What's Cooking?

This weekend Cody and I made our first Korean meal.  It is a dish called Japchae and although it's traditionally made with beef, we substituted for chicken.  It required a trip to the H Mart (Korean grocery store) to get the special noodles for it but everything else could be found in Giant/Whole Foods.  We enjoyed making it together and it turned out really good!  I was the biggest fan, Cody added a little more spice and unfortunately Auden didn't warm up to the clear noodles, ha.  I look forward to trying more Korean recipes...especially because most are non-dairy so they fit perfectly with my diet. 

In other news, we received update pictures of Grant!  They were taken 5 days ago on his 10 month birthday.  He is getting so big!  His fostermom is in one of the pictures and she is looking so lovingly at him with a huge smile, that makes us so happy.  His hair is getting so long, cheeks are so cute and although we may be biased- we think Grant has the most perfect lips.  They are the kind of lips kids draw in pictures because his upper lip has a perfect indentation in the middle.  It's amazing how much love we have for this boy that we have never met.  Again, please email me if you would like to see the pictures as I am not allowed to post on the blog yet. 

Happy 3rd Birthday Auden!

A letter to Auden on his 3rd Birthday- February 12, 2013

 

Dear Auden,

Happy 3rd Birthday sweet boy! This year you had a fun birthday celebration at school and we had a birthday party for you at Grammy and Grandpa's house in Philadelphia. We let you pick out the decorations for your party this year, so when we showed you all the choices in the party store...very predictably, you wanted a "truck party!" Mommy and Daddy had fun putting together goody bags and you helped Nana bake the cupcakes for your school party. Here are some pictures of the celebrations.

 School- Kidsdom Montessori



Mommy got to join in on the fun 

 Ready to party at Grammy and Grandpop's house!

 Grandpop's turn getting spun and playing "pin the smokestake on the Thomas train"

 Yeah! Truck cake!



Auden with his cousins and his best bud Nate 

Happy Birthday Auden!

You went through a lot of changes this year Auden. April brought a new house, June brought a new school, July we converted your crib to a toddler bed, November you began potty training, end of November we successfully said goodbye to your heart medication, January you were fully potty trained and just recently you got a big boy bedroom set with a full size bed! It really feels like you are growing up right before our eyes. Slow down little man! You are always full of surprises to keep us on our toes. For example, since you loved the soccer class we put you in when you just turned 2 we thought we would try again this past fall. Well, I'm not sure if it's because there wasn't a cute female teacher- but you had absolutely no interest in playing soccer at all! We recently took you ice skating for the first time with your buddies Jack and Hartly and we prepared ourselves for you only wanting to be on the ice for five minutes. Well, you surely surprised us, you absolutely loved it and by the end you had enough balance to stand up on your own and even push Daddy a few times.   

Some of your other likes and dislikes: you love puzzles and currently you can put together 48 piece puzzle by yourself...I'm not sure what other kids your age can do, but you certainly amaze us with your puzzle skills! You really aren't into arts and crafts, painting and coloring. So we definitely have to work on your drawing skills, ha. You love playing with your trucks, cars and trains (like most three year old boys).

You love going with Daddy to the indoor pool on Daddy's Fridays off...and Daddy loves it too, especially because he gets so many compliments from the moms about what a great Dad he is! You are still scared/don't like a lot of tv shows and movies. You ask us to change the channel (and these are cartoon shows) when something is a little scary, when someone does something mean to someone else or when someone is going to get in trouble. So, I guess you could say you are pretty sensitive, but that is okay sweetie:-)

 After the discontinuation of the heart medication, had to do a holter monitor for 24hrs- all okay!

Sledding over the Christmas holiday at Nana and Pappy's in NY 

New bed!



Our little ice skater

You are talking in paragraphs now, hard to believe I was once scared you were never going to say a word! You make us laugh everyday with your expanding vocabulary. Pronunciation is still a work in progress...for example, "gee in the no" has to be translated to "ski in the snow." Of course Mommy and Daddy aren't helping things by loving the way you say "let's nuggle on the couch" and have started to say it too, haha. You made Mommy's heart melt last week when I told you that you were my little monkey and in response you told me that I was your princess. And everytime Mommy gets dressed up for a night out and wears heels, you say "you look so beautiful Mommy."  I'm trying to relish all these moments because I know soon you will be "too cool" to say such things.  You are such a sweet boy with such a beautiful heart Auden.  We can't wait to see what this next year brings and are so excited to tell you that you are going to be a big brother.  I know you are going to be the absolute best big brother ever!  We love you dearly Auden.  

9 month progress report

Last week we got a progress report from Grant's 9 month birthday on January 20th (unfortunately no pics with this one).  But lots of good information.  He is 19.5 pounds now, 28 inches and I believe it says two teeth.  He is eating formula 5 times a day in addition to- porridge, rice and apples.  He doesn't like taking a bath any longer, ha.  He has two naps a day and sleeping through the night from 9pm-7am.   

Next it has a checklist of 11 items for his developmental age range and all are checked...so in other words, our little boy is perfect!  He is:

- imitating speech sound "umma" "mamma "appa"
- responds to name
- rolls over
- crawls
- gets to sitting alone
- pulls to standing at furniture
- plays "peek a boo"
- uses pincer grasp
- lowers to sitting from furniture
- walks holding onto furniture
- responds to "no" 

Of course it's hard knowing we are missing all his "firsts" but it is so wonderful to know he is thriving with his foster family:-) 

update from Korea

Yesterday we got an update on our baby Grant!  Not sure what took so long because the pictures and measurements are from a month ago, Dec. 24th, when Grant was 8 months old.  He is growing great, 19 pounds on the nose putting him at almost 50th percentile.  His height is 60th percentile and his head circumference is 50th percentile.  So nice and average all around:-)  

The pictures were awesome, thanks to Grant's fostermommy.  As warned, the two pictures that the social worker took at his agency check-up were poor.  He was sitting on a table looking down so you could barely see his face (just his awesome hair, ha).  I would have been so disappointed if these were the only pictures we got.  However, it was amazing to see him with our 1st care package we sent.  He had one of the toys that we got him in his mouth already in one of the pictures.  Feels like a little piece of us is now with him in Korea as we know he has the blanket, toys and storybook with our voices.

Grant's fostermom came through for us big time, she gave the social worker three more additional pictures that were likely taken on her phone since two were a little blurry from Grant's movement.  It was cool to see her house in the background of the pictures to give us a little glimpse into his life.  One of the pictures is an adorable close-up with a smirk on his face and the two other pictures are him standing up (holding on to things).  This tells us he is doing amazing developmentally considering the pictures had to be taken when he was only 7 months old since the social worker got them on just about his 8 month birthday.  My little smarty pants.  I love the one picture as he is standing on the couch with a mischievous smile on his face like he knows he is doing something wrong/dangerous:-)  These pictures tell us he is happy, healthy and doing great.    So thankful to his fostermom for providing them!  Hope she continues to send her pictures along with the social worker's pictures.

If anyone would like to see the pictures, feel free to email me since I can't post them on this public website yet.

Care Package #2

Our second care package to Grant is all packaged up and ready to go!  This time I focused on clothes.  Yes, the hand me downs are beginning already and he's not even home yet, ha.  Sorry Grant, these are gently used items from your big brother Auden:-)  They are some of my favorites and they smell like our house, so they mean a lot more to us then any new clothes we could go out and buy.  I hope and pray we will get to see pictures of him in them one day.  As you can see, we also included some little toys.  Nana and Pappy gave Grant the little dump truck for Christmas:-)  

Since we recently found out our Korean social worker is a slacker when it comes to update photos, I asked the agency if there is anyway for us to get the disposable cameras back during out wait (instead of when we go to Korea).  She agreed to letting me send a note asking Grant's fostermom to give the cameras back to the agency when they are full and asking them to forward them to us.  Sometimes fostermoms do this on their own, but it is rare.  So, I'm hoping the note does the trick.  My biggest fear is that the cameras get lost going through two agencies and so many hand, please keep your fingers crossed this doesn't happen!  I have a dear friend from high school that through the power of facebook I have been able to keep in touch with...she knows Korean and was nice enough to translate a letter to Grant's fostermom for us.  It was so nice to be able to tell his foster mom that we can't wait to meet her one day and are forever grateful for taking care of our son for the first years of his life.  We are so lucky to have my high school friend be able to write this note for us, she has also graciously offered to help with any questions I have regarding Korean holidays we hope to incorporate and Korean recipes I would like to try.  

After going through about 5 Ziploc bags, I finally managed to stuff it all in without tearing the bags.  It's definitely an acquired skill that many adoptive parents are getting good at. 

Tomorrow we are attending a waiting parents group at our agency where there will be a panel discussion with families that recently brought home their children.  We will get to meet a couple other moms that I've connected with through facebook, so we are looking forward to it!

our big boy!

Our little boy is growing up!  He wore underwear to school all week and only had one accident the first day.  And this weekend we were out shopping, went out to dinner and went to a neighbor's party and sucess all around!  So, I hope I can officially say Auden is potty trained:-)  It's been a long process but we were pretty relaxed about it and I think that technique really worked well for him.  About three months ago we realized that he wasn't ready for underwear but he was very good at going to the potty when he was naked from the waist down, so we worked on that for a while at home.  Then, he was able to do underwear but not pants, so we just did that for a while at home.  Then the next challenge was playing outside our house with pants on.  Then leaving the house!  Finally when we thought he mastered that we got the courage to send him to school in undies (with maximum distraction of 15 kids to play with).  And he did great this week and we are so proud of him!  All in all it was a pretty stress-free experience and I'm glad we just waited until he was ready for each step!  Can't believe our little boy is going to be 3 next month!  Getting rid of diapers really feels like he is not a baby anymore:(

                                      

great find!

Happy new year!

My favorite children's book is "Guess How Much I Love You."  It is a sweet story of a son rabbit and daddy rabbit saying how much they love each other.  I heard of a great website that sells books and films in Korean and ordered this book in Korean so Grant's fostermom could read it to him.  We hope to send the next care package out in the next week. 

Sorry for the blurry pic, here's Grant's Korean version next to Auden's English version.

Recently I found facebook groups of others waiting to travel to Korea in the process of adopting.  It has been great because I even have connected with other families with our agency.  The bad news is that I learned we have a slacker for a Korean social worker.  Two other families that have her as well say ever since Sept. she hasn't been sending hardly any pictures and updates of their little ones (and when she does her pictures are lousy, like toy in front of the face, ha).  I didn't realize this all depends on the social worker in Korea.  Some families have awesome social workers and get monthly pictures and updates.  So, this was a little sad to learn...it doesn't seem fair that it's up to the social worker to decide when to send.  Oh well.  Praying we get new pictures and an update soon...on the 20th of January, Grant is going to be 9 months old!