Five days from now...

...we will be at our hotel in Zhengzhou spending our last night as a family of five!!  We received our letter from the Chinese government granting us permission to travel to our son's province to complete our adoption, and we leave on Sunday!!  We are SO thankful that we were able to get the travel arrangements made so quickly.  One of the major reasons why I am so thankful is that we have some dear friends who will be traveling at the same time, staying at our same hotel as they adopt their precious son!  Six years ago these friends stayed at our house awaiting the birth of their first child, well before we were even thinking of starting our own family.  Now six years later, as of next Monday there will be NINE children between our two families!  What a sweet privilege it will be to welcome our sons into our families together!

We can't wait to share more stories of our time as we take our whole family on our trip to get Isaac!  We arrive on Sunday, and then Monday morning we get Isaac!  Tuesday is the day the adoption is finalized, which also happens to be Jeff's birthday.  On Wednesday we will travel to the city Isaac has been living in to apply for his passport and visit the orphanage that he and David grew up in.  We are also anticipating the opportunity to meet the foster family that Isaac and David had lived with for over 2 years!

Ok, I'm off to panic over more details that I'm just sure I'm going to miss!

Cinderella

A couple of weekends ago, I had the great privilege of escorting my little princess to watch the Ukrainian Youth Ballet perform the ballet version of Cinderella.  It combined the two greatest loves of Miriam's life - princesses and ballet.  We almost didn't get to go through a ticket mix-up, but through the incredible thoughtfulness of a friend, we were able to make it work.  I'll let the pictures speak for themselves, but it was a magical night not soon to be forgotten!

All dressed up in our princess dress and ready to go to dinner and a ballet!

Mama and her princess

Relaxing on the subway and thoroughly enjoying all the happy attention from everyone around her

Pure joy

Showing off her own ballet skills!

Patches & Eyewear

Ok, so there have been a lot of posts lately revolving around glasses.  That's because a lot of our life has been revolving around that lately.  First Miriam got her glasses, then her eye patch (or eye sticker as we refer to it around here), and finally Elijah got his glasses.

I have been nothing but blessed and amazed by how well they have both done.  Elijah actually just let us put his glasses on and has never once complained.  Every once in a while he will pull them off if he is either very angry or doing something like jumping repeatedly in a ball pit that isn't so easy with glasses on.  But mostly it has been such an easy process!  No small miracle for a 2 1/2 year old boy!

Miriam has also done a great job with her eye patch.  She wears it most of the day, usually taking it off for 1-2 hours each day.  Her brain doesn't know how to use her left eye well, so even though she should have near normal vision while wearing glasses, she actually has very poor vision even with the glasses.  So she wears the patch to force her brain to re-learn how to see from that eye.  We haven't done any official doctor follow-up yet, but I'm pretty sure I know her eye is making improvements.  She will likely wear the patch for 6-12 months since the learning process is a slow one, but she's a brave little princess who doesn't mind wearing her eye sticker most of the time.

Here are some pictures of my beautiful kids in their fashion eye wear!

Miriam's first eye patch - in honor of the 4th of July!

Miriam with her sweet friend Abby who came to an "Eye Patch Tea Party" to help encourage Miriam as she began wearing her eye patches.  They decorated their own eye patch and Abby wore her's along with Miriam.  So blessed she has such great friends!

Check out the glass slipper eye patch!  Yes, you can now all be amazed at my skills of eye patch decoration! :)

I think Elijah has the personality to fit the glasses!

My handsome boy!

 Of course David couldn't be left out of the glasses wearing.  For the first few days after Elijah got his glasses, David wore this nearly everywhere.  And always upside down.

Life with Elijah

Yep, this picture pretty much sums up what it is like to live with my full-on little man!  He does everything 120%, both the good and the ugly.  There is literally never a dull moment when he is around, and he brings out much laughter and many heart-attacks.  Just today we were at a pool celebrating both America's and David's birthday, when for the 27th time I lost track of Elijah.  I yelled across the pool to Jeff, "Do you know where Elijah is?".  When my friend laughed at my slightly panicked expression, I informed her that I end up asking that question approximately every 20 minutes all day long.  And that boy is FAST!  Seriously, nobody should be allowed to move that quickly who has such poor impulse control.

Here are two recent stories that highlight the joy it is to have a little boy like Elijah in our home.  The first happened just a couple of days ago when Elijah decided to go poo on our dining area floor instead of the potty (both boys spend most of their time at home with naked bottoms since they use the toilet much more consistently that way).  I walked into the room to see a large and stinky deposit on the floor and the bottom half of Elijah covered in mess.  I quickly scooped him up and set him on the bathroom floor when the doorbell rang.  It was three men who had arrived to check our gas meter.  All three of my kids were completely naked and the pile of poo was not more than 2 feet from them, so all I could think to do was grab a towel, throw it over the pile, and pretend there was nothing unusual happening.  While I was on the phone with Jeff asking where our gas card was located, Elijah decided to run back into the room to say hello to everyone (he can't ever pass up a chance to be mr. social) and the poor gas meter man who was in the house had to try and dodge a very unpleasant attempt at a hug.

The second fun adventure with Elijah was on stage at church for David's dedication.  We made the last-minute and fool-hardy decision to take our whole family up front for the dedication time during those nostalgic and naive moments where we thought about how sweet it would be to have the whole family together.  So Jeff is holding David and I am holding Elijah.  In less than 10 seconds he is squirming and asking to stand by himself.  I whisper urgently, "If I put you down, do you promise to stay right next to mama?"  "Yes", he replies, and like a complete moron I decide to believe him.  Of course in no time flat he has started to wander across the back of the stage and I am trying to subtly (in front of 400 people) move slowly after him.  As soon as he realizes he's being followed, he breaks into a full-out sprint across and off the stage (did I mention he's fast?).  So I have to give up all pretense of calmness and go sprinting after him lest he actually makes it out of the sanctuary.

Once he is retrieved, I haul him back on stage and vow to not put him down for anything.  In another moment of mama brain lapse, I put on a bright smile and whisper to him as he screeches and squirms, "Do you want to tickle mama?"  Instead of tickling me, he begins to swat vigorously at my face and I hear gasps of surprised amusement from both the congregation and the pastor.  At this point I am desperately wishing I had brought a roll of duct tape to tie him up because I could get away with it and no one would think badly of me for doing it.  But instead I find the pacifier and he magically decides to snuggle down happily on my shoulder.  That's my boy.  Slapping one minute and snuggling the next.  As we climb down off the stage, I smile at Jeff and say, "Yep, we are officially 'that family'".  You know, the one that makes everyone else feel better about their kids, because no matter what else they did that day, at least they didn't run away and then slap their mom in front of 400 people.  You can view a part of the service on youtube courtesy of the other family having their son dedicated at the same time at http://youtu.be/ZBRKLfwEIRY   Yep, it includes both the escape and the slap.

I love that kid with all my heart!

Glasses & Sound of Music

This past week, Miriam got her long-awaited glasses!  When we went back for the follow-up visit with the opthamologist, we discovered that Miriam is very far-sighted in her left eye (+6.0), and because that eye is so bad it has a tendency to cross.  Even more, because she has not really been able to see out of that eye, her brain has stopped using the eye.  Even when she has glasses to correct her vision, her left eye avoids trying to see and she still predominately uses her right eye.  So, in a few days in addition to her glasses she will start wearing a patch over her right eye to force her left eye to learn to see.  I'm pretty sure she is going to hate the patch mostly because at first she will have a very hard time seeing anything and will have no depth perception at all.  But the good news is that she LOVES her glasses, and thanks to some encouragement from loving friends and neighbors, she is convinced everyone who sees her in her glasses thinks she is even more beautiful with them on!

It turns out that Elijah also has some significant vision problems.  He is very far-sighted in both eyes, and has astigmatism in both eyes as well.  He has a much more pronounced tendency than Miriam to cross his eyes.  So, glasses for little Elijah as well, and likely surgery down the road to correct his crossed eyes.  And here I thought all the vision problems in our family were going to come from Isaac! Elijah's glasses got ordered today, so in a week or so he should be getting them.

One of the first things that Miriam wanted to do when wearing her glasses was to re-enact the wedding scene from the Sound of Music where Maria marries the Captain.  So we decorated (didn't make it into the pictures) and Miriam convinced her brothers to be the bridesmaids. :)  Miriam of course was the bride and Abba was the groom.  Enjoy the video of the service. :)

Trying on the glasses for the first time!

Look, I can see myself in the mirror and I'm so cute I can hardly stand it!

The wedding party

Family Vacation

To celebrate the start of the summer for us and to get some much-needed family rest time, we spent a couple of nights at a local hotel as a mini family vacation.  The hotel has an indoor/outdoor swimming pool with two kiddie areas, a playground, and an awesome breakfast buffet.  And really, who needs anything else to make for a good vacation?

Things the kids LOVED to do:

1.  SWIM!!

2.  Yell at the top of their lungs in the hotel lobby to hear the echo

3.  Go out for pizza at a cute little mall that has two play houses out front

4.  Jump back and forth on the beds in the hotel yelling "chicken!!!" (don't ask, I don't know)

5.  Eat approximately 8 waffle pieces and 4 hard boiled eggs at each breakfast

6.  All pile onto mama and abba's king-sized bed to watch a video

7.  Get very little sleep because they are too busy being excited talking and laughing at bedtime and naptime.

8.  Give mama a heart attack by strategically trying to wedge their bodies into the revolving door

Great fun was had by all, and we were so glad we went!

We love pizza!!

And we love to swim!!