Around the house this week. . .

A little block building during our snow day off from school on Tuesday (or, more accurately, our ice day off from school - no nice fluffy white stuff to play in ;-().

L l

 

 

Look what I can do!  Fine motor skills - check!

L loves to take her babies on 'strolls' around the kitchen...

We had a sickie in the house this week - note the nice flowing nose. But still cute, nonetheless!

 

A K-pop star in the making?

First video attempt - C hoopin' it up!

Testing, testing 1-2-3.... This is C's basketball game yesterday.  He is #3 on the team in the white jerseys (the little guy that is talking to the coach before play starts and the one going after the guy with the ball throughout most of this video). By the way, these boys are all 3rd graders - note the size differences amongst them!

L update and this week in pictures

This week started out with L's comprehensive early intervention evaluation.  She was evaluated by three professionals - speech/language pathologist, occupational therapist, and developmental specialist.  The good news is that she was evaluated at or above age level in all areas, aside from expressive communication (obviously).  Her fine motor skills are at age level and everything else - gross motor, receptive communication, cognitive/thinking ability, social emotional, and adaptive/self help - all rated above age level.  In particular, they rated her receptive communication at above a 24-month level!  I thought that was pretty awesome considering she is 18 months old and heard only Korean for the first 9 months of her life.  They noted, as I have noticed as well, that she picks up on subtleties in speech around her that is not even directed at her, which is a higher level receptive communication skill. 

The bad news is that her expressive communication is at a 9 month level, which obviously wasn't a big shock since she doesn't say any words at all, aside from "uh oh" and animal sounds.  So, Miss L will now be getting one hour of speech services in our home every week.  All three of the professionals assured me that she is "one very smart cookie" and that she will be fine, and likely won't need services for that long.  As an aside, Miss L was quite the rock star in their office.  They were fawning all over her and actually calling in other people, including the director of the office, to come look at how adorable she is.  Unfortunately, I can't take any credit at all for her cuteness!

Here is the rest of our week in pictures.....

 

CHEEEEEESE!!!!!

Special Delivery from Korea!

L's foster mom was so sweet to send some adorable Hello Kitty mittens and Pororo snow boots for her, and some Pororo gloves for the boys.  L was so excited to see her new treasures when I opened the box, and was happy to model them for me.  Thank you foster mom!

Playing Catch Up - Christmas!

Warning:  This is a long post and will probably be ultra boring if you are not a family member or close friend.  But I need something for our memory book, so bear with me!
 
I know this is a bit tardy, but better late than never, right?

I love Christmas.  I mean, seriously.love.Christmas.  Not just Christmas day, but the entire holiday season.  I love the decorating, the baking, the celebrations and music.  I am one of those people that has my car radio continuously tuned to the "all Christmas all the time" station from Thanksgiving through New Years.  My heart goes a flutter when I see the first signs of Christmas decor at the local strip mall.  And yes, I even (gasp) started putting up our Christmas decor before Thanksgiving this year.

So no surprise, every year our family joyfully participates in I make our family do a whole bunch of things that I have declared our annual family holiday "traditions" (the problem, as J sees it, is that I seem to come up with a new "tradition" every year).  Christmas is always special for our family, but this Christmas was a little extra special because we had L home with us to share in all of our traditions.

Okay, so the first of our traditions is the Choral Arts Society Family Christmas Concert at the Kennedy Center.  We go every year usually a couple of weeks before Christmas and I just love it.  The music is great; the audience gets to sing along with the Christmas carols; and Santa, Frosty, and Rudolph make an appearance at the end.  It always really puts me in the holiday spirit.  I knew it was probably coming at some point, but sooner than I expected, our eldest declared for the first time this year that he didn't want to go and that the Santa that comes out isn't even the "real" Santa (on the positive side, at least he still believes in Santa!). That should have been my first sign that perhaps this wasn't going to be the magical family holiday moment I had my heart set on.

We were on the fence about whether we were going to take L with us.  I really wanted her there to share in the tradition, but J thought she may not be able to sit through the whole thing (considering she doesn't ever make it through church).  But in the end we figured bringing her was more economical than paying for a sitter, so along she came.  She did well for about the first 20 minutes, but then started to get really restless - kicking the chairs and trying to touch the people sitting in front of us, playing musical chairs between all of our family members, and letting out a huge scream if we tried to get her to sit still. So, after a while, we just let her out of our laps and let her stand (or, more accurately, scrounge around on the floor in front of us and under our chairs - yuck).  This was going well until she discovered a stash of food in my purse.  We certainly couldn't let her eat in the concert hall at the Kennedy Center, so I had to take it away from her.  As you might imagine, that didn't really go over very well and engendered huge, blood curdling screams.  It was no less than a Christmas miracle that we were able to get her to calm down rather quickly and go back to her under chair exploration.  All was well until J said he smelled something.  Seriously, she had to pick NOW to poop?  So, family holiday tradition #1 I have to admit was a semi-failure this year.  We had one pouting kid who didn't want to be there, one restless/screaming/stinky kid, and J and I didn't really get to enjoy the show because we spent the entire time trying to placate L.  But on a positive note, B had a great ole time (and didn't seem to notice any of the drama that was going on - go figure).

On to holiday family tradition #2.....  Every year, on the evening of the 23rd, we drive downtown to see the National Christmas Tree, which is on the Ellipse right in front of the White House in Wash, DC. There is a stage with live musical performances every evening, a huge yule log, the National Menorah, a large Nativity, and Santa's workshop where kids can make crafts and visit with Santa.

All suited up and trekking over to the White House...

We caught some shots of the Capital Building on the way over.

 

For some reason, Marine One (the Presidential helicopter) kept landing on and taking off from the White House lawn over and over and over again that evening (seriously, like 20 times when we were there).  It was really noisy, but really neat to see.  This is the best shot we could get (they all turned out blurry).  Marine One is the blurry, shiny thing on top of the White House.

And here is the National Christmas Tree.  The smaller trees you see encircling it represent each of the 50 states and U.S. territories and have ornaments on them created by residents (usually children) of that state/territory.  Pictures don't really do it justice.  There are also a bunch of trains running at the base and all around the National tree.  You can even see the passengers inside.  The trains are the kids' favorite.

Prior to visiting the tree, we went to the United States Botanic Garden.  They have an exhibit every year of all of the monuments, the White House, Capital Building made out of all natural materials - twigs, leaves, grasses, etc. - and a huge train and pointsettia display.  This year, they also had landmarks from around the world made out of natural materials - Eiffel Tower, Taj Mahal, Machu Picchu, and a bunch of others.

Here are the boys in front of the 'Capital Building'.  

And all three in front of the 'Smithsonian'.

The boys in front of the 'Eiffel Tower'

This would have been a great family picture if C had his eyes open.

On Christmas Eve morning, I took the boys ice skating at an outdoor rink at a shopping center near our house.  I don't know why we've never taken them before, but they LOVED it and were quick learners, especially C.  He was off and skating in no time flat.  And yes, I declared this our new Christmas Eve family tradition.

Getting laced up....

And they're off....

 

 

  

Later that afternoon, we headed over to our good friend's house for some pre-church appetizers and libations ;-).  And then off to church for Christmas Eve service. 

Christmas was quieter than usual this year, as normally we have at least some portion of one of our families here.  My mom almost always comes out from Arizona, but couldn't make it this year because of her job.  And J's parents chose to spend the holidays at home this year with his siblings (but came out after Christmas for J's birthday and New Years).  It was kind of a bummer for me, both because I love having a lot of family around during the holidays and because it was L's first Christmas with us and I would have loved to share it with our families.  But nonetheless, we had a nice, quiet family Christmas, and it was the first Christmas in a long time where I didn't feel the longing and sadness of waiting for a child to come home.

The boys loved their jerseys....

and the gifts they bought for each other (so sweet!)...

and their table air hockey set.

L made herself right at home in her new kitchen...

and thought the baby doll her brothers bought for her was pretty cool too.

 

And that about wraps it up!

18 months

L is 18 months old and has now officially been with us longer than she was in Korea.  How is it possible that 9 months have passed already?  Geesh.

We had her 18 month checkup today and she weighed in at 23 pounds (25-50th percentile), which is a percentile jump in the weight category.  That isn't surprising, given that she is eating like a maniac lately.  You wouldn't believe what this little girl can put down.  She ate three full size pieces of pizza the other day - crusts and all!  She is 32 inches tall (50-75th percentile), so she is slipping down in the percentiles height-wise.  Disappointing, as I had big plans to groom her into a Korean super model.  And her head circumference is a whopping 19 inches (90th percentile), so clearly she is destined for Mensa.

Overall, the pediatrician thinks she is doing great.  I asked her about her excessive drooling and the fact that she seems to have her mouth open a lot and breathes a lot through her mouth.  She said that it could all be completely normal and will resolve with time, or she could have enlarged adenoids (which can cause all of those things), so she referred us to an ENT to get her checked out.  Frankly, I'm kind of hoping she does have some sort of ENT issue that can be corrected somehow, because I don't know how much more of this drooling I can take! lol!

 

checking out what the dog is eating

Here are some highlights of Miss L at 18 months:
-  She is sleeping like a champ.  She goes down between 7:30-8 at night and wakes about 8:00 in the morning, though can sometimes sleep even longer.  She usually takes one, 2 1/2-3 hour nap in the afternoon.  She rarely wakes at night and is a very sound sleeper.
- She eats anything that isn't nailed down.
- She loves seaweed.  She chomps on it like it's candy.  But I can't stand the smell of her breath for the rest of the day.
-She loves 'cooking' things in the new kitchen she got for Christmas and feeding us and her baby dolls.
- She is really into dolls and stuffed animals now - even more than she was before.  She carries them around everywhere and frequently hugs and kisses them.
- Still no talking going on, though she does say "uh oh" now.  She tries really hard to repeat words when we ask her, but nothing really comes out right.
- When she gets in trouble for something, she immediately puckers her lips and lunges forward to kiss you!  What a little manipulator, eh?
- Nothing makes her laugh more in this world than her brothers.  Boy does she think they are hilarious!
- She seriously loves dogs.  Any dog.  She gets totally animated and starts 'talking' and squealing away every single time we come across a dog.  She follows our dog around and tries to hug and kiss her.  Unfortunately, the affection is pretty much just one sided. ;-)
- She has a peculiar habit when she is done eating.  She will do the sign for "all done", but every.single.time we go to take her tray away (even if she has been sitting there for a really long time without eating and rejecting everything we give her), she starts grabbing at whatever food is left on her tray. She literally cannot get down from her highchair without swiping some food from her tray.  She throws a big hissy if we don't let her take something. 
- She loves to have her picture taken and will pose for us now. 
- She loves clothes and seems to instinctively know when she has something super cute on.  She will 'model' and twirl her skirts and dresses for daddy.

- She gets scared every time she hears the garbage truck (or any other loud truck) or a loud plane fly overhead and starts screaming and runs to me to pick her up.
- As of a couple of weeks ago, she can now walk down the step from the kitchen into the family room completely independently without sitting down first or holding on to the wall.

- She is the biggest whiner I know and she throws a complete hissy fit when she doesn't get her way.  Yep, she's a total drama queen, and she's all mine ;-).

Nice black eye from falling into the fireplace.