Discovery

Ilya discovered his first pile of earthworms yesterday.

Then he he stomped them all in front of me. There are earthworm guts still on my patio. Blech!

Then Norm made spaghetti for dinner.

Then I wanted to throw up.

Guess it's time for me to "mommy up" if I want to survive parenthood!

Ketchup

Seems I left my lunch sitting on the kitchen counter this morning. Nice. This is always a great thing to realize when it’s 11:45am, you’re 11 miles from home, your office is severely short staffed so making a run to go grab it is out of the question, and you’re absolutely STARVING. To add insult to injury, the only option you’re left with is the fast food joint you swore off when you were 10 years old. Why was it sworn off? Because the last time you were there, a dying and very dried up lizard fell out of the potted plant you were sitting under, landed square in the middle of the cheeseburger you were about to take a chomp out of, and made you scream like the little girl you were!! : - ) The memory still gives me the heebie-jeebies.

Anyway, desperation led me back to the fast food joint today. Sigh. Before I pulled away from the 2nd drive up window, I peeked in the bag to make sure my order was complete and noticed something was missing. Ketchup…

I realized then that my blog is missing some things as well, okay lots of things. It’s about time for all of you to “catch up” on what’s been going on lately. So now that I’ve got my blogger hat back on, I hope you’ll check back and read about our adventures with Cubby.

We’ve been busy, we’ve had a ton of fun, and we’ve had some challenges, all of which I look forward to sharing with you. For now though, I’m going to enjoy my fries…and my ketchup!

Toodles,
Kar

Loopy & hurting but ok

Title sums it up pretty well. Having trouble focusing on typing (or anything really!) so pls 'scuse any typos here. Will post more in the coming days but wanted to thank everyone for the well wishes, good thoughts & prayers.

Thanks again & hugs
Kar

Tomorrow

I haven't mentioned this yet (mainly because I don't really want to think about it), but tomorrow morning I'm heading in to surgery. The surgery itself should be pretty straight forward, maybe a few days to a week of recovery, but the whole anesthesia thing really scares me (and I think Norm, too, since he's seen firsthand the issues I've had with it in the past). I know I've said it, but I just don't deal with with anesthesia at all...

The other not so fun part of tomorrow will be the fasting. I may be very petite, but trust me I am quite capable of packing away the food. I am NPO after midnight tonight but won't head into surgery until around 11:30am or noon tomorrow. Poor me and poor Norm for having to deal with me tomorrow morning lacking caffeine and food! I'm considering gorging myself at 11:30 tonight, but really...that would be no different than what I've been doing since 8pm. So far I've had tiramisu cake & milk, ice tea & goldfish, M&Ms, pretzels, and I'm now considering stealing one of Cubby's strawberry Blue's Clues yogurts. Nice mix, huh?! :-)

Another obvious concern I have is how well Cubby will deal with all of this. I don't know when I'll be able to pick him up again, or rock him to sleep. I don't know how he will react but I do know he won't understand. My fellow adoptive parents will likely understand my concerns about whether or not this will effect attachment in any way. While our attachment journey was shorter than other family's, that isn't to say we didn't have our share of challenges. Cubby & I are at an excellent place right now and it gets better each & every day. I pray this will not have a negative impact and that God will provide me the guidance and strength I need to meet Cubby's needs as well as my own over the next few weeks.

So I'm guessing my recovery time will either keep me totally away from all things Blogger, or will give me more time than ever to get a couple of those posts written that have been nagging me for weeks now. Either way, thanks for stopping by. "See You" on the other side!

We broke our own rule...

We needed to get out of the house for a bit of fresh air, so we took Cubby to a place called G@nder Mountain which is a hunting, fishing, camping & outdoor gear store.

Camping & outdoor gear - - right up my alley. Hunting & fishing...ummmm...not so much. Unfortunately G@nder stresses the hunting & fishing much more than the camping & outdoor.

I knew I was in trouble when we noticed that the men's shoes took up 7 very long rows with shelving on both sides. I've never seen so many men's shoes in one store. Wanna know what me & my fellow female campers could choose from? Two shelves (not rows!). SHELVES people!! What Twilight Zone did I just enter?

Not that all the camoflauge, bows & arrows, shot guns, shot gun shells, stuffed animal heads and (gasp!!) live bait made me feel any better. Norm, on the other hand, was in some version of male heaven that (thankfully) I'll never experience. Not that he's a hunter/fisher type of guy but I think he was secretly thrilled to be amongst so much testosterone. As I type this, Norm is forced to watch Dancing with the Stars with me. Can you blame him for enjoying this outing? Hehehe!

Anyhoo...

When Cubby came home, we gave family & friends strict instructions that camouflage wouldn't enter our house in the form of clothing, toys, etc. We are anti-civilian-camo-clothing. That may sound silly, but we just aren't fans of camo clothing unless you're in the military. Otherwise, we just think it's, well, ugly I suppose.

In stores, we quickly bypass little boy camo clothes but something happened in the G@nder children's department...something terrible...and THIS toddler hat ended up in our shopping cart (click it to enlarge & read):

Yikers! What were we thinking?

Well, I'm not sure what was going through our minds in the store, but once we got home and snapped this photo:

The only thought that entered my mind was "That's MY boy!" If anyone can make camo cute, it's Cubby!

The Very Lonely Bunny

Long time, no post. It's nice to meet with all of you again on this beautiful Spring evening! I hope the past 8 days have gone well for you & your family.

Yesterday we took Cubby to the Se@rs Portrait Studio for his 2 year old & Easter pictures. The last time I took him he did great, so being the rookie I am, I thought this photo session would be a breeze. Let's just say Cubby's agenda was slightly off from mine, and his did not include sitting still, smiling, looking at the camera, or otherwise cooperating for his glamour shots! The photographer did manage to get a few smiles out of him (but very few)...

I was especially excited about the Easter pictures because our local Se@rs decided to let the Easter Bunny hop right in to their studio this year. I wasn't looking forward to standing in line with him for the mall Bunny b/c Cubby is still learning "patience" and "wait" (we have a looooong way to go as far as this is concerned). The Se@rs option sounded great, so I booked 2 sessions for the same day (the 2 year old & then the Bunny).

This was his first experience with a larger than life costumed character and we weren't sure what to expect. When Bunny walked into the studio, Cubby FREAKED and tried to claw his way to the top of my head. My right eardrum is still recovering. After a few minutes though, he was comfortable enough to wave to the Bunny, say hi, say his name, and tell everyone he is 2. Being the rookies we are, we thought it was okay at this point to try & get him to sit with the Bunny. Or near. Or even in the same room. Thirty minutes later, we would have been happy with him sitting ANYWHERE instead of swinging like a little monkey from Norm to me to Grandma to Norm to me and back to Grandma. I swear the kid's feet never touched the floor yet somehow he made his way to each of us even though we were standing a few feet apart from each other.

I'm happy to say that we finally got a 2009 picture of the Easter Bunny, just minus a certain little boy...sigh....

Cubby's 2!!!!

**HINT: After you click "play" and the slideshow starts, click on "organize" to see the photos lined up instead of piled on top of each other. You can then click on each picture to enlarge. Enjoy!!

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