Naptime

Today, Meredith fell asleep in the car on the way home from a lunch date with me and a friend. When I put her into bed she woke up a little, but I figured she'd fall right back asleep. Here's what I heard - intermittently - over the next hour (all in a perfectly content voice, with no crying):

"O-K, O-K, O-K" (somehow she makes "okay" sound like two words)
"Butay,butay, butay" (we've never figured out what this means, she's said it for months)
"Wunday, wunday, wunday"
"Yuck, yuck, yuck"

This was followed up with some motorboats, and then...finally....sleep. What a funny girl.

Cheerios!

Look how far we've come with the eating! Meredith now eats her own bowl of cereal for breakfast. It is so nice for us to watch her eat instead of feeding her!

Happy Adoption Day, Meredith!

June 24 is another special day we celebrate right on the heels of Meredith's birthday - it's her Adoption Day!

While we aren't doing gifts (given the proximity with her birthday, it would probably be overload), we are going to celebrate with a cake! We'll also enjoy looking at some photos and some special souvenirs we brought back to remind us of Russia. Most importantly, we will praise God for bringing Meredith into our family.

In case you haven't seen pictures, here are a few special ones from June 24, 2008, when we picked up Meredith at the baby home.







And here is Meredith now!


What a big girl! And what a blessing. We love you, Meredith.

Happy 2nd Birthday, Meredith!

Today is Meredith's birthday! Although she and I didn't get to spend much of the day together (she traveled home with Rob while I stayed here in Wisconsin for a conference), I got to sing "Happy Birthday" to her this morning. It was really special to have our first birthday together with her.

Last year on this day, we were in the middle of the 10-day waiting period between going to court for her and getting custody, so we weren't with her.

The year before that was the actual day of her birth. It is hard to think about that, because she was in such rough shape, born 3 months early and weighing under 2 pounds. I wish we could have been there for our little girl. It makes me a little choked up sometimes to think of her in that hospital alone. But we know she was not alone. God was watching over her even then, and it is humbling to know He had her in the palm of His hand even when we didn't yet know she had been born.

But enough reflecting. This year we finally got to join the party to celebrate Meredith in person!!! We had a birthday celebration with my parents on Saturday. I'll post more when I have a chance, but here are a few highlights.






Among other gifts, a friend of mine offered her old cell phone when I told her how Meredith likes to push the buttons on mine (potentially causing trouble). We wrapped it up for Meredith to open as a birthday present. She knew what to do right away!



I am praising God today for our little girl.

Join me!

Wun-day

I thought I'd tell you a little about what Meredith's communicating these days.

First, her words:

duck (guh) -- also applies to other birds, including Big Bird
balloon (boomboom)
mama (mama)
daddy (dadday)
moon (moo)
button (bud'n)
frisbee (bee)
squirrel (gwuh)
stroller (diddle diddle) -- yeah, we don't know why either
ball (bah)
baby (baby)
boat (buh)
want (wun)
gwun (meaning currently unknown!)

Then, her animal noises (which are sort of operating as animal names for her!):

owl (hoo)
cow (moo -- yes, she finally uses an "m"!)
horse (neighing sound)
monkey (oo)
dog (bowwow)
frog (bowwow -- despite our demonstrations of "ribbit")
sheep (same as horse)
lion (roaring sound)
pig (very realistic snorting sound - no "oink" for her)

She also uses some baby signs - she seems very adept at them, so if we had used them more maybe she would know more of them...

want
please
thank you
all done
eat
more
book
ball
help
no (shakes her head)

She stood in front of the fridge yesterday signing "want" "more" and when we opened it for her she immediately reached for her sippy cup and took a drink! So cute!

Meredith has also impressed us greatly with her ability to recognize letters of the alphabet. Well, 2 of them. Maybe 3. But it is so cool! She will point to a letter "O" and say "Oh" or "Ooh", and her letter B is as clear as day. We're still working on A. Not pressing her obviously, but it is fun to help her learn something new and then have her point to it in her books.

Finally, the subject of this post is her latest repeated word: "wun-day". She has been saying it over and over again for the last two days. I may have solved the mystery when I realized that one of her current favorite books begins: "One day Danny went to the museum." Could she really be repeating the first two words of the book? I guess we'll never know.

When you let a toddler try your drink...

I know one should never give a little kid alcohol. And I know caffeine isn't good for them either. But I figured it couldn't hurt to give Meredith just a little sip of a Frappuccino (frozen coffee/milk/sugar) - she would no doubt think coffee was disgusting, as I did from childhood all the way through college. So I gave her a sip.

Well, here's the verdict. (This video was taken earlier this year.)

The Beach!

Although I have been to see the beach, and occasionally swim in it, I had never been on a "beach vacation." However, when friends of ours invited us to join them in a big house on the beach with 2 other couples for a week, we decided to go for it! We couldn't actually do the whole week, but we enjoyed our Wednesday-Sunday immensely and can't wait to go back. We drove up to the panhandle and got beautiful weather at our house right on the Gulf.

Here are a whole bunch of photos to give you an idea of what a good time we had!

But first, here was Meredith's response to my attempt to pack her suitcase for the trip.

I actually couldn't get her to stay out of it so I waited for Rob to get home in order to have a chance to throw her clothes in!

The first morning we were there, Meredith got to see the ocean for the first time! It was windy but beautiful.

A happy girl with her daddy!
Walking toward the water...
...making the cutest footprints! (If you click on the photo you can see her Canada sweatshirt, pony tail, and little pink shorts close up! So cute!)

There's the water - wow!

Checking out the sand with Mommy.

Ready to try the water with Daddy? This series of photos gives you the idea...



...ummm.....
...c'mon honey, it's ok....
....NO !!!!
Ah, safe once more!
The next day Meredith played with her "bee" in the sand. We forgot to buy her some buckets and shovels, but she didn't notice :)
We played on the beach again the next day with a different swimsuit! (Let's be clear, though, there was no interest in swimming....)

Meredith was doing the actions for her favorite song, "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star". The photo below is "how I wonder what you are". Notice that she has a patch on her eye - we are doing this for 2 hours a day to help work on the strength of her weaker (right) eye. They make very cute patches these days, with girly themes, and they work just like bandaids. She's been very cooperative.

..."like a diamond in the sky" (well, a u-shape...)
Here's the gorgeous view from our back deck. I originally thought it wouldn't make much difference if we were right on the beach or a block or two away, but this convinced me that it's worth staying RIGHT there. We could sit on the deck and see dolphins' fins come up when they were swimming around out there. It was amazing!

Here's Meredith wandering around on one side of the deck (yes, all of the posts were checked for stability - Lindsay did it before I even got there!).


The other side of the deck had tables and we ate all of our meals out there. I didn't think to take a picture until the last day so we're missing one couple who had already left (sorry Kevin and Christina!). It is hard to describe my joy in eating so much food cooked by other people :)

Meredith enjoyed her new friend Eli!

This picture looks like something that would be in an alumni newsletter where some old roommates all got together after having babies around the same time. Well, we've never been roommates - actually all of us were already married when we met each other - but we all became moms within the last year and are having a great time!


Here's hoping for another chance to do this soon!

And now some unrelated updates - I like to mention key progress that Meredith makes when I put up a blog post. The news is exciting -- three big things:

1) After weekly appointments for 2 months, the occupational therapist is so happy with Meredith's fine-motor progress that we're cutting back to every-other-week for checking in with her.

2) On Easter, Meredith ate little pieces of ham by herself WITH A BABY FORK!!! I was in shock.

3) There is another new word, and it's the first one that is basically pronounced like the actual word (imagine that!). If you point to a button on your clothing, or to her belly button, she loudly tells you: "BUDN!" We could say it's her first 2-syllable word, but that second part doesn't really have a vowel so I don't know....but it is sure cute!

(Note: photos from Easter will be coming soon, but we need to organize them....Meredith was great at the Easter Egg Hunt!).