What Are You Doing Next Saturday?

If your answer is, "Nothing," or "I don't know," and you're in the Indianapolis area, you should come to a fun filled evening at our Love Makes a Family benefit dance!  The evening is for the entire family, complete with dancing, dessert buffet, silent auction, and activities & games for the kids.  Dancing is certainly not a prerequisite.  Come enjoy an evening of fellowship as we raise funds to help bring our son and the Hennessy's daughter home from Ethiopia. 

Tickets are just $5 a person, with a maximum of $25 a family.  The dance starts at 6:30pm and runs until 9:00pm at our church, Mt. Auburn United Methodist, in Greenwood.  Along with dancing and desserts, we'll also have a silent auction full of goodies.  Just to tempt you, some of the items we'll have up for auction include:

• 4 weeks of classes at Gymboree Play & Music
• Private Wine Tasting for you and 20 friends at Mallow Run Winery
• A private suite at a Fever game
• Photography packages from 3 different Indianapolis photographers
• Lots of gift certificates to your favorite restaurants
• Beautiful handmade items
• & LOTS more!

If you haven't already purchased your tickets, you can do so by using the link to the right, or by emailing: taylor-hennessyadoption@hotmail.com.  If you'd like to help us out by bringing a dessert of any kind, just send us an email letting us know what you'd like to bring. 

Please come out and help support our families and the ministry of adoption!

Finally Moving Forward

I wanted to share a few things related to our current adoption.  I know I haven't really blogged about it for awhile, but there hasn't been too much to tell.  We started the process back in the fall, and then found ourselves in a holding pattern while we waited for tax time to roll around (for various reasons, but mostly for Uncle Sam's refund!)  Our taxes were filed over two weeks ago and our process is now moving again!  We've finished up our final 3 visits with our social worker with lightening speed (just another joy of the adoption process - while we were waiting, the rules changed yet again and we had to meet with her a total of 4 times instead of just twice.  She was awesomely understanding, and in order to keep us going, set up our last 3 meetings at our home.)

So now she's furiously writing our homestudy so we can file our pre-immigration paperwork with the US government.  And once we are fingerprinted and receive our magical I-171H back from USCIS, our dossier will finally be sent off to Ethiopia.  We're hoping this could be sometime in April.  Ironically, our last DTE (dossier to Ethiopia) date for Mia was 5/8/08.  Wouldn't it be strange to end up around the same time again?

And then our "official" wait begins again.  Infant boy referrals have increased slightly to 5-7 months wait, but I'm really not worrying too much about it, which is not at all like my personality and totally unlike our first time around.  While I am super excited to be done with all this paperwork and being scrutinized, and also to see my son's face and return to Ethiopia, part of me is a little sad that my one-on-one time with Mia will be coming to an end.   It took us a good while to get into a good rountine and adjust to all the change, and while she and I certainly have our moments, we're having a great time together.  She's at such a fun stage, and I love the flexibility that comes with her growing age.

That doesn't mean I'm not excited to bring our son home, I just know it'll be some major adjustments for us all.  The end result will totally be worth it, and I know Mia will be the best big sister ever.  

We've also got some more fundraising events scheduled in the coming months, the biggest being our Love Makes a Family Adoption Dance, which we are co-hosting with our friends' the Hennessy's on Saturday, April 9th.  The evening will include dancing, desserts, a silent auction, and of course more infomation about adoption.  See our new tab across the top for more detailed info.  You can purchase tickets either via email or through our Paypal link to the right.

Not a Baby Anymore!

It's hard to believe that our baby is no longer a baby anymore!  Last Tuesday, Mia turned 2 (which she can tell you and indicate by holding up one finger from each hand :) 
Although her party isn't until this weekend and Travis has school Tuesday evenings (which equals very little Daddy time for the day), we wanted to make the day special anyway.  I mean, how often do you turn 2?

As soon as we heard her start to stir, I went up to get her while Travis readied our camera.  As I greeted her with, "Happy Birthday Mia!" she promptly looked at me and said, "Mommy, cake today?  Present?"  She's a smart one, I tell you. 

We debated on whether or not to give her her present first thing in the morning or to wait until dinner, but as soon as she saw it on our ottoman, there was no stopping her.

I love how when she starts concentrating really hard, her tongue always sticks out.  It was one of the first things we noticed in her referral picture.

Cookies!

Letting Mommy show me how to "bake" the cookies.

Cheese!

She is in love with gloves of all kinds (including socks which she will turn into "glubs") and now she has her very own hot pad.

Many of you wanted to see the "special" cupcakes I made for her birthday day.  They're really nothing too special, other than I made them from scratch.  I thought they turned out simple yet girly.

And really, if you're going to be self-indulgent, you might as well do it on your birthday, right?  So yes, we had cupcakes for breakfast.

And fortunately for me, this girl like the idea of cupcakes more than the cupcake itself, so after a few licks of icing, she asked me to "save it for later."

Later that morning we had our class at Gymboree, so I made sure we wore our birthday girl shirt.  All her little friends and teacher sang to her (which she loves), and then I made chicken and noodles (her favorite) for dinner.  After Daddy left for school, we played more with her new cookies and I did a little photo shoot (and I mean that very loosely...my living room and artificial light do not make for stellar pics).  Can you believe how big she is getting?

Speaking of big, we also took her for her 2 year old check up on Friday.  She weighs in at 26 pounds and 33.5 inches long, right around the 50 percentile for both.  She's meeting all her milestones, except for maybe dressing herself, but that's not been a skill I've been particularly nurturing.  I had to crack up though when the nurse asked if she was putting 2 words together.  Um, just 2?  We get paragraphs from this kid.  She's incredibly articulate, and I'm just in awe of how she's adjusted to life.

It's somewhat easy for us to forget that she's adopted, to forget that there ever was a time in her life that she wasn't with us.  And I take some comfort knowing that she won't remember that time.  We love her so, so much that it's beyond words.  I've said it before and I'll say it again: she is our daughter.  Period.  But, it seems that for every milestone, every anniversary, every major event that happens in her life, we are brought back to that sobering remembrance.  I don't want to dwell on it everyday, all day long, but it's not something that we can pretend doesn't exist.  We are quickly approaching the time when she will start to ask us questions, and I'm sure our answers will be through both tears of joy and sadness.  Adoption is certainly a lifelong journey, not just a process that ends with a court decree. 

Wordless Wednesday: Hot Stuff

What do you do when winter seems to be dragging on a bit too long?  You get desperate enough to bring an outside toy in, grab some shades and a pretty bracelet (and don't forget lovey!) and watch your daughter discover the fun we've been missing.

I know it's supposed to Wordless Wednesday, but this one cracks me up.  Look closely at her left hand.  She's wearing a hot pad, and holding both a play cup and her snack cup with cereal bar.  Just in case either one is steaming hot.

Christmas Celebrations

Well I didn't quite make my goal of catching everything up last week, so I decided to lump together some of our Christmas celebrations into one big post.  (New Year's Resolution #274: Take more picutres of my rapidly growing girl so that we have more pictures to post!)

First, we decided to take advantage of Indianapolis' 12 Free Days of Christmas, and took Mia to the Indiana State Museum to ride the Polar Express train.  We actually had a big group of friends going, but Cooper starting running a fever that morning, and baby Miles decided he'd rather party all night than let his poor Mommy sleep.  So we ended up with our BFFs Savannah and Joe (affectionately referred to as Joe-Joe by Mia), and still had a great time.  Savannah and Joe were pros, as this was their second year to ride the train.  After waiting in a very short line, I quickly found out that Mia Jane is not so into riding on moving objects.  I had to ride in the train car with her, holding her in my lap.  After one ride, she announced, "All done Mommy!"  Fortunately, she loved just watching the other kids and was eager to wait while Savannah and Joe rode a few more times.  I had never been to the State Museum, so we took the kids to a couple more exhibits before heading home.  We (the mommies) all wanted to explore the Titanic exhibit, but you had to pay an additional fee, and we were pretty sure we'd have more luck without our kiddos, so we decided to try that one again later.  It was a fun (and free!) morning, and I hope we can go again next year.

We tried to get all 4 kiddos (including Joe's baby brother Will) together on Santa's sleigh for a picture. It was really a good idea in theory... 

Mia: "My nose itches, Mommy!"  Savannah: "I can't look at the camera Aunt Sarah.  That would be too easy!"

Joe: Savannah, you look down on the count of 3 with me.  Mia, you look straight at the camera and smile.  That'll frustrate them some more!

The result of telling them to say, "Elmo!" instead of cheese.

One thing (among many) that I love about Christmas is getting to spend time with those you don't see as much of throughout the year.  I know it makes the month of December crazy busy, especially when you've got a little one whose schedule you keeping messing up, but I was willing to forsake schedule to spend the evening with our dear friends the Smiths.  Travis and I are the godparents to their daughter Gabby, and since Emily went back to teach this fall (and because both our lives are hectic in general) we haven't seen much of them at all.  We had a great time watching the girls play, celebrating Gabby's (4th!) birthday a little late, and catching up with our friends.  Gabby was so good with Mia, which is impressive considering their age difference.  I was the oldest on both sides of my family, so I remember well having to play with all my much younger cousins.  It ain't so easy, let me tell you.  Lots of, "They're little, they don't understand, you are bigger so you need to share."  But Gabby was so patient, loving, and maternal.  I still can't believe she is four!

Playing dress up.  I think we need to get a hat like this.

So sweet.

Gabby is all smiles for the camera.

Cheese!

Our girls together

Last for this huge post, every year our church hosts a breakfast with St. Nick.  Travis and I have been working at them for the last several years, and last year I brought Mia even though she was still a bit young for the event.  This year, I was so excited because she's starting to understand more and more about Christmas, and we've watched The Polar Express about a dozen times, so we know who Santa is.  The morning starts out with breakfast, followed by crafts, games, and activities, and completed with a visit with St. Nick himself.  Unfortunately, Daddy was unable to join us for breakfast, so Papaw and Grandma Paschall came with Mommy and Mia. 

Mia was very excited to see Santa from the outset.  She waved and pointed and kept saying, "Santa!  Ho ho ho!"  I was optimistic that she'd do better this year as we had pretty good luck with Santa at the mall:

Note: My husband does not endorse the scanning of professional pictures and forbid me to post this anywhere.  However, you can't actually buy a digital image from the mall, so I feel justified in only posting it here.

 But as you can see, the actual visit with St. Nick didn't go too well.  Oh well, I guess there's next year, right?

"MOMMY"

Here's a few more pictures from the morning.  After our failed visit with Santa, we ran into our friend Savannah, and then did a few crafts with Grandma.

BFFs

Making Christmas ornaments with Grandma Paschall

We love our Papaw and Grandma!

Happy Birthday Jesus!

This year it was especially important to Travis and I that Mia begin to understand the real reason for Christmas.  Right after Thanksgiving was over, I went to our local Christian bookstore to find a good book about the Christmas story.  The one we found tells the story of Christ's birth, but also emphasizes that we give presents at Christmas because we want to share Christ's love and say Happy Birthday to Jesus.  Yes we did talk about Santa too, but we wanted to focus on the fact that Santa doesn't bring us presents because we're good.  God didn't wait for us to be "good" before He sent His Son to be born.  He sent Jesus to us because no matter how hard we tried, we couldn't be good enough.  We needed a Savior, so He sent Jesus because He loved us.

As you can see in the video below, Mia became very aware of who's birthday we were celebrating. 

Christmas Traditions

Part of becoming a mother means starting your own special family traditions.  As many of you know I love to bake and cook, and although I am a type A + personality, I could not wait for the day Mia would join me in the kitchen.  I quickly adjusted my expectations (hello messes!) and decided that the best way to enjoy the experience was to just go with it.  So what if there was flour dumped down the cabinet instead of the bowl?  

Over the holidays, Mia helped me make cookies three times.  The first time, she was just so excited about standing on the chair and eating the cinnamon chips that she really didn't do much helping.  By the second time, though, she was into it.  As soon as I asked her if she wanted to help Mommy bake cookies, she requested the chair be pushed over for her.  Her special job is to dump the dry ingredients into the bowl for Mommy to mix together, although she is still a bit frightened by the electric mixer.  

Helping Mommy measure out flour.

"Mommy, you need some flour right here under your nose."

"I am such a big girl!"

"I do it!  I do it!"

Of course all this cookie baking has created quite the little cookie monster.  This girl is in love with cookies, specifically oatmeal cinnamon chip.  If you haven't tried cinnamon chips, you are missing out.  I can't wait until we can try our hand at decorating and maybe even a gingerbread house.