A long time ago (when we only had two kids, which seems like a really long time ago), I did a post about how Tori and no longer had any standards when it came to our normally clean house. I had a photo of me reading the newspaper on the couch in my pajamas while surrounded by a messy array of toys and other items.
But that was nothing compared to the lapse tonight. Charlie was constipated and crying while trying to poop, so Tori and I had to put his legs in the proper position and then kind of massage the poop out of him (I realize this must sound awful, but I assume every parent has had to do this at some point). Anyway, some time passed and I was rinsing my dinner plate. That's when it hit me that I had not washed my hands between massaging the poop out and eating my dinner. Really disturbing. Even more disturbing? We had fish tacos for dinner...you know, the kind you eat with your hands?
Friday, September 30, 2011
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Charlie One-Year Appointment
Because I try to use this blog as a baby book, I try to always enter the info for the kids' appointments. You may have noticed that Charlie is a tad chunky, but actually his weight was only in the 85th percentile (25 lbs, 12 oz), his height was the 55th percentile (30 inches) and of course his enormous head was in the 97th percentile (19.25 somethings). He and Zadie are two peas in a pod when it comes to big heads!
He's on track with everything developmentally, though he doesn't seem to be in any rush to take steps. He's pretty content crawling around (he finally crawls the "real" way now). Unfortunately he still has to take lots of medication for his childhood asthma, but all in all he's doing great.
His favorite thing in the world watching his siblings romp around. A close second is feeding himself...that always seems to entertain him for long periods of time.
MY very favorite thing about Charlie is his great belly laugh. It's almost husky and it makes me happy every time I hear it.
He's on track with everything developmentally, though he doesn't seem to be in any rush to take steps. He's pretty content crawling around (he finally crawls the "real" way now). Unfortunately he still has to take lots of medication for his childhood asthma, but all in all he's doing great.
His favorite thing in the world watching his siblings romp around. A close second is feeding himself...that always seems to entertain him for long periods of time.
MY very favorite thing about Charlie is his great belly laugh. It's almost husky and it makes me happy every time I hear it.
Charlie Turns One!
Charlie turned one year on September 20th and we had a small party in the park with some dear friends. I felt a little differently about this milestone than I did for other two kids, as you can kind of gather from the Evite text below:
It's been a tough first year. Between the emergency stomach surgery at three weeks, the non-stop crying for the first six months, the emotions of the court taking him away for a month, the chronic ear infections and childhood asthma, and then that time a few weeks ago when he swallowed a tiny lava rock and we had to call 911...let's just say that we are ready to celebrate a very important milestone.
Homeboy is a survivor. He made it. We made it. Let's have a party in the park!
It's been a tough first year. Between the emergency stomach surgery at three weeks, the non-stop crying for the first six months, the emotions of the court taking him away for a month, the chronic ear infections and childhood asthma, and then that time a few weeks ago when he swallowed a tiny lava rock and we had to call 911...let's just say that we are ready to celebrate a very important milestone.
Homeboy is a survivor. He made it. We made it. Let's have a party in the park!
So, as you can tell from the invitation and the photos below, we had quite a bit to celebrate and we are thankful to the friends and family members (including my parents coming up from San Diego and my Aunt Dana, who was in town from Texas) who attended.
Here is the man of the hour. Unfortunately, this wasn't his most photogenic day because he got suncreen in one of his eyes and it was kind of red and goopy. And, in an unfortunate wardrobe choice, he was shirtless the whole time and that isn't his best look for obvious reasons!
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| And here is the quite tasty cake that our friend Sidney baked. My mom also made some homemade lemon bars (from her own lemon tree) and those were great, too! |
We've made it a tradition to have pinatas at all our kids' first birthday parties. This year I stuffed it with trail mix, organic gummy fruit treats, and apple sauce "crushers." The parents seemed relieved, but I must admit it's the first time I've ever seen that many kids neglect to pick up everything that came out. Oh well...
Unfortunately, we managed not to take photos of any family members, but we did get some shots of friends who turned out. Here is our friend Shafiq and his dapper son, Zak.
And our friends Allard and Richard, who we first met in our foster-to-adopt class about four years ago.
Monday, September 5, 2011
Zadie Portrait
My sister-in-law took this great photo of Zadie over the 4th of July weekend. I love this girl's smile.
When people see this photo, I have a feeling they will say that she looks just like me. Like I've said before, I really don't see it. Maybe it's hard to see yourself in another person. At any rate, I take it as a compliment because Zadie is far more beautiful than I have ever been. And I'm not being modest.
Tori and I marvel about her beauty all the time and I tell her sometimes that she is beautiful or that I love her smile, but we don't want her to necessarily grow up focusing on that too much. And, frankly, I don't want her to be one of the super-popular beautiful girls in high school because I think they get into too much trouble and have to face a lot of peer pressure. I hope she can be a bit of a nerd in high school, like I was. Not the kind that's picked on, but enough a nerd that she's a bit sheltered from the scene in high school. Fingers crossed!
Beach Days
We like our kids best when we're at the beach and least when we're in our house. At the beach, all three kids are really good at entertaining themselves. Our routine on the weekend is to pack lunches and lots of snacks and try to get to the beach around 10am and then leave about 2pm for naps back at home. We're not sure how long we're going to be living such a close bike ride to the beach, so we're trying to make the most of it now. It always amazes me how many people live in L.A. and never go to the beach, since I think it's one of the main benefits of living here (then again I rarely went to the beach when I lived in San Diego).
Here are some of my favorite photos from the beach over the past few weeks.
Here are some of my favorite photos from the beach over the past few weeks.
It's always so special and rare when one of the kids wants to stop playing and just chill. I was a little bit jealous of this moment.
Check out Charlie's weird kimono robe thingie. A friend brought this back from China as a bathrobe when Zadie was little, but it's thin and cool and perfect for keeping his pale skin out of the sun.
Hooray that Skip has a boy cousin his own age! Here is cousin Gavin, who will soon be moving to L.A. for more beach days!
I think this was a day when we came to the beach after work and didn't have bathing suits. I like it when Tori wears this cute hat instead of the other, totally awful Korean hat she typically wears. Had to document the occasion.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Sophie and Izzy Visit & Weekend Mornings
A few weekends ago we had a nice visit with Sophie and Izzy. They came to L.A. with my sister and mom to connect with an aunt who was in town. We hung out at The Grove, had ice cream together, and then my mom and sister drove back to San Diego. And we got to keep the girls overnight!
Even though we're kind of overwhelmed with our own three, it really wasn't too much extra work to have the twins here because they are really well-behaved and they kind of keep Zadie busy. And actually Sophie is really good about playing with Skip, although Zadie tries her hardest to exclude him at every opportunity. Sophie is interesting because she is very independent and often breaks away from the group, or decides to spend time with Skip or Charlie. Everybody played well together and I was happy for Zadie to get some quality time with her cousins.
Tori and I trade off taking all three kids out of the house on the weekends, usually from 6:30am (when they're allowed to get out of their beds) until about 10am. It's hard to manage all three, but at least somebody gets to have one peaceful and restful morning per week. So I don't mind taking on the challenge since I know that I'm going to benefit from the system. I usually take the kids to the park from 6:30am to 7:15am and they ride their scooters while I feed Charlie. Then we go to Jamba Juice and they also eat some of the steel-cut oatmeal there. Then we go to a different park afterwards. Tori usually takes the kids garage-saling, though I really don't understand how she manages all of that, especially because at that time of the morning the kids are always needing to pee or poop (and never at the same time). Apparently she just asks lots of people if she can use their bathroom and I guess she's pretty hard to turn down with three kids in tow.
Anyway, I was quite proud of myself for taking all five kids away on the Sunday morning when they were here. First we went to the park and they ran around for a long time. Then I actually took them to that evil restaurant that has the playground, but annoyingly doesn't open until 9am. I figured since I was so desperate to manage them all, it was pretty justified. And they were pretty excited about that whole set-up. The other people in that restaurant were quite curious about my five children -- lots of questions about that. And looks of pity.
I've taken Skip and Zadie to "the restaurant with the playground" a few times but I really try to avoid using it's actual name because I don't want them to start asking to go there or building some associations with it. Lord knows I was the biggest McDonald's addict of all when I was a kid and, even though I know how bad it is to eat there, I still have to go there like once per month out of some chemical addiction. And then Tori sees it on our credit card bill and is appalled, month after month!
Here are some photos from the weekend that my sister took:
Even though we're kind of overwhelmed with our own three, it really wasn't too much extra work to have the twins here because they are really well-behaved and they kind of keep Zadie busy. And actually Sophie is really good about playing with Skip, although Zadie tries her hardest to exclude him at every opportunity. Sophie is interesting because she is very independent and often breaks away from the group, or decides to spend time with Skip or Charlie. Everybody played well together and I was happy for Zadie to get some quality time with her cousins.
Tori and I trade off taking all three kids out of the house on the weekends, usually from 6:30am (when they're allowed to get out of their beds) until about 10am. It's hard to manage all three, but at least somebody gets to have one peaceful and restful morning per week. So I don't mind taking on the challenge since I know that I'm going to benefit from the system. I usually take the kids to the park from 6:30am to 7:15am and they ride their scooters while I feed Charlie. Then we go to Jamba Juice and they also eat some of the steel-cut oatmeal there. Then we go to a different park afterwards. Tori usually takes the kids garage-saling, though I really don't understand how she manages all of that, especially because at that time of the morning the kids are always needing to pee or poop (and never at the same time). Apparently she just asks lots of people if she can use their bathroom and I guess she's pretty hard to turn down with three kids in tow.
Anyway, I was quite proud of myself for taking all five kids away on the Sunday morning when they were here. First we went to the park and they ran around for a long time. Then I actually took them to that evil restaurant that has the playground, but annoyingly doesn't open until 9am. I figured since I was so desperate to manage them all, it was pretty justified. And they were pretty excited about that whole set-up. The other people in that restaurant were quite curious about my five children -- lots of questions about that. And looks of pity.
I've taken Skip and Zadie to "the restaurant with the playground" a few times but I really try to avoid using it's actual name because I don't want them to start asking to go there or building some associations with it. Lord knows I was the biggest McDonald's addict of all when I was a kid and, even though I know how bad it is to eat there, I still have to go there like once per month out of some chemical addiction. And then Tori sees it on our credit card bill and is appalled, month after month!
Here are some photos from the weekend that my sister took:
Monday, August 15, 2011
Zadie and Jake Forever
A few weekends ago we went to San Diego with some very good friends from L.A. We had a great time and one of the best parts was how well Zadie played with Jake. This was really fun during the day, but kind of an issue at night since they were sleeping in the same room and they would keep each other up late chatting the night away. But this was a really cute photo we snapped of the two of them sleeping while holding hands, probably after chatting for like three hours.
On this particular night, my nephew Nick was babysitting and he couldn't get the kids to go to sleep. He said that Jake kept talking and talking and that Zadie told Jake that she was really tired and that if he didn't stop talking then she wouldn't be his best friend anymore. This made Jake really sad and he came out of the room crying to talk with Nick, who was sort of at a loss for what to say. I wish she wouldn't have said that to him (telling people she's not their best friend anymore is her new favorite insult), but it's also kind of amusing to me!
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