We aren't technically leaving until tomorrow. We have the housesitter all lined up, our family has absorbed 15 shots, despaired over the fact that we have more stuff than car and we are basically ready to continue this journey.
We meet Evie for the first time this weekend and go to court on Monday. I don't know when I will be able to post again, but I will give you updates when able.
Finally arrived on Wednesday.
Evie Lanwe Hoffmann
Her formal name is Evonna and I am sure we will be calling her Eve at some point too. We actually received these pictures in the morning, but we promised each other we would wait until we could check it out together. (Though I think Court peeked). It is pretty amazing to see two new members of our family. (For privacy concerns I cropped out Evie's birth mother.) Sent them to my Mom and then of course posted them as protected on Facebook and received a lot of great comments.
Maya was super excited. She asked a ton of questions and it was really hitting home to see a picture of Evie's birth mother. May wanted to know what her "Chinese Momma's" name is and if she is ever going to meet her and why does Evie have a picture of her birth mother and she doesn't. All good questions that you think you are prepared for, but still created for a pretty heavy day.
We are both freaking out about the whirlwind that is going to be our lives going through packing and shopping and everything else that takes place with an International adoption. We are definitely ready for it, it will be a good adjustment for all of us, tough at times, I am sure, but I think it is all a part of what makes 4 happy family. (*Groan....had to throw in a pun)
So, a little while back we went to this consignment thing looking for new (used and inexpensive) clothes for the new kid. (Because second born does not get any of the new stuff, am I right?) The event was at a water park near the Wisconsin border. Maya loves water parks and they had windows overlooking the place next to the banquet room reserved for people selling their stuff.
I hate shopping so I was more than happy to watch everyone run around in the water while Maya had her face stuck against the class drooling ever so slightly. Meanwhile, my wife was a kid in a half-priced, semi-eaten candy store. Win - Win.
There was one rack inside that was nothing but costumes from years gone by. They were pretty heavily picked through and the ones that were remaining were either really old (something that looked like ALF) or really expensive (come one people do not pay $35 for a flower costume for a toddler). There was one diamond in the rough that lit Maya up though, it was a little Minnie Mouse dress shirt thing with polka dots and the long black sleeves. She was ecstatic so we decided that it was worth the $2.50 and threw it in the big bag o' stuff that was amassed.
Well, the point of this post is not another cute costume that we bought our daughter, it is more about hitting that point of realization that our daughter is becoming a little bit spoiled. We were going out to dinner with C's parents that night and we told/bribed her with the costume making her promise to have good manners for the rest of the day and that night. If she fulfilled her end of things, she could have the MM costume.
Maya was having a tantrum day. We took the costume away and told her that she can't have it if she was not going to act nicely. Her response to us telling her that we were taking it away was to go ahead and put it in the trash. Anger. Seething anger for not appreciating something. We got her down for a well-needed nap and sat in the basement to talk things out.
Looking across the vast wasteland of toys spread everywhere, I started getting more and more frustrated. We have this house chock full of toys and games and dolls and so forth and there just did not seem like they were apperciated. We also talked about how musch useless crap we buy her. Not anything big, mind you, more like something out of the $1 bin from Target or give her a bubble gum ball or a ride outside of the hardware store on the mini- merry-go-round.
To condese this down, we started in with a chore chart for her. I wanted to put things like clean the gutters and knock down the wasp nests, but we settled on get dressed, be a good listener, feed the cat and pick up toys. We left some extra room on there for other things. The idea is that she gets her allowance if she has 30 stars in a week. We have been talking up that she should save some of it for long-term and can can spend/save the rest on something she chooses.
It took her until the first commercial for some caterpillar game on TV the next day to declare what she wanted to blow her hard-earned cash on. We had to explain that she had to earn it first before she could spend it. (Which got me thinking that the next lesson will be from the Banco de Hoffmann credit services).
The first week went really well, she earned 31 stars and was super excited and proud of herself. Not sure if she trule "gets" it yet, but at least Courtney and I have a new bank to hit when we are strapped for cash.
From the always fun Comsumerist.
By
Laura Northrup,
5:30 PM on Sat Sep 12 2009, 32,011 views
Did you think that a restaurant using the code "bogo bitches" to refer to coupon-using customers was bad? Well, a Cactus Joe's restaurant in England can top that. A new menu item called 'Thankyyou littell f***er'" appeared on a family's receipt after their child acted up during a long wait for food.
According to the child's mother,
[S]omehow they still managed to take that long to serve us and after about 20 minutes, Molly started to get restless and a bit impatient.
'She wanted to get up and walk around but we wouldn't let her so she had a little tantrum.
'When we asked for the bill there was another long wait so I went up to pay at the counter and that is when I saw the swear word on the bill.
'I couldn't believe it. The woman looked really embarrassed and the manager apologised but I could still see people whispering and sniggering.
'It's out of order.'
We can't help but wonder what the logic was here. A passive-aggressive note that employees thought the family wouldn't see until after leaving? A staff member taking out frustration with a customer's misbehaving child with what he or she thought was a behind-the-scenes note? Whatever the case, if you're going to insult customers, at least take the time to do it with proper spelling and grammar.
The family turned down the restaurant's offer of a free meal. The employee responsible has been fired.
The best laid plans...
Ever plan one of those weekends where you want to get a lot accomplished? I don't just mean cheap "honey do" lists and other accumulated life bullet points. I am talking about one of those you plan all week on knocking out big projects down to the hourlong-time blocks on how things are going to fit into place? Military precision.
Then it all gets messed up. I went to bed on Saturday night at about 12:30 and was jabbed awake by Courtney about 30 minutes later and she mumbled fire alarm. Not a great thing to hear when you are asleep. I finally put two and two together (based on the fact that she was not getting out of bed) and realized that the alarm in Maya's room was beeping because of a low battery.
If you recall, Maya unknowingly had the heck scared out of her a little while back when he lesson at school on stranger danger coincided with me burning asparagus and setting of the talking fire alarm. The fallout was that she thought someone was in our house house and she has been nervouse around fire alarms ever since.
Obviously, at this hour of the morning the only logical thing to do is rip it off the wall and take care of it later. Crisis averted. About 3 hours later I woke up in excruciating pain. I could not move the right side of my face and realized that my jaw muscle had swollen up and I could not move it. Stupid TMJ. Went downtstairs, took drugs and writhed in pain for most of the morning. I know I need ot get a mouth guard, but I just have not gotten around to it. So, the morning was pretty shot.
I was feeling better by the afternoon and we went out to grab something to eat. The other story arc for our weekend was that Courtney was stung by a bee on Friday. Courtney is allergic to bees, sometimes they affect her and other times they don't. Her leg got bigger and bigger and redder and redder throughout the weekend. She woke up Sunday morning and could barely walk on it. See picture at the end of the post.
So, off to Urgent Care. The staff there seemed a little freaked out and they marked up her leg and told us that if the swelling goes outside of this line that we had to go get her admitted to the hospital. Scary how quickly things could escalate. So, we got her some drugs and she spend a portion of the day with her leg elevated and being immobile. Kind of a lost weekend...but we got some down time as a family, so no complaints.
It is fitting that this is my 200th post.
She was born in the Marshall Islands on August 19th. That is about all we have right now besides some name information I can't share. More info as we get it. Waiting on pictures.
***Oh and by the way we received notice today that our concurrent China adoption just passed the review side so we get to sit in another line for a couple of years. Not sure what we are going to do...
Interesting article.
Kind of like the conspiracy theory that the receipts are longer so they will not fit into your wallet which means you are less likely to keep them to return stuff.
