Kerry is Three!

Kerry is three years old today! Where has the time gone? Yesterday's party got of to a bit of a rough and late start as the Birthday Girl was....ummm...constipated. There's really no nice way to put it...but after she had taken care of said business she was ready to PAR-TAY.

I love her shy-but-excited expression as everyone sang the Birthday song. All she could talk about for weeks was that she was "gonna have cupcakes and fwee candles!!" So thats what she got. She was too fast for me to snap a shot of her blowing them out, but we did get it on video.

I ADORE this shot of her with her gi-normous cupcakes. These are Gi-Gi's cupcakes and they are so scrumptious. She's my big three year old now, but she still looks like my baby in this one.





All the little guests got goody-bags. Cousin Sydnie loved her guitar themed necklace kit and said " this is SOOO rock-and-roll"...ha ha!

Sweet little cutie-pie McKenna.

The adorable and spunky little miss "C"



And my loooooong time good friend, Christy with tiny Miss "C".

Opening presents. She got a Woody doll from Mommy and Daddy. She fell in love with it in the store so we just had to go back and get it.

She got a tiara and wanted to wear it..here she's trying to put the matching earings in. The tiara lasted about ten minutes.

She'd been saying she needed a "pink um-breya" so thats one thing Mamaw got her.

My cupcake fanatic was thrilled with this little play set from Miss "C".

Our budding architect loved this set of Lincoln Logs from Nana and Papaw.

Happy 3rd Birthday Sweet Girl! I can't wait to see what this year holds for Kerry. The changes we saw from her 2nd birthday until now were just amazing and wonderful to see.

February 27, 2011

Two years ago today I got a surprise call at work.. just after 10 a.m. Dana, the special needs advocate at our agency, had found a baby at just after midnight and thought she might be the one for us. My head was spinning as I listened to Dana telling me that this baby was called Ji, Lu Ying, she had a VSD, she would be one year old the very next day, and that she was really cute. I immediately called Doug, raced home, and met him at the computer....where we fell in love with a tiny girl on the other side of the world.

From what I understand, each new list of special needs children available for adoption are posted at midnight our time for the adoption agencies to view. I'm so thankful to Dana for "burning the midnight oil" because if she had waited until morning to view the list, I'm pretty sure we would not have Kerry.

And I can't imagine life without her, now. I am so thankful, and so..so blessed.

Laugh, and the World laughs with you......

Cry, and, well Mommy will scoop you up in a hurry and try to make it better...because Mommy loves that smile.

Kerry loves her little dwarf hammy friend Ruby and was excited to spend some quality time with her yesterday. Louise passed on a couple of months ago (I'll spare you the details) and Kerry still asks about her occasionally. I don't know what else to say to a two-going-on-three year old aside from "Louise is gone, sweetie", which she accepts. She is so sweet with Ruby and handles her so gently. Ruby is equally as sweet and has never even offered to bite Kerry.

Last night we had a family movie and popcorn night. Aside from her beloved skates and a tambourine, Kerry owns nothing with the "Dis.ney Princesses" on them. We decided to take our chances and let her watch "Beauty and the Beast", and she seemed to enjoy it well enough...especially the music. She'd never seen it before and she sometimes likes to make up her own titles for things so she picked up the case, studied the cover for a second, and said "Dis one's called.... "The Pwincess singing"..ha ha.

Yeah, I'm hoping we can stay immune to the whole D.isney Princess merchandising. She was pretty into the movie at certain points then she'd lose interest and start coloring or working a puzzle, so we'll see. Judging by the only moderately interested look above, I think we might be safe for a bit longer. Right now, she'd rather be a Pirate than a Princess. I'm not complaining.

Oh and I had to share a funny little Kerry-ism from earlier this week. We were at Old N.avy just kinda seeing what we might find for spring and at one point Kerry said "Mommy! We're at the Old Maybe!"

We've had a bit of a warm up here this past week, and let met tell you, we've been enjoying it immensely. Kerry has been able to participate in one of her favorite past times...blowing bubbles. She's also been able to enjoy her swingset in the back yard, and the neighborhood /playground. The poor thing had been suffering from acute cabin fever and after spending a total of three hours out doors on Thursday alone, she seems to be cured. The warmer weather has done a world of good for her Mama, as well =).

It was so breezy that all she had to do was hold this bubble wand in the air and let the wind do all the work.





Watching the bubbles float away.

Just cute...

My baby girl is getting so excited about her upcoming birthday. She tells everyone, even the occasional stranger in the produce aisle, that she's "gonna be FWEE candles!" and that she's going to have cupcakes, and chocolate, vanilla and strawberry ice cream. We've even practiced blowing out candles. Let me tell you, the look on her sweet lil' face the first time she successfully blew out all of the wicks on the three wick candle we were practicing on, after being so excited about the idea of her "fwee candles", was priceless. As for me, I'm not sure I'm as ready as she is for my my "baby" girl to turn three.

And it seems that as she gets closer and closer to three, there are things that she does so differently than she did just a few short months ago. For instance, just look at the page she's painting above. Not so long ago, she would have paid little attention to the lines and would have just been content to put as much color in random spots as possible, and maybe paint a simple "smiley-face". Not any more. Although she still likes to add random splashes of color here and there, I watched for nearly half an hour as she carefully painted each of those boxes yellow..trying hard to stay in the lines. The growth and development that occurs in early childhood has always fascinated me, and now that I have a front row seat to observe it in my own child...sometimes I just have to sit back in awe, and watch.

Xin Nian Kuai Le (Happy Chinese New Year)

When I got home from work today, I decided we needed a few photos in honor of Chinese
New Year. It's been dark and cloudy so I'm not happy with the lighting, but I'm crazy about my little subject =). When we were in China, we bought several of these little qipao dresses for Kerry in different sizes and they hang in her closet like little stair steps. This is the largest of these dresses. She's growing so fast!