Much to be Thankful for...

WE HAVE A NEW BABY!! My sister Shelli gave birth to baby #4 this morning at 3:56AM! Josie Kate weighed a very small 7lbs 2oz (her other three were 9lbs 8oz, 10lbs 2oz, and 8lbs 15oz, so this one seems so tiny!) and is 19 1/2 inches long. My mom and i (and Shelli's husband Darrin) were there to watch Josie make her way into the world. What a beautiful experience! I am soooo thankful for a healthy baby niece, an amazingly strong sister, and the opportunity to have seen the births of all four of my nieces/nephews!

We were thankful to wake up on Thanksgiving morning to the first snow of the year! A beautiful blanket of snow (just a couple of inches) on everything...and Maelin was sooooo excited! She and Baba spent some time outside making an awesome snowman...

...and sledding down the not-so-big hills around our house! We were definitely thankful for Baba's safe return home after seven days of hunting up north.

While Baba was up north, Aunt Maureen and Adam came to keep us company and stay overnight with us -- we had a blast! We did some shopping, went out to eat, played at home, and best of all, Mama and Aunt Maureen got to stay up until 2:00AM and talk til we couldn't keep our eyes open any more!

We've made a break-through in our nightly bed-time routine. While Baba was gone up north, Maelin and i started working on her going to bed by herself! We played up the fact that she looooves to do things by herself, and she went to bed that Sunday night while i worked on school work at the table. The first night took 45 minutes and she yelled for me three times (but didn't get out of bed), so i considered it a success for the first night! By the third night, she went to bed by herself without any calling out for me :) Buuuuut, then Baba came home the next night, and she thinks she's missing out on something at bed time! Every night she says, "Not MaeMae bed do-by-self!" She's actually done very well, but it's taking time. I'm thankful for the extra time to catch up on things around the house while she's falling asleep!

I'm also thankful for those of you who are still reading our blog :) Last Sunday marked 8 months since Adoption Day (4-2-07), and we appreciate those of you who are still hanging around!

xoxoxo,

Mama, Baba, Maelin and Leslie

Mae's First Halloween

I mentioned about a month ago that we'd reached the six-month mark since our adoption of Maelin. We had an appointment with our homestudy social worker, who sent a report to our agency in California. Along with the report, we needed a few pictures, so we took an updated family picture last weekend. Aren't we cute?! :) Jim set the timer and we all posed...i figured that Maelin would be completely confused by the timer and no one really taking the picture, but she "cheesed" just perfectly! Now we have a new game: Maelin makes us sit on the hearth in front of the fireplace while she runs over and 'sets the timer' on an imaginary camera, then runs and sits with us, commanding everyone to smile! It's fairly comical!

Maelin and BabaDaddy spent last Saturday afternoon gutting and carving two pumpkins from Papa and Nana. At first she was enthralled, watching BabaDaddy's every move...by the end, she was riding her tricycle around the garage while he finished carving the second pumpkin - haha!

I wondered how Maelin would react to the whole Halloween hustle and bustle, but she did just great! I bought her 'ladybug' costume at Old Navy for $11 (score!), and she was t-h-r-i-l-l-e-d!! The three of us went to a Halloween party at the Deaf Club in Flint on the Friday before Halloween, where she played games and hung out with some of her classmates and schoolmates. It was really a good time. On Halloween day, she wore her costume to school and had a blast trick-or-treating around the school. By that evening, Mama had had enough Halloween, so we only stopped two places to trick-or-treat: Great Gramps and Gram's (Mama's grandparents), and Papa and Nana's house. We stayed at Papa and Nana's house for a while and played with Jacob and Lucas while everyone visited. Then we headed to Uncle Darrin and Aunt Shelli's house for a birthday celebration for Cousin Lauren (who turned 10 on Halloween) and Adrienne (who turned 2 the Thursday before).

Leslie has been staying in the dorm a lot this school year. She comes home one or two nights each week, and Maelin looooves it when Leslie is home! This is the first year that Leslie has chosen to stay in the dorm on Halloween instead of coming home with us...i guess that's a sign of growing up! The end of the first quarter of school is coming up; i've heard mostly positive reports from her 10th grade teachers, so we're hoping for a good report card. :)

With Halloween successfully behind us, we're looking forward to the next big holiday 'first' with Maelin. We're guessing since Christmas involves presents, she'll handle that one alright, as well :)

Love to all,

MamaShonda, BabaDaddy, Leslie and Mae

Random Thoughts

I've decided that our newly-painted bathroom wall is way too plain...it needs a collage of pictures of Maelin in the tub! Here's the first picture in my new collection :)


Leslie stayed with us last weekend for MSD's Homecoming. We loved having her at home for a few days! On Friday night, she went to the Homecoming dance, which was a 50's theme (hence the white t-shirt, black leather jacket, pony tail and scarf!). But she let me put some make-up on her, and i thought she looked beautiful!

Mama's birthday was this past Wednesday, so we had the Frampton and Gleeson gangs over for cake and ice cream. The kids found a bunch of play sunglasses, and i had a blast recording their silly-ness for posterity!

This has got to be one of my all-time favorite pictures of Maelin and Leslie and i ... just us girls :)

I've had an interesting past few weeks. In addition to having a broken ankle (which is getting much better now), i got two spider bites which required a trip to the doctor, a shot and three prescrptions. We had Maelin's 12th IEP meeting (okay, i'm exaggerating, but you know us, we call them every couple of months just for shits and giggles...) which was extremely stressful, and then, because i don't have enough on my emotional plate right now, my purse was stolen from my classroom on Wednesday morning before school! Leslie's sidekick (pager) was taken, as well, so we've spent the last week or so closing accounts, cancelling credit cards, replacing things and doing damage control. *sigh*... But even in light of the stressful events of late, i have much to be thankful for, and i won't soon forget that.

Love to you all,

MamaShonda (which is Maelin's new name for me...ha!)

Six Months

Today is the six month anniversary of Maelin's Adoption Day... I'm thinking back to April 2nd and wondering how much she understood of what was going on. Did she understand that we were her new Mama and Baba? Did she wonder where we were going when we got in the van or on the airplane? I'm thinking of her foster parents and wondering how they coped with the heartbreaking task of letting go of such an amazing child. I'm remembering how much our lives have changed in the last six months, both positive and negative. In some ways, it feels like much longer than six months...i can't remember the last time that i had a couple of hours at home to myself...and i'm wondering what the heck i did with all of my free time before Maelin!!

Maelin has started calling Jim "BabaDaddy," which i think is completely adorable! A few times she's called me "MamaMommy," but Jim is consistently BabaDaddy :)

We're in our fifth week of school, and Maelin is doing very well. Getting up at 6:30am isn't always easy, but she loves going to school and talks about her classmates all the time. New signs she's started using in the past couple of weeks: who, which, now, remember, again, bib, forgot, new, said, you, excuse me :)

It's late and i'm exhuasted, so that's all for now...good night!

xoxoxo,
Mama (and BabaDaddy, Leslie and Maelin)

School's In!!

So we're smack-dab in the middle of a 'fake smile' phase, but i still think she's beautiful on the first day of school! We worked the 2nd half of the summer on earlier and earlier wake-up times so that 6:30 on Tuesday morning wouldn't be a shock to her system, and it was worth it. She was a little unsure of things that first day -- where are we going, what are we doing? But each day since then has gotten better and better. She rides to school with Mama every morning, and after school she takes a van that drops her off at Baba's work. So far, so good! :)

In other news, i'm officially an invalid. We have been trying to spiff up the place, and it was barn-painting-day on Saturday. Most of my friends know that i will go to just about any length to get out of work (ahem)...so i fell off the ladder while painting and broke my ankle! First broken bone of my life, and it really sucks. Trying to care for a 3-year-old has not been easy (hopping and crawling around the house - ha!), and trying to teach six of them during the school day is truly challenging! But my aides have been wonderful (like they really have a choice - grin), and we'll see how things go.

More later,

xoxoxo,

Shonda

The August Post

Here's my new favorite picture of Maelin! She's sitting on our front porch in her new favorite shirt, which was a gift from Aunt Maureenie :) And when i say it's her favorite shirt, i mean she wants to wear it every day...and if it's in the dirty laundry, she whines for a few minutes until she's sure that i won't just dig it out and let her wear it anyway!

A few weeks ago, we took Maelin on her first rides at a little carnival in Davison (again, the favorite shirt!). She loved the cars, merry-go-round, and slide-ala-burlap-bag, and then went on the big ferris wheel with Mama! I put my arm around her for the first few rotations, and then she moved it away -- no fear at all in this girl! She wanted to ride the bigger rides, but neither Baba nor i would ride them with her!

It's been great to have Leslie with us for a few weeks this summer! We went swimming at the beach, played at the park, and (pictured here with the shirt...did i mention it's her favorite?) rode the Huckleberry Railroad at Crossroads Village. Maelin really enjoyed the train ride :)

We've been doing a few home-improvement projects over the last several weeks -- ripping off wallpaper and painting the bathroom, finishing the upstairs closets, bleaching the gunk off the shingles, experimenting with sandblasting and staining the outside of our house -- and Maelin loves to be in the thick of things! She looooves helping Baba fix things...he says she's going to be an engineer when she grows up :)

I can't believe that the summer is coming to a close! Ten weeks sounds like such a long time, but it really flew for Maelin and i. We've really and truly had a wonderful time together, and althought i'm looking forward to the start of a new school year, i will miss the days at home with Maelin! And just for those keeping track (me!), Maelin's expressive sign vocabulary is at 233 words!! What an amazing little girl...we love her soooooo much :)

xoxo,
Shonda

July already?!

I can't believe that three weeks have gotten away from me since i last posted here! You would think that i could commit to posting once a week, but we've been so busy! Even if Maelin and i stay home and play all day, there just isn't time to do more than check email. Maybe if we had cable internet i would do it more often, but dial-up sucks, and it takes me forever to get logged in and upload pictures. Anyhoo...

Speaking of pictures, the top one is Jim and i on our 3rd wedding anniversary at the end of June. We went out to eat at Damon's in Grand Blanc while Maelin played at Aunt Laura and Uncle Jon's house (thank you Jon and Laura!!).

The second one was taken just a few days ago; we got together with my friend Kara and her two kids for a day at the beach ... what a great time! (The last picture was taken while we were swimming at the beach also.) Before i realized it, three hours had passed! Anyway, Kara and her kids gave Maelin a new towel, and she looked so cute in it, i just had to get the camera :)

The third picture was taken last night. I wanted to water some of my flowers that i can't reach with the sprinkler, so Maelin kept herself busy in some sand...andwater...and made a deliciously messy mud puddle! She said she was 'cooking' and told me over and over, "Don't touch!"

The next one was taken on the Fourth of July (you can tell i'm pretty concerned about the order in which i've posted them...). The three of us went to North Branch for the annual parade, and Maelin loved it! I think the tractors were her favorite part, but she really liked the horses, too.

Leslie was at summer camp at MSD this past week. She had a wonderful time canoeing, playing kickball, swimming, fishing, and traveling to Lansing to watch a Lugnuts game. Now she's staying the weekend with a girlfriend. They're going to Ohio to hang out on their boat for a couple of days, so that should be fun!

I guess that's all for now. I need to wake up Maelin from her nap if we want any hope of a decent bed time tonight!

xoxo,

Shonda