Two little turkeys.
Sometimes I just can't believe that I have two children. I wanted more the minute we got Magnolia and I often wondered how it would happen. We were worried about the long wait to China so we started looking at other countries for adoption. When I got pregnant I never even thought about the end result. I was just trying to survive the pregnancy. When George arrived I was nowhere prepared for having two. I still look at my husband and say, "we have TWO children!" A miracle considering there were many years of wondering if we'd have ONE. So, this year I'm grateful for my two amazing children. I love them more than anything and while there are still empty chairs around our table, I am so grateful for what I have now in this moment. They have brought me more joy in my life and I feel so blessed.

We are heading out of town to be with family!

Wishing you all a very Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy 7 months George! You celebrated with your daddy & Magnolia while I had my first night away from you ever. I missed you a lot but daddy sent me a video of you to show me you were doing great! I think you missed me too. We did a whole lot of cuddling when I got home!

I love your fuzzy hair. I love the fat dimples on your knuckles. I love your baby smell. I love the way you breathe heavily when you're happy & excited. I love the cringed look on your face when you're about to drop something on the floor and you know it's going to make a loud sound. I love the way you scoop your Gerber puffs into your mouth. I love the way you pull your legs into the air and slam them down together at the same time when you're in your crib. I love your smile that awaits me when you wake from your nap. I love all the color you have brought to my life George, you are a very special little boy! xoxo

p.s. I also love how tight your overalls are in these photos...you just had a big lunch. :)

We have been home an awful lot lately. This might otherwise drive me a little crazy but it's been nice. Real nice. We have spent the past two weeks getting George on a really good schedule...the first since he arrived! AND he's sleeping through the night! This has made a world of difference for us all. No one is sleep deprived and the routine has brought a good rhythm and comfort we all needed. I have been looking for an antique highchair for a while now. We were all squeezed around our island and I knew it was time we all sat down at the table together especially now since Baby George eats his meals with us. George surprised me one day by saying he was stuck behind a train and looked over and saw this highchair outside an antique store in a small town. He got out and bought it for me! I absolutely love it. It couldn't be a better fit in our house. It's from the forties and has a removable enamel tray! The best part was that he only paid $15! Seriously?! That's a great deal. Geesh, I love my husband. :)
Magnolia and I spend our mornings in the sewing room while George naps. I have been playing around with appliques and then decided to make a fall dress for her. It was so easy, I didn't even use a pattern and I love the way it looks on her with jeans. She was so tired of trying it on for me that I resorted to giving her lollipops every time I asked. We both thought that seemed like a fair deal. She works very hard on moving pins from pin cushion to pin cushion. I also threaded a needle for her and gave her some fabric on an embroidery hoop. She threaded it all through in no time...I think I need to come up something a little more challenging next time. :)
Another part of our routine is a walk in the late afternoon. We try to get out before the sun sets but that's growing closer and closer to 4:30pm! Magnolia has built up quite the stamina on these walks and each time we go a little further. Of course George just goes along for the ride. :)
George bought me a photography reflector for my birthday. While I still have no idea what I'm doing, I love to play around with it.

We have this song stuck in our heads a lot around here. We first heard it on Elizabeth Mitchell's You Are My Little Bird CD. It's the current favorite in our car. Then we heard it again but this time on t.v. If you aren't familiar with the Classical Baby Series, I highly recommend them. I might even love them more than my kids but they really do love to watch these.

Grassy Grass Grass

by Woodie Guthry

Grass grass grass, tree tree tree,

leafy leaf leaf,one two three.
Birdy birdy bird, fly fly fly,

nest nest nest, high high high.
Cloudy cloudy cloud, wind wind wind,

rain rain rain, mud mud mud,
Doggie doggie, dog runy run run,

quickie quick quick, homey home home.
Bedy bed bed, sheety sheet sheet,

sleepy sleep sleep, dreamy dream dream.
Dancie dance dance, singy sing sing,

grow grow grow, biggy big big.

Just thought I'd share what we've been up to. Have a great weekend everyone! I'm heading out for a girls weekend. The first time being away from my kids...ever!

Magnolia wanted to be a bat with big wings for as long as I can remember. I think it started about 6 months ago when Nana bought her the Stella Luna movie. She didn't change her mind once. Not once. Never even considered it. So, I took a sweater of Georges and cut legs into it and nipped and tucked here and there. I added wings and and some ears on her hat and it was done. I was so proud that she would be warm inside that wool sweater. I even put her pajamas on first then another layer before putting her in that bat suit. Poor thing still came home shivering cold!

Here she is showing us her candy. She had a great time and we let her eat quite a bit of it. I never knew the meaning of bouncing off walls before tonight but now I know...

Meanwhile, George slept through it all. We put him in a lambie sleeper that was Magnolia's because his first 2 options were too small and he was awfully mad about that. So here he is waking up at 6pm ready for his dinner and completely oblivious to anything. Gosh, I love this little stinker.

Here's the two of them early afternoon before costumes went on.
Hope you and yours had a wonderful Halloween too!

Happy Birthday Magnolia! We are the luckiest people in the world to be your parents! We love you so much. You delight us every single day with your charm, your wit, your humor, and your sweetness. You are a very, very special girl! Hugs & Kisses, Mommy & Daddy
The theme was purple this year. She said her birthday would be purple as far back as the middle of the summer. We added a little pink just because pink came up occasionally too.
We started the morning opening all of her gifts. Then George came to pick her up to take her to lunch. They had a very special day out and she came home exhausted. She blew out her candles after dinner and we tucked her in reading her new books and looking at her not believing how fast she is growing up.
Happy Happy Birthday Magnolia!

We had a great fall weekend! Weather has been so gloomy and rainy but on Sunday afternoon we had a tiny bit of sunshine so we headed down to our local produce stand and picked out pumpkins. George slept through it all which was probably a good thing & Magnolia was happy to have us all to herself. Above she's on top of a haystack which she declared "she loved!"
On Saturday morning I made these pumpkin doughnuts...they were to die for. :)
We've been decorating for Halloween. Magnolia and I put glitter on some pumpkins. She did the small ones with LOTS of glitter. :) I also put the usual cats in the windows but made a bat chandelier this year.

Picking out pumpkins.After our pumpkin trip we went to the park. It was so cold!



Back to sewing, a whole lot of hanging around the house, and getting ready for Magnolia's 3rd birthday this week...love this time of year.

We've had only one day this week without rain so we decided it would be a good day to go out and pick the remaining apples on our apple tree. When we got outside I noticed the leaves from our ash tree were starting to fall. They looked so pretty on the grass, almost as if they were artfully placed there. I decided to plop George in the basket and take some pictures of the first of the fallen leaves in our yard. Welcome fall!

I can't believe George turned 6 months old last week! He is SUCH a dumpling, I'm not sure I'll ever get enough of him. He's so smiley and so much fun to play with. At his 6 month check up he weighed 18.4 lbs. and measured 26.75" long. He's doing great! He sits up beautifully and falls forward to reach a toy but once on his tummy he gets super mad. He's also discovered shaking rattles and dropping toys on the floor. I took these photos of him in his diaper for no other reason than his sleeper was covered in peas. :) Happy 6 months George! xoxo

I decided to keep Magnolia home from preschool this year because she has a late birthday and that would mean 3 years of preschool. I also wasn't sure she'd be ready to part from me (okay, and I from her). We're doing gymnastics together and she loves it and is growing more and more independent. We're also signed up for a craft class and she'll start swimming lessons with her daddy at the end of the month. I took her to library story time and put her in the group that has story time WITHOUT a caregiver. She asked if I'd be right outside folding laundry (what I do every night when I put her to bed). I told her I'd wait for her right outside and she was okay with that. She did the whole story time without coming out for me! I was so proud of her and so happy with the trust we've built together! In other news she had her first dentist appointment and was so brave and so good. I was convinced she had decay but what I was seeing was something the dentist told me either happened when she was in utero or something hereditary...we'll never know. She's talking my ear off lately and now asks if it's "quiet time or not" or if once we get downstairs (away from nursery)she still has to be quiet. I don't think she stops talking all day! Last weekend we went to the mall. When we pulled into the parking lot she said, "The mall, let's bark..woof woof!" She must think park & bark are the same word. She makes me laugh so much! She really loves dinosaurs and is doing a lot more imaginary play. She's also getting scared a lot more and the world of monsters has appeared. She's excited about Halloween and her costume which I'm trying to finish sewing! Here she is helping pick apples off our apple tree in our backyard.

A lot of exciting things have happened in George's world! He cut 2 teeth last week! He rolled over a couple of times one morning and hasn't since. Either he's just too fat or he doesn't find it very exciting. He has started to scoot though. On his tummy he pushes his rear in the air and scoots. He doesn't get far and fusses after a few minutes of this entirely exhausting exercise. He's starting to sit up much more on his own and topples less and less. He smiles nonstop and it's such a hoot to get him laughing. I thought he loved me like none other but I think his love for Magnolia is even greater. She ALWAYS cheers him up and they've really started to bond the past two weeks. It's a beautiful thing to watch.

We are having a lot of fun getting ready for fall, Halloween, and our birthdays, I love October!

Catching Up

Wow, I've been away a while! I've been so busy with house projects and travel. We spent the other weekend in South Bend visiting my parents. My dad took George to a Notre Dame game and my mom and I tagged along for the tailgating. It was a lot of fun! My parents have a house right near campus so it was a beautiful walk to and from. Here we are hanging out on their front porch.

Last weekend we took our family room and made it a playroom with nothing but toys in it. I'm so happy to have this room instead of toys all over the house and so is Magnolia.

I confessed to George my anxieties over the amount of photos I've taken and the questionable way I've backed them up. He bought a separate hard drive and backed everything up for me...phew! We also got a new pocket camera to replace to one that froze in my purse last winter. We missed that one because it was so easy to take a quick video. We realized we weren't taking videos anymore and knew we had to start again! In other technological news, I inherited George's old iPhone. I love this phone and so does Magnolia. George uploaded all kinds of apps for her and usually at the end of a meal in a restaurant it gets pulled out as the last trick in our bag and saves the day. Now I get the power of this magic trick!

I'll be back soon with news from Magnolia & George's world!

We spent the past two weekends on the island enjoying the last warm days up there. We had my sisters and their families one weekend and Nani the next. Both weekends were equally gorgeous. George and I took Magnolia out in the canoe for the first time all summer. This is photo of Nani on the canoe. It was so so serene, it made us wish we had done it sooner. We stopped at the local kite store and picked out some kites to fly. It was so much fun and Magnolia loved flying her own ...see videos below!

Magnolia down on our shore as the sun was setting. George and George on School House Beach skipping rocks.

George & Magnolia on the Ferry on Labor Day.

Magnolia & Sophia taking a bath together outside.

Cousins Ellie, Magnolia, & Lilah

Cousins Lily, Lilah, & Magnolia having lunch at the snack bar.

Endless fun scooping water.

Cousins Magnolia & Sophia.

Magnolia's first time paddling a canoe!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=764twKkWu1c

Magnolia flying her new kite. She's saying "side to side, side to side." It's from Nia Hao Kai Lan, her favorite dvd. :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A73PfDiBb24

These days were the perfect way to end a wonderful summer!