A Christmas Story

Erlan likes to tell a story about visiting Santa. He says:

Cheese.

Poop.

Choo-choo.

Mommy then translates for his avid listener.

We took a picture with Santa ("cheese").

Then Erlan went to the bathroom to poop.

Then Erlan rode a little 75 cent train.

The longer version of the story goes like this:

Erlan and Mommy stood in line for 30 minutes to get Erlan's picture taken with Santa while Santa had a lunch break. Three minutes before Santa is supposed to arrive, Erlan announces, "Poop!" I told him that we would first "Cheese" with Santa and then he could poop. Erlan asked, "Choo choo?" "Yes," I said, "we will choo-choo after pooping." [At that point, I wasn't actually sure what he was talking about. Erlan, who loves trains, had spotted a kid's train ride while we were walking around the mall. I figured there must be a train somewhere in that mall, and we could find it after the poop and picture.]

Erlan was fine with this plan. As we are standing there (1st in line), Santa finally walks out. The kids start cheering and waving. Erlan sees Santa and emits a high-pitched scream--the kind you hear in horror movies. He was terrified. I finally got him to wave to Santa, but I knew that he wasn't convinced that this guy is jolly.

I let the people behind us go first so that Erlan could see that Santa is ok. Erlan still was not convinced. Another family gets their picture taken. Even though Erlan still does not want his picture taken, I force the issue because of the impending need for him to poop. Erlan screamed again, started crying, and reluctantly sat on my lap for the picture. The result was this:

From this, we created our 2008 Christmas card:

We hope everyone has a great holiday!

Inspiration

One of the blogs that I love to read is written by a friend of Ben's from college, Angie O'Neill. Angie and her husband have been dealing with cancer for the past 11 years. Despite this, Angie writes a blog that is funny, insightful, and inspiring. Today, Angie has written a beautiful letter that I found completely inspiring. I hope you do too...

KEEP BELIEVING: our interview - a few things I WISHED I would have said...

More!

Our house was rockin' on Halloween. Friends, family, and our two dogs had a howling good time at Erlan's first Halloween. Ben and I have been very excited about Halloween. We started talking about what Erlan should be in August. We finally settled on a Shrek-themed family get up, with Erlan as Gingy. Granny Jannie made his costume. He was as cute as a button.



Erlan caught onto the whole trick-or-treat thing pretty quick. I could see the wheels in his head turning...Hold orange bucket. Follow big kids. Thrust orange bucket at stranger. Say, "MORE!" We couldn't get him to say, "Trick-or-treat," but he would say or sign "more!"


Here are Erlan's cousins, Kenzi, Gavin, and Keely, on their way home after a night of trick or treating.











Here I am with our youngest revelers: Mikayla and Brecken. Erlan did not like seeing me with the two babies and demanded equal time.

A few more scenes from the night...
















And, finally, here are pictures of our new puppy, Baxter. Ben's brother, David, got Erlan a puppy. David didn't tell us he was doing this, he surprised us. Ben was elated (meaning he wasn't at all elated). Erlan is not the best at getting up in the morning to walk Baxter even though it is his dog. Erlan calls him "Back!" and loves to chase him. For a 2 y.o., Erlan is actually pretty good with Back. Now when Erlan wakes up, his first words are, "Back. Out." (Translation: Daddy get up and take Baxter out.) Before Baxter, his wake-up words were, "Eat. Milk." (Translation: Mommy get up and get me some cereal and milk.)

Life and other things

I know that the faithful reader (n=1) is wondering what happened to this blog. Basically life happened. We are so busy that I wonder where the time has gone. I take my hat off to those bloggers who can balance their life with posting in order to maintain some wonderful, insightful, and funny blogs.

Speaking of blogs, one of my favorite Kaz adoption blogs just went public. Check out:

http://ruopoliadoption.blogspot.com

This is the story of Regina & Frank. They adopted Milo. He was the second little boy that we met during our selection process. We were thrilled when Regina and Frank sought to adopt him. From reading Regina's blog, Milo and Erlan seem like two peas in a pod. Also Regina writes fantastic posts that give great insight into the adoption process. For example, she wrote a letter to Milo's birthmom that captured the complexity of emotion adoption involves.

I have been thinking about Erlan's birthmom a lot lately. When we started the adoption process, I was reluctant about maintaining contact with the birth family. This was one of the appealing features of international adoption. Now I wish that I could send her pictures of this beautiful little boy so she could watch him grow too. I wish I could express my gratitude for her for the gift of being allowed to raise this little boy. I would love to send her updates on his progress. Instead I send progress reports to the government. Oh well, at least somebody in Kaz gets to read about how wonderful Erlan is (even if he wouldn't eat his dinner tonight).

We have started taking classes through the State to become liscensed foster parents. We must take this step in order to adopt through the State. I don't know if this is the right path for our second adoption journey, but we do want to explore this area where the need is so great. Take a look at:

http://www.moheartgallery.org/Albumn/index1.htm

This is a wonderful project that tries to help place children who are older and thus harder to place.

My parents had their Fall Party a couple of weeks ago. Erlan had a great time. He went on every hayride, found another girlfriend (Erlan has a thing for blonds), and played in the bounce house. He had chocolate cake for dinner, courtesy of some yet-to-be-identified man.

Erlan has hand-me-downs from 7 boys, including a set of twins. Here's Erlan trying on all of the clothes on at once.

Erlan continues to make great strides in development. He likes to jump ALOT. He can stand on one foot and looks like an exaggerated version of the Karate Kid when he does. He loves to ride his tricycle around the house. He can use the pedals, but he prefers to Fred-Flinstone it. He continues to build his vocabulary and is putting together two-word sentences. He likes to say, "I be back" and to raise one finger when he does it.

On that note. I'll be back. I don't know when, but I'll be back.

Say cheese!

Erlan loves to mug for the camera. Now he must say "Cheese!" As a consequence, all of our picture are starting to look like this:




He's still adorable!

The weekend, with an update.

Some local ne'er-do-wells kicked our weekend off with a bang. They stole our car right out of our driveway. Not my precious SUV (thank goodness!), rather our 1996 Nissan that has seen better days. The car has been through Ben so it was not only a big surprise that somebody stole it---it was rather shocking that they could even get into it. Frankly I'm surprised that the mess in the car didn't make them shut the door and walk off. The dome light doesn't work, so maybe they didn't see it but surely they could smell it. The car has a peculiar odor that comes from cow-mucked boots, cattle feed, and dropped toddler food.

The car has been reported. We've driven all over town and on county roads looking for it. I figure it will turn up as an abandoned vehicle on one of the numerous gravel roads that surround us.

UPDATE: The car was found today. I'd like to be overjoyed about it, but somebody's joyride will end up costing about $400. I got to pay for towing, I'll need to get it shampooed to get all of the fingerprint powder out, and then there was the money in Ben's wallet....

The three things we swore we'd never do...

I figure it's time that both Ben and I cop to the three things that we swore we'd never do when we became parents.

Oath 1: No child will sleep in our bed.
Oath 2: Our child will not suck his thumb--ok, this was my thing (not Ben's)
Oath 3: Our child will have a normal name with a proper phonetic spelling--again just me.

Reality 1: Erlan loves to sleep in our bed! He will not go to sleep unless we lay down with him and pretend we are going to sleep too. If I try to read as he goes to sleep, he calmly stays up with me until I turn out the light. We generally transfer him to his baby bed after he goes to sleep. This means that he wakes up at least once in the night and screams to get back in our bed. Generally this doesn't work; although, I have slept walked, gotten him out of his bed, and transferred him to our bed. Occassionally we fall asleep while putting him to sleep. He is in heaven when this happens. He sprawls out like a starfish in order to cover as much of the bed as possible for a two-year old boy. His second favorite position is in-between my legs. He then tries to roll over my outside leg so that he would fall out of the bed. The consequence is that I raise that leg throughout the night. His third favorite position is to lay between us like we're a hammock, head on Daddy's tummy and feet on Mommy's stomach. I know you're wondering--yes, he kicks. By the way, he does not like it if I try to snuggle with Ben.

Reality 2: Thumbsucking was one of the few things that I really felt compelled to comment upon when my friends' kids sucked their thumbs. I did not want my children sucking their thumb. I watched my nephew struggle to break the habit when he was young, and I didn't want my children to go through that. My beautiful boy is an ambidextrous thumb sucker. He uses both thumbs interchangably. Now strangers comment about Erlan's thumb sucking. I agree. I don't want him to suck his thumb, but it is the way he learned to self sooth and I won't take it away from him now. I read that children tend to outgrow thumbsucking by age 5. This hasn't been my experience, but maybe I never met an average kid. :-)

Reality 3: I like phonetically spelled names. I wanted people to know how to pronounce my child's name when they looked at it. Erlan's name is about as far away as you can get from this. Erlan, pronounced Yair-lawn, starts with a Russian "E" not an English "E". The Russian "E" has a "yeh" sound. This spelling will confuse Erlan's teachers for years to come. :-) So, why not just change the spelling? The Russian "E" is part of Erlan's heritage, and I want him to be proud of where he came from. Also, I just like the E.

By the by, Erlan UPDATE:

1.) He grew 3/4 of an inch within two months
2.) We saw him jump by himself for the first time yesterday.
3.) He can put his sandals on by himself. He can put his shoes on, but cannot tie them yet.
4.) He's potty trained!!! WOOHOO!!!
5.) He wakes up with a smile on his face, says "Mommy! Daddy! Eat!"