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.

We have been cleaning up the house and for now the camera is not easily accessible. I wanted, however, to relay a lovely conversation I had with Julianna. I was picking her up from Vacation Bible School and we had this exchange:

Mom: How was VBS?
Nana (loudly): Get down!!!
Mom: Get down from where?
Nana: The table

At this point, her teacher interjects "Julianna is a little climber."

No new pictures. Nope, not a single one.

Julianna ran down the hall today with her animal book that has a crocodile in it. She was pointing at the croc and saying, "after awhile". It took several attempts before I caught on "after awhile, crocodile".

Julianna has declared what her birthday gifts should be—balloons, and lots of them and cupcakes to lick.

Once again, we are without new pictures. No excuses. I have decided that it is time to start potty training in earnest. Julianna went in the bathroom yesterday, pulled out a new diaper, the diaper wipes and was proceeding to remove her diaper when I came in. A poopy diaper, at that, which would have been an ugly mess. But if she is willing to change her own diapers, then it's time to learn to use the potty. She put some tinkle in this afternoon. Maybe she'll get underwear for her birthday.

Julianna is sporting a new do. She kept pulling the hairbows out of her hair and then would spend all day pushing the hair out of her eyes, so I went back to the bangs look. It is easier than trying to keep something in her hair.

Julianna has picked up some new phrases. My favorite is "squeeze out the poopies", mainly because I have no idea where she learned it. It's cute to hear her say it. Now if only she would sit on the potty...

This is an old picture. No new ones since the last post. Julianna is holding Captian Jack's mice. She found them under the couch and thought she should take them to him. It was very sweet.

We had a call this morning from the new immigration clearing house. They wanted to know if our local USCIS office had found our home study (as if! they probably aren't even looking, but then agian, I'm bitter). Anyway, I mentioned to them that I had a couple of notarized copies and she let me fax her one so she could start working on our file!! Nicest lady we have encountered in our adoption journey so far. They still need the original one from the local office, but at least now we don't have to sit around waiting for them to decide to find it.

Finally, some new pictures. This is Julianna's opinion of having her photograph taken this week. She was very proud that she got on this all by herself and managed to turn it all by herself as well.

Giving superman a big hug.
On a positive note, I have not seen The Aristocats in at least a week. I have, in the meantime, seen Lady and the Tramp enough to memorize it. There are some things that bother me about the movie. First, why does the Tramp call Lady 'Pigeon' and why is she not offended? What possesses Aunt Sarah to bring those wicked cats with her? Does she not know they have a dog? Does she not know they trust the dog with the baby? Who watches the baby when Aunt Sarah drags Lady to the pet store for a muzzle? Does she leave him in the care of those trusty cats?

Still no pictures. I have not taken any new ones lately. We are awaiting immigration clearance on the second adoption. We heard from the new central processing site that they did not receive our home study. We contacted the local office where it was to be mailed from and they don't know where it is. We also found out that some of the immigration requirements have changed and we are not sure how that will affect us. Learning some new verses: be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.

This is going to be one of those boring no picture blogs. Our paperwork is currently at immigration, which is the last of the paperwork. The wait is starting to wear on me. We have no idea how long it will take for immigration to clear us and that makes it harder. As I make my way through the Bible, I came to Genesis 22 today. I have blogged about this before, but I thought I would revisit it. It is the story of Abraham being asked to sacrifice his son and having to walk three days to the appointed mountain. As our senior associate pastor preached, three days of wondering, "how can this be right, how can God's promised son now be the expected sacrifice?" Three days for Abraham to walk on, in faith, despite the temptation to say, "God, I think I misunderstood." Re-reading the chapter today reminded me of Abraham's faith and his choice to walk on in that faith.

We have reached the blogging doldrums around here.

It feels like forever since I sat down to blog. Julianna and I had a shoe disagreement. She loves this pair, but her toes stick out the front. I've spent a lot of time hiding shoes lately.

Raggedly Ann needed to be rocked to sleep this week.

You might notice this looks different. I was trying to add an addendum and ended up deleting about a third of it. So, the update is this: we received our pre-approval for Keith Matthew today. It was a great finish to our eight wedding anniversary. So now there are three important events on our anniversary, tax day, homecoming with Julianna and pre-approval for Keith.

The photos are from a year ago today, as we arrived home from China, 24 hours late, after an unexpected stop in Japan. We don't look half bad for people who had been traveling 48 hours.

Phil and Julianna visited Dreamy and Granddaddy while I worked this weekend. They fed the fish and played with the puppies. Julianna is quite fascinated by the dog swimming in the water. She keeps asking me to pull the picture up on the computer.

I'll admit this started as an idealist dream. My grandmother always had a flower garden that attracted a lot of butterflies and I have fond memories of catching butterflies . I thought it would be great to plant a little garden with Julianna, one that we could water all summer and watch the butterflies and birds visit. So off we went to the local home improvement warehouse for a bird bath, kid sized garden tools, and pretty flowers. We also got a little fence, mainly so the lawnmower doesn't get the flowers. We set up the bird bath and marked out the area and started digging.
Unfortunately, about right now, Julianna got bored with the whole process. The dirt was hard to dig and mommy was using big tools. No place for little kid tools at this point. My solution, turn on the hose and let her clean out the bird bath, partly because water will keep her entertained for hours and partly because she had made a mud pie in the bird bath.
When I finally got to the point of planting, Julianna decided that digging in the dirt was not all that much fun and proceeded to pull the flowers off the plants. My disillusionment set in. She did finally decided that scooping dirt out and putting it on the garden buddy was fun. It was drenching wet and made a nice, muddy mess.

In the end, the flowers were planted and the bird bath filled with clean water. I'm sure we will enjoy watering it all summer and the birds will probably enjoy the water, but next time I'm going to have someone with large garden equipment come and prepare the garden spot. Applications are now being accepted, as I had also planned to grow tomatoes for our little veggie lover.

Yes, the pants came clean. Uncle Don, is called Lollipop around here.

It's really hard this week to not be nostalgic. I went back and read the post for day two of parenthood, which was all about vomit. Poor little thing would not eat and what she did ended up on my pants. Ahh, the memories.

Yesterday was Gotcha Day. Wow. We had a nice quiet dinner at home. We lit a candle and said a prayer for Julianna's birth family. I put her into her Gotcha Day outfit, which, amazingly, still fit, but she was uncooperative with photos. At least this April was filled with smiles and not screams.

It is hard to believe, but one year ago today we were sitting in the international airport in LA hoping and praying we would make it to China. It has been an amazing year. We have been audited by the IRS twice, my brother came home from Iraq, my brother-in-law went to Iraq, we celebrated the holidays with new enthusiasm, and we have seen Julianna blossom into a happy, contented child.

Our first Easter in China, with stuffed peeps.
Easter at home with real marshmallow peeps.