Grace's First Christmas

The pictures are
#1 Grace in ALL the jewelry Santa brought her on Christmas Eve, she had every single piece on
#2 All 5 in matching jammies, right before bed on Christmas Eve
#3 Grace and J opening their stockings
#4 Grace and Bitty Baby
#5 Grace and Bitty baby and the bitty baby bed

Grace had a wonderful first Christmas. She loved all the cookies and treats and loved going to look at lights, she would point and say ooh. She was into doing any activity her brothers were doing so she made and decorated cookies, saw Santa, sat with Santa when he came to our house, colored, wrapped, and put bows on presents.

The presents were the only hard part of the day for our Princess, she wanted open them all and when she was told no, there was a tantrum. As a result, she spent some time on the stairs. When she opened gifts that she could play with right then, she was happy for a bit, but she wanted to open more presents!! (who can blame her, isn't that what everyone wants?) She loved all her gifts and let me tell you, she knows which ones are hers and if one her brother's touches one of her new toys she goes screaming after them, MINE! We're working on the sharing, she has no problem playing with their stuff, lol, but she'd rather they leave her toys alone. Nothing out of the ordinary.

Santa brought Grace a Bitty Baby, who goes everywhere with her. We have spent a lot of time changing her clothes and putting her to bed. She practically throws the poor doll into the crib, which prompts Scott to say, SLEEP BABY in his meanest voice. What a hoot.

All in all a wonderful holiday for everyone, filled with lots of gifts, food and love, and couple tantrums for drama.

Scenes from the Christmas season

I have had too many parties and guests to post much lately, so I will put up some pictures from some of our Christmas celebrations. Grace loved Christmas and only went to time out three times while we opened presents :-). She would like to own it all and sharing doesn't rank high on the list of things she likes to do, but drama does, so she chose to throw herself on the floor in very dramatic displays of displeasure, hence the stairs. She's been home five months and throwing these tantrums almost that long, and I still have to turn my head so she doesn't see me giggling. Hope every one had a very Merry Christmas!

He's making a list, checking it twice, gonna find out who's naughty or nice....

Our Christmas card. Merry Christmas!!

The one where we celebrate ALL religions.

First, let me say that I am a died in wool Lutheran, and that really only matters for this story.

Yesterday I went to the post office because I needed Christmas stamps. I can buy stamps at the grocery store, but I wanted to get the festive ones. I planned out my errands so that I could go to the post office early and beat the line. I even planned to go to the small one, hoping there would be less people. The line wasn't huge, 10 people or so, but they were all mailing packages so it was very slow moving. M and J asked if they could go sit on bench. I said yes and they went and sat pretty nicely. I should mention that mine were the only kids in the post office so it was silent there, besides their noise. So Grace see's J and starts to point and yell Doodle, our family nick name, she doesn't say it, she yells it several times. I can't get her to be quiet, so I'm covering her mouth, people are starring. I make M and J come back hoping to keep Grace quiet.

We are still in line and now Grace doesn't want to hold my hand, or be held or frankly be that cooperative. None of this would be bad in a normal situation, but it was silent in there and I could feel the stares. So I finally get to the front of the line and I have now sandwiched Grace between my legs so she can't go anywhere. She is yelling out doggy and baby and all the words she knows and is still yelling Doddle, there are occsional screams.

I ask the lady for 60 Christmas stamps. She holds up 3 choices and I pick the blue ones with gold tree. I paid and struggled to sign the visa slip. Tthen I stuffed those stamps in my purse and got the heck outa there.

Later I took the stamps from my purse to show Scott how pretty they were. Upon closer inspection, I notice that isn't so much a tree but scroll work in sort of a tree shape. I told Scott that I thought I bought the Hanukkah stamp and we laughed and laughed. Then I said what is EID, it's here in the corner of the stamp. Being curious, Scott went to the postal site and looked up our stamps. They aren't the Hanukkah stamps they are the, ready for it????



ISLAM stamps. They won't exchange them so I'm sending my Christmas cards with an Islam stamp. Scott thinks I should write we celebrate all regions on my envelope so people don't think we're nuts. I'm not worried about them thinking we're nuts, they already KNOW that!

Pictures

Our first post placement report is due at the end of the month, so I'm getting ready to send it off for the appostille and onto our agency. We are to attach one to two pages of pictures to the back of the report. So I've been going through five months of pictures and I've narrowed it down to 22 that show a broad range of the activities that Grace has experienced. How on earth can I supply enough photos to show how much she is loved and how much she has enriched our lives? We're confident that she is happy and attaching, and we hope that the Russian officials will see that, but we really hope they'll see the love. Now how to get all 22 pictures onto two pages, presented in my best scrapbooking format, and with captions, ugh!

On the food front, we're going to chalk the pickyness up to toddler hood, which we knew, and we're going to work on the food hoarding in her mouth and try not to give it too much attention. We encourage her to chew and swallow a lot, and she knows what to do and does it. As for getting down from the table, the same rule applies to all the kids, if you get down, you're done eating. Hopefully she'll figure out to stay there before she starves.

Food Issues??

When Grace first came home she had some very obvious food issues. If someone in the house was eating she would scream unless she was eating what they were, and she would eat and eat and eat. We have gotten those under control, but now I'm concerned because she has gone the other way.

Background issues, we have the four skinniest boys ever!! They eat to live and that is it. They have yet to be big eaters. They are picky, but eat the minimum for the meal, and go without until the next meal if they must. So the problem may be that I have no clue how kids really eat.

Grace today, she is getting picky, and she's a toddler and so I'm not worried about that. I am concerned that if someone else finishes eating and is excused, she just gets down, and sometimes she has eaten a bite or two. We put her back and try to get her to eat, but she shovels food in and has such a mouthful she gags. She is a s l o w eater, so having the boys stay until she is done is not that realistic, it can be 30 plus minutes while she picks at food. We have found her hording food in her mouth, she stuffs a bunch in and doesn't chew and it's been in there 10 minutes.

I've looked for info on post PI food issues and haven't found any, does anyone have any suggestions? I don't think she has any really serious issues, but because she is a girl, and they tend towards this problem, I want to nip any issues she may have from her early life in the bud.

So help a Momma out if you can and pass on any and all tips or book titles, I'm looking to educate myself.

Grace meets Snow!!!

Living in the Pacific NW we don't see a whole of of snow. Yesterday we go a nice taste of it. It snowed off and on throughout the day and Grace was transfixed by the sight of it. We were surprised at how fascinated she was with looking out the window and watching the snow fall, she's from Siberia. I assumed that she probably had never been outside in it, but I remembered looking out the window at in May. Maybe when she left her old life behind, all the memories stayed there?

We put off taking the kids out in the snow because I don't have enough snow gear for all of them, some of it is going in their stockings and I refused to give it to them now. And then there is the snow boot dilemma. We might get 3" of snow once a year if we are lucky, and I just can't see my way clear to buying boots for that little use, so I sent them out in rain boots. Anyway, at 8pm, as the kids were getting ready for bed I caved and got out all the gear I could find and let them go out. (Grace was in her jammies, bad mommy) A bunch of neighbors were out and we had a huge snowball fight. I wondered how Grace would react to the snow, she loved it! She was running around, throwing snowballs and laughing. What a treat to get share this special first with her.