Throw me another moon pie, mister.
Julianna told me she wanted two hair bows. I started looking for two pink ones to match her outfit, but she declared one of them had to be blue. It is so exciting to have her learning new things. Right now, she is learning "karaoke" since the current favorite video is "sesame sings karaoke". Well, I need to go because it is almost time for my personal favorite, Ladybug picnic. 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12...

Julianna and I had another interesting conversation this morning. She was chasing one of the cats down the hall and I gave her my standard phrase of mutual nonaggression. She looked at me and said "aggression". I repeated nonaggression, she repeated aggression. I think the cats are doomed.

Finally, a new post. The flu hit our house, but we are recovering. Julianna did go to the adoption clinic at UAB. They think she is essentially caught up on her motor skills. She tested at 2 years, six months. Chronologically, she is two years, eight months. Her language skills, though, are still a concern. She is finally interested in videos, but only ones with music and sesame street characters. The only exception is The Aristocats, which I think I now know by heart. It does, however, give me relatively uninterrupted blogging time.

I have decided to run. My goal is to run a marathon, hopefully next January. I've been taking Julianna out with me and she is a tough task master. When I run, she yells "faster, faster", then giggles mercilessly and when I stop to walk, she yells "again, again". Hopefully she won't make me eat raw eggs....

Julianna is quite fascinated by Phillip's new Star Wars book. She calls it the "Chewy Book". She gets to look at it right before bed, after she reads her other books. Phillip has shown her parts of Episode IV and she has her very own R2D2. I let her watch part of Episode I: The Phantom Menace last week. When I told Phillip, he said he had not planned on letting them watch the first three movies until they were 10 or 12 because it is like letting them read the apocrypha.

Planes, trains and automobiles....
Fixing the seat on her tricycle.

Julianna and I had quite the conversation this morning. It went something like this:


JC: Nandy (candy)
Mom: You would like some candy?
JC: Purple nerds
Mom: I will have to find the purple nerds.
JC proudly strolls over to the 'secret hiding' place and declares: Up there. Momma get it.


On the plus side, I found a bag of unopened Christmas chocolate while digging around for the purple nerds.

This lovely sequence of events happened last week.

Julianna removing Daddy's wallet from the drawer:

Checking it for money:
I think we might be in trouble when she hits the teenage years...

This election cycle, Alabama moved its primary up so that it would be a relevant event rather than a rubber stamp for the already selected candidate. The primary will be on Super Tuesday for most of the state, but Super Tuesday happens to coincide with Fat Tuesday and in Mobile and Baldwin county, the voters will be to preoccupied with their pre-lentan preparations to vote. Our primary, therefore, is today. For all you sticklers, the votes will be sealed until next Tuesday and one election site will be open. Legal disclaimers aside, here are the photos of our day.

Getting ready to head out the door. She had to have "Big Bear" with her. He also has to wear a diaper, which keeps popping off because his butt is a little bit bigger than Julianna's.

At the polling place. There was not a single campaign sign anywhere. Usually the turn is covered.

Showing off our sticker.
This one is completely unrelated to the voting. It just warms my heart so to see her "reading" a book.

Things around here are quite fun.

Rocking our babies. The green one is "Alisoar". It is a dinosaur, but Julianna was calling it an alligator. It sort of morphed into Alisoar. He has joined the sleeping crew.

Everyone is now tucked in and being read to.

Putting a diaper on "toy"

On this day, she decided that the diaper had to be powdered. She also checks them for poopies, takes them off, rolls them up and puts them in the trash.

Putting the babies to bed is our favorite game. We usually do it a couple of times a day. She calls it "lay down". Cannot for the life of me figure out where she learned that. I'm just waiting for her to pick up some of our other phrases, like "you need to pursue a policy of mutual nonaggression with the cats".

Here we are on our way to eat lunch with Mimi. Julianna loves lunch with Mimi. She will go for hours before we leave saying "lunch, Mimi". Mimi introduced her to ketchup. I got Mimi a lovely t-shirt to show my appreciation. On this particular day, Julianna was dipping her chicken all the way in the ketchup so it was completely covered. After awhile, she started eating the ketchup straight out of the container with a fork. I think we might loose our standing with the Mustard Museum.

Yesterday, I put Julianna down after changing her diaper and told her to run around while I selected some clothes. I was washing my hands when she came running down the hall yelling "elephant dress, elephant dress". How could I refuse such a cute request, especially since she went in her closet and selected it herself.

I discovered during nap time today that the Australian Open tennis tournament is into its fourth day. How did this happen? I used to be so up on the tennis schedule.

Maybe it was because my cabinets needed redecorating today?

Or maybe because pizza elmo needed a new diaper?

Or maybe it was the counting lesson--one lollipop?


Probably though, it was just all the fun we are having in my little corner of toddler heaven.

Here are the good ones from Daddy's camera:
Putting our babies to bed.
Showing off cousin Jessica's dress from London.


Giving "toy" a walk down the hall. Caterpillar is too hard. Notice he is in diapers.


This one I wish had turned out . Doesn't she look so grown up, almost like she is out the door with a briefcase and java.
And here is what I normally get.
Enough whining.

My favorite blogger posted at Christmas that she took nearly 700 pictures of her twins. I'm having blogger envy. I was doing better at taking pictures, but once again I'm stuck with Daddy's camera. I never realized how fast mine was until I had to use his. I think tomorrow I'll post the outcome of today's camera use.

Julianna has a few new year's resolutions. First up, reading instructions.

Next, collecting her own power tools.


















Seriously, Julianna has moved to a toddler bed. She tried to climb in the crib on Monday and fell. She did not hurt herself, mostly scared her and mommy. She has done very well so far. She has not climbed out once down for the night, but I'm sure it is coming. Her only real complaint about the bed is that our cat Baby likes to sleep in it too.

Make sure you read the post before this one, for an explanation for the new colors and name.

You might have noticed that the blog name and the template have changed. Our family is growing beyond Julianna and we want the blog to reflect that. If you have not heard yet, we are in the processing of adopting a son. He will be four on Saturday, and like before, our agency will not allow us to post his photo until we have final approval from China. We are many months away from travel as we had just turned in our application when the agency contacted us. It is a funny story. They called and emailed with a message that they had some questions about our application. We thought maybe we had checked some box wrong or they needed some clarification about our work status, but no, the question was would we consider this child. Now the paper chase has begun in earnest and we are looking toward Beijing.

Well, our first Christmas as a family has passed. We had a great time. We made Christmas cookies and cake and lots and lots of messes. We took the tree down today and Julianna keeps pointing at the former spot, saying, "tree, tree". She is wearing her new Pooh jacket for the second day. She would probably wear it more if she new the secret hiding place, commonly known as a coat tree.




Uncle Don Don kept her full of candy for two days. She is gradually coming off her sugar high, but not pleased with mommy's one lollipop rule. Mommy can be so demanding.









Her favorite gift was by far her Barbie car. Barbie, however, has yet to ride in it. It was commandeered by Little Elmo and Blue Dog, who have been spotted cruising up and down the halls, wind whipping in their hair.

As Julianna would say, 'Christmas Trees'.

Or as mommy would say, Happy Christmas.

Either way, Merry Christmas, everyone.

I thought I would provide a few updates from our house. First, the Internal Revenue Service is pleased to inform us that they have decided not to change our tax return. Who writes these things? It should have said, congratulations, we decided you did not lie on your forms. Or maybe, congratulations, our close examination of your finances is at an end. We are glad, but nonetheless, bitter about the whole experience.



Next up, potty training updates. Miss Kitty and Elanor Bear are diaper free. "Other Baby", as in not that baby but the other baby, is still in her diapers. She does sit on the potty sometimes. We don't have diapers small enough for this kitty, but I would have loved to have a video camera to record Julianna trying to fit one on her.

Julianna is like "other baby", still in diapers but sits on the potty sometimes. We got positive results one day and had a potty dance, but none since.

In retrospect, I'm not sure why I ever thought an open changing station was a good idea. I've spent the better part of seven months imploring certain members of our family to please not throw the diapers, shoes, towels, etc. on the floor while mommy dries her hair.







Then we had this episode. She was quite proud of herself. It was quite amusing until Wednesday, when she wanted a new diaper and proceeded to climb to the top of the changing station and laid down, with diaper in hand.






Maybe I should get my own supply of 2-0 nylon.

How many layers do you need in winter?



Apparently three.

The Minnie Pearl impersonation was an added bonus.