Pirates and Princesses

















I may have mentioned previously that Julia loves Pirates of the Caribbean. She loves Cap'n Jack. Well a few weeks ago we took a day trip down to Grapevine to check out the Kids Room to Go showroom among other things. Julia has outgrown her baby dresser and is in need of a real one, we had seen this online and wanted to see the quality of it. Especially since they have a store close to where we will be living in FL. We are very likely going to go with the Princess set. But I have to share some of that afternoon with you. We walked into the store and Julia thought it was a giant playroom. She was having a blast checking out all the furniture and decorations, yes we have a true shopper here I believe, I think her and Aunt Alissa could have lots of fun together. So we checked out the Princess set first because this is the one I had looked most at online, then we went walking around the show room. Of course with a sales guy kind of tagging along just in case we should be buying anything. Julia got to the Pirates room set up and flipped! Her exact words " Mama it's a Pirate ship, where's the treasure??" Then she proceeded to look at the posters on the walls and point out "Will" and "Captain Jack"... the sales guy was tripping at this point! LOL. The next set was "Hannah Montana"... so Daddy asks Julia "who's that on the tag?" answer "Hannah Tana" then she read off the label on the mattress set... it said you guessed it.. DISNEY! By now the sales guy is choking and asking again "how old is she?" thought he was going to lose it when we told him 2 and 1/2. So yes, my child watches way too much TV and as you can see most of it is Disney. Can't wait to take this girl to Disney World, hopefully that will be next year. :)

Oh and I asked her which furniture she liked when we got back in the car, half afraid she would say the Pirate ship, she actually gave it some thought and said "Cinderelly bed" so I guess we were looking at the right set after all. This child is entirely too much some days! :)

Easter Morning


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More videos from our Easter morning at Dropshots all in all it was a good day and yes the Easter Bunny might have gone a bit over board.. so what else is new?? lol Sorry no pictures, I'm looking into a new camera now to solve that issue;)

Hope you all had a wonderful holiday.

Potty Training and Kai-lan

This was the start to my week and yes we are trying to work on potty training here this week. By this I mean try to give Julia just a bit of a push, she's used the potty occasionally in the past but we are hoping to get her to understand to use it all the time. Some days she gets this, others not at all. It's been a long week so far, here's a peek into the last couple of days. Enjoy and be forewarned, yes there is talk of "poo" there I said it! So if you don't want to know the details, stop reading now! :)

Since Ray is on call this week and worked most of Tuesday night, he finally got home around 9 only to get 2 more calls within 10 minutes of being home and having to head right back out the door. Because of this Julia was sleeping with me Tuesday night/Wednesday morning. From 3 Am to 4 AM I can't tell you how many times I got kicked and HARD, til finally at 4 I was just exasperated and got out of bed and came out here! Naturally within a minute my munchkin followed me. We didn't get back to sleep til around 6:30 or so, almost to the point of just getting up and dealing with it with it for the rest of the day. I almost wish we had.

Now you have to keep in mind we are potty training this week. So Julia has been in big girl underwear and we have been making an effort to go to the potty every half hour-45 minutes this first few days to get her really used to going. It's been going fairly well, of course there have been accidents. Yesterdays was a doozy. I guess I either lost track of the time or got distracted. I had a couple of phone calls come in back to back so it was likely distracted. So I didn't notice her slip her undies off (she had a dress on) well we were supposed to have another play date so I wanted to try to get her down for an early nap. I figured after our rough morning, shouldn't be too hard. On the way to check her and turn off the tv and I realize oh my she's wet, then I realize, nope no undies.. GREAT.. so where are they??? I find them and a trail of "presents" that you can imagine was very hard to see on this dark carpet in this ever so dark room, you can't light this room, it just sucks the light up. YEP, she had pooped and at least she knew she didn't like the feel of the dirty undies.. I'm holding on to that thought for all it's worth at this point... so I calmly clean it all up (or I thought all, I was still finding some as late as 7 last night!!! yikes!) and show her where it was "supposed" to go. And we go on and get ready for nap.

So nap time. At this point I was exhausted too so I'm trying every trick to get her to lie down and give in to sleep. NO such luck. The play date was supposed to be at 3 so we started this process around 1:30. she was bouncing off the ceiling., the heck with the walls. After a friend stopped by a little after 2 (and she can attest to how exhausted I'm sure I looked at this point! lol) we tried again to lie down, now I'm pretty sure at this point we are not going on the play date, because I know my child and if doesn't get at least a 45 minutes nap she's a nightmare through the evening and I was not prepared to deal with that on top of everything else. So I am getting more and more frustrated with her by the moment,

Julia has been watching "Nihao Kailan" and yesterday's lesson, yes believe it or not, was on "calm, calm down". IN the show Kailan had her friends watch the "hula ducks" going "side to side, side to side, side to side" to calm, calm down. So my entirely too intelligent child starts whispering in my ear... "side to side, side to side, side to side" LMAO off at this point because yes I am beyond exhausted and let's face it she learned the lesson!!! And then, THANK GOD she went to sleep! So I come out here, and email a quick note to daddy, only to get an unsympathetic reply of "can't breathe laughing too hard".... and found out we were the entertainment for a few guys at the shop yesterday! Wonderful, he's lucky they are dad's too and I know they and their wives have been or are currently in similar situations daily.

Good thing Ray didn't have any calls last night, however he might have been better off if he had. He could NOT stop taking delight in my day, to the point that I started picking up Julia's shoes near my chair and aiming them at him. (just the light shoes, no heels and it was really done in fun, though I'm not sure his mom understood that part. lol) To top it off, on the bottom of one of the shoes... was yep you guessed it more Poo!!!!

At this point, I called it a night and went to bed to watch a movie, he gave Julia a bath and put her to bed. Good Daddy.

Today has been better, she's already pooped on the potty first thing and told me "we don't poop in pants!" Thank you Lord!! Sadly this hasn't lasted and we have changed wet pants several times today. But we will get there. She's just learning after all.

I'm sorry this was so long, but it was truly the only way to convey our day to you all. Hope it makes you smile. Go ahead laugh, we all have.

Easter Party



Just arrived and just woke up from a nap here.


Not too sure about this party thing yet


Oh there are eggs with candy inside??


Now we're liking this deal. lol


Mama and Julia


All worn out.


Parties are such hard work.


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Meeting the Easter Bunny

Our Squadron held it's annual kids Easter party a little early this year, but as you can see we were fortunate to be blessed with an absolutely perfect day for it!! After all the recent up and down weather, 75 one day and snowing the next you can imagine how nervous the girls planning it must have been this past week. But it was truly a gorgeous day and the kids all had a great time so it worked out. Julia slept on the way to the party and on the way home, we were kind of off the beaten path aways so at least she got some sleep today. The party did fall right in the middle of her nap time, so she was pretty quiet right up til the egg hunt. There are of course more videos and pictures on Dropshots, but I'll warn you they include a lot of moving around so be prepared. LOL.

Have I mentioned lately that Julia is a "GIRL"??! LOL By that I mean she is truly becoming a girlie girl more and more the older she gets. She could not wait to get this dress on today and stood ever so still for me to put her hair quickly in pigtails because of course we were running behind. then checked herself out in the mirror before we left and I wish I had had the camera for the smile, I guess she liked the result. I promise you there really were pigtails under all those ribbons!

She absolutely loves to dress up! So grandma's and aunties if you're ever lacking in ideas for something to get her, summer dresses would be a hit every time I promise you! Her eyes light up and she says "gimme, gimme please." I wish I could say I was kidding. Auntie Alexa we were going through sorting out clothes you handed down to us, gosh I have no idea when you gave us these bags I found, but I was sure they were size 4's, imagine my surprise to find 2 whole bags of clothes in size 3's. That she is wearing RIGHT NOW! I think we just tripled her wardrobe! Now I really need to pick out a dresser for this girl!! You should have seen the fashion show as Julia tried almost all of it on. The sad part is, unless she has a major slow down and oh isn't she due to slow down here soon, the 3's will not fit for long. As it is, I think if the dress runs at all short, I'll be looking at 4's for her. Crazy isn't it?? That's just for DRESSES though, everything else I think she's fine in 3's for awhile, she's just so tall that dresses tend to look and I guess even feel short on her. She's always trying to tug at the hem to make it longer. lol. I think she likes the longer styles better. She's so funny.

All in all, we've had a really good week and with it starting to warm up hopefully a bit more consistently it will just get better from here on out.

Fun Stuff


Julia has been reminding us this week of how funny she is and how much fun a 2 year old can have! And leaving us in stitches the whole time. I'm adding some video of her singing with Steven Curtis Chapman's latest song "Cinderella" Julia and I both love this song. :) And then last night she spent about 10 minutes rolling around inside the pillowcase with the pillow inching across the room and just plain being silly. For more video of both go to Dropshots, well worth checking out I assure you. I must have thought they were cute I'm allowing Julia to show you my cluttered desk top and the family room after a day with Hurricane Julia. Enjoy! :)


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Moosey's back and more..



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Happily tearing paper


what??


Silly Daddy


Her secret stash!












Nope, not the same moose, but Mama's a good internet searcher! ;) Took a chance and went online and found what I thought was at least a close possibility to our lost Moose (no he never turned up, I seriously think she slipped him into the trash that day while she was helping :( ) so I ordered the one I found online and it's the exact same Moose!! YAY!! Julia was so happy to see him in the box that came in the mail, I'm sure she thinks her original one was just on a trip or something. Needless to say she is keeping a very close eye on this Moosey and has yet to put him down for more than a few minutes at a time. She never did really attach to anything else while he was gone either and would oh so sadly ask for him every night, sometimes only once a night (thank goodness) but every night. I'm so grateful and relieved we were able to replace this one. Oh if only everything were that easy.

I'm sure you noticed the tearing paper pictures above, we are not quite sure what to make of this, but Julia will quite happily and contentedly shred any paper she can get her hands on til it's in the tiniest pieces possible. We caught her the other night with this left over wrapping paper, you can see in the last picture she had been at it for awhile, so yes I knew she was tearing paper, but after a bit I guess I tuned out the tearing noise because I knew it wasn't anything important that had fallen into her hands. Should I be worried about this?? It's just such an odd thing to me but fascinates her for some reason.

You may also notice how big our munchkin looks in the latest pics. I'm going to have to find a new nickname for her I guess. We finally noticed the other day while chatting with another friend that Julia had indeed had another growth spurt. Funny how I'm the last one to notice these things, so we measured her that night. 37 and 3/4 of an inch tall! I knew she had grown but wasn't expecting that much at all! We still have to weigh her but I'm sure she's still around 27lbs or so, I'll be very shocked if she's gained much more than that. But then she shocks me daily. She's starting recognizing shapes now too. We haven't worked a whole lot on that, but I guess between what we have done, Noggin, and her puzzles it's sinking in for her. I love this age!

There are a couple of more videos on Dropshots, one from a night at Chuck E Cheese back in January for Bradon's birthday the other is another one from this weekend with her Moose. :)

Happy Chinese New Year


































I wanted to get these pictures yesterday, but Julia was having none of getting dressed up yesterday. Probably a good thing with all the other things we had to do, I wouldn't have gotten nearly as many pictures. This morning however despite the lack of sleep she woke up happy and couldn't wait to get dressed up. So of course I let her. She's a funny little thing and more independent every day.

The bed pictures are her showing off on her new Princess bedding. Grammie Hall wanted to know what it looked like and we finally got it onto her bed. I think she likes it.;) I know it doesn't match her room right now, but with moving so soon, we are NOT painting again. When we get into our new house, we'll paint that room pink or green or something that goes with this set for her. Debra she likes the Princess rug very much as well and as you can see it goes great with her new bedding. Thanks so much.

I'm still brain-fried with a lack of sleep so I'm going to cut this short, and as yet we still haven't seen Moose anywhere...:(

oh Mr. Moose???!!


Well, it's happened the moose that featured so prominently in the pictures below, has come up missing. I've searched the house high and low and for the life of me, can't find where she put him down yesterday. He came up missing yesterday afternoon, so it was a nap without him, which went better than expected, but was a short nap. That worked out because we had errands to run. I thought sure that when we got home one of us would find him. Nope, nada, nothing. Bed time came around, still no moose. A few tears but not dreadful and off to sleep she went. To toss and turn and wake every hour or so and ask for him. Then at 12:30 she woke and has yet to go back to sleep, it's now almost 3:30, we still can't find moose and we have to try to get some more sleep. Why did he have to be the same color brown as the carpet in this house???!!! I'm sure he'll turn up eventually, I'm just not sure how much sleep we'll get in the mean time. Please pray we find him soon or that she attaches to one of her many other toys soon!!

Some random shots

Julia and Bradon

Doing some artwork

using the glue stick

it's not a wonder I don't get much sleep...












Julia recently spent a couple of hours hanging out with her buddy Bradon... always a good choice as far as she is concerned. We really don't have that much going on, we didn't make it to the area Chinese New Year celebration, Mama's back went out, so there was no driving, let alone getting us both ready and out of the house... :( Oh well, hopefully we'll find a good group when we move and can try again next year or maybe even one of the other festivals later this year.

Julia has this thing with shredding paper, she will tear it up into tiny pieces when given a chance. So this week since she had done that with some white tissue paper, we decided to put it to use and I got the glue stick out and some construction paper and we made a "snow" picture. :) She thought it was cool. I really need to be doing more things like this with her, I'm going to make more of an effort in that department.

As for the sleeping picture... yes, she spends at least part of each night in bed with me, and with Daddy gone she's just been camping out there. It's just easier on my back and as she still has nightmares it's easier on her too. As you can see though she has a tendancy to be all over the bed. I never know when I'll wake up with a foot in my face or her head pushed into my shoulder blades, but most of the time lately she's been better. Maybe she's just been sleeping better, I dont' know anymore.

Oh and Nai-Nai that's her Moose-moose, as you can see it's never far from her. She attached to it when Daddy went to school. Makes it so much fun when she drops him on the brown carpet. lol


Right now we are enjoying the Superbowl,("GO PATRIOTS!") Julia really liked Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers at the half time show, Papa and Uncle Joel would be proud. ;)


Edited to add... yeah we're pretty bummed at the end of the game...:( oh well. you win some, you lose some.

Our weekend


A birthday picture for Mama.



At Playhouse Disney, yes she was quite in awe.



And it was dark in there :)


Checking out her program after the show



After having some of Mama's birthday cake, and yes that is cake on her face!









Saturday was a busy day around here. Mama's birthday and Playhouse Disney and Daddy made it home again for the weekend. Couldn't have been any better :)

Julia certainly enjoyed the show, she sat most of the first half in absolute awe just taking it all in. After intermission we couldn't get her to sit back down, she spent the second half leaning on the seat in front of her, it was empty for a good part of the second half and then the little boy that came back was also leaning ahead so we let her get away with that. The second half she did everything the characters told her to do, clap, pat, you name it. She was having fun. After it was all over and we were back in the car we asked her if she had fun. She popped her cup out of her mouth and said "I had fun" took another sip and out came the cup again, "Go see Bradon now?" All about priorities. LOL. So yes we went and saw Bradon. They are too funny together.

Later on it was time for cake and ice cream for Mama's birthday and just an evening spent together having fun. Before bed that night, I had gotten down on the floor with Julia to change her and after a bit she threw herself into my lap, gave me a big hug and said "I love you SO MUCH Mama" Love those spontaneous moments. So all in all it was a great weekend here. Hope all of yours were just as nice.

Having fun





Daddy slipped home this weekend from school. It was very nice to have him be able to do that. This picture is of Julia trying on a new "Dora" outfit, and yes, that's her pink "Dora" backpack from another ensemble that she insists on having fairly frequently, then add Daddy's hat and what a look! LOL. I really did avoid Dora like the plague for as long as possible and it didn't seem to matter, Julia still knew who she was, and now Mama has caved and given in. Dora is currently one of her favorite shows. Though I'm really hoping Ni-Hao Kai-Lan replaces that in her book when it starts on Chinese New Year.:) Or at least gets watched, this is one show I want her to watch! The premise is similar to Dora, but they will be teaching Mandarin Chinese phrases and culture. I hope that it turns out to be as good as we are all hoping it will be. Oh well, in the mean time, she's enjoying Dora.

Speaking of Chinese New Year, it's coming up fast. Feb. 7th this year. We are again this year blessed to be getting together with other adoptive families in the area and celebrating. I think we are doing that Feb 2, so even though it's just Julia and I we'll be going out for Chinese food and meeting the other families. As this will likely be our last chance to do anything with these particular families, we don't want to miss it.

And next Saturday we are going to see Playhouse Disney Live! I can't wait to see Julia's face as she sees Tigger and Pooh, Mickey Mouse and friends, Handy Manny and Little Einsteins. All shows she has enjoyed on a lazy Saturday morning, so to see them come to life?! I'm sure it will be fun for all of us!

As you can see, we have plenty to keep us busy and looking forward to while we wait for Daddy to finish up this month of school. Deployments are sure going to take getting used to again, no doubt about it. But after the first few days, we settled into a pretty good routine, so I'm sure we'll be fine in the long run. One month left, and then when he gets back it's really going to be busy here getting ready to move, house hunting, etc... May is going to come up on us very quickly.

I'll be sure to get pictures these next few weeks of all of our activities! :)

Julia's got a new friend














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I think the smiles say it all. You may remember a time or two our mentioning that Julia loves horses. Well, Grammie and Grampa Hall decided to do something about that. She was supposed to get a rocking horse for Christmas, but because of circumstances out of their control in the form of back orders and the order being cancelled, it didn't quite make it for Christmas morning. However, I don't think Julia minds at all. She is certainly enjoying her new friend and yes dragging him all over the house with her at this point. We'll have to work on that one. So thank you Grammie and Grampa!! She's in love. And though you may hear her on one of the videos saying "Diego's on" (repeatedly I might add) she still didn't get off the horse until I told her we could take him to the family room. Even now while she's taking a break (an hour or more after delivery I might add) she still pops over and gives him a hug or climbs on for a quick ride. She's having no trouble at all getting on and off. To put it more specifically, I've had time to load the pictures/videos and write this blog!! So thanks from a very grateful Mama too!!

the Holidays and more






waiting to get her hair done :)

So pretty, "ready to go Mama?"

A day out at Chuck E Cheese with friends, they stayed on this game for quite some time.

They were having lots of fun!

Trying on some new clothes Christmas Day!

Nope, wouldn't let Mama do my hair yet, but I like this book and the Belle doll that Santa brought!

check out the Dora PJ's couldn't get these ones back off for a little while. Yes, Dora is a big thing right now.

Thanks for the tricycle Papa and Nai-Nai! I really like it and can't wait to take it to the park to try it out!












Well as you can see Julia had a great Christmas! Sorry there are not more pictures, but we were using the new camcorder more, sadly those videos are too big to put on here. I have had some limited success with getting some of the shorter ones on Dropshots. So you can go there and finally see and hear our munchkin! You'll just have to start back in November on the Dropshots page, sorry the date was set wrong on the camcorder, but it'll be right from January on. (I think!) For family, we'll be getting a CD done up of the Christmas video and out to you soon. Julia tore through her presents in about an hour, the only time she slowed down was on the blocks from Uncle Joel and Aunt Kim (thanks guys!!) yep, she still loves blocks and puzzles. Everything else got a quick look and an "ooh and ahh" and she was diving back under the tree for the next present.

After presents Daddy cooked breakfast and we had a day of watching Julia take in all of her new things. It was very nice. She really enjoyed everything and watching some of her new movies, if I remember correctly Aunt Tiny, I believe Cinderella 2 was the first one in the DVD player that day!

For New Year's Eve we went to a friend's house to celebrate, lots of kids for Munchkin Moo to play with, fireworks, noisemakers and a toast at midnight. Julia was very cute telling everyone "Happy New Year!"

All in all we had a wonderful holiday season and hope that you did too! Now it's back to reality, and for us that means packing up and getting prepared for our move this spring. So needless to say we'll be busy here.