Little pea is definitely a rough and tumble boy. He loves all forms of trucks (especially firetrucks!), likes to get dirty, climbs like a monkey, thinks body slamming is funny, and already throws like a little leaguer.
But, my rough and tumble little boy also loooooooves princesses! He frequently asks to watch the Dora princess episodes and begged me to buy him a princess toothbrush last week. "PaLEEEEEESE, mommy! With a cherry on top?!" (whoever taught him that is EVIL!)
So, whenever pea pulls out the blocks, it usually involves building a princess tower. Today's princess tower had a super "cool" garage for the princess's car.
Mr. Cheesy. He is definitely into making a cheese face and immediately saying, "Let me see the picture!"
And, as much as pea enjoys constructing his princess towers, he enjoys destroying them even more. Thank goodness the firetruck was close by to "put out the fire" and clean up after the destruction.
We have had a lot of snow this winter! At least it has been sticking around for awhile. And, we have all been suffering from some serious cabin fever. I am ready for spring, how about you?
So, until spring arrives, we enjoyed a little time playing in the snow last weekend. It was finally warm enough to be outside without getting frostbite or windburn and the snow was perfect for snowballs and snowpeople! Pea LOVES being outside regardless of the weather so he had a blast.
He especially enjoyed body slamming the snow. No joke. He literally threw himself on the ground attacking the snow. He is extremely physical and he has definitely taken it to a new level lately! He especially enjoyed sticking his face in the snow. Is there a WWF for toddlers?
Snow angels. Grrrrrrr....the Abominable snowman!
On top of the world! (or at least on top of frosty's body!)
It was a fun afternoon, but I am not sad to see the snow melting! Come on spring!
Finally, after much searching and reflection, we have decided on a new domestic adoption agency and are moving forward! Initially, we had decided to stick with our first agency, but we kept putting off the application. I kept telling myself it was just because we were busy focusing on other things, but I did not have that pull, that motivation to get it submitted. Now I know that my heart was sending me a message and holding me back for a reason. Our child is meant to come to us in a different way. We had a notion of what our next adoption would look like, but that is starting to change. As I have said before, adoption is truly a journey of the heart. And, this adoption is already proving that as we are opening our hearts once again. Even though we have moved in a direction we didn't expect, it feels RIGHT. My heart feels at ease and that pull and motivation returned instantly after connecting with our new agency. I just know this is where we are meant to be. It is exciting and scary and full of unknowns, but our hearts are opening wide and we are ready!
The next step in our process is to attend our agency's training in April. At that time we will be matched with our social worker and our homestudy process can begin. I anticipate we probably will not be "active" until mid to late summer. We are excited and we can't wait to see what kind adventure and miracle is waiting for us this time around.
WOOHOO!!!! Thanks to some awesome advice, I was able to recover all 500 lost pictures!!! I used a card recovery program online and it worked wonderfully. I had no idea that was even available! So, let's redo this FFF thing...pea thought it would be a great idea to suddenly start coloring on everything but paper right before we listed our house. We were all in the basement cleaning when pea found a permanent red marker and started coloring all over a rug (thank goodness we were getting rid of it) and he colored on the panels of a cabinet. Jason took some Goop cleaner and the red faded a little so it is not as noticeable, but STILL. He just HAD to color on something right before our house was listed!
In this picture, you can see he managed to color all over his hands and face. He also colored on the carpet in our basement. Good grief. At least this time he was using a washable marker.
So, you think coloring on the wall is bad...
Pea enjoys "cleaning" in the basement with an old long feather duster. The other night I decided to exercise (what????) in the basement while Pea was playing. I was in the middle of this very important obstacle course when I heard some interesting noises behind me. I turned around and there was water all over the carpet. I walked over to discover that pea was dipping the feather duster down the sewage drain and sprinkling the lovely smelling water all over the carpet and the cement floor in another area of the basement. DISGUSTING. And, of course, this was JUST after we had finished cleaning everything up in order to be prepared for any short notice house showings. Needless to say, sewage is not really the smell we want to greet potential buyers when they walk in our house. Oh, I was mad! And, to be honest, I was more mad because I finally decided to dedicate some time to exercise and it was interrupted! Luckily we were able to get it cleaned up quickly and the house is back to smelling "normal."
So, I inserted my memory card to find the perfect picture for this week's FFF theme. And, I found it! Pea had managed to color all over his face and hands with a green marker. It was priceless. And now...it is gone. Forever. Sniff. Sniff. Sniff. I have no idea what happened, but somehow I managed to delete my entire memory card. Gone in an instant. All 500 pictures. Luckily, I recently uploaded a vast majority of them, but I lost all of November, December, and the few I had in January. Yes, that means Christmas. I have maybe 3 or 4 pictures saved from Christmas Day at our house. How depressing!! Sigh....
So, here are two pictures from LAST January since I don't have any from THIS January to share. Sniff. Sniff.
It's amazing how much he has grown! These pictures were also taken with my old camera and they look awful compared to the quality of my current camera! Who knew?!?!
It's official! Our house is on the market and we already have a showing scheduled for Friday! Of course, we realize this could take awhile so we are not getting too excited, yet. We spent the entire weekend cleaning, organizing, and decluttering. My parents were a TREMENDOUS help! Our house looks amazing thanks to them! Now we just need to figure out how to maintain our clean and organized house with a wild two year old who enjoys destroying the house in under 2 minutes. So, we busted our hineys over the weekend and now we wait......
Adoption news...or really, lack of news. We are currently reevaluating our choice of agency. We have not been getting the warm fuzzies from them and we also received some negative feedback from someone on an adoption forum. Granted, that is one person's experience, but we have already been starting to feel a little uneasy about our choice. So, we're thinking our gut feeling may be pointing us in another direction. This feels all too familiar because this is exactly how pea's adoption journey started. And, it worked out perfectly. So, we are going to be calling a couple of the other agencies that were on our initial list and then make a decision. And so it begins!
It's Friday! Woohoo! This week's theme is close-ups, but I am going to do my own thing. A couple months ago, my siblings and I arranged a family photo shoot as a Christmas gift to my parents. We all went to the park for the afternoon and the photos turned out great, though pea was not very cooperative so we only have a couple good shots of him. There was just too much space to roam in the park and he was not at all interested in sitting still, or even walking for that matter! Even so, it was a lot of fun and my parents ended up with a beautiful photo book of our photo shoot. Check out some of the other FFF posts on Hannah's blog HERE.
I know. I know. It's been pretty quiet and boring in our little corner of the blog world. But, a lot has been happening and we recently made some big decisions. Jason and I have been planning on moving for several years. Not just moving across town, but moving from our current town. Away from family. Away from the place where I was raised. In fact, I never, EVER, imagined that I would even move back to the town where I grew up. I couldn't wait to go off to college and get the heck out of dodge! And, I did for about 10 years. Then, on a whim about 9 years ago, Jason and I decided we were tired of only seeing our families 2 or 3 times per year, at the most. So, we moved back to my hometown, to the place I had vowed to never live in again. But, after a couple of years, we were feeling the itch. The itch to live somewhere else and that became our plan.
Then, suddenly, things started getting in the way of our master plan: jobs, graduate school, building a family, the timing just didn't feel right, etc, etc. Through it all, however, we always talked about moving and our conversations would often be, "well, maybe we shouldn't do x, y, or z because we may be moving next year." Consequently, we have never really felt fully settled where we are because we have always planned on leaving. What we have slowly started to realize (yes...I said slowly!) is that our master plan (the plan that never seemed to materialize) has been holding us back. We stopped pursuing other goals and plans because we were so focused on this other plan and uncertain of our future. It was keeping us from building roots, making connections, and feeling grounded where we are. And, we realized we were growing weary of waiting for something to happen that may not happen for a long time, or may never happen. In many ways this realization was a great relief, in other ways it was a bit stressful because this is something we have been thinking about and planning on for a long time. Suddenly, our "master plan" seemed to be evolving...significantly.
We have finally admitted that our "master plan" no longer feels right and it's time to let it go...for now. So, what does that mean? We have a new plan! Ha! We have decided to stay we where we are and settle in for awhile (notice the noncommittal time frame!). In fact, we are getting ready to list our house so that we can look for another house to build some roots, a house with room to grow. Truly, this has been a huge decision for us and one we have been deliberating over for a few months. As you may remember, we were going to list our house last spring with the "plan" of moving away. Well, the market just wasn't in our favor so we decided to wait. And, during that wait, we did a lot of soul searching and it led to this recent decision. With that in mind, we are ready for a different kind of change. Sort of like a new beginning.
So, we have been busy getting our house ready and hope to have it listed by next week! We are excited, though we realize there are no guarantees in this market. My parents are helping us this weekend with a power clean so that everything will be ship shape! Wish us luck!
So, I am trying to clean off the video camera so here is another video of pea! He has been taking swimming lessons for the last few months and has come a very long way since our first day in the pool! You may remember he screamed and had a death grip on me for the entire lesson! No more! He absolutely LOVES the water. For the most part, he doesn't really care what the rest of the swimming class is doing. He just swims around doing his own thing most of the time, testing out his new skills (including beating daddy with the noodle). Enjoy!
