Ringing in the New Year (a little late)

Saturday was our local FCC chapter's Chinese New Year party. Because I'm on the board, it's an all-day affair for us (and it's why Emma had her birthday party last Saturday instead of her actual birthday.)

So we went early to help set up for the party - like 9 a.m. - and were there until 4:30 p.m. A long day for sure, but Emma held up remarkably well. She really likes hanging out with the daughters of my fellow-FCC board members. Here's a picture of some of the girls after we went on a McDonald's run to get them some lunch...


The actual event got underway at 1:00 p.m. It was so much fun...there were more than 300 people there and it is so wonderful to see all of the friends we've met over the years with their beautiful daughters (and a few sons!) Emma was running all over the place with her pals...here she is with her good friend Helen...


After the Chinese dance performances, they gave away raffle prizes. Our FCC president asked Emma to come up and hold up each of the prizes as they were being raffled off...my little Vanna White!


Frankly, I was surprised that the winner of this prize was able to wrestle it out of Emma's hands...but she gave it to her.

It was an exhausting day, but a good one. We're so fortunate that our area has such a large and active Chinese adoption community. A couple people in our travel group live in smaller, more rural areas and don't have contact with any other families who have adopted from China. I think that would be very difficult. I'm so grateful that we see so many families who are similar to ours...

Anyway, a belated Happy New Year...we hope the Year of the Pig is a good one for all of you!

Good morning...

...to mommy's 5-year-old girl! Happy birthday, sweetie!

Meet the newest member of our family...

It's Sami the cat! I was the owner of two cats who lived to be 19 and 20 years of age...they died two years ago, within six months of each other. Emma has wanted another kitty, but I've resisted, mainly because after 20 years, it was nice to be pet-free for awhile. But as an early birthday present, yesterday I took her to the animal shelter to pick out a cat. We played with several, but she chose this one and named her Sami. She's 4 years old, declawed, and fortunately, she has very good litter box manners! Emma adores her, almost too much. The cat is a little spooked by her because she wants to hug and hold her so much. But I'm coaching Emma to be more gentle and to give the kitty time to get used to us. Anyway, here's the one photo I have of the two of them together...


It's too early to tell, but it's possible we may have to perform a kitty exorcism on poor Sami - look at those eyes!

A happy President's Day

Emma and I had such a nice day together today. Which is a good thing, since our day yesterday was less-than-perfect. I think we both had birthday party hangovers or something, because she was whiny all day and, at one point late in the day, I practically screamed at her for asking me repeatedly to turn on the tv. It was one of those days where you lie in bed and think about what a horrible parent you are.

Anyway, we started fresh today. It helped matters immensely that, after weeks and weeks of high temperatures in the teens, it was inexplicably 50 degrees today. We felt like putting on our swimsuits and hitting the pool. But instead, we headed to our favorite park to take a walk and feed the ducks. Of course, it never occured to Mommy Einstein that after weeks of below-freezing temps, the lake would be frozen over and the ducks would have headed to a warmer climate (probably northern Canada.) There were no duckies to feed, so Emma threw the bread on the frozen lake instead...


After walking more than a mile around the park, we headed to the local outdoor shopping area where we did a lot of window shopping and then ate dinner at Panera. My vegetarian chili and Emma's wild rice soup hit the spot...


Then back home for a bath and early bedtime for her and I'll no doubt hit the sack right after "24." Ugh, back to work and school tomorrow. But I'm glad my girl and I ended the weekend on a positive note...I felt so crummy after Sunday. Sometimes you just worry that what comes out of your mouth is going to scar your kid for life. But even after a bad day, Emma always seems happy to see me the next morning.

Chuck E. Cheese post mortem

So after yesterday, I can offer one piece of sage advice to moms and moms-to-be...no matter how much your child begs, if they want to have a party at Chuck E. Cheese...DON'T DO IT!!!

I guess I'm being a little dramatic...the party was far from a disaster. The kids had an absolute blast and that's what's important. I just thought it was horrible. Not because of the noise and chaos...more that they have one party after another scheduled and you're rushed so quickly from playing, to eating, to cake, to unwrapping presents...you don't have time to enjoy anything. But as I said, Emma and her friends had a good time. Here are some pics:

Here is the birthday girl!


Here's Emma, Emme and Lola goofing around in front of the blue screen tv thing...I think this was the hit of the party....


And here is as close to a group picture as I could get...


Behind Emma are her friends Maci, Emme, Lola, Jasmine and Helen. Missing in action are Jia and Jenna.

After the party, we had to rush to our monthly China girls playgroup, which seemed rather tranquil compared to Chuck E. Cheese. We staggered home at 7:30...Emma was in bed by 8 and I hit the sack at 8:45. Emma's now playing happily with all the groovy gifts she got from her friends. We need to start getting ready for church shortly. Thank goodness tomorrow's a holiday and we can chill out for another day.

Sleepover

For long time readers of this blog (I think there are like two of you), you might recall that last October, Emma went to her first sleepover at her friend Lola's house. It was the first time in our life together that we had ever been apart. Emma had a blast and didn't seem traumatized at all (sigh!)

Anyway, tonight Emma is HOSTING her first sleepover, with Lola as her guest. When Lola's mom dropped her off, the two girls were so excited, they practically hypered themselves into a total frenzy. They've settled down a bit, but I'm sure there's no way these two will be asleep before nine...we'll see how it goes. Here are some pics of the two happy girls...




Tomorrow it's Emma's 5th birthday party (although she doesn't turn 5 until next week.) I'll give you a full report tomorrow on how the soiree went at that little place I like to think of as hell on earth...Chuck E. Cheese!

Just what we needed...

MORE SNOW!!!

Sunday afternoon at the puppet show

Sunday after church, we met our friends Dana and Jia for lunch and then went together to a puppet show. We are blessed to have a local puppeteer who puts on brilliant, original puppet shows...everything from Little Red Riding Hood to the Mikado. I don't throw the word around a lot, but he's an absolute genius.

Anyway, the girls were very excited about the show and looked so cute together, as usual...




The show was funny and cool and afterwards, the kids got an up close look at the puppets. One of the musicians even let the girls pound on the drums and play some of his instruments...


We had such a lovely time - the temperature today actually rocketed into the mid-30s, so we took a walk afterwards. I swear, it's the first exercise I've had in weeks, thanks to this blasted cold weather. But the temps are supposed to head back down tomorrow, so no one's putting away the hats and mittens yet.

Hope ya'll had a good weekend too...back to the grind tomorrow!

Mommy - Ace Sports Photographer (NOT!)

At risk of sounding egotistical, my skills as a photographer have improved vastly since having a child. I think over the past four years, as I've taken hundreds if not thousands of pictures of Emma, I've learned a lot about what makes a decent photo. However, I have to say that I have developed little skill in taking photos of a moving child. It is so hard to capture someone in motion...as I discovered today at Emma's gymnastics class. I tried and tried to get some good photos of her in action, but I'm not happy with any of them.

That said, here are the best of the pathetic bunch (after seeing them, I'm sure you'll be thinking "These are the best ones? What did the duds look like?"

This morning at Emma's class, the girls got their first crack at the uneven parallel bars. I have to tell you, it's a little unnerving to see your 31 pound daughter, hanging upside down on the bars.




I did get a kind of cute shot of her working on her floor exercise...but, of course, she wasn't really moving much at the time I snapped the photo.


Ah well, practice makes perfect. Maybe I'll do better next week...

Prepare to be scared

Okay, what's the story here, you're wondering. Did my daughter just go 12 rounds with Mike Tyson? No, what she did is - while I was making dinner tonight, she got out her Libby Lu makeup kit (see January 28 post) without permission and gave herself a makeover. Now I'm certainly no makeup expert (one look at me would tell you that.) But I'm pretty sure using bright red lipstick as eye shadow is not really considered all that chic. But Emma was so proud of herself, I couldn't be that mad. Needless to say, her makeup kit is now on the top shelf of mommy's closet. Thank goodness it's bath night!

Greetings from the deep freeze

I can't believe it's been a week since I posted anything...I'm convinced it's because it's too cold to do anything requiring any energy. We've had more than two straight weeks with the temperatures below 30 degrees. Yesterday, the high was 7, but with the wind chill, it was like -15.

Of course, since it was practically sub-zero, we had a million things to do...gymnastics, a birthday party and then we went with some friends to see Sesame Street Live. Although Emma has never been a Sesame Street fan, she really enjoyed it. For me, it was the longest 90 minutes of my life! I've had a good time at some of the kids' shows we've seen...Dora the Explorer, Clifford and Disney Princesses on Ice come to mind. But this was mind-boggling dull to me. But the tickets were free, and as I said, Emma liked it - and loved getting cotton candy - so it was worth it.

Other than that..nothing much happening except trying to stay warm. Emma started to get a runny nose yesterday and woke up with a cold this morning. Hopefully it will be a mild one...it seems everyone here now has a cold or the flu. I can't wait until spring!

Anyway, here's a funny picture I took of Emma at the birthday party...my little goofy girl!

Our crazy day

So here was our day on Saturday:

Leave house at 9:30 to go to Emma's gymnastic lessons.
Rush from gymnastic lessons to get to Emma's friend Emme's birthday party at Libby Lu (more on that later)
After two-hour party, go with some of the party people to eat at Rainforest Cafe because everyone is starving.
After almost two hours at Rainforest, rush across town to make it in time for our monthly playgroup with Emma's Chinese friends.
After playgroup, a bunch of us go out to eat at local Mexican restaurant.
Get home at 7:30 p.m.
Go to bed at 8:30 p.m. exhausted.

A long day, to say the least, but fun.

Okay, the birthday party at Libby Lu. For those of you unfamiliar with Libby Lu...it's like they stuffed 500 princesses into a store and it exploded. If you have a girl into princess and girly girl stuff, it's heaven. In addition to the rows of little girl makeup, crowns, glitter, jewelry and hair accoutrements, you can book birthday parties where the guests can get makeovers. So Emma's friend Emme had her party there yesterday and let me tell you, these girls were on cloud nine. First you get to decide if you want to be a princess or a rock star (guess which one our girl picked!) Then you had your makeup done and your hair done. Here's what Emma looked like when her makeover was complete:


And here's a picture of Emma with Emme (who went for the rock star look)


I didn't mind this whole thing too much because they went really easy on the makeup and they did such an incredible job on Emma's hair...it was so cute (if you click on the picture of Emma and Emme, you can see upclose how wonderful Emma's hair looked,) I have to tell you, when I saw her after they got done working on her, I actually got tears in my eyes. I have always thought Emma was just about the cutest girl on the planet. But when I saw her like this, I got a glimpse into the future of what a beautiful young woman she was going to be. Probably way too soon for me.

But when we got home last night, it was into the tub to scrub off the makeup and the hair glitter. So I've got my little 4-year-old girl back now.

Today it's church and we're hooking up with our friends Dana and Jia this afternoon. When I'm going to clean the house, do laundry and go grocery shopping is up in the air.

Hope all of you are enjoying your weekend!

Months vs. years

Last night after work/school, Emma and I went to Target to get a birthday present for a friend of hers and then went out for dinner (hey, it's been a long week.) So Emma and a little girl were hanging out in the play area and I started chatting with her mom. I asked how old her little girl was and she said "39 months."

Excuse me...I was unaware I was going to have to do math when I got into this conversation. So now I have to get out my rusty mental calculator and think "okay, 39 divided by 12"...oh, so she's THREE.

It is my personal opinion (and therefore should be the law) that you have to stop reciting your child's age in months at 23...as in 23 months. I'm sorry, after that you just have to say "two." If you like, you can be more specific, such as "she just turned two" or "he's two-and-a-half" or "she'll be three in March."

Which brings up the question...when do you stop saying "and-a-half?" I frequently told people Emma was two-and-a-half and three-and-a-half. But I can't remember ever telling someone she was four-and-a-half. Maybe four should be the cutoff for that, since I have taken it upon myself to lay down these rules. I certainly know I would roll my eyes if someone told me their child was six-and-a-half.

Of course, the really sad part is, I spend more time thinking about these matters than I do on issues like whether the troop surge will make any difference in Iraq.

Such is my life these days...sigh!

Snowmen and angels

The last thing we really needed after last week's ice storm was six inches of snow. But that's what we got last night. It was that heavy, wet snow that is a nightmare to shovel. I spent an hour this morning shoveling out our driveway - it will be a miracle if my back doesn't totally spaz out, which tends to happen when I overdo things.

On the positive side, heavy, wet snow is the most fun to play in. So this afternoon Emma and I headed outside to the frolic in the winter wonderland. First, we made angels in the snow - which actually isn't all that easy in the heavy stuff. But it was still fun...


Then we attempted to build Emma's first snowman. It has been forever since I've built a snowman, and I'm telling you, it isn't as easy as I remember! But we managed to mold together a sad, pathetic-looking snow creature that in some ways resembles a man...


I swear, Emma is crouching down in a futile effort to make our snowman look bigger. Anyway, we had fun and I'm sure we will both sleep like logs tonight.

My little Mary Lou Retton

Emma's arm has recovered nicely, so we went to our first gymnastic lesson today. Emma was very excited, but as I anticipated, got very clingy as the class began and I practically had to drag her onto the floor. Fortunately, the instructor took her under her wing and let Emma stand next to her during class. Here's Emma sitting next to her new little friend Cassidy...


After a very tentative start, Emma ended up having a great time. And at the risk of sounding like one of those delusional stage moms, she really seems to have a talent for gymnastics. She certainly has the physique for it. The other parents were commenting on how well Emma did on the balance beam (despite the uncertain look she has in this picture, she really did great on the beam.)


So I'm all ready to order our tickets for the 2016 Olympics - wherever they may be - because Emma will no doubt be the captain of the U.S. gymnastics team by then (kidding!)

Okay...what happened here?

No, despite the fact that our entire metropolitan area is a skating rink, Emma did not fall down on the ice. We finally got out of the house yesterday and we went to our favorite Mexican restaurant after running some errands. While we were sitting in our little booth, a waiter dropped a glass on the floor and, as she leaned out to see what had happened, Emma fell right out of booth and onto the hard floor.

I guess I should have known something serious had happened when she didn't cry. Normally, Emma breaks into hysterical tears for like 90 seconds every time she has any kind of little mishap. But after this, she just sat on my lap with this pale, pinched look on her face. She said she was fine, but when we got home, and I got her pjs on, she started crying and crying, saying her arm hurt. These are the moments when the parenting books really don't help much. I just sat there with her in my lap, wondering if I should just give her some Tylenol and put her in bed, or if we needed to get to a doctor. I knew she didn't have a fracture or anything because she could bend her arm and wiggle her fingers. But when she didn't stop crying, I bundled her up and headed out to the closest emergency room.

What a madhouse...there were like 40 people waiting to be seen, the majority of whom had wiped out on the ice and broken arms, legs, tailbones or heads. Shockingly, they got to us fairly quickly (like after 30 minutes.) They examined her, x-rayed her arm and said she had a small crack in one of her elbow bones. Not enough to put on a cast at this point, but she needs to keep her arm in a sling for a week or so. If it still really bothers her after a few days, we may need a cast.

When we got home, I dosed her with Tylenol, put her into my bed and then crawled in with her. She fell right asleep and I watched the rest of the Golden Globes. Emma whimpered all night in her sleep, especially when she rolled over on her arm. Her school was cancelled today so we're home, trying to recuperate from our little freak accident.

Ah...the adventures of parenting! It's certainly never boring!

Still shut in...

...but appears the storm is finally coming to an end. After 48 straight hours of sleet, the precipitation has turned to snow and should be ending soon. Hopefully we can dig out later today and get to the grocery store at least!

We've been entertaining ourselves fairly well. It helped that Emma took at 2.5 hour nap yesterday...that makes a tremendous difference in how the day goes. Last night, we decided to make a fort with the clothes basket and Emma's khakis (blankets!)


Emma also got her first introduction to the IPod...I've never let her use mine because I didn't want to start her on the road to hearing impairment so soon. But I turned the volume down low and loaded some of her favorites, like Hilary Duff, Laurie Berkner and Dora - and she listened for quite awhile...


So I guess we're going to make it out of this mess with our sanity in tact. However, I do think we're going to take a break from playing Go Fish and Crazy Eights for awhile...I swear, we've played about a hundred games of cards over the past two days!

Cabin fever

Ugh...like much of the Midwest, we are in the middle of a winter storm. It's that lovely "wintery mix" of sleet, freezing rain and snow that makes life miserable. It started yesterday afternoon with a nasty sleet storm. Emma's school closed at noon so I went to get her and we made it home by 1 p.m.

Now please don't misunderstand...I love spending time with my daughter. We never seem to have enough time together really. However, the prospect of being stuck inside with a 4-year-old for three straight days (which is how long this storm is supposed to last) would fill most parents with dread. By 5 o'clock yesterday afternoon, I was getting weary of hearing "Mommy, play with me" and "Mommy, I'm bored" and "Mommy, can we GO somewhere?" And we probably had at least two more days of this!

Fortunately, the relentless pelting of ice and snow let up for a couple of hours late this morning and we ran out to Target and met some friends for lunch. But then it started up again and it's back to the house (with the walls slowly closing in...) It's not that Emma and I can't entertain ourselves...we can - but not for 12 straight friggin' hours! We are just used to being on the go a lot, I guess. Anyway...here are some pictures from our lovely weekend so far...as you can see, being stuck inside has made Emma a bit goofy too.

I convinced her to try on her new swim suit (see yesterday's post) - I think she likes it!


Later, I let her pick out whatever she wanted to wear - since it appeared we weren't going to be going anywhere. This is the ensemble she came up with...


I think she thought the diaphanous pink skirt, the fur-trimmed pink sweater and the pink Crocs went together because they are all pink.

Finally, I think this kind of sums up our mental state right now...


We're going a little crazy!

Gymbo spree

For those of you who don't live in the Gymboree universe, it's time to redeem your Gymbucks. So yesterday during my lunch hour, I dashed over to the nearest Gymboree to see what looked cute (uh, just about everything!) It was the usual madhouse there. Even though they had tons of winter clothes marked way down, I was in the mood to get Emma something for summer - despite the fact that warm weather is months away.

I spied this adorable swim suit and knew it was perfect for my gal. I can't wait to see her running (WALKING) around the pool this summer in this. Of course, I had to buy the matching sunglasses and picked up a couple of cold weather tops super-cheap. But it's the swim suit I was most excited about.

Mommy Einstein

It was a fairly nice winter day on Sunday, so Emma and I headed to the park to get some exercise. We were hiking around the park and there was a huge pine tree with scads of pine cones underneath. Emma walked around the tree, picking the biggest and best pine cones. We put them in a plastic bag, along with a few acorns. I suggested that maybe we could buy some glittery spray paint and little sparkly jewels and decorate them. Emma's eyes got really big and she said "Mommy, that is SUCH a great idea!"

So we went to Michael's and spent $12 on spray paint and glue-on jewels to decorate a few pine cones. But hey...your kid thinking you're a genius...priceless.

I'll have to remember this day ten years from now, when everything I say to Emma will be greeted with a roll of her eyes to show what a total idiot she thinks I am!