It's Christmas Eve...

We have been so busy this December, but I really want to throw up some pictures of our Christmas activities before the big day. 

To make a long story short, I'm very pleased the 3rd Annual Jupiter Nativity Experience was a success, and thrilled the stress is over. The weather was perfect, and we had a great community turnout. I directed the play, and did more sewing than usual: I made Dave's vest, fixed my costume, and made all of Jessica's costume from a pattern. After all those months of study and thought about Christ's birth, I never feel guilty that my Christmas is too commercial. I'll blog more about it another time.

Jessica learned how to say "dee" for Christmas trees, except that she says it when she sees Christmas lights, so I think we programmed her incorrectly. She can take bows off of presents, but although she understands the "open" command for books, she didn't figure out how to unwrap gifts. (Note the bow stuck to her butt, her pants slipping down from crawling, and her warm clothes: it's actually cold down here--into the 30's--several times.)

Two days after the Nativity, Dave and I went to hear the King's Singers--they are incredible vocalists. We didn't have the time or the courage to go shake their hands, so we bought CDs and took a cell phone self-portrait.

I wanted to take advantage of the fact that we weren't traveling out of town, and see as many local Christmas events as possible. (Entertainment is twice as sweet when you're in the audience and not trying to make it happen!)

So I went to hear a local Presbyterian choir, and the Young Singers of the Palm Beaches.  The Young Singers sang only 1 song I'd heard already (yes!), and it was funny and interesting all 2 1/2 hrs. One of my piano students is in the junior choir. I highly recommend them.

We traveled south to Hoffman's Chocolates, which has a strange collection of outdoor Christmas displays, and a store-factory with the most tantalizing sweets. Why can't they make a scented candle that smells like that shop? The real thing is terrible for my waistline.

We also went to the music-light show at the mall we can't afford to shop at.

In this blog, Jessica is modeling 7 outfits all generously donated by friends, including this onsie: "It's my first Christmas: SPOIL ME!" No problem babe.

We also rode the new carousel, complete with Florida animals (dolphin, manatee, flamingo, turtle, and endangered sandhill crane) with it's charitable pitch, ubiquitous in our wealthy county.

And at others' request, and out of personal guilt, I finally set up an appointment and we drug ourselves to a portrait studio for formal pictures. Call me ProcrasiSanta, but we didn't get to it 'til Christmas Eve Day. It took way too long, and we're no supermodels, but they'll do.

Jessica is just learning to stand.

Oh how I love our little angel!  She is the best gift we could ever ask for. Dave and I are so excited to watch her open presents.

We stopped at the extravagant botanical Santa garden at the mall. A visit with the man in the red suit was not high on a to do list that I only half finished this year. Next year we'll try for a picture with Santa.

Jessica is seriously motivated to stand with all those toys on the coffee table (our games trunk.) These are her first figurines and she shows her love by biting their heads. I'll post that video later...

She's asleep right now (probably on her knees/bottoms up as usual), and I should go to bed too. So I'll sign off. Merry Christmas to you all. We love you and wish you a Happy New Year, from the three of us.

Thanksgiving

We had a nice quiet Thanksgiving. Dave enjoyed his 4-day weekend, and I got 4 days off working on the Nativity. The day started with Dave running 4 miles in the local "Run for the Pies" in which the first couple hundred people across the finish line won a pie.

Two years ago he ran this race with my sister and her husband, and we thought it was a 5k (3.1 miles). This year he trained for 4 miles and was pleased he improved his time by a whole minute, and got a Publix apple pie.

Jessica and I waited at the playground during the race. She had no fear; she climbed all over and was happy to have kids running all around her.

Dave cooked ALL of Thanksgiving dinner. I had been only buying instant & frozen food, and hadn't made any plans by the Saturday before Thanksgiving.  Dave took the initiative: "I'm making a list and going shopping, Liz. What do we need?"

Dave and I love watching Alton Brown's Good Eats. Dave used Brown's recipe to brine our turkey for the second year. 

All I did to help was set the table, take pictures, and beg for vegetables besides everyday broccoli and carrots. Dave got me spagetti squash and artichoke--yum. Besides some extra salty potatoes, everything was perfect. He even did all the dishes. Thanks, hon.

We failed to get a good picture of all of us.

Jessica chowed down and used our tablecloth as a napkin for her hands. Here she bites a stuffing popsicle.

Here's Jessica's opinion of the meal:

After Jessica's morning nap on Black Friday, we went shopping. Jessica lasted about 4 hours--the last hour we had to switch toys, snacks, or distracting games every 5 minutes. But we made it to 4 stores and picked up some deals.

We wanted to buy ALL of the toys from our childhood for her THAT DAY. We had to keep telling ourselves "She's too young for a:
dial-up phone
lite-brite
legos or duplos
tricycles
toy food and kitchens
science kits, especially involving rockets
Playdough
bristle bricks
anything Crayola
giant puzzles
popcorn pusher
toy register with plastic coins
Lincoln logs or tinker toys
etc.etc.etc."

She can't stand, and she doesn't really know how to use her shapes bucket or the wood puzzles she has now. Her first birthday is in 2 months anyhow, so we can get other toys then. We opted for a giant plush lion, balls, a 3-D bookmark, a baby laptop with buttons and lights and music, foam bath letters and a doggie washcloth mitten, and a short push toy with music & buttons.

I also bought her a cute stripey outfit (which says size 24 months but will probably fit her this summer.)  Our little baby is growing like a weed: she turned 9 months this weekend, but is wearing 9 & 12 month clothes already. She has long outgrown her little baby bjorns/slings, so we also got a frame baby backpack off Craigslist. We already tested it and it works great. We also Amazoned a plastic, indestructible Nativity.

Saturday we pulled out the decorations, and Jessica loved the loud plastic sparkly tree beads.

Dave persuaded me we needed a real tree. It's been 5 years with only the fake 3-footer. So Jessica went with us to get the skinniest tree in the lot. (I thought that was a funner milestone than seeing Santa.) She just thought it interesting, but spikey. I've been letting her play with the little tree (shown below), and our Christmas bells. So far she's pretty obedient about not pulling ornaments off, and Smokey has no interest in the trees either...but we'll see.

I also found the cutest Christmas PJs for her with "I've been good" and reindeer all over. But she kept pulling at the forearm sleeves, which were too tight, so we cut them off.

We're terribly excited for Christmas this year (we're staying in Florida), and very grateful for our little Jessica.

A Whole Month's Worth of Posts

I've been busy working with my congregation for our 3rd annual Nativity Experience for the community (nativityexperience.blogspot.com). I work on it every day, so I'm behind on Jessica's blog. So I'm warning you: this is a long entry.

This October, with high temperatures still in the 80's, we got a visit from Dave's old lab buddy from University of Texas and his new wife. They had just finished a cruise, and since one of their adventures got rained out, we went snorkeling here in Jupiter. 

I drug Ruth along for some letterboxing, since there are 2 hidden near the inlet. (One I still can't find.) Jessica played and napped, and Dave kept his cell phone out of the water.

Apparently it was jellyfish day at DuBois Park. About 7 people were stung by some bad, unseen jellyfish, including a little kid all over his body (he was OK after a vinegar spray), and Dave and Jay got a little zapped when they were snorkeling in the inlet.

There were also some harmless comb jellies, less than 4 inches long. They have rainbow lights along the edges and we picked some up in our hands. If you look close you can see tiny orange, green, and purple lights.

On Conference weekend, Jessica went to the hospital. She had had a 102 fever for a week, and the doctors decided it wasn't teething, ear infections, or viral, so they took some blood and urine tests and gave her antibiotics. The next day her white blood cell count was HIGHER, not lower, so they sent her to the hospital as a precaution and for more tests. Her only other symptom was sleeping more, and probably peeing less, although we didn't notice it.

It turned out all she had was a urinary tract infection, but those results didn't come for days. In the mean time, the hospital came up with all sorts of creative tests to figure out why her white blood cell count was higher than a UTI would indicate.

We were just along for the ride the first few days. We found out Jessica's veins are hard to tap, and I couldn't stand to see her hurt, so Dave held her. She didn't like her left arm tied up to an IV, but she figured out how to wriggle some fingers out of the tape and use just her right hand. She perked back up with fluids and antibiotics, and soon acted like she was just there for fun. She had a hightech crib and a gold star helium balloon and lots of attention. Dave and I stayed with her 24 hrs for 4 days, until the last night, when she was back to her 12-hr sleep schedule: we broke down, went out to eat, then slept at home.
  

By this time, to make a long story short, we were getting tired of waiting, testing, and the parade of doctors. A misdiagnosis of pneumonia didn't help. They wanted one more test, but I wasn't buying it. I stayed up two nights for hours reading medical information online, and we discussed it. We decided to check her out. And she is just fine so far--happy and healthy. We learned a LOT about when to trust the doctor and when to trust our instincts. We appreciated the attentive care she did get and the blessings of technology.

OK, back to the fun stuff! Jessica, in the last month, has learned a lot. After self-feeding only crackers for 2 months, she finally figured out pincher grasp and started getting Cheerios in her mouth. Hooray for self-feeding babies!

She can't pick up those slippery fruits, so we tried this game one day:

She also likes to try drinking from a cup (no love for the sippie, yet)  . . . 

. . . and last week I came in after her nap to see had she sat up on her own. 

She gets on her knees sporadically, so this is my best picture. We cheer every time she does, so she knows she's doing something good. Now if she's on carpet, she can move forward to get toys. It's more of a kneel-flop forward-kneel-flop forward procedure so far. She can sit up and lay down at will now, and we are so proud. 

She is wandering farther from where we put her down, and so pleased with herself!

She's learned to drum, and babbles all the time. She says "dadadadada" all the time, occasionally says something with "k" when she sees Smokey, and knows how to say "MA!" randomly, but we're not counting anything as words yet. She knows when we ask her a questions she's supposed to say something back, and when we are telling her the name of what she has in her hand.

A friend of mine watched Jessica while I did the sound checks for Nativity. Jessica  babbled "dadada", and their family dog ran to the door thinking that their "dad" was home from work!

But she has her bad moments. She's learned to pitch fits: throwing her head back, leaning to the right, grabbing her right ear, and wailing like she's dying. But you put Cheerios on her tray and the tears suddenly evaporate. She poops in her bath, pinches us, and tries her best to jump from high places. But not too often. It all melts away when she leans forward to kiss us without being asked.

Here's a clip of me trying to secretly film her doing her new "evil laugh". I was trying to only video her from the waist up since she was taking her bath. (Now we know why she does that evil laugh in the tub!) The bathtub surprise we caught on tape made me laugh too, but disgusts Dave. We've talked seriously about early potting-training techniques . . . 

Dave is training Jessica young to root for the family alumni college football teams . . .

and Mommy spent several hours sewing a biblical costume for Jessica's first Christmas.

And there's lots of time for laughing; at anything that comes near her chin:

And the cat, of course:

Jessica's First Halloween

Well, every year I run my Halloween costume ideas by Dave, and we liked this one that takes advantage of Jessica's bald pate:

Hahahahaha! She can be the fairy princess when she's older and can pick. I'm a big Charlie Brown fan. Dave bought me the holiday DVD set (Great Pumpkin, Thanksgiving, Christmas). 

It was a fun theme. Dave's dark Snoopy ears don't show up well in these pictures. He helped me bobby pin my hair up to look like Lucy.

We kinda wanted to dress up as Peanuts characters dressed in their Halloween costumes, but it's hard to find a red hat and that green witch mask, a green WWII flying ace helmet, and Jessica doesn't know how to say "I got a rock."

We went to our church family Halloween party & Trunk-Or-Treat, and the PAL (adoption support group) kid party. Jessica liked watching the kids, and was good to stay up past her bedtime until 8:30pm, when she crashed both nights. 

Jessica, for Halloween, has been working on her new "evil laugh": a nasally, fast, sheep-baa-ing, forced low snicker. It makes everyone else laugh, and is impossible to catch on tape. You can hear a milder "mostly evil laugh" version in this clip:

My friend Meghan (left) and Halloween party chair (Padme) Josselyn. Josselyn and her crew did the most amazing Halloween decorations, complete with giant gym-sized spider web on the ceiling, tons of contests, and fake organs floating in glowing liquids. Amazing!

For trunk or treat I made the back of my PT Cruiser into a monster mouth. I used 4 black garbage bags, covered the headrests with fake eyes, and cut jaggedy teeth from poster board. And the best part: I threaded a rope through the hole of the trunk cover (top of the mouth) so you lift the jaw up and down. I played Jaws on the stereo and used a power converter to plug in lights in the candy cauldron.

While I was sweating in the Florida heat (it was Oct 29) decorating my car, Jessica had her first sucker: a strawberry Dum Dum. It only took one lick for her to figure out what a sucker is for.

The kids under age 5 had to be persuaded to put their arm in for candy. I thought I'd have to sit in the car all evening and work the mouth, but half of the kids wanted to operate it. Drew, also one of my piano students, threw out menacing monster phrases; my favorite was "You KNOW you WAHHNT some CAHHNNDY!"

Our video clips are dark and not very long, but gives you an idea.

(And Jon: We have video evidence who benefitted from your kids' trick-or-treating . . . )

Jessica and the Red Balloon

I think Jessica's little mind figured out that the her free grocery store balloon was connected to that pink plastic star in her hand. And yanking that was funny. She laughed so hard for 30 minutes, she gave herself hiccups (normal) and had tears leaking out of the side of her eyes (a first). What a goon.

With the distracting balloon, not knowing where things are at Publix, and all of Jessica's admirers, it takes well over an hour instead of 40 minutes to buy food. But it's much more fun.

Today's darling outfit is sponsored by Aunt Rochelle. Thank you!

Adoption Support Groups

These people are lifesavers. Our friends and family were very sympathetic and helpful, but we drank in all the experience of other adoptive families.

Our local support group is Parent Adoption Lifeline, and Dave especially loved meetings. We attended for 3 years, two of which had a "Candle lighting" ceremony and lunch. We had to light a "waiting" candle, while others lit a "new adoption" candle. Finally in August of 2010, we got to light a candle for Jessica.

We are also board members for the Florida Families Supporting Adoption group, for couples waiting to adopt through LDS Family Services. We mostly talk by phone since we're scattered across the state, but once a year we have a conference in Orlando.

2010 was Florida's turn to host the regional conference for the Southeast U.S. FSA groups. Man it was a lot of work!--months and months. Our co-presidents and friends, the Middletons, decided adoption conferences had too many tears, and we need a fun theme. I volunteered to be in charge of speakers, and molded chocolates (a first for me) as thank you gifts. I thanked myself a lot too.

These thank you bundles also had coconut candles packed inside,

and I spent several hours collecting, transporting, and stringing hundreds of fragrant plumeria blossoms to make flowers leis for the first time. Thanks to our friend Becca, (who's adopted, searching for her birthmother, and may adopt children herself soon) who stayed up til 1 am helping me make these beauties.

And the speakers were great. An adoption lawyer,

a really funny fertility doctor,

and others: Church head adoption lawyer David McConkie, the LDS Family Services President and member of the Seventy, Steve Sunday, the insightful Kite and Satchell families, an online advertising guru/adoptive dad, and 4 amazing birthmoms, all different.

And we also all heard our guest speaker, by far the highlight of the conference: Troy Dunn, the Locator. Long story short: he's a Florida bishop; in his day job, he's reunited thousands of adoptive and birth families; he's good at it; he made us all laugh and cry; and he has an adopted mother and brother.

My favorite parts: doing what is right doesn't always equal doing what feels good; adopted parents shouldn't take it personally when kids search for birth family (and they always do); he doesn't help kids under 18 search; reunions are almost always wonderful; kids are better adjusted to adoption the earlier and more they know; the funniest story was about his company getting launched overnight when a TV plug posted his phone number, and thousands looking for adoptive connections called (because it's all about family!); he once helped locate a birth mother in a medical emergency that saved a little girl's life, without the girl knowing at her request; foster parents have his highest respect; and he loves birth parents.

After some great music, good food, a Polynesian floor show, and lots of talking and a few tears, and a great sigh of relief, we came home from one of the best events I've ever helped plan.

Below are some of our board members, including Kim Middleton, left, (an incredible person), and a birthmother (red shirt).

Jessica was a peach; she sported a hula skirt and onsie declaring "Sorry Brangelina, I'm taken."

Hooray for adoption friends and hooray the work is over!