Double Happiness

Family Foto Fun Friday

Just a little reminder that FFFF has moved to http://lovinglydia.typepad.com.  Enjoy!

Giddy Up! (Wild Wild West!)

(click on photo to see larger image) Our local Mc Donalds was doing a fund raiser by offering photos of the kids on a pony.  Our kids were highly enthusiastic about sitting on the horsey and the proceeds went to Ronald McDonald Charities -- so we were "in"! After a light snack of Chicken Mc Nuggets and apple juice, we stood in line for our photo and this was the result.  Introducing Gwenny - the Grumpy Cowgirl and Maddy the Contemplative Cowgirl! Neither child cried but neither was super thrilled about wearing this silly attire while sitting atop an overheaded pony named "Snowy".  In fact, I'm almost certain that my girls were as excited about being there as Snowy was (which isn't saying much!)  But everyone was cute as can be so it was blog-worthy.  And here ya go!

Family FotoFun Friday Participants

1. sophieandsage.blogspot.com 2. catching butterflies 3. Cannon Fishbowl 4. Teague Adventures 5. Raising Cami Rose 6. 4 3=chaos 7. Just Keep Swimming

8. Chopsticks & Tabouli 9. Journey to Sarah Lu 10. Wo Ai Ni! 11. Mountains and Mountains & Oceans and Oceans 12. mexican chopsticks 13. The Happy Momma 14. The Princess and the Pea

15. Motherhood and Other Ramblings 16. The Ghelerter Twins 17. Journey with AnnaClaire 18. Diana\'s Twins 19. Allie\'s World 20. twinchatter

Love

Family FotoFun Friday Challenge #35 
Post your pictures on your blog and leave a link and a comment here before 6/22/07. 

This week's photo challenge is "Love".  Want to play?  Here are the very simple rules.

I got the idea for this week's FFFF from M3 over on the Salsa in China blog.  She wrote about how her twin cuties (Rose and Marie) totally "heart" one another and that made me think about Sisterly Love in our house.  Thanks, MMM!

My girls really do love one another even if they don't always show it.  But here they are showing it!

Family FotoFun Friday Participants

1. amy heymann 2. Our Adoption Trip in China-Mei Jun Qian-Mia Kennedy Gifford 3. Just Another Family 4. Just Keep Swimming 5. Elena Manubens 6. Cannon Fishbowl 7. JourneytoAnnalisa 8. Sophia\'s Journey Continues 9. My Chinese Dream 10. The Princess and the Pea 11. LadyBug Journals 12. Table for 5 13. Journey with AnnaClaire 14. Zoe\'s Place

15. mommy24treasures@aol.com 16. G.B.J. Lambooij 17. Journey to Miah 18. Life & Times of Chloe & Pearl 19. Raising Cami Rose 20. Search and Destroy Twins 21. Chopsticks and Tabouli 22. Oohs and Aahs 23. Ally 24. season star 25. Nobody said there\'d be days 26. Rachel Grace Li 27. MississippiZen 28. Life with Emilia

29. Eliza\'s Story 30. mexican chopsticks 31. Mountains and Mountains & Oceans and Oceans 32. She\'s a-DORI-ble!!! 33. Journey to Sarah Lu 34. Our Maddenclan 35. christina 36. Angela Bean 37. Diana\'s Twins 38. Gogoz Place 39. with six you get eggroll 40. The Ghelerter Twins 41. MakandJack

Messy!

Family FotoFun Friday Challenge #34 
Post your pictures on your blog and leave a link and a comment here before 6/15/07. 

This week's photo challenge is "Messy!".  Want to play?  Here are the very simple rules.

All kids are messy but Gwen and Maddy are incredible mess makers. If the naturally occurring toddler mess isn't intense enough, they'll invent more of it -- just for fun! For example, today, I gave my little monkey girls a slice of cheese. I figured they'd be enthuastic about this snack choice since they always open their toasted cheese sandwiches like Oreo cookies and nibble the cheese out. I thought I'd just save them the trouble. The result: They squeezed it between their fingers like play dough! Did they managed to swallow any of it? Nope. On any given day, you can probably find at least one mauled toast slice (that's been stripped of all its cheesy goodness) in some stage of petrification under a car seat. Every few days, I use a whisk broom to sweep out all of the crumbs onto our driveway (or a random parking lot) and I'm starting to notice that flocks of birds are following my van like sharks follow fishing boats that toss chum behind them as they return to dock with their daily catch. I'm probably interfering with migration patterns. We ate "mackie cheese" for lunch a few days ago and I actually had to carry their table into the kitchen and hose it off over the sink! But nothing is more abusive than the way they eat chocolate.  Just look at all that yummy stuff they wasted by smearing it all over their face!  (Okay, I'm guilty too but I was only one year old and I'm sure I've never wasted even an ounce of chocolate in any form since then!) Even washing up is messy in our house since there's soap to squirt and water to splash and shirts to soak and towels to toss on the floor.  And that's WITH my supervision!  We keep a baby gate across the bathroom door to prevent them from attempting to "clean up" on their own. Family FotoFun Friday Participants 1. The Princess and the Pea 2. Catching Butterflies 3. Raising Cami Rose 4. Journey to Sarah Lu 5. Journey with AnnaClaire 6. The Monkey King 7. MississippiZen 8. Just Another Family 9. Motherhood and Other Ramblings 10. season star 11. mexican chopsticks 12. Daily Grind 13. Chopsticks & Tabouli 14. mommy24treasures 15. Just Keep Swimming 16. Life with Dallas 17. Life with Emilia 18. Our Adoption Trip in China- Mei Jun Qian-Mia Kennedy Gifford 19. Katie\'s Antics 20. Journey to Miah 21. Allie\'s World 22. with six you get eggroll 23. Diana\'s Twins 24. Krista Dolan 25. Rachel Grace Li 26. Zoe\'s Place

Baby Strollers

Family FotoFun Friday Challenge #33 
Post your pictures on your blog and leave a link and a comment here before 6/8/07.

This week's photo challenge is "Baby Strollers".  Want to play?  Here are the very simple rules.

Of all of our baby related purchases, I think our strollers have given us the most bang for the buck.  There's not a day that goes by that we don't use the stroller.  Some days, it's hauled in and out of our trunk three or four times!  Since we use the stroller so much, it stands to reason that some of our most memorable photos include strollers.  When I was preparing this week's FFFF, I dug through the archives and had at least a dozen photos to post but I limited myself to just these three (one of each of our strollers). The top photo is a sleeping Gwen in our Graco Metrolite stroller.  It was taken in China at the Six Banyon Tree Temple in Guangzhou.  It was my birthday and it was our 6th day with our new daughter.  My birthday hadn't been a cause for celebration for many years.  First of all, it's 9/11.  Next, I'm over 40.  And as lousy luck would have it, I'd spent the prior two birthdays dealing with pregnancy losses (one of them was on my birthday).  So, this birthday in China with Gwen and Andrew was simply beautiful. Yes, we took a stroller to China.  We also took a baby carrier and both items saw LOTS of use.  It was wicked-hot and as much as Gwenny loved Mommy to hold her, she seemed to greatly appreciate being less hot and sweaty in her stroller when we were outside.   The stroller was cheap so it was easy to buy it for the trip to China and replace it if it didn't survive the trip.  But it survived and performed better than strollers 5 times the price.  There wasn't a reason to replace it until we got Maddy. In anticipation of Maddy's arrival.  We test drove every tandem/double stroller on the market and ended up with the one that met almost all of our needs (lightweight, large basket underneath, parent drink holders, no 'third' wheel in the center, easy to push with one hand, etc).  As luck would have it, it also ended up being the cheapest double stroller (other than umbrella strollers).  In the middle picture, you see Maddy and Gwen on Maddy's adoption day in our Graco DuoRider stroller.  This was her 2nd day with us and the first smile we captured on film.    Nine months later, we're still using this stroller every day and it's going strong. Finally, here's our new jog stroller - a BabyTrend Expedition.  It's much easier to push on the streets and sidewalk and the kids love it.  There's even a built in speaker for you to plug your mp3 player/iPod into for the kiddies.  We got this one at Babies-R-Us (cheap) and our only regret is that the front wheel doesn't swivel.

Family FotoFun Friday Participants

1. The Princess and the Pea 2. Just Another Family 3. With 6 You Get Eggroll 4. season star 5. Cannon Fishbowl 6. mexican chopsticks 7. Life with Emilia 8. Search and Destroy Twins 9. Our Three Daughters 10. And Miles To Go... 11. Chopsticks & Tabouli

12. Journey to Sarah Lu 13. the monkey king 14. Sophia\'s Journey Continues 15. Just Keep Swimming 16. The Ghelerter Twins 17. Motherhood and Other Ramblings 18. Journey with AnnaClaire 19. Raising Cami Rose 20. Now We Are Six 21. Twochinasistersandabrother 22. Zoe\'s Place

23. Loving Gracie - Paperwork Pregnant No More! 24. From Here to There, the Ladybug and the Dragonfly 25. From Here to the There, the Ladybug and the Dragonfly 26. Our Maddenclan 27. Amy W 28. Our Adoption Trip In China-Qian Mei Jun- Mia Kennedy Gifford 29. She\'s a-DORI-ble!!! 30. Twinchatter

No FFFF this week

I should have explained why I posted about Maddy's finding spot right out of the blue yesterday.  I posted it because I just got the photos yesterday.  Another family was traveling to her city and agreed to take some pictures of her finding location for me.  I expected one or two but they sent me a dozen or so.  I'm incredibly grateful for their generous gift and I know Maddy will be grateful to have these pictures when she's old enough to understand the whole thing.

Today is Friday and I'm still feeling a little bit emotional about the photos and can't quite bring myself to play a new round of FFFF just yet.   It's Memorial Day Weekend and a time to reflect on the sacrifices of others.   So many people have given so much so that we might have what we often take for granted.  This week of FFFF silence is dedicated to them.

I was feeling a little bit blue so, before nap time, I took the girls out into the front yard for a quick game of hide and seek.  These cherubs are the best cure in the world for the blues!  Just look at those sweet faces!  Gosh, I love 'em so much!  I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday weekend.

 

My Mother's Baby

Family FotoFun Friday Challenge #32 
Post your pictures on your blog and leave a link and a comment here before 5/25/2007.

This week's photo challenge is "My baby photo".  Want to play?  Here are the very simple rules.

Last week was Mother's Day and that gave me one more wonderful reason to think about my mom.  Now that I'm a mom (for the last 19 years), I find that I'm constantly comparing myself to my mother in ways I never did before motherhood.  For example, as a young girl, I wanted hair like mom and bright red fingernails.   I wanted a gold mini-dress and matching shoes! As a pre-teen, I hoped to have breasts and curves like my mother.  But, now that I'm a mom, I've put aside those trivial things in the single hope that I'd just have patience and grace like my mother. When my son was born in 1988, Mom took care of both of us until I was back on my feet and confident enough to go back to my own home with my new little person.  Mom was so good with Michael -- so incredibly natural -- that, at some point, I wondered if everyone would be better off if I just gave him to her!  Of course, I didn't do that and the sound of him sitting behind me here in the office pounding away at his computer is a reminder of that.  Some day, he'll have a wife and kids and I hope he'll appreciate my Grandma skills as much as I appreciate my mom back "in the day" when he was a baby.  Of course, Mom had experience because she'd already had a baby or two.  Now I have experience too! The photo you see is me -- my Mother's baby -- and the source of probably too much of that hard earned experience!

Please don't enter your link until you've completed the Foto challenge and posted it on your blog.  If you enter your link early, it might get deleted!  Also, Instead of your name, please enter your blog's name.  After the challenge is over, many people like to go back and look at old challenges so please help them find that specific post on your blog by entering the link that goes directly to it ( How do I do that?).

Family FotoFun Friday Participants

1. The Boy & The Bulldog 2. k2 3. season star 4. Nobody said there\'d be days

5. Journey with AnnaClaire 6. MississippiZen 7. Smith Family\'s Adventures 8. Cross-eyed

9. Motherhood and Other Ramblings 10. Just Keep Swimming 11. Journey to Chloe

Mothers

Family FotoFun Friday Challenge #31 
Post your pictures on your blog and leave a link and a comment here before 5/18/2007.

This week's photo challenge, in honor of Mother's Day, is "Mothers".  Want to play?  Here are the very simple rules.

(My week has been so screwed up that I didn't even realize that today was Saturday!  I thought it was only Friday!  So, I'm not really prepared to do this week's challenge.  I'll add Andrew's Mother to this post after the kids are down for their naps and not driving me straight up the wall).

So, let's see... today is Tuesday, right?  And it's taken me this long to (finally) get around to adding this wonderful woman to my Mother's Day FFFF challenge.  This is Andrew's mom and she's a truly wonderful woman!    This picture is one of my semi-recent favorites and was taken at Christmas 2005 in Santa Fe.  Mom is showing off her new Vermeer calendar (which is, obviously, no longer relevant since it was a 2006 calendar -- oh well.) I'm very fortunate to have the personal life experience of having two mothers who are so kind and giving.   My mother in law is such a joy to know.  Most of all, I'm blessed to be loved by the man who was raised by such a woman because everyone knows that a husband will treat his wife the way he treats his mother.  I'm humbled and honored to be near the very center of my man's universe -- a place his mother earned and deserves and I spot I often don't feel worthy to occupy but humbly do.  As a mom to two daughters, I have wonderful role models for my chidren.  I wish with all my heart that my mother was still here to share these amazing mother/daughter moments but I'm happy that the girls have Nana on speed dial and she's just a push of a button away! Happy Mother's Day to all present and future moms!

Family FotoFun Friday Participants

1. Just Keep Swimming 2. No More Work Than One 3. Journey with AnnaClaire 4. Smith Family\'s Adventures 5. zella 6. In My Eyes 7. The Ghelerter Twins 8. Rachel Grace Li 9. Chopsticks & Tabouli

10. Zoe\'s Place 11. Oohs and Aahs 12. Teague Adventures 13. And Miles To Go... 14. MississippiZen 15. Davis Days 16. AlyzabethAn 17. The Princess and the Pea 18. Our Three Daughters

19. 4 3=chaos 20. Motherhood and Other Ramblings 21. Journey to Sarah Lu 22. Sophie and Sage 23. Stephani 24. Now We Are Six

No No

Family FotoFun Friday Challenge #30 
Post your pictures on your blog and leave a link and a comment here before 5/11/2007. 

This week's photo challenge is "No No".  Want to play?  Here are the very simple rules.

Family FotoFun Friday Participants

1. Raising Cami Rose 2. Journey with AnnaClaire 3. Loving Lydia 4. Motherhood Ramblings 5. Just Keep Swimming 6. Search and Destroy Twins 7. Sophia's Journey Continues 8. mommy24treasures 9. Replaces Old Site!!! 10. Life with Emilia 11. Journey to Annalisa

12. season star 13. My China Journey to Miah 14. And Miles To Go.... 15. Chopsticks & Tabouli 16. Chloe and Pearl 17. The Princess and the Pea 18. Sophie and Sage 19. Katie Comes Home 20. MississippiZen 21. Now We Are Six 22. LadyBug Journals

23. Ni Hao Brown Cow 24. twinchatter 25. Mei Jun Qian- Mia Kennedy Gifford 26. Rachel Grace Li 27. The Ghelerter Twins 28. Zoe's Place 29. She's a-DORI-ble!!! 30. What's Katie Doing Now?

Gotcha/Metcha Clothes

Family FotoFun Friday Challenge #29 
Post your pictures on your blog and leave a link and a comment here before 5/4/2007.

This week's photo challenge is "Gotcha clothes".  Want to play?  Here are the very simple rules.

People say they have skinny kids on Gotcha day and they post pictures to prove it but I almost never see it.  Maybe because photos add ten pounds so, if you only weighed 19 to begin with, you end up looking normal?

I decided, in honor of Maddy's 8 month anniversay of our first meeting, that I'd dress her in her Gotcha clothes and see how much she's changed.  I was drawn to do this because I'd been thinking about her Gotcha day a lot over the past week or so.  Another family adopted a little girl around the same time that we adopted Maddy.  They met her in the same room, adopted her in the same room, stayed in the same hotel.  But they didn't keep her.  I can't 2nd guess their reasons but it really made me think about Maddy since every adjective they used to describe their new daughter could have easily been used to describe ours.

I remember it like it was yesterday.  They carried her in and my first thought was that she looked prettier than her referral pictures (if such a thing was even possible!) and my second thought was that she looked much, much, MUCH, skinnier!  So skinny, in fact, that it was hard to not gasp when we undressed her back at the hotel room to give her a bath.  Her back bone stuck out and had little scars where the boney protruberances had met with hard objects in recent months.  She was 25 months old and potty trained but had a butt the size of a newborn!  She was average height for a Chinese girl but her weight didn't even register on the charts.  She had a good appetite and was in Foster Care so what happened?  Did they intentionally starve her? 

It took Maddy about three days to cry.  Until then, she was compliant yet expressionless (except for rare instances when Gwen would make her laugh or smile).  She was filthy and covered in little sores that couldn't heal because she'd constantly pick at them.    She let Daddy tend to her basic needs.  She didn't tolerate me at all and that was the case until long after we were home.  Bonding has been a process that took the best part of six months but we've arrived!  She finally accepts affection and even seeks it out!  She's talking and running and jumping and eating!  She's a happy little girl and she owns our hearts!

Gwen was just a couple of months past her first birthday when we met her but she weighed a healthy 22 pounds!  She's even "healthier" now (that's what we're calling it!) at 35 pounds!  It was pretty easy to put Madeline into her Gotcha clothes because they'd only aged 8 months (and were large to start with) but Gwen has been our girl for 19 months now!

This really was the very last time we might ever hope to squeeze her into those clothes!  And it sure was a squeeze! They were TIGHT!  But I'm really glad I made the time and took the pictures.

Family FotoFun Friday Participants

1. Rachel Grace Li 2. Raising Cami Rose 3. Search and Destroy Twins 4. The Princess and the Pea 5. Twins! 6. Ryleigh Teague 7. Allison & Quinn 8. Cannon Fishbowl 9. Just Keep Swimming 10. Our Three Daughters 11. Sophie and Sage 12. Waala Family Adventures 13. MississippiZen 14. A Kerrnal Journal 15. Motherhood and Other Ramblings 16. Sophia\'s Journey Continues

17. LadyBug Journals 18. Davis Days 19. Hearts in China 20. Journey with AnnaClaire 21. Zoe\'s Place 22. Bang the drum and Shout! 23. Chopsticks & Tabouli 24. Our Adoption Trip In China- Mei Jun Qian- Mia Kennedy Gifford 25. Hiking Through Life with Ian and LiLi 26. Two "Twin" Terrors 27. mexican chopsticks 28. Loving Gracie... Paperwork Pregnant No More! 29. What\'s Katie Doing Now? 30. kathy 31. Now We Are Six 32. Avery FuMeng

33. Salsa in China 34. Shelly 35. Journey to Sarah Lu 36. With 6 You Get Eggroll 37. Ni Hao Brown Cow 38. The Life and Times of Chloe and Pearl 39. Ladybugs & Dragonflies 40. Our Madden Clan 41. Life with Emilia 42. stacie 43. She\'s a-DORI-ble!!! 44. All About Chloe 45. Rony 46. Journey to Gianna 47. In My Life