Drum Roll Please....

It finally came, our approval from China to adopt Keith, who currently resides at Beijing Social Welfare Institute. He will be five next week. Whoa. In six to eight weeks, we should finally be on our way to China.

For Christmas, Julianna wanted dress-up clothes--Snow White dress, Belle dress, Aurora dress, and so on. She also wanted shoes, gloves, earrings, necklaces and chap-stick (this is what she calls lipstick).

Paw Paw made her a wardrobe for her new outfits. She has been changing three or four times a day. She looks at the wardrobe and says, "I have choices".

'Nuther baby also got dresses to match Julianna's.

You'll notice she is sleeveless. It was hot on Christmas.

I've been working on Julianna's life-book, which invokes a lot of nostalgia. It seems so amazing that this wonderful child is in our lives. She has changed us in so many ways and we feel truly blessed. There are lots of ups and downs, but life around here is wonderful.

This is the earliest photograph of Julianna. It is her finding ad photo, and was taken in either September or October of 2005, when she was around three months old.


This is September, 2008.

She is so grown up.

Yesterday Julianna declared she wanted to listen to her Ariel CD while she napped. No problem, pop it in the CD player and she's set. Wait, do we own a CD player? Let's see, five iPods, three iPod docks...Is that a record player? CD player, CD player, ah, there is one. Unplug it, move it to her room, pop in the CD and listen to the singing....

Here it is, December. I've been at a loss as to what to do with the blog lately. Julianna has reached the point that she knows when we are talking about her and seems upset when I relate her latest escapades to others. Plus, I'm not sure which direction I want it to go. In some ways I think I tried to imitate other blogs rather than striving to make it my own. So for now, I think I'll be posting infrequently, although, we plan to post daily from China, when we finally get to travel.

Well, finally I am posting the Halloween pictures. Her Royal Highness had a good time at our Church's fall festival. She got to jump and jump and jump. We did very well in the candy department, in that she came home with three lollipops and one small bag of M&M's. Someday she will figure out that candy is to be had for the asking. May that day be many moons away.


There was a cake decorating contest as part of the festival. The guidelines were to bring your favorite pumpkin creation. Around here, our favorite pumpkin is the one a fairy godmother turns into a carriage.

Julianna and I had quite the conversation yesterday morning, like around 9 am:

J:Want candy
Me: You may have candy after your nap.
J:No after nap. Want candy.
Me: I'm sorry, that's the rules. You can have candy after your nap.
J:NO, no rules.

We are in the throes of potty training around our house. I've been wondering if one of those "Days Accident Free" signs for the bathroom would be excessively tacky.

We made a trip to the beach yesterday with the cousins, who are in town for their fall break. October is a great time to go to the beach. No crowds, perfect weather. Julianna loved it. She jumped and swam and made sand castles and carried buckets of water from the ocean to the sand. She was fast asleep 5 minutes into the drive home.
Do you ever have conversations with your kids that make you want to laugh hysterically, but you can't because they are dead serious and you don't want to hurt their feelings? We had this exchange today:

J: Don't put Ariel book in the potty.
Me: Excuse me?
J: Don't put Ariel book in the potty. Nana be very sad.

Julianna wanted a hairband like Elastigirl. We understand it lasted about five minutes at church.
This was Cousin Jessica's dress, specially crafted by Grandma. Julianna wore it long enough for me to get a photograph before declaring "too big, different clothes".

Phillip and I are fans of Patrick O'Briens Aubrey/Maturin series of books. So, when it came time to plan a boys room, we thought a Captain's Cabin theme would be fun. My parents found this bed.
Can you think of a better name for a sailor's bed?
Putting it together.
It is really, really big. Thank goodness we have high ceilings.
The wall color will be "Resolute Blue" and all you Hornblower fans can snicker at the name, although we did not pick it for the name.

These are from Easter. We stopped by Uncle Don's "office" on our way to Grandma's. Julianna has been asking lately to visit the office again.

This week I was reflecting on the long path to finishing our paperwork and how many times we threw up our hands and said, we quit. Deep down, though, we always knew this was the path God had laid out for us, despite the frustration. I was reminded of CS Lewis' comment in A Grief Observed, where the answer he hears from God is "Peace, child, you don't understand". It is like that sometimes. We want so badly for God to lay out His plan, to seek our advice and input on the finer details, then implement a mutually agreed upon compromise. God, though, does not want a committee, He wants obedience.

We are Dossier to China (DTC). Our agency received our dossier today, reviewed it and approved it to be sent in this week's batch. We were so thrilled to be sent today because we expected to wait until next week as our agency has a Wednesday cut-off for the Friday mailings. But they slipped us through and we are ecstatic.

We are not allowed to post identifiable information about Keith until we get final approval, so I leave you with a teaser. Beijing, here we come.

Breakfast with Her Royal Highness.

Our paperwork has made it through the consulate. Finally, we are through.

The Houston Consulate is beginning to resume operations. We are still not sure when our documents will be completed, but at least they are able to do some work. It is still very frustrating not knowing where things stand. As this process has gone on, I've started to thank God for His sovereign plan. Even though it is has been a long and difficult process, God has ordained every step and has known all the roadblocks and annoyances we would face. My "job" in the process is to thank and praise Him and trust in His plan.

Julianna started "school" this week. She goes to half day Mom's Day Out two days a week. They are doing a curriculum this year. This week we are learning the color red and the letter A. I talked it up for about a week before she started, just to get her ready and we bought a new lunchbox. She is also taking a backpack with her. We made a special shopping trip for the lunchbox and lunches.

This is what she wore.

This is what she wanted to wear. She wears this dress all the time now. She asks for it the moment she wakes up and we hang it up in the closet each night. She does have to wear "boring" clothes when we go places.
This is from a different day. We were headed out for our morning walk. You'll notice the rain boots with the Cinderella dress.

For those interested in an adoption update, our paperwork is at the Houston Consulate for authentication. It was supposed to be finished today. Unfortunately, Hurricane Ike is headed to Houston and the Consulate is closed until further notice.

We're busily watching the hurricane dump lots of rain on the Gulf Coast. We are still waiting for the re-do on our improperly notarized paper. I've had a lot of time over the last week to think about the sovereignty of God and my response to challenges. God is not taken by surprise. We will complete our paperwork in His timing. He is also in control of the rain and the leak in the living room. My responses, though, tend to be complaints rather than a recognition of God's sovereign plan. I seem to live on the weak side, as in Proverbs, it says "If you falter in times of trouble, how small is your faith". (Pro 24:10).

I'm trying very hard not to whine, not to meltdown and spew impolite comments, but this paperchase is driving me crazy. I went to get the county certificates on our papers yesterday and one of the notaries was done wrong. This is the second time this notary has had to redo an improperly notarized paper. I caught the first one, but this time, the signature did not match the one on file with the county. It is very frustrating and every time it has to be redone puts us another week from being DTC.
Nana needs a hairbow. I need some good, stiff chocolate.

I like to think that Julianna is adjusting to the rules and is learning good behavior. Then we have conversations like this:

Julianna discussing supper with Grandma and PawPaw, while Mommy and Daddy were out:

Mommy:What did you eat?
J:Chicken and fries.
J:Eat chicken first, then eat fries
Mommy:That's right, you eat your chicken first, then you can have fries.

About now I'm feeling pretty good about her learning delayed gratification. That is, until I confirm supper with Grandma, who cannot recall Julianna eating any chicken, but did see her put away a fair number of fries. Sigh.

Despite our locals USCIS office loosing both our homestudy and our homestudy addendum, we are almost to the end of the paperchase for this adoption. We received verbal approval of our I800a on Saturday and should have written approval some time this week. Then we get to certify and authenticate and then, finally, mail everything. We are aiming for 9/5/08 as our DTC date. Crossing our fingers!!

Captain Jack takes over. I guess there are benefits to being in the Admiralty.
Captain Jack is named for Jack Aubrey from Patrick O'Brien Aubrey/Maturin Series. When he was a kitten we called him Midshipman Jack.

It's probably against the rules to post without a picture of Julianna, so here she is.

I mentioned in my last post that Julianna has been buying a lot of shoes. It all began with the orange ones, then she had to have green and purple. We went looking for new sandals and ended up with the glitter pink pair, but no sandals. The pink ones are her Cinderella shoes.
Shoes and a new 'do.


I've learned a valuable lesson from her and her shoes--Never pull a pot out of the cabinet and put water in it without first checking its contents.

Julianna has had a busy summer. She went to the beach and has been house hunting with Grandma and Paw Paw. She has also been buying new shoes. I planned to take the camera to the beach to document her first beach outing and the battery was dead. I resorted to a film camera, but now I have to finish up the roll and then take it to the store for developing, then scan them into the computer and then, finally, blog. Man, how old-fashioned.

The IRS has once again decided that they will not change our taxes. I still think that is not the best phrase for informing people of a positive outcome on their audit. At the risk of offending the IRS and inviting yet another audit, I would like to suggest the government send certain auditors to night college for remedial math classes. I will also offer them this little trick for remembering greater than/lesser than signs, the alligator mouth eats the bigger number. Can you sense my bitterness?

On a happier note, we had this conversation at dinner:

Julianna pointing to the dinner guests:

Uncle Don puts his poopy in the potty, Paw Paw puts his poopy in the potty, Grandma puts her poopy in the potty...

Julianna, however, does not

There is finally movement on the adoption front. Our Hague compliant update is done and off to Interstate Compact. Crossing our fingers that the paperwork will finally go to China this month.

Julianna finally let me watch some tennis today. It's hard to believe we are into the third slam of the year and I finally got to watch 20 minutes of a match. We even got to play tennis this week. It was the first time since we returned from China that we got to head to the courts. Thank goodness we mostly had the place to ourselves or we would have been apologizing to a lot of people for our balls in their courts.

Now to round out the birthday festivities. Julianna did a good job putting sprinkles on the cupcakes. She is proudly wearing the Birthday Girl pin from Kim in my office.
"Patiently" waiting for someone to light the candle and for the singing to commence.

The plate lands face up, the cupcake, face down.

We celebrated Julianna's third birthday yesterday. She initially had two requests-balloons and cupcakes to lick. She eventually modified it to include toys. We started the day making the much desired cupcakes.While I was measuring out ingredients, Julianna pulled out a selection of pans and "cooked" the cookie cutters.
Julianna insisted on doing the mixing herself. Every time I tried to help, she would say, "Do it myself".
She also put them in the liners herself.She slightly overfilled these two.

Every good cook cleans up their dishes, as well as their hair, their clothes, the floor...



With the much longed for balloons. I think this was her favorite part of the day. I took her to the store with me and let her pick the big balloon. She was absolutely thrilled every time a new one was filled. She ran around the house all afternoon with the balloons.