My Daughter's Boyfriend?

Today I was dropping the kids off at school and ran into another mother there. Ms. J said that her son, W and E were sitting together on the bus the other day when their two classes went on a field trip.

One of the other teachers told Ms. J that W said “I’m sitting next to the most *beautiful* girl” (Ms. J has an English accent so it sounded lovely the way she said it). I though that was just the sweetest thing.

A few moments later when we got into the hall, E said to me “Can I hold W’s hand?”. I said that she would have to ask W, since sometimes boys don’t want to hold girls’ hands.

“But you can hold mine”, I said. She said “no” and walked backwards to her class! Once on my way to work, I called T to let him know that we’re going to have a problem once E hits her teenage years!

My Daughter's Funny Faces Series

Here is a series of photos of E taken at lunch last week. Yes, that is blue marker on her forehead. That is what happend when Mommy doesn't pay complete attention when E is drawing. Luckily is was washable marker.

My Its My Heart Walk

This Saturday, I walked in a charity event to raise money for an organization called It's My Heart. IMH is a support group for parents of children with Congenital Heart Defects (CHD). My goal was to raise $1000. I was only able to raise $775. So if you still feel like giving, you can mail me a check made out to "It's My Heart" or you can mail it directly to the organization (www.itsmyheart.org). Please put my name in the memo line.

I would really appreciate it if you could help me make my goal. I want to thank all of my very generous sponsors. The team who raised the largest amount raised about $3,300, so I feel very fortunate to have singly raised almost $1000.

IMH is a great group that provides support especially when you're in the hospital with your child helping them recover from their heart surgery. They have monthly meetins and also offer educational programs and scholarships to health care providers who are focusing their study on the prevention of CHDs. The event itself raised over $33,000. IMH will be able to do a lot with that money.

The walk was held at a downtown park. The weather was supposed to be very rainy, but luckily, the rain held off and we were able to do the walk and enjoy the fun activities.

Here we are with "Arty" (as in artery) for a "before" picture. E got the red hat since she is a survivor.

Here is the start banner...

And here we are on the actual walk. I'm pushing our double stroller (I'm in the turquoise hoodie) and my friend Haley is next to me in the Jeter jersey. Her son just has his open heart procedure in November. He's had multiple closed heart procedures. He is one month younger than Z. The walk was only about 3 miles. It was very humid.

Here is E receiving her medal for the walk. Z fell asleep about 2/3 of the way through (he's in the front seat).

After the walk, there were lot of activities for the kids. They had about 5 different jumpy jumpy (bounce a lots). E loves these things. They had a superhero one where you enter through a "Phone booth" and climb about 15 feet up a slope and then slide down. That was her favorite. She probably went up it about 10 times.

Here she is getting her harness on the go on another kind of jumpy thing...but it was more like a sling shot. We couldn't believe she wanted to go on this thing. She waited very patiently for about 20 minutes in line, watching each kid in front of her during their turn.

Off to the side, you can see the large poles that hold her up. She had to jump off the mat a few times to get herself going.

But soon she was flying through the air, pretty high up. She was so happy.

And then she was also brave enough to try the rock climbing wall. This was as high as she got before she wanted to come down. She got this high on her own power. We were impressed with her bravery. The man who put her harness on said "She can go on this?". And I said if she wants to. She is my little thrill seeker!

My Kids' Trip to the Children's Museum

Hello Rat Ox Ram Dog Fans,

Lots has happened since our last post. Chinese New Year started on February 7th. It is a 15 day festival, ending in the lantern festival. In China, the entire country goes on vacation for Chinese New Year, traveling to be with family. It is the year of the Rat. T is a rat.

We celebrated by going to dinner at a Chinese restaurant with others from the group Families with Children From China (FCC). We had a very nice time. The group was larger than last year CNY dinner. T and I always felt a bit funny attending FCC events with no child from China (even though waiting families are always welcomed). But now, we have Mr. Z, so we are certified (in more ways than one!)

Last week I took the kids to the children's museum downtown. We met my friend Cr there with her two kids, K and P. E is about 9 months older than K. And Z is about 8 months older than P.

It was my first time in a public place with both kids, where Z could really run around and I had to worry about keeping one set of eyes on two kids that run in different directions. I was a bit worried. Luckily, the museum was relatively empty, so it wasn't too hard. It turns out that Z doesn't like to wander too far away, so that made it a bit easier than I anticipated.

Here are some of the activites we did at the museum: shopping in the grocery store....

Milking a pretend cow....

Drawing kitty cat faces on our faces with grease pencils....

Enjoying our friends....

My Dog's Cone of Silence

Well, I was off from work today (thank goodness). T called me at about 8am to check on the dog. Apparently, last night, Sydney chewed off of his splint. I'm sure you recall he has a broken leg. Tim re-wrapped the splint before he went to work this morning.

Well, I checked on Sydney at about 8am this morning. His splint was nearly off. I freaked out. The kind of freak out when something is so medically gross I can't even deal with it. T finds this state of mine extremely funny.

I thought that Sydney's leg was in really bad shape and he was trying to walk on it without the splint. I thought it would re-break again. Fortunately, it did not (or at least we think it didn't). So T told me to take the splint off (all the while E is on the potty having a marathon BM, wanting me to read books to her and Z is crying and generally tearing up the house).

So I take the splint off and call the vet's office to see if we can get Sydney in so that the leg can get re-splinted. Then came the real challenge (as if the morning wasn't challenging enough)...getting everyone to the vet's office. You know how the Marines say they do more before 6am than most people do all day.....

Two kids get into their car seats. I carry one 60 pound dog into the front seat of my car, white hair is everywhere. We arrive at the vets office. Thankfully I get a parking spot in front. Z is in the stroller and E is walking. I put them outside the vet's front door (only about 15 feet from me). And head back to the car to carry the dog to the front dog. We all make it inside and I attempt to calm a frenetic dog to try to keep him from putting weight on his broken leg. Needless to say, I was covered in dog hair.

Another $100 dollars later....we have the cone of silence dog. Complete with a new splint! All in all, I think Sydney is very happy to be home. The vet says we can have an x-ray at 4 weeks (2 weeks from now) to see if we can take the splint off.

That was all accomplished by 9:15 this morning. Then all we had to do was get showered and head to ballet lessons. What a hectic life we lead. But really, I wouldn't have it any other way. :)

My Mama Moment

I got home from work yesterday a bit late (a whole other story). The children and T were already home from spaghetti supper at church and were bouncing around the living room. Z was crawling in and out of the stroller (you can see him in the bottom right side of the picture).

When I walked in and he saw me he said "Mama!". And that just about made my heart melt. He had been saying mama for a long time. And recently I suspected that he had made the connection that my name was mama. But today was the first time that I was 100% confident that he called me mama. So T took this picture of my smiling face after Z said mama.

My Foray into Blogging (by Mr.T)

What does one do when Mrs. J goes out to dinner? Why take over blog duties of course! And boy do I have a fan club! We are enjoying the new year and Z is even helping out with cleaning the house- a new year's resolution we didn't know he made (as frequently we will find important things in our trash can cleanfully placed there by Z). He is an animal with the vacuum!

Martha eat your heart out!

And here is J and E and Z pretending he is Mr. Potato(e) head. He was told this morning not to eat any Mr. Potato's parts and he proudly defies our mandate.

Well thanks for your viewership whilst Mrs. J is having enchiladas and margaritas and swapping white elephant gifts (the horror!). I'll be back- enjoy those salads and don't forget to tip your wait staff.