Interview Project time!

Last year, I participated in the 2012 Adoption Bloggers Interview Project. I learned so much from the interview experience and from reading others' interviews. Naturally, I wanted to do it again!

Keep an eye out for my interview, to be published on November 12th. (See, now that I have broadcast that to the world, I have to get on the ball and make it happen. Accountability!) As a happy coincidence, November 12th also happens to be Olivia's 6th birthday, A.K.A. the sixth anniversary of our parenthood and adoption adventure. You can read more about that day here.

November is Adoption Awareness Month, and this is one way that we will be participating. We will also be adding extra prayers in November for adoptive parents, birth parents, and children still waiting for a family, whether internationally or domestically through the foster care system. And, I hope, we will be visiting with both kids' birth families during November. It's going to be a busy month!

Language barrier

Sweet Martin is doing all of the things he should be doing at 14-almost 15 months old. He toddles, he runs, he tries to explore every nook and cranny that is not toddler-proofed. He doesn't climb like Olivia did at this age (Praise God!), but he gets around. And he babbles. He says very little that makes actual sense and sometimes gets frustrated that I don't understand him. But he talks a lot.

My favorite is when he comes up to me and, with animated facial expressions and hand gestures, launches into a very important description of...something. If I respond with something like, "Wow, that sounds great" or some other response that makes sense to other people, he looks confused and walks away like I can't possibly communicate with him. On the other hand, when I play along he continues to tell me (in completely unidentifiable words) exactly what he thinks about...something. It goes like this.

Martin walks up and slaps my leg. I look down. "What's up buddy?"

Martin, gesturing wildly and eyes wide. "Jesh-a-blah buh. Gah BAH bebud ziz duh. Blah bee?"

Me, animatedly, "Blah bee? Blee blah blah blue blee." (I'm not nearly as creative in my gibberish as he is.)

Martin, watching me with awe and respect, nods and says in all seriousness, "Bah beezah." And then we both giggle. And he grins widely and declares, "SSSSUP!" And he runs away.

Toddlerhood, man. It is pretty sweet.

The apple

I was snacking on an apple this morning when Martin came over and demanded his portion.

Happy to oblige his desire for healthy foods, I sliced off some small pieces and put them within reach of his small hands. I failed to notice, however, that he had shoved more than one piece into his mouth at once.

Moments later, he had toddled into the living room where he sat coughing and gagging on a piece of apple caught in his throat. Apples are in that weird category of food that, right now, are easy for him to bite off but not as easy for him to chew thoroughly enough to swallow. I can usually avoid problems by giving him tiny pieces, but it doesn't help when he decides to try multiple pieces in his mouth at once.

Both of my kids have very sensitive gag reflexes, so I could see where this was going. But Martin was sitting on the edge of the rug and leaning over the laminate floor, so I figured it would be an easy clean-up.

Nope. To try to dislodge the offending piece of apple, Martin decided to stand up. He turned this way and that, and as I was rushing across the room to aim him in the right direction, he promptly threw up all over my oriental rug...mere inches from the laminate floor.

Luckily, milk and apples do not cause stains. Still, cleaning up shiny hard laminate would have been so much easier than cleaning up a fancy rug.

After this incident, Martin fussed for the appropriate amount of time in order to let me know that he was displeased with me for letting him get a piece of food lodged in the back of his throat, and then he toddled off happily and let me clean up the mess.

Moral of the story: Do not feed the baby apples. Also, try not to get too attached to things you own that are of some value. The children will do what they can to depreciate those items as quickly and disgustingly as possible.

Soccer mom

Fall is my very favorite season. It seems we are moving slowly into it with a back-and-forth of cool days and warm days. It is the season to play outside as much as possible.

This year, playing outside includes soccer season. It is our very first foray into the world of youth soccer and it has been...interesting.

Soccer is an age-group sport, not a skill-based sport. Which is a bit frustrating. Olivia is in the "under 6" group, which includes kids aged 4-6, and she is nearly a head taller than everyone else. While she has yet to perfect her skills, she definitely has them.

The most obvious of her skills is speed. This kid is fast. She gets in there and steals the ball and then breaks away and is on the other side of the field kicking on goal before half of the kids even realize what is going on. Now, if we could just improve her kicking accuracy, she'd be a rock star!

Joe is the coach of this team. We are still a little unsure about how we got roped into that. However, as much as he says he is ineffective at this age group, there is no doubt that he knows more about the sport than 90% of the adults involved. Many of the adults are learning the rules as they go, sometimes from him, even if the kids aren't really absorbing it. (Kids in the 4-year-old age range cannot be expected to remember the rules of soccer.) And Olivia is learning a lot from him. So it is fine.

Carrying her brother around at water break time.

Martin has been my spectator companion for soccer practices and games. He likes to try to walk onto the field while the kids are running drills. I try to keep him behind the net as much as possible, but he's getting to be faster than me.

Kicking the ball into the wrong side of the net.

As fast and valuable as Olivia is on the field, she also really likes to play goalie. She's so cute. She stands in the box shouting cheers to her teammates and gets all excited when she blocks a kick on goal or gets to kick the ball back into play.

So far, soccer season has been fairly enjoyable. I think we'll enjoy it even more next year, when competition is introduced and more kids are playing the game instead of kicking up dirt and picking clover.

Weekend trip

Last weekend we did a whole lot of driving and spent some time in Wisconsin visiting Joe's Grampa, who is 97 years old. You guys. That is a lot. Grampa was married 50 years to Joe's Gramma before she died, and now he's been married more than 20 years to his second wife. That kind of life experience just kind of blows my mind.

Joe's Grampa is a pretty amazing guy. He's an old farmer and can carry on a conversation about just about anything. His health has been declining a little more steadily in the past year or so, but he maintains his sense of humor and is just fun to talk to.

This was Martin's first trip to see Great Grampa, for whom he was named (Grampa's first name is Martin's middle name). They were fast friends.

Fist bump with Great-Grampa

We visit about once a year, and every trip is special because we don't know which trip will be the last one. Each time we are there, we have places we visit, including the cemetery where Joe's maternal grandparents and paternal grandmother are buried. When Joe's Grampa is gone, these trips will cease, and that will be sad because it's become something of a tradition with us. These are Joe's roots even though he didn't grow up in Wisconsin.

I hope we will have a reason to visit Wisconsin a few more times because we would miss that tradition. But most of all, we would miss visiting with this pretty incredible guy.

Joiner

I realize that I don't write here often enough, so I'm joining the 7 quick takes bandwagon for this random Friday to jot a few things down.

1. Olivia still loves school. She continues to dazzle her teacher with her ability to get along with others and follow directions and be helpful at school. She continues to befuddle her parents with her inability to do any of the above things at home. Transitions, man. They kind of suck.

2. Martin has developed an excited Pavlovian response to the appearance of any yellow bus. He thinks they are all Olivia's bus. He's excited to watch her get on in the morning and get off in the afternoon. It is adorable.

3. Speaking of Martin, he is quite the little comedian. He is just so funny. And he knows he's funny. And he gears his timing toward making himself even funnier. He may be a comic genius.

4. I kind of love school uniforms. Like, a lot. They are SO EASY. We never, ever fight about what to wear in the morning. Uniforms = da bomb

5. Also, I love our school. Catholic school, y'all. It is something else. I mean, Olivia comes home talking about what she learned in reading and math and religion. In kindergarten! I was a public school kid, so this is kind of foreign to me, but awesome.

6. In that same vein, I love that I can send Olivia on the bus and she doesn't come off with bad habits learned on the bus. Or at school, for that matter. The kids, the teachers, the bus driver...they all foster values and an attitude of respect. I know some of the kids who ride the bus she would ride if she went to public school, and based on that I'm certain that we'd be fighting some newly-learned bad habits if she were in that environment.

7. This is kind of perfect.

Kindergarten. No big thing.

So, Olivia started kindergarten on Monday. She woke up WAY early and then fell back asleep on the couch and then popped up when I said it was time to put on her uniform. Soon, she was ready to go out into the wide, wide world of big kid-dom.

I know this is something of a milestone for most kids (parents). For her, it was no big thing. She was in preschool at the same school for the past two years, all day, 2-3 days a week. She simply moved one classroom over to start kindergarten.

When we walked in, she went immediately to the lockers, found the one with her name on it, hung up her bag and went to play with the other kids. "Wait a minute, I need a picture." Sighing heavily like a teenager embarrassed by her camera-happy Mom, she obligingly moved over to stand in front of her locker for a snapshot.

She managed to put on an excited smile, though.

She was ready. Today is the third day, and she's still popping out of bed, eager to choose a uniform color and get dressed for school. (I love that, by the way. Uniforms rock. SO EASY.)

Today, I am shopping online for a sweatshirt or cardigan that is uniform-appropriate because we had some (very welcome) unseasonably cool weather this mornings. I wasn't expecting that in MID-AUGUST, but we'll take it.

We are still early in this 5-days-a-week school process, but so far it has been good. I am almost as excited about this school year as she is.

OK, family, finish with your pictures already and get out of here. It's school time!