Our Christmas..

Kerry had such a fun Christmas season this year. This seems to be the first year that she was old enough to really be into everything about it. She was enjoying all of the Christmas music (just like her mommy) and even learned a few songs, she was really into helping us decorate the tree, and Santa was finally a hit this year. We watched some of the classics like "Frosty" and "Rudolph" and she loved them...last year, not interested. She had so much fun helping me wrap gifts (just not hers of course) and was my official "tape assistant". And she apparently has the ability now to anticipate the arrival of a big event so we got the "How many days til Chrismas?" question almost daily for at least 2 weeks, hee hee. Best of all she learned more about the birth of Christ =).



New jammies for Christmas Eve. She's still really into Minnie Mouse so she got a cute little gown and new slippers. (Her much loved froggy slippers are pretty much outgrown now..sniff, sniff).



This was the first year we left out milk and a cookie for the Man in Red. She even left a note. I wrote "to" and "from" and she wrote the "Santa" and "Kerry". I love her fancy "S" and the fact that she ran out of room and put the "A" underneath =). But she caught on quick and wrote her name smaller.



Sleepy eyed girl on Christmas morning passing out stockings.







This was all Daddy's idea. It really "eats, drinks, pees, and poo's". She's had fun with it so far.



This was her "Santa" gift. She asked him for a computer game so we got her a Leapster Explorer. She LOVES this and it has some great educational games like "Mr. Pencil". She's all about learning to write letters and spell words lately so its a favorite.

She got some other fun stuff, too, like two Play-Dough play sets, Lego's, lots of craft supplies and other goodies. We spent Christmas Eve with Doug's family and enjoyed our church's candle-light service. Christmas Day, after a nice leisurely morning at home we went to my parent's house for a huge lunch with family. I'm really feeling so blessed as we wrap up 2011.

Merry Christmas from our family to yours!

( these are the two photos that were on our Christmas card this year).

Kerry sings "This is the stuff"

Kerry has a few favorite songs that she requests to listen to every-single-time-we-get-in-the-car. Here she's singing one of them. Oh my..she is a mess. I flipped the view screen over a few times so she could see herself...I bet you can tell which parts =).

What have we been up to?

Baking cookies, with sprinkles of course. She's getting better about not dumping half the container of sprinkles on one cookie but, judging by the evidence on her lip, she still can't resist sampling the icing =).





Decorating Christmas trees.




Making milk chocolate and white chocolate dipped pretzels with Mamaw..a yearly tradition.




Lots and lots of pretzels.



Trying to get a Christmas card worthy photo. When the subject is as fidgety as she is cute, and Mama is 4 hours into an all day nausea inducing migraine...well..you get the picture. At least, if you're on my mailing list you will =) !

and an unsuccessful attempt at putting together a gingerbread house...she still enjoyed sampling the building material so all was not lost.

Kerry recently saw episodes of Team Umizoomi and Special Agent Oso that both involved libraries. We visit the local library on occasion and I had always just checked out her books with mine. Well, after watching these episodes and learning about how libraries work she was so into everything about it. She was over the moon with excitement when I took her the library to get her very own card and so proud to sign her name to it all by herself and check out her first book. Afterwards we went to pick out a wallet to keep it in..she chose a cute little pink monkey wallet. Oh yes, she feels like "big stuff" now =).

"Shhh, Mommy, I'm reading."

And you should have seen her strutting around after she found her purse to carry her new wallet and card in. Too much, hee hee.

What can I say, three year old girls are just fickle!

We were near a different mall today after an appointment, and it was a cold drizzly day, so we decided to hang out there for a bit and maybe get some Christmas shopping done. We passed by Santa's place and I guess she decided she liked the looks of this Santa and was feeling brave so she said "I want to go in and see him". Well, all-righty then...if only she could have done this 2 days ago when I had her actually dressed for a visit with Santa. Oh well, I adore this photo, and this girl, anyway. =)

He was a very good Santa and she was sooo, so sweet telling him that "Daddy wants new pajamas, Mommy wants earrings (I didn't tell her this), and I want a computer game". He talked to her and asked her questions and really won her over. She told him that she wanted him to come to her house and even told him what street she lived on. We found out that his favorite cookie is chocolate chip, so I guess we'll be leaving some out on Christmas Eve because, trust me, she will not let us forget.

So, how about a little look back so we can really appreciate the evolution in this relationship between Kerry and the big guy in red.

2009

Surly Santa..taxidermy Reindeer...and an unhappy Kerry. Nice.

2010

Good Santa...Kerry was doing great until she actually got up in his lap at which point she went into a state of shock at what she had just done.

And then there was todays photo.

I love todays photo =).

My girl is very....expressive =)



It's going to be Christmas-card-picture-taking-time soon. Wish me luck.



She's looking festively red in these photos because I took her to see Santa yesterday....it was a no go. She wanted nothing to do with this strange bearded man in red so I didn't make her do it. She is, however, very excited for Christmas and, now that Thanksgiving is over she has been asking daily, "Is it Christmas yet?"

Things have been a little crazy and unsettled around here lately, which is my excuse for lack of posting lately. I feel horrible about it, too, because at the same time, Kerry is doing and saying the funniest things lately. She is growing and changing so much and I really need to document this more so I don't forget any of it.

She is full of imagination and pretend and I just love watching her play and listen to the little scenarios she comes up with. One of her favorite things to do right now is play "grocery store". We take turns being shopper and cashier, and when Daddy gets pulled in he is bag-boy, he hee.

Kerry's little dwarf hamster, Ruby, died unexpectedly a couple of weeks ago. She took it as well as could be expected. She just asked several times over the next couple of days "What happened to Ruby?" and "Why did Ruby have to get dead?" Explaining death to your three year old is tricky, and sad. Lucky for me, she has been watching the Lion King as much as we'll let her, lately, and so I was able to kind of use the scene where Mufasa dies to explain it to her as gently as possible. I purposely avoided saying that she "got sick" and died because I could just imagine the thoughts that would enter her head the next time one of us gets sick. We almost lost another pet last night. Our cat, Salem, started acting sick and painful last night and was really worrying me so I took him to a local 24 hour emergency vet. It turns out he had a life threatening urinary blockage. They sedated him, got the blockage out and flushed his bladder, and he is home now recuperating and feeling much, much better. He'll be on a special diet from now on to hopefully prevent that from happening again.

So I spent several hours at the emergency vet last night, then a doctors appointment of my own this morning, then back to Salems regular vet today to make sure he's still urinating and doing okay today, another appointment for me tomorrow, then one for Kerry on the 14th, and another for me on the 19th....this is what I mean when I say things are a little crazy lately. We did get to spend a nice relaxing evening putting up our Christmas tree tonight, though. Should be posting pictures of that, of course, soon...hopefully.

Her eyes..

We found out at her first routine eye exam, a few months back, that Kerry has a condition called entropion. This means that some of Kerry's lower lashes turn inward, instead of outward. It's worse in her left eye. They are in constant contact with her eyes...I can't imagine what that must feel like. I get one little eyelash in my eye and it drives me bonkers until I get it out. She has never once complained, and has no redness or watering so this came as a quite a surprise to me although I knew that this is not uncommon in asian eyes. Today was her second visit with a pediatric eye specialist and she said that, just like when she examined her three months ago, the lashes are turning in, there are abrasions, but no scarring yet. So for now she will be watched closely in the hopes that as she grows and her face "matures" the lashes will naturally start to turn outward. In the mean time the eye specialist is setting up an appointment with a plastic surgeon. This is sort of a "just in case", in the event that she starts to see any scarring in Kerry's eye the plastic surgeon will already be familiar with her and ready to do what is needed to prevent permanent damage to her cornea. She did reassure us that surgery is not often needed for this, but she wants to be ready in case, which makes me feel some better. I'm really not liking the idea of surgery. I love my baby's eyes just like they are, BUT if something about them is not healthy then we'll do what has to be done. Pray it doesn't come to that.

110

My baby girl is full of stories lately. A lot of them involve Pixie dust, Peter Pan, sharks...she's been watching "Jake and the Neverland Pirates" lately. I finally managed to catch a small bit of one of her "stories" and couldn't resist posting it.

Halloween 2011

First a little flashback. My little Bumblebee on her first Halloween in 2009 =).

This was the first year that Kerry was interested in picking her costume. She has been really into Disney lately, especially "Mickey Mouse Clubhouse" so when she spotted this Minnie costume, she was sold. She even insisted on having a black nose like Minnie.

She was sooo excited this year. She has been asking daily...for the past two weeks.."How many days til trick-or-treat?"

Her pumpkin was full in no time and started getting heavy so I ended up carrying it for her toward the end. When we got home she said " I had so much fun!"

Earlier this week my girl and I took of on our own to Bernheim Arboretum and Research Forest to take in the beautiful Fall weather and colors. Kerry loves to have "pick-a-nicks" so we packed up a cooler bag full of snacks and juice boxes and off we went.



I tell ya, for this Mama there's nothing better than seeing this sweet smiling face from across the pick-a-nick table. =).





We took in the Fall colors

And we played around a bit

A nice lady volunteered to take our picture on the Canopy Tree Walk. It juts out 75 feet above the forest floor and it sways a little. Kerry was a little nervous in this.



She cannot resist climbing rocks.

Hmm, I'm participating in Lisa's "Favorite Photo Friday" but can't seem to get the button that links back to it to show up on my blog.

We have been busy enjoying the beautiful weather and some fun Fall activities so these pictures are just from random days this past week.

Those pearly whites got a a good cleaning and I'm happy to report, no cavities! This was her second visit with the dentist and, again, she did AWESOME! I love this office. They are always so good with her.

So I just have to share a little Kerry story from today. She is crazy about Mickey and Minnie lately and has recently discovered the "Mickey Mouse Clubhouse" website. Well earlier today Doug was outside mowing the lawn, I was cleaning up in the kitchen, and Kerry comes walking in with a coloring sheet print out in her hand. I was kind of surprised and asked who printed it out and she said "I did". It turns out she can now get herself on-line, got to Mickey's Clubhouse, and print out coloring sheets at will. Seriously?! My 3 1/2 year old is now as computer savvy as I was when I graduated high school! It really is a different world now isn't it?

Ready to Rock!

Kerry loves using things as pretend drums, so we brought up the Wii Rock Band that had been sitting in the basement gathering dust since since she came home and let her go to town on the drumset. She was one happy little girl. I think she got the "are you ready to rock?" bit from an episode of the "Bubble Guppies" of all places =).

I love this shot of my girl. It's just so her, on the move.

And I love this one too, cause Mama still sees her baby cheeks in this one =).

This is the "I'm gonna get you, Mommy" shot...hee hee.

I feel like I've been a neglectful blogger lately..mostly because it seems like it's been so busy that I'm letting so much go undocumented in this little scrapbook of sorts.

So what's new with Kerry? Well, I'll say that my Jiangxi girl is still as spicy as ever...and at 3 1/2 she seems to have perfected the "whiny voice" when something isn't quite going her way, or she's frustrated. She decided to test the rules the other day by saying "No!" when I asked her to do something and...well..lets just say we had a little meeting of the minds and she won't be doing that againg any time soon. A wise mama friend of mine (hi Jess) said that she read somewhere that often at the half-year mark a child may experience a developmental growth spurt, and with that comes a new "awareness" and they sometimes try to test the rules. I absolutely believe it. I have noticed a developmental growth spurt. Her language and thought processes seem to be getting more..sophisticated, and emotionally she has made some big leaps in independence (going to Mother's day out on her own on Thursdays..huge for her), and for the last several months shes been asking lots and lots of questions about EVERYTHING. So I'm not surprised that she's been a little "extra spicy" and out of sorts at times. So we've just been trying to get into her little head and see where she's at right now , and reassure her that the rules all still apply and, by the way, it might be time to add a few more developmentally appropriate expectations of behavior. Seems to be going well.

Thankfully, she is still every bit as sweet as she is spicy, if not more so. She's always telling us we're her "best friends forever". She's really learning to have good manners and her little "please", and "thank you's" are so sweet. We get the best hugs and "I love you's" from her...those are the best. And just today she absolutely made me melt when she said:

"Mommy, let's happy ever after".

We're sure going to to our best sweetheart. =).

Here she is with the pumpkin she picked from a recent outing to a pumpkin patch..which I neglected to post about (see what I mean?). We're going to wait another year or two before carving our pumpkin..for now she paints them. She LOVES to paint.

So I got a surprise email from a family who just got home from China last week with their adorable girl who happens to be from the same SWI that Kerry spent her first 15 months in. I'm part of a Yahoo group for people who've adopted from this SWI and this family was given the opportunity to visit the orphanage while in China, so a few of us sent updated photos for them to give to the staff. We were told they were excited to get the updated photos of their former charges and called each of them by their Chinese name. At one point the staff pointed out a mural that is located on at the entrance to the property and pointed out a baby on the mural. They thought they recognized her as Kerry so they snapped a couple of photes and emailed them to me.

Sure enough, thats my girl. She's holding the hand of the mayor of JiAn and in her other hand is one of the toys that we sent in her care package, so this was probably taken in the weeks before we met her.

So two years after leaving, you could say she's gone but not forgotten. How cool is that?!

Each October we spend a weekend at Lake Cumberland State Park with Doug's family and some friends from church. It always proves to me a fun and relaxing weekend, and this year was no different.

And for our little nature loving family, it's bliss.

Kerry had a great time feeding the local wildlife.

And we took a nice hike down to the lake shore where she collected rocks and little clam shells...

and she was thrilled to find lots of big rocks to climb on.

Showing me an acorn...she collected a bag full of these to give to "our squirrels" at home.







She also got to enjoy the indoor swimming pool at the lodge, as well as the large playground. Check out this great old-school metal slide. Mama even had a turn on that thing...just for old times sake =).