Tea with Duck and Bunny

Abbey is loving the song, "I'm a Little Teapot".

Text Me!

Abbey got some new mirrored platforms and a great toy cell phone when Lao Lao came to see her this week. She's so into all of it. She's two, going on sixteen.

She Did It Again!

Tonight Abbey got straight out of the tub, climbed up on the potty, and did it again. I guess she is more ready than I am. She loved all the praise and attention. Yesterday we went to Toys R Us for the second time in her little life (you may remember the first time with the corn popper many months ago). After saying "I want" over 100 times she zeroed in on this little microwave. She has never eaten fried chicken, a hamburger, hot dog, or potato chips, and at first I was not too excited about it. But she was so ecstatic because it lights up, rotates the food, and dings. I felt that this should be her chance to choose. It was only $10 so that helped sway me as well. She pointed to the star on the Toys R Us bag and started singing Twinkle, Twinkle.
She is just so funny. She has created a new game where she stands across the room and has me hold out my arms and beg to hold her and then she says "No!" several times and then relents and runs and jumps in my arms. She also saw "Where is Thumbkin?" on Sesame Street and begs to play it over and over. She took her counting up a notch and started using her fingers too. She is just a delight in every way.

First Merry-Go-Round

This is a vintage toy that our speech therapist has used a lot with Abbey. It made me realize how much parks have changed and how much I miss merry-go-rounds and teeter toters. Today I found a park that has both. It actually has two merry-go-rounds and a four horse teeter toter. Abbey loved it all.
We had quite the celebration tonight. After my last post about the potty chair we both sort of moved on to other things and forgot about it. Tonight Abbey wanted to get on it after her bath and it was so cute. She climbed up and got her feet on the rim and squatted just like they do in China. I told her that if she wanted to she could try that on the big toilet too and I also showed her how to straddle facing the toilet. She loved that idea and climbed up on the big one and then went tinkle. It took several seconds for it to sink in that she was really actually doing it and then we partied. Abbey did a victory dance much like those that go on in the end zone after a touch down. She marched around naked on her tip-toes with both pointer fingers up in the air and I sang, "Abbey went pee-pee in the potty". We went and got the chart that came with her chair and wrote her name and hung it up on the wall and put a sticker on it. She was so proud! I still don't plan on potty training her now but she is welcome to do this whenever she wants. We are going to let her go get a small toy tomorrow too, which I have only ever let her do once. I know, we can't do that every time, but we were both so excited over this first one.
She also counted to three again tonight as she had Dora jump off the side of the tub into the water like we do at swim class. It wasn't quite as surprising as the first time because it was just counting without the pointing and one-to-one correspondence, but it let me know that it wasn't a fluke.
We're on a roll here : )

Wow

My jaw is hanging open...

Abbey just layed out some chips on the floor in front of her duck and counted 1,2,3!
She is having a little language explosion. Her new favorite phrase is "right back!" whenever one of us leaves the other for a moment. I can't tell you how much fun it is to see and hear her learn to talk.

Thumbelina

Our community has so many fabulous things for children, not the least of which is our library. We have a brand new 10 million dollar children's wing with 22,000 square feet of BOOKS! It's got a beautiful aquarium and next door is a humongous park with great play structures, duck pond, etc. Today we went to the library to see the puppet show Thumbelina. It was excellent and Abbey loved it!

Apple Tree

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Over the last two weeks Abbey has started singing bits and pieces of songs and it's really fun. I pulled out the camera yesterday and she wasn't ready to sing in front of it yet but I hope to share some with all of you soon. Here's what she's trying so far:
Twinkle, Twinkle
Ring Around the Rosy
The Great Big Spider (like eensy weensy but you pound your fists and sing loud)
No More Monkey's Jumping on the Bed
Johnny Appleseed Prayer

Team Cutie Pie

Abbey and Miss M just finished round one of their swim lessons and received their first little certificate today. They've mastered head bobs, ice cream scoops, kicking, blowing bubbles, kickboards and jumping in off the side. (When I say mastered I mean with them holding on to mommies for dear life and us "helping" them.) Favorite parts included singing Motor Boat, Five Little Monkeys, and Ring Around the Rosie. They had an excellent teacher and several cheering family members. The swim lessons are everyday M-Th and then they are also taking KinderGym on Wednesdays. Last week they also hit the toddler library story time and had a picnic in the park. We are SO thankful to have such a dear friend.

Turn the Page

A close friend and her husband had just completed their first adoption. They adopted a beautiful girl domestically that was part Korean. At her baby shower I had the privilege of holding her daughter. As I held her sleeping baby a love welled up in my heart that I never knew you could feel, it was overwhelming. It was like being a conduit of a love that neither began with me or ended with her, it was above and beyond.
In pondering serious life decisions I’ve found it very helpful to consult with those whom you respect and get their perspective on the options before you. As I contemplated adopting a child I approached the decision which the deepest sense of gravity I have ever known. My sister and brother-in-law are the pastors of my church. In talking it over the possibility of adopting with them, my sister said something that stuck with me. She said that she could not imagine me looking back over my life at it's end having never been a mom. She was right, that was unthinkable. I checked out tons of books from the library about adoption and had them all piled around my bed. I wrestled with the Lord for almost two years. I didn’t realize it before, but I had quite a narrow mindset about what it meant to be a Christian and be a mom. Although I had not been conscious of it before, I now had to face a whole world of perfectionism I had erected in my mind. I thought that the ideal was to stay at home to raise children, have a white picket fence, make all your food from scratch (preferably grown in your organic garden), and home school your children or have the money to put them in a private Christian school. And there definitely needed to be a dad! The idea of a single, working mom with a child in daycare was truly outside of anything I could think of God wanting anyone to do. As I read more about the situation of orphans around the world I slowly began to realize that there was a lot of things I had not taken into consideration. With every argument and concern I came up with I felt that God kept reminding me of the same thing: that having a single, working mother who knew Him was better than being in an orphanage. I was terrified about the finances, time and energy it would take to be able to parent a child alone. And yet I really began to come to an understanding that however substandard a situation I could provide, it would actually be a huge improvement for a child who had no one. At least I could love them with all my heart and be sure they got three warm meals a day. I began looking back and realizing that this all fit into things that the Lord had been doing in my heart for a long time.

I experienced the paradigm shift which you may remember me sharing before. I never realized all of these preconceived notions ruled my mind, but they did. One day I my thinking was transformed. I had always clung to a verse in Psalms 68:6 that says, "God sets the solitary in families." Feeling very solitary, I kept waiting and hoping that God was going to set me in a family with a husband and children. As I was praying about adoption I felt like God spoke to me one day and said, "You are the family, and I will set the solitary in you." It really turned my perspective around and I realized I could be the family someone needs.

Here we go...

For many years I had a hole in my heart and a dream that never seemed to be within reach. There was one thing that I always wanted more than anything, and that was to be a mother. As the years stretched on as a single person a lot of patience and endurance was worked into my heart. As I approached my 40th birthday the sadness about not having a child began to feel unbearable. For a year or two I had a constant feeling of an hourglass with the time running out and a sun setting. Those two pictures were looming in my heart and mind at all times. Even if I were to meet someone and get married, by the time that all happened it would be too late. While out to lunch with a friend one day I shared this overwhelming sadness. She asked me if I had ever considered adoption. I was stunned. That sounded preposterous to me. How could I as a single woman ever manage to do such a thing? But a seed was planted there and it began to grow.
At that time I also felt a heightened conviction about two issues that had plagued me for years…fear and unbelief. I had no problem believing that God loved other people and would do wonderful things for them, but I really couldn’t get it from my head into my heart that He felt that way about me. I knew that faith pleases God and that doubt and unbelief offend Him, and yet I couldn’t seem to rid myself of these. I didn’t understand why God would bless others and never seemed to answer my deepest prayers. Many times I asked leaders if they could see anything wrong in my life that would keep me from experiencing God’s blessing, and they told me in tears that they really didn’t understand why God had me in the place that He did. The pathway that was opening up before me would free me from these bondages and answer the questions in my heart.

Dedication

Last Sunday we had Abbey's dedication. In both services they had me share my story instead of having a message from our pastor. There is so much that I haven't shared with all of you but I hope to begin to do so soon. Let me just say that there were incredible miracles that happened through my journey to Abbey and they were things that I couldn't share about at the time. Anyway, after I spoke we had this little slide show. My friend Teresa also sang The Broken Road by Rascal Flatts which perfectly fits my story. Lots of friends were there rejoicing with me and it was another wonderful day in my life with Abbey. Here's a picture of her afterwards....

Who Abbey Looks Up To

Thank you K1 for my new dress! It's perfect.

Abbey adores my nephew. He's a drummer and she's very excited about drums and music. My niece is Abbey's other shinning star. She loves to play with her any chance she gets. This is the three of them at church Sunday.