ready to jump back in, thing will have picked back up and China will be a bit more stable and quicker. We will just have to see what's happening when we are ready to go for it.
The other thing is Evelyn. She is growing and changing and I have to relinquish the last vestige of baby-ness. Her crib will be out of her room by the end of the week. We have a toddler bed coming for her. I used to think it was so silly to hear mothers lamenting about loosing that last thing of the baby days. Now I understand!! It's that you finally have to face the fact that you are now the mother of a child and not the mother of your little baby. OK OK she's great now and I love her and I love watching her grow it's just that well, she was just so damn buttery and bean-y as a baby and now she's all about " I can do it", " No thank you for the hugs Mama"- you know what I mean? It's bittersweet.
So that's it, in review, I'm fat , we're moving, China adoption is a mess and Ev is growing up- 'nuff said.

December into January

Well it was a hard trip in a lot of ways, we never really have enough time and with everyone's schedule, it can get difficult. If we didn't get to you for a visit, please don't be upset, we just simply ran out of time. We even had a couple of good friends scheduled and had to back out of bringing Ev because she just got so tired and overwhelmed that I just had to give her a break. She held on as long as she could but she is only three. We use my mom's house as a base and mostly everyone we need to see is an hour's drive or more and that is on top of the 13 hour trip just to get to my parents house. We did have lots and lots of fun though and we ate WAY too much. Here are some pictures...



The big Christmas Blowout at Grandma's house was about to begin....


Just Brevin.


Brevin on his scooter. I think he liked it.


This is a shot from the Annual Sibling Get-together. I have no idea how Leslie's sisters manage to get such delicious food out for everyone and in such vast amounts. It is always so fun to get to be with all of them for a visit.



Three cousins. From left, they are Kate, Evelyn and Audrey.



Evelyn with all of her big cousins, Kate, Aden, Scott and Audrey. Even though Aden's face blurred a bit, I think it's a pretty good picture of all of them.


I just love this picture of Audrey and Kate.


Evelyn and her cousin Brevin posing just outside of our favorite Chinese Eatery in Ohio. They were quite distracted by traffic and the fortune cookies.



This is Evelyn with three great kids, Jimmy, Brianna and Noah. They are playing their new XBOX 360.




No this is NOT Billy Bones. It is in fact, his brother, Toeby who was rescued and adopted by Jim and Lynnette. Toeby now enjoys quite the life, he has a fireplace to lounge in front of, treats are given freely and he is loved.



While visiting our friends in PA, we visited a local eatery for my favorite splurge food of all times, Cheesy Fries. Unfortunately The Bean decided that the bank of 8 tv's on the wall were a bit much and after much wailing and talking this was our compromise.


Evelyn in the backseat on the way home. She has her trusty flashlight so she could read in the dark.