Catching up

Okay. I know that I haven't blogged in over a month, and I know that during that time we had lots of things going on that would've been great blogging fodder. Unfortunately, life got in the way of blogging, and I had to set my priorities. Blogging hit the bottom of the list.

So I'd like to take this time to catch up. During the month of July we went on a couple of trips. The first was to Holiday World in Santa Claus, IN. It's a fun place for kids, and a pretty good place for parents too. We went with friends from DH's work. One of the families we were with camped out with us, the other spent the night at local hotel. David and his wife have two children, Lucy, 3 and Eli, 4 months. They were the ones that stayed at the hotel, and who can blame them. I don't even think I'd attempt taking two small children to an amusement park, nevermind try camping out. Greg and his wife (the other family that camped with us) have two children, Emily, 13 and Taylor, 11. They were all great fun, and it was a really enjoyable time. Unfortunately, we didn't take the camera with us, so no photos. But I can write about the trip, and hopefully that will document some of the memories for us to share with each other later.

For those of you that don't know about Holiday World, it's an amusement park and waterpark. The admission price includes admission to both,. They have free drinks while in the park, and free sunscreen while in the waterpark. It's clean and VERY family friendly. So it's a really nice place to go with younger children. By about high school, I would say though, that the kids are probably going to want to go to someplace with more adventerous rides.

With that said, Grace had a good time. She was too little to go on alot of the rides, but she had fun on the ones that she could go on. We started out the day at the waterpark. While the other adults went on the big kid waterrides, Grace and I went to the Monsoon Lagoon which looks like this:

There's lots of spraying water

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A Rough Summer

DD1 has been trying our patience. Now, I understand that she's learning to be her own person, learning how to live in a world where it seems you're nobody unless you fit in, and it's cool to not like your parents. BUT, it's hard. It's hard for her and it's hard for us.

This weekend she was caught on her cell phone at 4 in the morning talking to her boyfriend. Not only that, but she was talking about things that, most likely weren't too risque, she shouldn't have been. So in addition to the punishment of getting her cell-phone priveledges and IM priveledges taken away for a week, there are also some rule changes. Up until this weekend, she was able to keep her cell phone with her in her room at night, with the understanding that she's not allowed to send/receive text messages or phone calls after 11 during the summer. Well, no longer. Starting next Sunday, she has to give her phone to us at bedtime. We'll charge it for her, and give it back to her in the morning. You'd think she'd be upset about these new rules, and she is, but honestly I think she's upset with herself more than with us. I think she fully understood that if she broke the rules, there would be consequences as we explained to her. She broke the rules and now she has to live by the consequences. I'm really proud of her for understanding that. Lots of kids today don't. They find it easier to blame anyone else besides themselves for their predicaments. DD1 is owning up to it and taking her blows. Maybe we are doing something right after all, huh? J

We're entering unchartered territory now

A couple of weeks ago, oldest, DD1, told me she had a boyfriend. She really only told me this because she wanted to know if she could go to the zoo with him, her friend and and her friend's boyfriend and the boyfriend's parents.. Oh my gosh! OK, I have to admit that I already knew about the boyfriend. DD2 told me. What I'm concerned about is that my baby girl wants to go on a date. A date?! She's only 14 years old!!! When I told her no, that she can't go to for several reasons. First, she's not alllowed to date until she's 16. When I told her that, she said that it wasn't a date. I told her that it was, and finally I asked her what she thought a date was. She told me that a date is where you go out with a guy without anyone else there. I told her, no that what she's describing is a date. No matter what she wanted to call it, it's still a date.

So, she decided that she would ask if they could all come over to our house instead. I told her that would be fine, but that she was not to be alone with her boyfriend at any time. Her response was that DD2 would be with her. I told her that she had to be chaperoned by an adult, not a child. She didn't like that either, but she decided to give it a try.

So today her boyfriend, girlfriend and girlfriend's boyfriend all came over. I have to say her boyfriend was very polite and seemed to treat her well. Her girlfriend's boyfriend was not near as gentlemanly. He kept trying to kiss the girlfriend. To the point where it was annoying. And later when she asked me what I thought of her boyfriend, I told her I thought he was trying to kiss her too much.

Daddy was a happy camper on Father's Day 2008!

Yesterday was Father's Day. DH had what he called "the best Father's Day he's ever had!" Why? Well, let's run down his day:

7 a.m. met with his mentoree from church (he meets most weeks with a guy from church that he's agreed to be his "accountability partner". They meet and talk mostly about his friend's problems and happenings in his life.

8 a.m. played his weekly Pickle Ball with his friends at the neighborhood tennis courts. Some guys from our neighborhood meet every Sunday morning in the summer to play Pickle Ball, which is sort of like table tennis on a tennis court.

10 a.m. came home and ate sat with his family while they ate breakfast. I went out to buy donuts and hashbrowns for the girls, thinking that he'd eat breakfast too when he got back. But he'd already eaten when he met his friend at 7.

10:30 a.m. opened his Father's Day cards and gifts. He got a card from me, a card from all the girls, an Outback Steakhouse gift card from me, DD1 and Grace, and a pair of shorts and a t-shirt from DD2.

12:30 p.m. Lunch at Texas Roadhouse with all of us. Gracie was still full from breakfast, so she didn't eat much. But she was very well behaved, and we all had a good time.

1:30 p.m. napped while DD1 and I road our bikes to Marsh to return the RedBox DVD we'd rented the night before (which the ride was a story in and of itself!)

3 p.m. DD1 and DD2 got the mower out of the shed to get ready to mow the lawn for Dad as a surprise. DD2 went out to the garage to get the gas can, and grabbed the wrong can (none of us girls knew he had a gas can that was a mixture of gasoline and oil, and a 2nd gas can that's just gasoline. I bet you can guess which gas can DD2 inadvertently picked up? Right, the wrong one - gas and oil mixture). When he got up from his nap, he asked about it, and had to stop the mowing progress, and clean-up the mower. He was none too happy, but didn't complain too much!

4 p.m. Went back to where I lost my bike chain after it broke off (told you there was a story about the bike ride) and retrieved my bike chain.

4:30 p.m. played Pickle Ball again with 2 cousins and one 2nd cousin.

6 p.m. Came home from Pickle Ball, showered and settled down to watch the US Open Golf tournament while the girls and I went to Walmart to buy essentials and shop for clothes for our trip to Lexington this weekend.

8 p.m. Ate leftover pizza (at his request) for dinner, and continued watching golf tournament.

10 p.m. Sat down to briefly watch "Jon and Kate plus Eight" with DD2 and I after DD1 and Gracie went to bed.

11 p.m. Headed off to bed declaring it was his best Father's Day ever!

Bike riding with Gracie

Remember when I told you about that wonderful bikeseat that I bought for Gracie last fall for her first birthday? If you've forgotten, here's the seat.

Well, a couple of days ago I took her out for ride, and realized that my baby girl is getting too big for the seat. The seat is only rated for up to 40 lbs, and Gracie is 26 lbs, but the real issue is that the seat gets in the way of my pedalling. I really like the seat, but I think it's time to move to something else. So we checked out Craigslist to see what was available - nothing that we were interested in. I decide to googl bike trailers, as we had one when the two older girls were little, and it worked great. It was a two-seater that I think we got at Sams Club. We gave it away to friends when we thought we were done with little ones (Never say never!). So I found this on Amazon:

The Instep Quik and EZ bike trailer It's not too fancy, but the reviews I found on it were pretty good. The reviewers mostly said that for the price it was a good trailer, but it is best for road and trail riding, i.e. smooth surfaces. That's the kind of riding I do, so for free shipping offerred, I went ahead and bought it.We should get it next week. I'll let you know how it works out. In the meantime, we'll keep using the front mounted bikeseat we have. If this trailer works out, look for my bikeseat to be posted on Craigslist!

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The miracle of Miralax

WARNING: If you don't like hearing about poop, don't read this!

Almost from the time we first held Grace in our arms, she has had issues with..ahem...bms. The problem is that she cries whenever she poops. It doesn't really matter if she's having a hard time letting go, or if it comes out easily. She cries. We had pretty much written it up to her personality, however there are times when she had some blood in her stools afters struggling alot with going. So we have tried prune baby food, which worked well before she started really eating solid foods, and prune juice mixed with water after that, to control the problem. Prunes worked alright I guess, but she'd alternate between hard poops and overly soft poops, and I didn't really feel like the right solution.

So last weekend when we were the Hands of Hope picnic I was talking with a family that have a baby girl adopted from Guatemala. Her name is Jillian, and what a cutie she is! But I digress. They also have another child, a boy, that had had similar problems with pooping. They eventually took him to the childrens hospital to a specialist to see if he could figure out how to "fix" the problem. The specialist put him on Miralax. Two half caps a day mixed with liquid, and that worked wonders for them. So I decided to try it on Grace.

I went to our local pharmacy bought a bottle and asked the pharmacist about the proper dosage for our baby girl. She recommended 1/2 capful a day. Apparently Miralax is one of those things that you have to experiment with to figure out the right individual dosage. So for the last 4 days or so, Gracie has been taking Miralax, and wonder of wonders we have no more poop issues!

I decided today to go ahead and call the pediatrician's office to check on dosage and how long Gracie could take the wonder medication. Turns out that she's taking about the right dose, and can stay on it for as long as she needs it. The nurse did say that if she still is having trouble after about a week of using Miralax, that we need to come in to see the doctor.

So for now, Miralax gets two thumbs up!

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Referral Anniversary Day on June 4

On June 4, we had our one year anniversary of when we found out the identity of our precious baby girl, Grace Minshan! I can't tell you how excited I wasa the day we found out who Grace was, and saw her face for the frist time. It was so exciting. I think it was even more exciting than finding out we were pregnant. Although it was pretty close to the same feeling.

Here's one of the first photos of our baby girl from our adoption agency that we received by email on June 4, 2007:

Now, here's a photo of Grace that I took this afternoon.

She's grown quite a bit, hasn't she? And isn't she adorable?!!!

Happy Referral Day.

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