What's going on at our house.

Alexa got bangs. I am not a big advocate of bangs, but Alexa's hair grows straight forward from the crown of her head, and is very thin. She chewed on it, and got food in it, and couldn't see because it was always in her face. I got tired of trying to comb her hair several times a day, especially since she isn't so good at holding still. (as those of you who go to meeting with us will attest to) This works fairly well, all I have to do is wash it and comb it out. We are still working on paperwork for our adoption. Our current plan is to adopt from Ethiopia. Some of you will know that we were originally planning on Nepal, but Holt felt that because of our health issues (my Charcot-Marie-Tooth) that we shouldn't be one of the first families to adopt from Nepal. So they suggested Korea or Ethiopia, and due to the waiting period for Korea and the limited number of states Holt can place Korean children in, we went with Ethiopia. We are currently waiting for David's birth certificates to arrive, and a letter from my doctor saying that my CMT won't hinder me from parenting acceptably. Anyway-I feel a little unsure about sharing all of this because there is still a chance we could not get approved, but I am optimistic.

I have started swimming again for exercise at Timberhill. They have childcare which makes it possible for me to swim during the day, and Alexa loves to go play with the other kids, the slide and the bazillion toys they have there. I am a little frustrated by the fact that I haven't really lost any weight yet despite the fact that I am swimming every day, and am now swimming about 65% of a mile. Fortunately the boost to my mental health that I get from the exercise is sufficient reason to continue. I have been going for exactly a month now, anyone know when I will start getting some positive feedback from my bathroom scale?

Alexa and Sophia together

Holly and I took some pictures of the girls together. They were fun, but not great. We finally called in Dana for some better family pictures, but these were pretty cute-so I thought I would post them.

Halloween with the cousins.

We had a visit from Jamie, Sophia, Holly and Nana. (Known to some of you as Sue :) The pumpkin carving was carried out mostly by David and Holly. It is hard work to carve a pumpkin.

We also had a little kids Halloween party, which was a lot of fun. Reese, Carsten, Zooey and Kaia came over with their moms!

Our "fairy" eating mashed potatoes, how prosaic. (I think that's the word I want)

The group shots were very entertaining. Kaia didn't like it much, so all the kids were watching her cry most of the time.

Trick or treating..

A group shot, out of order..not sure why.

Weekend in Newport

We took a spur-of-the-moment trip to Newport this weekend inspired by Will and Shelley (I was looking at her blog entry about their visit to Newport and I thought, "we could do that"-so we did!)
We drove over Friday evening when David got off work and since we were awake early Saturday morning, we went to the beach at about 9:00 am, when it was cold and damp. This is Nye beach, and Alexa loved it. She was so happy she would run a few feet, and then stop and laugh and clap for the joy of it. I could not get her to hold still for pictures.
The best part about the beach is that it is beautiful and amazing no matter what the weather is like. Well worth the cold hands and ears!
Then we went to the Oregon Coast Aquarium where we saw many beautiful and amazing things. They had this tank of swirling seaweed that was beautiful.

Most of the tanks had these beautiful glass sculpture things in them too, I could have spent hours if I didn't have a four year old and tired legs.
The sea otters were adorable.
Jellyfish are always amazing to me..so delicate.
The colors and shapes..
I think these were anchovies, also shiny and gorgeous en masse.

After the aquarium we went to take a nap, and then to the Aquarium Village area which was hysterically funny.
Like some sort of Disneyland imitation.
And then we had an amazing seafood dinner at a place called Local Ocean Seafood on the bayfront, with this view.

We stayed overnight and went to meeting with our friend Linda on Sunday. Then we ate lunch at a place that I call the crab shack, but I can't remember if it is actually called that or that it just looks like a crab shack. They have big pots of water and they boil those crabs out front. I ate half a crab for lunch..messy and YUMMY. Alexa had rice..we can't convince her to try new things at this point in her life. We are always torn between eating somewhere that has food we like, and eating somewhere that serves mac and cheese.. Saturday night she wouldn't eat anything at the seafood place, so we went to the grocery store afterward and bought yoghurt.

So here is a question for anyone who visits there..where are your favorite places in Newport to eat and stay and visit?

I recommend both the crab shack place and the Local Ocean Seafood place. We stayed at La Quinta Inn. It was OK, but they allow pets to stay there, and there were about 10-15 dogs who stayed there with us. I personally don't like to hear dogs barking when I am sleeping and honestly I kind of like outside dogs better than inside dogs. (I don't mean to offend anyone, that is just the way I grew up.) So anyway-the aquarium was incredible, the Aquarium Village was dorky, but had a cool yarn store. Nye Beach and the shopping area around it looked really neat. I would have loved to poke around, especially the bookstores, but again, Alexa is not really a fun person to shop with!

Riding a Tricycle

Sort of No action shots because she can only go a little way by herself so far, most of the time I have to be pushing her a little bit, but she does have short periods when she can do it herself. The sun was in her eyes, so no looking at the camera either.

Our low-carb company..

Here is Alexa with one of her favorites, The Wheels on the Bus. (This copy has a button that plays the song when you push it)And here we have Mike and Lee who stayed with us this week. Lee is on a low-carb diet because of Diabetes, and Mike is trying to eat that way too..so we had fun planning meals.
David and Alexa before meeting this morning.


She is getting to be such a big girl now. This is fun and a tiny bit sad at the same time. At least she still lets me cuddle her! She is developing a lot of new sounds. She can say momom, but doesn't always distinguish between the mom word and more (mmmmo is how more sounds). She can make an H sound, and recognizes the letter when she sees it. She can do an ah sound, which we are trying to get her to use in conjunction with her hand sign for want and for all done. She can make a g sound. There are so many new things that she is learning, and we have lots of help. We still go to speech therapy, occupational therapy, and physical therapy twice a month each. She goes to school three days a week for two hours a day and they also provide some speech and physical therapy. She is almost able to ride her tricycle, she can't jump yet, she can go up and down one step at a time unassisted, and sometimes up a couple more without help. We are working on teaching her to walk on a six inch "balance beam", and to jump on the trampoline or one of those big rubber ball things with a handle. (we don't have one yet but we do it at therapy)

Hmm- not sure why the big therapy update on this post, but why not?

Our new floors

We had some laminate flooring put in last week. We have been having trouble keeping the carpets clean, and the linoleum that was in the kitchen was scraped in places and pitted, and never looked clean even when it was. This is much better. It was kind of a pain to move that big bookshelf and the piano and, and we also got flooring the the office/spare bedroom, so everything had to come out of there too. I really like how it turned out. So bright and cheerful. It is noisy however, Alexa loves to stomp around on it, and when she dumps her blocks out, or throws a bit of her wooden train set it really startles me.
We had to be out of the house while it was getting installed, so we went to Eugene to Grandma Penny's house. She has toys for Alexa, and Penny and I are working on hand carding some alpaca fleece that we got at Black Sheep Gathering, so we had fun.