Thank God for Charlotte's brother, T!

And his family! They are such wonderful people, and i'm so glad that Charlotte's primary connection to her birth family will be through them.

We went and saw them yesterday. We had hoped that T's 12-year-old sister would babysit (for money, of course, and while the mom was there, of course!) and we could go to a movie, but after a couple of hours there, i really didn't want to leave! Charlotte had such fun playing with T outside and inside, and she especially loved his trampoline. The two of them running around and playing in there was just too fun! Makes me wish we had a trampoline. But alas, our yard slopes.

While we were there, the subject of the other two siblings (there's also a half-sister about age 13 or 14 and a full brother about 8 or 9) came up. i mentioned that i search Facebook for the sister periodically because she's at that age. Well, apparently i was searching the wrong social medium because late last night, DH found her on MySpace. Do people really use MySpace anymore?

The good, the bad, and the ugly. The good is that she lives in a steady house with her father, and he obviously loves her. In fact, he lists her as one of his heroes on his page. However the bad is truly ugly. His personalized account homepage has a very unsavory name, of the white supremacist variety. It kind of makes me sick to my stomach to think of it.

For about two hours this morning, before i knew that vital little tidbit, i had this little fantasy of writing her grandparents a letter. i thought that she lived with her grandparents actually. i dreamed of writing them a letter and having them write back with maybe a picture or two of the little girl at various ages, a story or two about her personality, and, dream of dreams, maybe just maybe they would have some information about the kids' birthmom, or, absolute best case scenario, a photo of her. Why do i get my hopes up?

Well, like i said, thank God for Charlotte's brother, T, and his amazing family, because without them i wouldn't have anything positive to share with Charlotte about her birth family.

It's amazing how kids make you busy

Before Charlotte, we lived a pretty dull life. Some of you may remember from my early blog entries lol. We didn't spend much time with friends, we didn't have many obligations. If we wanted to see a movie, we just saw a movie. The only thing keeping us close to home on weekends were the dogs.

And i've always heard that kids change that. And that's perfectly fine by me! But i really had no idea how true that is. i figured if you had a few kids, especially school age kids in sports and other extracurriculars, your life would be pretty busy and you wouldn't have a lot of free weekend time. But with one kid who has no extracurriculars? And yet, there it is!

For weeks we've been intending to visit my horse, Sunny, but for weeks things come up. Good things, fun things, but still things. Charlotte's party, in-laws visiting, visiting my dad for Father's Day, you get the idea. This weekend we were sure we were going to see him, but we were invited to our babysitter's church's friends and family picnic thingie tomorrow and we're going to visit Charlotte's brother's family on Sunday (and hire his 12 year old sister to babysit so we can go to a movie, hopefully!). We might be able to go tomorrow afternoon, but if we don't, it's okay. It'll be a lot of fun!

"BIG" Adventures

Charlotte is obsessed with "big" things now. She seems to have picked up what the word means in the last month or two and uses it a lot, particularly to show her preference. "Big cup!" "Big bowl!" "Big car!" Today it was "Big pool!" (our YMCA has 3 outdoor pools: a baby pool, a medium sized pool with a zero-grade entry and a little slide, up to 3' deep, and a regular sized pool). She tried (to no avail) to convince me she should go down the "Big slide!"

Last night it was "Night night big bed PEEZE?" Charlotte's room has her toddler bed and a queen bed in it from the old foster days when we were prepared for siblings. How can i say no to that?

So, the toddler mattress went down next to the queen bed and she slept in the big bed. She actually did really really well. She slept all nighgt without waking or fussing, and slept about 30 minutes longer than usual. Tonight she picked the big bed again, but tossed and turned for about an hour before finally falling asleep, upside down with ther feet up on the headboard. LOL!

Photography

i have a nice camera. Well, a pretty nice camera, anyway. It's the Canon Rebel XSi; not professional quality but still good quality. i even have a decent lens (in addition to the kit lens): a 50mm 1.8, aka the "Thrifty Fifty". However, what i don't have is the knowledge of how to use it. i can stick it in full auto mode and get some decent pictures. Not professional quality by any stretch but still decent pics. i can stick it in "P" mode and get passable indoor pics most of the time. And i LOVE that i don't get "shutter lag" (probably really focus lag), so when i press the button, it shoots right away. No 10 seconds later business that can kill a photo shoot or passing moment when photographing pets and toddlers. But i can't use any of the other manual settings, and i don't really understand the "P" mode.

i'm reading the book "Understanding Exposure" and taking the lessons at 2 Peas. You can find my progress here.

For those who don't want to go to the other sites, here's my favorite picture:

Kiddo was lying down on the deck of her toddler climber with her head hanging down over the slide ever so slightly, about to slide down.

Wow, such a brave girl!

We had Charlotte's 2 year doctor's appointment today. She did so great! But first, the stats.

She weighed 26 pounds, 8 oz, which is exactly 2 pounds up from her NINE MONTH appointment! In over a year, she's gained 2 pounds lol. And she's grown probably a foot and is now 34" tall (i remember her being like 2'2" tall at a year). So she went from being close to 75% weight and 25% height to being 40% weight and 50% height. Yay! She's average! Oh, but her head, you ask? Yeah, she still has a 95+% noggin, the little genius!

At this appointment they do a Hep booster and a finger prick to check iron, lead, etc levels. At 1 year she was just slightly low on iron and took a supplement for a few months until she started eating more eggs and leafy greens. Thankfully her iron levels are absolutely fine now, but her platelet count came out really, really low. She said 100 would be low and she'd want to monitor it, but Char's were 60 and she said, "Technically i can't let you leave the building." Yikes! So they repeated the finger prick on the other hand, and this time it came out to 350, so we were good to go. Thank goodness!

And through all of that (including a newby learning the finger prick the first time -- perhaps why it came out wonky the first time), Charlotte did not cry at all. She didn't even really whimper or whine. She wanted "up please" but settled for hugs. She's such a brave girl! Those finger sticks HURT!

Bikissle

Charlotte's new "bikissle", a Diggin Skuut wooden balance bike:



We had to put the body piece on upside-down because she's so short lol. Thanks, Uncle Lance! Best birthday present ever!

i just can't believe it's been over 2 years!

Charlotte's second birthday came and went last week. i admit i took it hard. i took it harder than my 35th birthday, and almost as hard as my 30th. And that's HARD! lol

i had to work on her birthday proper since it's the first day of the month, so we all met at lunch at Monkey Joe's and let Char explore it for the first time. She had a BLAST! She was so happy climbing and sliding and bouncing. Such a crazy brave girl, too. That night we gave her some presents and had some cake.

This Saturday was her birthday party. It went really well, and all my planning ideas made it to fruition. The sushi cupcakes and nigiri rice krispie treats turned out really well, too. Even the fish watermelon happened (it just didn't have a fin). Unfortunately we totally forgot our camera so i have almost no pictures, but all the kids had a blast. Charlotte loved having her buddies there and basically having free reign of the pool. Her brother was there (and his 12 year old sister), as well as her first AND second "little husband", and our nanny's three nieces and nephews. Everyone seemed happy despite the super hot and steamy indoor pool environment (why oh why couldn't she have an April birthday? lol).

And, to make matters hilarious, Char started calling my MIL's husband "Grandma". Teehee!