A Big Day For Athena!

Athena had a very big day (and night!) this weekend! She slept in her own bed, by herself, all night for the first time since she's been about 18 months old! She has separation anxiety that surfaces at night time. John and I have been very patient with having her sleep with us knowing that it is what she needs to feel secure. It's been hard when we felt like we needed to defend it to others who have no idea about adoption and separation anxiety but we know we're doing the right thing. We told her that when she felt ready to sleep alone in her own room we would get her a pet fish to have in her room to keep her company. We headed out today to pick one out:) We know she's going to have a long road ahead of her until she feels secure enough to hop into bed by herself with no tears every night, but we sure celebrated that first night and her getting her pet that she earned!

Here she is with her new pet Goldie the Goldfish. Yes, there is a fish in there-hiding behind the red plant in the corner after her exciting day of a ride in the car and a new home:)

We even celebrated with a goldfish breakfast! A PBJ cut out into a goldfish (a circle for the body and a heart for the tail), then covered with orange carrot 'scales'. The eye is a dried blueberry and the bubbles are cookie sprinkles.
We'll see how tonight goes! She's tucked in and reading books to Goldie right now, but she was very anxious about being alone in bed again tonight. I think we'll also do a sticker chart where she can earn other fun things for sleeping in her big girl bed. The sticker chart worked great when she started at preschool and there were tears every morning when it was drop off time. I needed to use it for about a month. After that she was used to drop off and we didn't need it anymore.

One thing is for absolute sure. We love her so much and are so proud of her no matter how long it takes! We're going to continue to be patient and do whatever it takes to help her be successful at this next big step:)

You'll never buy pancake mix again.

This is my go-to recipe for home made pancakes. They turn out great every time and the ingredients are things you always have on hand. They taste way better than the box mix kind and you don't need to worry about pancake mix expiring in the pantry if you don't go through it fast enough. The cast of characters:

1 1/4 cup flour

3 t. baking powder

1 T. sugar

1/2 t. salt

1 egg

1 cup milk

2 T. vegetable oil

Directions:

Mix all ingredients with electric hand mixer until mostly smooth. Let batter stand 20 minutes. Then fry 'em up:)

Wilderness Waterpark 2011

We had our second annual trip to the Wilderness Waterpark in Wisconsin Dells last weekend with friends. As expected it was so much fun and we're already making plans for next year:) This year instead of getting all separate rooms, we all shared a 3 bedroom suite and it was so nice with the kids to have the room to spread out and hang out together. There was a kitchen and living room and 3 bedrooms and each family got one bedroom. We arrived Friday evening and stayed until mid afternoon on Sunday and we all played in the waterparks all 3 days. The kids were exhausted after the weekend! (and the parents were a little bit too;) It's an affordable little mini vacation that we plan to keep doing every year as long as the kids are interested and keep enjoying it.

Here is Athena on her favorite 'green slide'.

Alton was a total water baby and had a blast in the baby areas at each of the 3 indoor waterparks at the resort.

Handsome surfer dude!

Look out below!
Daddy and Alton taking a Cheeto break:)

The 3 big girls goofing around:)

Our crew for the weekend:) Ages 2, 5, 4, 1, 4, 1

We're already looking forward to our 2012 trip back!

Alton 18 months

I had Alton in for his18 month well child check a couple of weeks ago. He actually was just turning 19 months when I took him in. Somehow along the line we got behind by a month and it has just stayed that way. I figure since he was a month premature, it means we're right on time, right?:) Well anywho, the big news is he is growing like a champ! He went from 11th percentile for height up to 21st percentile! Yay! He hovers around 50th for weight every time I take him in and that stayed the same. He still doesn't say much as far as words. He says 'mama' but not just for me. He calls me and John both mama. His other only consistent word is he calls Amber 'baa'. I've decided to go ahead and set up a speech evaluation for him through the Birth to 3 program. I made the phone call early last week and am in the process of working on the scheduling of it with our B to 3 coordinator. Alton may or may not qualify, but I just want to get some professional input either way because if he could use some therepy we should get started on it sooner than later. I've been taking tons of cute pictures of Alton to try to score some perfect ones to get ready for our next post placement report. He still LOVES tractors!

Look! I made a tractor train!

I can drive 2 at once!

Daddy dressed me in bibs today and I'm looking too stinkin cute!

Wait a minute, I see something over there that I haven't tried destoying yet!

If sissy can do it, then so can I!

Faster Ena! Faster!

I love my 4 wheeler almost as much as I love tractors:)

Pumpkin gutting:)

One of Athena's most favorite activities ever is gutting pumpkins. From the minute pumpkins are brought home all she can think about is when she gets to gut them and play with the guts. I would dare to say she looks forward to it as much as, if not more than Santa Clause coming, Easter Bunny coming and even her own birthday. We got some awesome pumpkins last weekend from our friends' very prolific pumpkin patch. (thanks guys!) Every night when I pick her up from daycare she asks if we could gut a pumpkin tonight. I've held her off all week because our weeknights are so short on time and we should wait until the weekend. Smart little thing asked me what day it was when I picked her up today and when I told her it was Friday, she knows Friday is a 'stay up late' night and therefor is part of the weekend! We got started with the cutting and gutting the minute we got home:)

We collect the seeds for roasting, though there were hardly any in this pumpkin for some reason. ps-don't you love her new haircut! It's all layered and stacked up the back and so cute on her. So easy to comb and go in the morning too. I love it!

This one's for you Katie:) We're working on our language and vocabulary development. Saying what the parts of the pumpkin are. Here she is showing off a piece of the pumpkin 'flesh'.
Realy getting into it with both hands.
She drew the face on with a marker, then I cut it out.
It was a little windy and cold when we went outside to light it so she ran back in to get her blankie to keep her warm while I snapped about a zillion pictures of her and her new pumpkin friend 'Eleanor'.
Good night Eleanor!

Crayon snack for 4K:)

We made these cute edible crayon snacks for Athena's treat day at school. I got the idea from the Our Best Bites blog over on my favorites blogs list.
First you cut pretzel logs in half and dunk each end in colored white chocolate. The Wilton brand is called 'candy melts'.

I printed these sheets for the wrappers from that blog too.

Super fun:)

Mama mobile number 2! Lets try this again:)

Now that all of the dust has settled from my car accident we finally had the time to do some car shopping and buy a new mini van to replace the one that I totaled. I loved my old mini van. We bought it used with only 23K miles and got so many awesome options on it that we never would have spent the money to get on a new one. I would have happily drove it into it's ripe old age for the next 10 years. But, many things in life are out of our hands and sometimes you just need to take the hand dealt to you and move forward;) My new mini van is definitely awesome too:) I love the color (charcoal dark grey that shimmers in the sunlight and looks black at night with chrome trim) It is a brand new 2011 and I think we got a pretty decent deal on it because it's a model year end clearance car since the 2012 models are already on the lots. It also has some pretty neat/different features that my old one didn't have and after driving it for just one day, I love this one now too:) So, here is my second smokin' hot mama mobile after laying my first one to rest after just one year.

Here's Alton having fun coloring with crayons:) The fun of coloring lasted for about 1 minute!
After that he decided to pull an all-boy-Alton move and destroy the paper & throw it. I tell ya, after reading the book Gender Matters (a good read that I recommend to any parent) and raising both a boy and a girl there is no doubt in my mind that there are definitely innate personality differences in boys and girls that comes from their gender regardless of how they are raised/parented. This kid is a trip after raising only a girl so far:)