Mackinac Island Pictures

We had a great trip last weekend. The weather was beautiful. The kids did a lot of swimming at the hotel, and while on the Island we rode the 8 mile trail around it. This is the first year that Caelan rode her own bike. Bob and Garrett rode one of the "tag-along" bikes, like a tandem, and then I had Lia on the baby seat. We walked around quite a bit, had a nice lunch, played at the playground. Bob and Garrett took a horse pulled taxi ride, while the girls and I picked out the fudge. Yum!

The Beloved "Ba-Ba"

Lia loves her bottle. We knew that she had very few solid foods and was fed primarily using a bottle when she was at the SWI. When we were in China, however, she ate anything and everything that she could get her hands on. Now that we have been home for 4.5 months, she has become much pickier. There are a few foods that she fairly consistently will eat: oatmeal, yogurt, bananas, pasta. Actually these are the four things that she will eat for breakfast/lunch. She eats well at dinner, but oddly refuses dinner foods at lunch or breakfast (I have tried this several times). But, she is VERY attached to her bottle. I have tried to limit her milk/soymilk intake to 24 ounces each day, but it is hard. She is very easygoing- however when she wants her bottle, there is nothing else that can console her.

I am starting to try to figure out ways to discourage her bottle dependence without upsetting her. I did have her pick out some new sippy cups, but so far she is not very receptive to drinking from them- though they make pretty good storage containers for toys and cereal...

Any tips?

Our Little Republican

We are faithful Obama supporters, but due to Miss Caelan's close relationship with John McCain (see picture taken during last year's Mackinac Island trip)- our girl has been trying to convince us to vote Republican.

OH- all is fine with Lia's kidneys. There is no problem, and all tests came back perfect!! I will post more pictures from this weekend later tonight.

Language

While I am impatiently waiting for the results of Lia's most recent lab work, I just want to mention how quickly Lia is picking up words. She still doesn't combine words yet- well unless "Bubba, NO!! MOM!!" counts? Bubba is Garrett's nickname.
She can repeat fairly clearly any word that I say to her and correctly uses quite a few words on her own. In fact, today we were counting as we were going down the steps and I said, "1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8" and but then we were at the bottom, then Lia said "9." I was surprised.

We are going to Mackinac Island tomorrow for the weekend, so I am sure that I will have quite a few pictures to post next week.

Formula and more

I got an email this week from CCAI about the possibility that children under age two, adopted during the first part of the year may have consumed some of the contaminated formula that has sickened so many children in China. I have been following the story, but given very little thought to the fact that it could have affected her. Lia was only drinking formula mixed with rice while in China and was actually still drinking Chinese formula through May, after we brought her home. I am not sure if she was fed the Sanlu brand, and in fact I can't even remember what brand we bought for her while there.

To be safe, we are going to have a urinalysis done. She doesn't seem sick, but there are a couple of concerns that I have had that are still not really fitting.

She is also being retreated with 3 medications for the H Pylori and we will check again for that in another week or so. I felt that her initial symptoms were still present and our ped. spoke with the gastroenterologist at U of M and he suggested retreating.

On another note, our annual Mackinac Island trip has been postponed. We have gone the weekend before my birthday for the last 3 years, that makes it this weekend- but the kids have soccer and Bob has to facilitate a United Way volunteer event at his school. Weather pending, we plan to go next weekend.

Yes, my 34th b-day is Wednesday and oddly enough (because I feel as good as I did at 25!!) I have had strange aches and pains this week. First, I woke up unable to move my head yesterday- like I slept funny and then this morning, I was having trouble with my knee... Ah.. I need to get back into shape:) I did great this summer and now I am falling back into bad habits.

Hair

I have been growing out my hair for two years now so that I can donate it to Locks of Love. I think that I now have a 10.5 inch ponytail, ten is the required amount. Yahoo! I like having longer hair- just not this long. I think I will try to grow it out another half inch before I cut it- I NEED to be able to put it in a ponytail!

Soccer

For the first time, Caelan and Garrett are playing soccer. Neither has played before. Caelan's team (with my friend, Becky and I as coaches) had a tournament this weekend. They ended up coming in second place for their age group- there were 16 teams. Wow! They did great. Caelan did better than I expected, especially considering it was her first game.

Garrett also had his first game. I think that Bob was slightly frustrated, as I know he is hoping that Garrett will be his star athlete, but Garrett just ran up and down the field smiling at the spectators. I am not sure if he ever kicked the ball- well maybe he did have one "kick off" but he sure was a happy little guy:) I laughed so hard. Too funny.


And isn't Lia adorable!?!

My Day

8:00 Bring Caelan to school
8:15 Bring Kali (our husky) to the groomers
8:30 Bring Garrett to School
12:00 Pick up Garrett
3:00 Pick up Kali
3:30 Pick up Caelan from School
4:00 Bring Caelan to Religion Class
Drop Kali off at home
5:15 Pick up Caelan
5:30- 6:30 Caelan to soccer Practice
Home by 6:50...
Sigh... Oh, and this all adds up to close to 70 miles of driving today. Big sigh...

First day Pictures

Caelan is now in the 2nd grade at the school where Bob is the principal. Garrett started his 2nd year as a preschooler- now he goes 3 mornings a week. The transition went smoothly and everybody was thrilled to be back at school. Well, maybe Bob could have handled another month off (hee hee!)

Here are some pictures. This first one needs some explanation- Lia wanted to get down and walk around (see her expression?) and Garrett has been VERY resistant to getting his picture taken. We have taken quite a few pictures this summer of Garrett's backside:)

Garrett and his best friend, Amelia with Lia on their first day.

And because she is so adorable, here are a few more pictures of Lia. Compare her latest sleeping arrangements with a few posts ago. She sure does love her stuffed animals!

This one was also taken today. Lia seems to have gotten into a fight with some ants? spiders? Who knows, but she has some bug bites that popped up after yesterday's backyard play.

School starts tomorrow...

and I almost hate to say it, but I am glad. I am looking forward to having some one-on-one time with Lia. We will be able to go to her playgroups and run errands while Garrett and Caelan are at school. I am having a very hard time being out of the house with all three. The two attempts at grocery shopping with all three were disasters. I was the frazzled mom at the grocery store with the cranky, whiny group of kids. Even the library has not been fun. I can certainly handle one, I am pretty good with two at the store and library, but not all three. I am sure it will get better:)

I started back at work, I am an online math and reading teacher. They switched over to a new classroom program, however, and I think that more teachers were switched over than students since I have worked only six hours in the past three weeks. I am hoping to work at least 10 hours soon, but for now it is nice to ease back in.

More tomorrow...

Summer Reading

I did manage to read quite a bit this summer. Here is my list:

Done with Appointments- YAHOO!!

Well, the eye exam and hearing exam went fine. Lia was cooperative and neither doctor noticed anything unusual. She had three vaccines last week, and while she wasn't too happy about them, she is pretty tough and tolerated everything.

Our "Little" Garrett also had his four year check up. He is a pretty small guy and due to his activity level he didn't grow much from 1-3 years old (moving constantly, never sleeping)- but this year he gained 6 pounds and 3 inches. He is now 36 pounds and 41 inches. Wow! We were starting to wonder about him:)

The only lingering Lia issue is something that was stated in her medical reports- that she has "Malabsorption." Even the doctor who reviewed her charts said that it could mean a number of things. She was diagnosed with H pylori right when we brought her home, but even after treatment she still seems to be having issues (you don't need the details!). She has actually gained three pounds since we were in China, but if the issues continue our pediatrician may check with a U of M gastroenterologist to see if we should check for other things, maybe gluten allergies(?) I am not sure. But, she is really doing great!

Three Months

It was three months ago yesterday that we met Lia for the first time. Our adoption was finalized three months ago today. I am going to post some pictures from today and then a one taken the day we met her and then one from the camera that we sent to the SWI. How much she has changed:)

Four months ago at the Orphanage:



Today (this is the same bear):




A few hours after returning to the hotel on our first day with her:

Today:

Two hours in the Emergency Room

With who else? Garrett...

At around 5pm, Garrett came over to me crying and coughing. He was actually foaming at the mouth and drooling this stringy mess. It was like nothing I had ever seen before and it kept coming and coming. I panicked.

We drove to the ER and proceeded to wait for a long time. I kept asking him if anything hurt or if he ate anything unusual. He insisted that he didn't. By the time we were actually back in a room, he said "Now I remember, I drank some funny water in a bowl in the backyard." The funny water? It was Caelan's afternoon "experiment" - something that she learned in first grade. You mix water with salt and pepper. Then you dip your finger full of dish soap into the bowl and the salt and pepper moves to the side of the bowl. Garrett was foaming Palmolive! Uugh! He is fine and no longer drooling foam. What a night.

End of Summer, sort-of

Well, Bob's days of leisure are over. He officially goes back to work tomorrow after 5/6 weeks off. We spent most of the summer at the cottage. We are planning to go there next weekend, but I am not sure after that how often we will make it up there. We are going to my parent's cottage for an "Olympics" party on the weekend of the 8th, which I originally thought was going to be a typical Hannan party: boat ride, hot tub, some wine and a good dinner, but I think that they are planning "games"... Hmm.

Lia has quite a few appointments coming up as well. Nothing this week, as I am waiting for my babysitter to come back from Florida (Hi, Katerina- we miss you!!), and would prefer not carting around all three kids. Lia is going in for a vision screening, hearing screening, vaccines and will have her first visit from Early-On (other than the evaluation). Garrett also has his 4 year old well child check. Fun. His also will have vaccines involved.

How many have you read?

I saw this on another blog and as I have been reading quite a bit lately, I wanted to see how many I actually have read. I didn't do very well, but at least I did better than "6". (This is coming from a teacher with a minor in English- and when life is calm, I do a lot of reading for fun.) I do suspect that I have read a few others- but did not bold them as I can't remember any details.

Here’s how it works:

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline (or mark in a different color) the books you LOVE - mine are in red
4) Reprint this list in your blog so we can try and track down these people who’ve only read 6 and force books upon them.

The premise of this exercise is that the National Endowment for the Arts apparently believes that the average American has only read 6 books from the list below.

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (I did read the first one)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible ( I have read quite a bit of the bible-13 years of Catholic Education- but I am sure I haven’t read the entire Bible)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Big Girls Weekend in Chicago

My friend, Becky and I have been planning a trip to Chicago with Caelan and her daughter, Isabel for probably six months. She wanted to do something special for Isabel's seventh birthday. My brother, Kevin lives in Chicago and so does my cousin Molly. My aunt is now renting a condo near Lincoln Park Zoo. I wasn't sure if I was ready to be away from Lia for an entire weekend, but decided to go. Lia did great, as I expected at home with Bob. We drove 4 hours, to Michigan City, Indiana, where we got on the commuter train to Chicago.

Friday we went to Lincoln Park Zoo and out to dinner with Kevin. On Saturday morning, we woke up and took Molly and Ruthie (the girls' American Girl dolls) out to breakfast at the American Girl Cafe. Caelan and Isabel were pretty excited. We shopped a bit at the store and then went to Navy Pier to the Children's Museum and then spent the afternoon on Navy Pier. We walked back along the lake and then went to dinner. It was short, but I felt like I had been gone for more than a weekend. It was very refreshing. I really don't think that I needed any kind of a break from Lia- but Garrett has been a bit of a handful lately and two nights away was exactly what I needed. Also, it was nice for Caelan to do something special. We had a great time. I LOVE CHICAGO!!

Garrett's Fourth Birthday

Garrett turned four on July 16th. He was very excited to turn four and as we went to bed the night before, he knew that because he was born at 12:16am, he would officially be four before he woke up. As he went to bed he asked at least ten times, "Am I four yet?" After many "No's" he did wake up at around 3am and I could finally say "yes". We celebrated with Bob's mom, Jenna, Zane, Mikey and Emily. Here are some pictures. Note that Lia is uninterested in the gift opening and cares only about the placement of the children's chairs:)

For our Alaska Friends

Just a quick one, I wanted to include a couple of pictures from our very good friend, Cory Cook's wedding in June. In typical Cory style, we walked in and there he was making coffee, not even dressed yet, though the wedding was set to start in a few minutes. We chatted a bit, and unknown to Bob, he was the best man and we were at the head table. Bob even came up with an impressive toast on the spot. Hee hee! Cory's wife is wonderful and perfect for him. They are both moving from Vermont and have teaching jobs in New Hampshire. I thought that those of you who know him would enjoy some pictures.

Home for a few days

We have been at our cabin for most of the last 2-3 weeks. Lia is loving it. We start the day by going for our morning walk, followed by lounging around the lake. Lia loves being outdoors and playing in the sand. She likes the water, though it has been a little cool. I am pretty happy with my exercise routine up there, I always walk around the lake once (4 miles) and I have been also trying to ride around the lake in the evening, though I may need to get a new bike seat if I want to keep that up. Hee hee!

I brought Lia and Garrett home for a little break on Monday. We had a very odd day on Sunday while at the Traverse City Cherry festival, starting with waiting two hours to eat breakfast at The Omlette Shoppe. Yummy, but not worth waiting for two hours with three small kids. Then as we went to watch the air show, an older woman passed out next to us. While she seemed OK, she was very disoriented and against her urgings, I called 911. She was not happy, but she wasn't with anyone and I couldn't just leave her like that. Then, Bob and I seperated for a moment so that he could watch the rest of the airshow while the kids and I looked at the crafter's booths. He thought I was going to meet him at the car. HA! The car was 2 miles away and I had all three kids. That was not my intention. After walking back and forth for an hour looking for him, I realized that he was nowhere around. He had my cell phone, my money, and the diaper bag. Great. So we made the long trek back to the car and sure enough, he was there. What an odd day. So I was crabby and the kids were crabby, and it was time to come home.

Bob and Caelan stayed until Thursday and we will hopefully go back there on Monday.
Here are some pictures.
Lia and I walking on the beach
Garrett and his friend, Amelia, at a park.
The "other" side of Garrett...
Caelan and Jenna on the jet-ski's
Morning family photo (Garrett has since gotten a hair cut)
Garrett's early b-day present- a pedal tractor which replaces last year's model.
Dancing on the beach
Bob's big fish
Caelan jumping at the festival

Cousin Lukas and Lia at the beach. Luke is 10 months younger than Lia.
Jenna, Caelan and Emily (of the Silva 4)