Boys and Girl

Wrestling is Jack and Jonah's favorite activity together. If you give them even a moment's freetime, it inevitably always ends up right back here. Give them another moment, and someone has lost a tooth, gotten kicked in the stomach, or been punched in the face. They assure me that this is "fun", and Jon says "they're boys...they need to wrestle." I get it...sort of.

Now the tea party...I get it! I'm still working on getting Maddie Rae into handbags and dolls. I'm hoping when her cousin, Mallaney, visits, she will give her some good lessons in how to play with dolls. Of course, she still likes to push cars around and tackle pillows. I need to teach her how to tackle her brothers if she's going to survive around here!

Bug Show

Jack's class did a show about bugs for their school assembly last Friday. He made a pretty cute click beetle!

Pre-surgery, First day home, 1 week post-op

11 Days Post-Op

Today marked almost 2 weeks since Maddie Rae's lip repair. She has been doing great. The first week was pretty much miserable for all involved, especially her. It seemed like once we hit the one week post-op mile marker, she turned a corner and went back to being her happy little self. We went to the surgeon today so that he could remove her stitches. She started screaming her head off the second she saw him, and I didn't get many words in with him because she didn't stop her screaming until he was out of sight. I told her that one day she would be thankful for him. She just kept crying. He said that everything is healing well, and he will do her palate repair in May. She's asleep now, but I'll try to get a good shot of her without her stitches when she wakes up. After her appointment, we quickly stopped into "Oliver's", a nice supermarket here that carries more American products. Joy of all joys, they had Mini-Wheats. And Twizzlers. And Candycanes. It's the little things that get you excited over here. I grabbed as many boxes and bags as I thought I could schlepp back and headed on my way. I'm including 3 pictures of Maddie Rae's grin...pre-surgery, first day home, and one week post-op.

A New Blog

I took my first try at blogging while we were in China adopting our daughter, Maddie Rae. Since then, I've had several friends and family members ask me if I was going to keep on blogging. I don't think it's because our life is particularly thrilling or interesting, I think it's just because we live so far away from home and blogging seems to be the new way to keep in touch. I'm also having "postpartum" feelings of wanting to show my new baby off, and here we are stuck 24 hours away from the nearest family member. Somehow skyping with a webcam and blogging online don't quite equal sitting in the same room together, but I guess it's the next best thing. So here goes the new blog!