Quotes of the Day from La Case de Aneed

1)  This afternoon I took Ava and two friends to lunch and then the children's museum.  As they were playing in the "supermarket", I sat in a chair (provided for parents) playing Tetris on my iPhone.  I was all of 8 feet from the girls.  Apparently, the didn't realize I could hear their conversation.  It had many funny moments, including one friend telling the girls "Did you know I almost died so many times from Asthma? SOOO many times."  (Granted, it CAN be quite serious, but hers is not.  She was exaggerating, JUST a little, but with beautiful dramatic flair;)  My very favorite moment of their conversting, however, came from my dear daughter.

Friend:  What are we going to do with all this stuff in our cart?  You guys if we make it too full it will take us too long to put away.  WAIT!  I know, let's bring it to Ava's mom and she can pretend she's making us dinner.
Ava:  I don't think that is a good idea.  You guys my mom get's SOOO tired because she takes care of little kids ALL DAY.  I think we should give her space to rest.

Sweet...and hilarious;)

2)  After dinner my children all got a small handful of blueberry yogurt covered pretzels that I noticed at the grocery store.  I didn't really explain what they were, I didn't think too much about it.  I simply said, "I have special blue pretzels for a treat."  Phineas was ecstatic for about 30 seconds.  He took one bite and then with a voice dripping in disappointment said, "Hey!  These aren't blue pretzels!  LOOK!  Someone painted them!" He didn't take to kindly to my hysterical laughter either;)  It took some fancy explaining to get him to keep eating....he was genuinely crushed to find a "regular" pretzel inside;)

3)  When I got home from my afternoon with Ava, instead of acting excited to see me, Chloe stated, "Go way, Go way, mama."  I said, "You want me to go away?"  To which she said with much finality, "Yes.  Choe (she leaves the "l" out of her name) wike (likes) Hannah (our babysitter)."  and then she gave me the "talk to the hand sign and started laughing hysterically.  It shouldn't have been cute, but she thought it was so funny one couldn't help but laugh with her.;)  She is just such a sassy little thing!

My Newest Crush

We had our Home Visit today for our Home Study.  It was a lovely experience.  I have a friend crush on our Social Worker.  She was just amazing.  I could probably write volumes about her.  She's adorable and brilliant and experienced.  She has two of her own internationally adopted children and is a psychotherapist.  Her realm of experiences related to adoption, is awe inspiring.  She has scene really wonderful things and really tragic things and she laid it all our for us.  She was encouraging and asked really thought provoking questions.  It was such a good experience that I was sad when the visit ended.

God is so good.  I have been wrestling with whether to adopt one child or a sibling group.  I have wrestled with what age children to request.  I have wrestled with where to put children with our current birth order.  I have been praying about it.  Our placment agency will go through this with us again, taking our temperments and the adoptees into consideration, but talking through this with Deb today was really good.  You can read a gazillion articles from experts that tell you opposing things.  Deb was able to ask questions and help me think through it in a way I hadn't been able to do reading and jouraling and praying.  It was awesome.  I felt so blessed to have such an experienced woman walk with us through this.  She'll be with us through the adoption and afterwards.  What a blessing!

Back on the Weight Loss bandwagon

Winter is over and since the week before Christmas I have gained almost 6 lbs.  It doesn't sound like a lot, but it's enough for me to feel yucky in my body and for my clothes to sort of fit awry.  It's unacceptable and a sign of the chaos my mind has been in on and off.  It started with a stressful week at my inlaws at Christmas (Side not, let me clarify that it was because of Chloe, not my in laws; The little gal wasn't sleeping and acted horribly all week....I should have read about moth ball toxicity BEFORE returning home, as she was sleeping in a walk in closet filled with moth balls...talk about mother guilt!).  Then the Seasonal Affective Disorder, then 6 of the busyiest weeks ever including two vacations.  It is amazing once one falls off the wagon how hard it is to get back on.

Today I am jumping back on, but I swear I may have to tie myself to this wagon.  It is 8:52, I have been awake for 2 1/2 hours.  Food should not be dominating my thoughts, but in deed it is.  The Easter Candy in the drawer has come to life.  I swear it is little demons screaming, "eat me, eat me" and I have to speak aloud back to it.  One observing me this morning would think I was insane.  I mean IT IS JUST FOOD.  I don't need to eat crappy food.  Do I?

I had a bowl of oatmeal this morning and I don't know when I finished it, but I came down from getting Chloe and I was crushed to find my bowl empty and my tummy still rumbly.  How thankful I am for fruit and veggies.  They are my long lost neglected friends.  I was cheating on them with pie and Easter Candy, but the loyal produce is still there waiting with open arms.  I just hope I can stay faithful.

Getting a workout in would be good too.  I haven't seen the gym yet this year.  Did I really just admit that to everyone?  I did- it's true, I haven't gone.  All my hard work sacrificed to illness and sick children and a million excuses.  Hopefully coming out of the closet will be mortifying enough to make me get back there or go for a run.  Oprah would condemn me for shaming myself, but I think it's just being appalled at the truth.  I have been making excuses and it's downright ridiculous.  If I want to be in shape, I am going to have to work at it again...and make time for it even when time is in short demand.  Here we go again, readers, back to the grind- to tracking and working out...and soon to feeling great once again.  It'll be a much shorter journey this time...gotta catch this weight gain train before it goes full spead ahead.

Adoption Process Update

We are well underway in our process now....all our paperwork on our end that needs to be done up to this point is completed.  We just have to have our physicals, which are scheduled, but not until 4/27.  (Did you know that though we just need a standard physical, because it is for adoption they made us wait for an "adoption physical" appointment.  This also means that though a physical a year is covered by our insurance it will be billed differently and that different code means we pay out of pocket.  COMPLETELY ANNOYING.  It means no insurance company is advocating for a lower price, we pay whatever the health system deems to be the "adoption physical" price.  Yes, the physcian needs to take an extra step of writing a letter on our behalf...but I am pretty sure a simple letter that says, "Marc and Kimberly are in good health and have no health care issues that would prevent them from caring for their children"  shouldn't cost hundreds of dollars.  This infuriates me, but I digress.)

Tuesday we have our homestudy.  This means our local agency (that we work with to be approved to adopt in the state of Wisconsin) sends our social worker.  She goes through our home, interviews our children, etc.  We have certain guidelines that need to be met for safety- ie. smoke alarms within 10 feet of all bedrooms, all cleaners/chemicals and medication in locked cabinets, no expired medications, etc.  We need to prove that we have room for more children and live in a safe environment.  It hasn't been incredibly stressful but is a bit time consuming to make sure everything is up to par.  I had expired meds from 2009....woops.  I always check before administering but there was some OLD stuff in there;)

Hopefully, this will go smoothly and they will type up a nice document and our dossier will be completed and we are on to immigration stuff and our referral.  Exciting times...getting this paperwork out of the way is priceless.  When we have all in hand (including MD letter and homestudy), I'll be sure to post a picture.  The vast amount of paperwork required is UNBELIEVABLE.

Quick shout out to our reference letter folks- we got back reference letters is very quick order...we know many people whose process has been held up because of reference letters so I thank our friends for honoring us by not only writing letters that make us cry, but getting them back to us quickly.  MUCHAS GRACIAS!

Boys are 90% Mischief and 10% Dirt

 I saw the title of this post on a t-shirt some time ago and thought it was cute.  I guess it still is...sometimes living with a little person made up on 90% mischief doesn't "feel" cute, however.

My son was born and along with his birth came several "boys are different than girls" warnings.  Never have warnings been more true.  My son is different than my daughters and certainly different than me.  Lately, it seems his antics has escalated, making for good stories, but a tired and oft frustrated mama.

Here is our most recent Saga:

Last Friday, my son came in from playing outdoors all afternoon and loudly exclaimed, "I peed my pants when I was outside, but they are dried already, isn't that cool?!"  It took me a minute to process his statement, a)that he peed his pants and b)that he stayed in them long enough for them to dry!  I mean who would do that?!  He's never done something so absurd and hadn't had an accident in a couple months, so I just said, "Buddy, that is gross and it will make your skin itchy; you need to go upstairs, wash you bottom with a washcloth and change your pants.  If you have to go potty, you need to come inside."  I figured that would be the end of it.

Apparently, I was too laid back about it because he peed his pants three more times between Friday and Yesterday.  I handled the first three nonchalantly, but yesterday I'd had it with this nonsense.

I sent him to clean up his room; we've had a problem with him thinking it's fun to dump out his toys and clothes on the floor so the last few times he's done it, he's had to pick it up all by himself (granted, I have to go back later and actually fold the clothes he stuffed back in his drawer).  While being in his room for over an hour, refusing to pick anything up, he peed his pants ON the clean clothing.  Dogs do that, people should not. Mommy, was admittedly angry.  A) he didn't pick anything up and b) he peed AGAIN and this time part of it got on clean clothes?  UNACCEPTABLE to this mommy.  He had to pick up the clothes and put them in the laundry, change into his pj's and go to bed for the night.  I told him he was going to go to bed before Chloe because he was acting like a baby and if he peed his pants again he was going to wear a diaper.  He cried, and I smiled inside because I figured this was great consequence for the little boy who wants to be so grown up.

Then came 6 am this morning....and the smile was erased.  I learned that this was a stupid thing to my son.  While in his room since 6pm, he was afraid to come out and though he had on a pull up, he pooped his pull up.  Then he tried to change it himself, in his room, on the carpet.  When poop got on the carpet, he tried to clean it up with his library book bag.  You can imagine what I walked into this morning.  It smelled to high heaven and was a sight to behold to say the least.

When first potty training, he took a few weeks to get to the potty on time for poop and we had problems with him try to clean it up himself, but we finally reinforced that he could not do it, he had to call mommy or papa to clean him up.  We had MINOR smears on his carpet during this time, but after months of him proving he went in the potty, we professionally cleaned the carpets about a month ago.

This time there was no smear, it was a mess and did I mention we have a social worker coming on Tuesday to do our home study for our adoption.  ARGH!  Did I fail to mention that he had poop dried all over his hands, on his pj shirt.....and even on his CHIN?  I can only imagine the germs he slept in.  SOOOOOO GROSS!

I asked him in complete disbelief, "Why didn't you call down to mommy?  What is the rule when you poop you pants?"  He replied, "I need to tell mommy and not clean it myself."  Okay, so then I asked if he knew the rule, why didn't he call me.  He said in the smallest, saddest voice, "I was too nervous."  Okay- momentarily, I felt badly for him and his humiliation.  We ended up having a really good (I think) conversation about doing the right thing even if we are nervous, even if we are scared, and even if we know we are going to get into trouble.  I told him he'll always be in bigger trouble for hiding the truth because that is lying.  I then made him call Marc (who is away on business) and tell him the truth so he could practice doing the right thing even when it's hard.  He did get a few priviledges taken away- but I reinforced it was not at all for pooping, but for not telling mommy and for trying to hide it.

After an hour of scrubbing and scrubbing with my "heavy duty" carpet cleaning solution- I still had this mess:

so...after dropping off Ava at school we headed to target to buy a machine.  I was standing scanning labels on the machines into my iphone (cuz thru my amazon app, i can then check the reviews on each machine on amazon) trying to figure out the best machine to buy when I notice out of the corner of my eye my son is sucking on a Winnie the Pool water bottle.  SERIOUSLY?!  I had to give a little talk about how we can't put our mouths on things that aren't ours and then I totally had to buy it and one other Mickie bottle he said he had sucked on.  Can I just say I was none too happy inside about having to buy two $8 water bottle we didn't need?  To make it worse, he was so happy we had to buy them, I am really frightened he's going to start putting his mouth on anything he wants to buy....so I had to burst his little bubble by saying, "I know you didn't know you weren't supposed to put you mouth on things, but you cannnot get a reward for doing it, even if it was a mistake, so one of these will be for Chloe and one for Ava.  You will not get one."  I hope it wasn't too harsh- he is devastated, but I just can't afford to have this become a habit like his pants peeing.  He's way to prone to testing the waters to take a chance.

Finally, I fear the poop on the carpet lesson is lost as well because I bought this great little maching called the Bissel Smart Shot that cleans for you, but when I ran down stairs, this is where I find my boy- totally intrigued by this "soooo cool" machine.....AYE

Seriously, Phin is cute as a button and I adore him, but I don't think I will ever understand this mischief maker; thank goodness Marc can help me out because today I kind of feel like knocking my head against the wall.

Yep, completely baffling and yet so adorable: