Breaking the Board

First, the Valentine walnut Piper gave me on Valentine's Day. She found it on a walk around the block a few weeks ago and had been saving it in her coat pocket. She had one for me, Daddy & Max. So cute.My attempt at doing a heart pony tail for Valentine's Day. {It did look better before school - but we were running late and didn't have time for pictures.} And finally, Piper's last day of karate.

They got to try out some moves to break boards.

First, the hand chop...

{horrible pictures - due to bad lighting and sitting far away}

Then front kicks...

I asked her if she wanted to do another karate class or dance class, or something else. She said she wants to do gymnastics, then swimming, then ballet, then karate again :)

Getting Closer

Max is taking more and more steps, progressing slowly but surely. It' been about 2 1/2 weeks since his first steps.

And a little video of Max giggling, thinking he is so funny feeding his sandwich to the dog. He often eats a bite, then gives a bite to the dog, then eats another bite, then one to the dog. The dog obviously loves him.

{note the door mats in the kitchen - we think the dog had a stroke last week - her back legs go out from under her when she walks on the tile - we thought the door mats would help, but she is still terrified to walk on the tile}

A must read...

Just saw this post today...

a must read.

To summarize... a family adopted a beautiful little girl from an orphanage in Eastern Europe (where it is taboo to keep your child if they have Down syndrome). The bio-dad hid in the bushes to see who was taking his child (who he had never visited in the orphanage) to America. After all was said and done, he realized what a terrible mistake he and his wife had made, placing their daughter in the orphanage at birth. SO, he is now going to ADOPT an orphan with Ds from his own country!

UNHEARD OF.

How do you spell "Mom"? ...and first cavity.

Last night Piper saw some note cards next to the computer. She asked me what they were for and then asked if she could have one.

Then she asked me how to spell "mom". So I told her, repeating it several times as she was trying to remember it long enough to go write it. Then she she hurried and added, "This isn't for you, though." Off she went to work on the note card. Then she came back and asked how to write "from", which I repeated several times as she went back to her room.

A few minutes later, she came back, smiling proudly, and handed me the card. "This is for you. I was just teasing." (As if I thought she was addressing a card to some other 'mom'.)

She drew a picture of us on one side and the other side was covered with hearts, covering the "Mom" (third row down) and "from" (fifth row down). Then she realized she forgot to write "Piper" after the "from", so she had to go make another one (which apparently is still in the works).

:::

Today I took her to the dentist to get her first cavity filled. Holy Drama. I really wasn't sure if she was going to make it. She cried with the shot (don't really blame her). She cried with the drilling. She cried with the filling. Halfway through she clamped her mouth shut and covered it with her hands. She did not like that drill (who does?). She was done. Somehow we coaxed her into letting the dentist finish. A bribe to the toy store of course. (Did I just reward her for getting a cavity??)

And now she is so proud that she has a silver star in her molar!

Animal Cookies

As we were getting ready for bed the other night, Max found a nearly empty box of animal cookies just in reach on the kitchen table.

He was determined to find that last cookie.

At last!Meant to post these with the videos of Max's first steps earlier this week... better late than never :)

The Unicorn

Piper drew herself riding a unicorn.

{Ignore the worst hair cut ever (thank you Cookie Cutters) - still trying to figure out how to fix it...}

The Blurb Book

About a year ago {maybe longer}, I set out to print my blog - turn it into a book. I tried a couple different websites that do this sort of thing, and ended up using http://www.blurb.com/ . I would work on it for a few minutes or few hours here and there, changing fonts, combining posts to one page {eliminating a ton of empty, wasted space in the book}, delete the whole thing, reslurp it, start over, etc. I started with the first year of the blog {from Nov '07 to Dec '08}. Well, I finally finished it and sent it off to get printed a week or so ago. And it came in the mail today!!! I'm pretty happy with it. Year two will be better {and faster}. And from now on I'm not going to resize my pictures before posting them - that made for some really small pictures in print. I should have taken the time and downloaded the high res pictures after Blurb slurped all my blog content, but it was just taking too long to complete my little project, and I was too impatient.

And I may do something fancier for the cover next book, too. The basic white turned out kinda boring. When I do smaller photo books thru http://www.shutterfly.com/ they are more colorful and visually appealing.

And the best part.... I'm now going to delete that first year from the blog & get it off the world wide web! Not sure why, but I'll feel better without so much of our life just hanging out in cyberspace. I think I am much more careful with what kind of info I post now, as compared with when I started the blog and only had a few neighborhood friends and family following. My intent is to leave the significant posts from my history as tabs (ya know - adoption, heart surgery, that kind of stuff) , but only have one year's worth of info on the blog at a time.
{And just in case you were wondering... The book ended up being 185 pgs (that was about 200 posts) - and cost $68, with shipping.}

Now onto year two!

First Steps

Max is taking a few steps here and there. He definitely prefers doing things all by himself, rather than walking with the Juppy, or holding onto my hands. He is also getting very proficient at cruising!

His PT thought he'd be walking by our next appointment (next month), but after reading a few blogs, I'm thinking maybe not quite - slow but steady progress. She also said that once he is walking, we'll probably not have the need to see her much, if at all, anymore. Since Max likes to do things his own way, he'll just need to gain the walking experience he needs and then he'll be able to figure out stairs, etc.