What a wonderful Christmas!

i think back to 2 or 3 years ago and how i was happy but underneath it all i was sad because i didn't know what the future would hold. 2 years ago yet one more holiday had arrived without a child in our home, without even being approved as we should have been long ago. In fact, Dec 26, 2008 is when we had decided to start domestic adoption, not knowing whether we would ever be approved for foster/adopt, and shortly after is when i started this blog!

Anyway, this Christmas was probably the best ever. i got to spend it at home with my 2 favorite people, Charlotte was in an excellent mood despite all the gifts and excitement being overstimulating. She had an early nap and it lasted 3 whole hours (crazy!) and woke happy and regenerized.

Santa was generous to her and the rest of us. In truth, Charlotte got enough toys for a set of triplets lol, but at least she's too young to be TOO spoiled. We may put some of them up until her birthday and put some extra money in her education fund instead of buying gifts.

So, here we have proof that Santa really did come! We only had one tree in our bedroom, but when we woke up yesterday we had one in the living room, too, with lots of toys and Santa left footprints and everything!

Note the doll in the middle stocking (Char's), the lovely 2 wood toys in front of the tree, and in the far right corner you can see part of the wooden play kitchen that MIL bought that Santa must have set up for us. How sweet of him! She got SO MANY toys from us, MIL, and my sister also. Plus Santa's footprints led us to a toddler playground outside! Wowee!!! My favorites are the doll and a doll sling i made her. Here she is opening gifts:

As for me, i got spoiled, too! Alan gave me a Kinderpack toddler carrier, a snap thingie for crafts(or changing velcro diapers to snaps), pajamas, cutting boards, and Photoshop Elements! Woo hoo! Santa gave me a corkscrew, bottle opener, S'Mores making kit, and a Rubiks game.

And my favorite photo of the day for oh so obvious reasons:

Heaven help us!

It's been a while

Sorry, i suck as a blogger. But you knew that.

A lot and not a lot has happened in the last month. Our adoption decree was actually signed by the judge this time, and paperwork has started trickling in about new insurance plans and whatnot. Hopefully soon there will be birth certificates, social security cards, etc.

i've been going a little (a lot) insane with Christmas shopping. i keep telling myself "This is the last year you can spoil her like this!" But i know i will anyway lol.

i think we're getting really close to potty learning. We sort of are, just somewhat slowly. It started with another diaper rash about a week or two ago (she gets rashes anytime poop sits on the skin, and in this case she must have pooped in the car and then taken a long nap that started in the car), and we had her go pants-less for most of a week. We bought a froggy potty chair but she kept taking the bowl out and then peeing/pooping in it. i think the handles on the side of the bowl stick out in an uncomfortable way. Anyway, we now have the biggest Bjorn potty which she uses pretty well but she still likes the regular potty with the insert. Most of the time when i get home from work she wants to be pants-less again, and honestly she's doing really really well. Some days she has 1 accident (out of 3 or 4 "incidents") but less and less, and asks for potty with Alan and our nanny frequently. i've been looking for some training pants and such and plan to have her spend a lot of naked time the week after Christmas when i'm off and Alan is off all but one day.

It was a dark and stormy night

And full of traffic. And when i got home my poor girl had a really bad diaper rash, so i was very preoccupied by taking her to the potty frequently and searching for cloth-safe diaper cream and letting her go diaper-free and taking her to potty every 5 minutes.

Preoccupied enough that i didn't notice the toilet was running and overflowed until there was about 1" deep in our large master bath. Ick, what a night! And poor girly has already woken up needing a diaper change once after only an hour. i think it will be a long night. i want to change her as soon as she wakes because she really is in pain.

i asked Alan if he would pick up a little potty chair tonight or tomorrow and give Char as much diaper-free time as possible. The nanny said that she had poop in her diaper when she woke from her nap, and since she'd fallen asleep in the car and Alan took her straight to her crib, my bet is she pooped in the car then fell asleep. She hasn't pooped in her sleep since, well, ever. Any time poop sits on her skin, she gets a bad rash. It's totally not his fault; he didn't smell it and he certainly wouldn't wake her up to change her diaper. It's just one of those things but i feel so badly for her. Let's hope she "gets" the potty chair really well so the nanny doesn't quit lol.

Now here's hoping there's no leak in the bathroom or anything. After i turned off the toilet and then went upstairs to put Char to bed, it seemed like the water level fell a bit. Hopefully the rug just wasn't fully saturated and the couple of towels i'd tossed down were more aborbent than one might think rather than having a leak in the floor somewhere. Yikes!

Boy, oh boy

Still no news about the "lost" adoption. With the Thanksgiving holiday, we figured no one would be really working last week and didn't push. However, one of Alan's investigative reporter friends is "raring to go" -- meaning wanting to call the judge's office to push them along. Chances are they won't do a story about it (the station's legal department doesn't like to piss off judges without a really compelling reason) but it will hopefully spawn some accountability. We'll probably hold off until late this week, but this mess has to get resolved before Dec. or we'll miss out on all benefits,the tax stuff, etc.

So yesterday we did our Christmas decorating. We decided to skip the tree in the living room this year, for obvious reasons. We did put up a tree in the master bedroom as well as a lighted wreath above the mantle and a lighted garland on the mantle, garland on the stair rail, some Christmas-y decorations around, etc. It looks pretty nice considering. We're planning to assemble big gifts a week or more before Christmas and then on Christmas Eve we'll put up another tree in the living room so when Char wakes Christmas morning, it'll be like Santa came in the night and REALLY brought some Christmas magic.

There was a big mishap yesterday that shows just how genius Char really is. Alan went on a hunt for extension cords (somehow they disappear this time of year), and Char followed him. He came back through the living room where i was and into the kitchen. i thought Char followed him into the kitchen, but she must have turned around and left the other way again.

i heard what sounded like a mouse in the wall between the living room and master bedroom. Since we don't have mice and Alan was in the kitchen in the other direction, i called "Where's Charlotte?" to him. He thought she was with me, i thought she was with him. Uh-oh!

i ALMOST passed right by the master bedroom because the door was closed (and surely i would have heard it close, right?), but i decided to peek in. As i did, Charlotte walked out of the far corner of the room holding, in one hand, a pair of scissors (!), and in the other the plastic babyproofing outlet cover (!!). She had clearly been trying to insert the scissors in the outlet cover. Oh, and where did she get the scissors? She somehow got them out of a babyproofed drawer. Yeah. Guardian angel that day for sure.

It just does NOT stop!

Question of the week: Is our adoption final or not?

We have still not received Charlotte's birth certificate, SSN, or new medical card with her new name, etc. When i contacted the medicaid office, they said they had no record that the state had sent in the paperwork. Every time we called the attorney or the state adoption worker, we get the same answer: "i sent in ___ paperwork; the state's probably backlogged right now."

Well, enough was enough so Alan decided to walk to the courthouse/county clerk's office and get some extra copies of the adoption decree and just send in the paperwork for everything ourselves. And... they have no record of the adoption being final. WHAT?!?!

Our attorney claims that the judge's assistant must not have filed what should have been filed. i'm skeptical. But we'll hopefully know what happened or at least how to fix it soon.

This week

Well, after being unceremoniously dumped from daycare and my MIL traveling here for the week with 30 minutes' notice (God bless her heart!), we spent the last couple of weeks looking for a nanny.

We finally found one! The amazing thing is we really liked every person we interviewed. We eliminated one based on price, one based on schedule (she travels with her sister's music group and may need more 1/2 day Fridays than we're really comfortable with), one based on transportation (she and her husband have only one car and she'd have to pick him up every day).

That left two: a college student (pre-nursing minoring in child psych) and a grandmother. We loved them both, but there was a $3 cost difference and in the end we went with the student. Her schedule will stay really flexible until next fall, and that's probably when we'd want to try Char in school again. Perhaps if all is still well then, we can keep the nanny 2-3 days a week and ease Char into school 2-3 days a week.

So far she's fine but she's scared of the dogs. We're working on it :).