"OH NO WAY!"

One of Van's new phrases is really an exclamation that means, basically, Eureka! She says, "Oh, no way!" like a perfect little high school student.

Here are some photos from the past few weeks. See Nanners playing hide-and-seek in the Christmas tree "forest." That rascal (pronounced Ras-a-cal). She plays hide-and-seek with Daddy every evening at home.

Here she is, eating "Ice-a-cream." Her favorite flavor? Pumpkin.

See her here with a new sweater and hat and a new friend, Mr. Snail. You'd think she'd found a unicorn in the yard, the way she marveled at this fine little creature. It took some serious reasoning on my part to get her to leave Mr. Snail (Mister Suh Nay-oh) in the great out-of-doors.

She's been wowing the other parents at the playground. I don't even feign modesty when Vanessa scales the playground equipment. "She's a climbing freak," I admit.

This little boyfriend is a year older. His mama and I said, "Go ahead, you can do it," and he looked up at us and said, "No, I can't." His mama commented that he had noticed Vanessa from across the playground, then he had to get up the nerve to approach her. After they climbed awhile, we saw him stand right up against Vanny, hold both of her hands, then move in slowly and carefully for a kiss. I fell on my back laughing.

Today is Vanessa's second birthday! We feel this is Vanessa Season, not just her birth day. We spent the weekend with the California side of the family, celebrating, and today we're having a quiet celebration at home, which may include sitting on Santa's lap and riding the merry-go-round downtown... photos to follow.

DADDY'S LITTLE GIRL

We want to wish you a happy belated Thanksgiving and an early merry Christmas! We were all set to leave for New York to finalize the adoption, but this week it fell through. The birthmother decided to raise her little son herself. We are not upset. We got to know her this past month and understand how strong a bond she has with him and she's doing a great job raising him. Please join us in our prayers for her. She just turned 21 and has absolutely no family support.

Here are some pics from the holidays, in no particular order. We had a quiet and absolutely lovely Thanksgiving at home. Vanessa loves to cook. See her in the kitty cat apron Grandma sent?

We've had a few visitors come by this month. Bjorn came for an overnight and Bridgette stopped by, too. Old friends Rob and Manuela visited with their baby daughter Sophia. Let me tell you, Sophia was a big ole hit around here. Vanessa loves older kids and Sophia can surf.



Daddio has been tackling Vanessa's mane of curls. See her here, with unruly bedhead. Will the real Baby Einstein please stand up?

There's a new daily ritual in town. It involves Daddy's bathrobe and a certain little kangaroo. She hides in his bathrobe and we say, "Where's Vanessa? Is she in the closet?" and a tiny little voice answers from the bathrobe, "No..."


V-Dog is pretending very well these days. She's also singing the Alphabet song, which is truly a shock, since we've not been practicing. Kids pick up the darnedest things. She's also adoring her independence. "No, Mama, No!" she says and holds out her hand like a traffic cop. I'm not invited on her little adventures. "No thank you," she says. She's all grown up, apparently. It's very, very cute.

This weekend we were visited by "Auntie" Nell and her groom, Braidy. I threatened to Photoshop our faces onto this picture for our Christmas card. Our pose is a bit more, um, candid.



Here are a couple of videos for your viewing pleasure. The first is of Nanners thinking it might be nifty to ride the white cat.

This is an older snippet of what it's like to go grocery shopping these days. Let me assure y'all, there are few activities that rate as highly as a trip to the grocery store, now that Van has discovered the mini "Shopper in Training" carts. Here she is leading me to he diaper aisle for the baby. I guess I mentioned we needed some!

Daddio is in Las Vegas this week for a coaching summit. He's a big time coach now. Nanners fell asleep in her clothes at 6:30 p.m. last night and woke up at 6:00 a.m. when I got up to feed Max. I came back to the room where she was sitting up in bed in the dark. "Mama!" she exclaimed. "Where are my jammies? I'm wearing my clothes!" She sounded slightly horrified and completely bewildered. I laughed my tail off.

And I leave you with my favorite video. Note the teenage surfers in the background.

GREETINGS FROM SEATTLE

Vanessa and I are visiting Seattle and Portland, on a last minute trip to see old friends on their birthdays. "Auntie" Sarah and "Auntie" Katja have turned another year older so we came to celebrate with them. There are many babies in the mix and we are loving every minute of it.

Here we are, four college roommates, finally getting around to building our families after 23 years of knowing each other. Seems like yesterday we were teasing our bangs to great heights and learning to drink coffee on the weekends.

Duncan grew in his mommy's belly as his mommy took me to my last round of chemo, every single week. He'll be 5 in February. Vanessa thinks Duncan is her boyfriend. Vanessa would have turned 6 a month ago if she had been allowed to grow immediately after conception. So who is older?

Van and I only had a brief amount of time to visit friends. See us here with Loretta, Wally, Jessica and Myriah. Loretta and I shared a small office for 8 years. Why I am alive and cancer free is a mystery. I feel grateful, as always, to be here and to be a mother.

Without realizing it, various members of Jack's family were already converging on Seattle. Nanners and I got to rendez-vous with cousins, aunts and uncles at at MacDonalds with a hobitrail. We got to share our BIG NEWS with the family directly:

DRUMROLL, PLEASE... On Friday the adoption agency called to say they have a little 8 month old baby boy.


Daddio and I have spent the weekend in contact with the birthmom and today we heard that she wants to match with us for sure. We are so excited! There's much in the works, so please keep us all in your prayers. If the match goes through as planned, we will have this beautiful child in our home in December.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

This is Vanessa's second Halloween. Remember how chubby she was last year? She fit into her costume again this year. She was a little lion, although she often referred to herself as being a tiger.

We asked her to roar and she did this pose:


She has stopped napping during the day and was very tired when we arrived at the downtown trick-or-treat event. She looked like she had toothpicks holding her eyes open, but other than that, she was able to go store to store, say "trick or treat," and even "thank you."


There were so many adorable children and stunning costumes. However, people still found a reason to stop and dote over the little mop-headed lion. She got so much attention it reminded us of being in China. Basically, she had the perfect mane for the costume. "Hair by God," I tell people.


We bumped into the triplets, Marley, Audrey, and Cordell. They were busy. Oh my heavens, we literally said "Hi," snapped a photo, and they were off with their triple stroller and fleet of babysitters.

Daddio took Nanners around to all the businesses that were handing out candy. Mama ran the camera. After quite a bit of trick-or-treating, Vanessa felt she wanted to run off some energy (she had her New Balance running shoes on, afterall). Daddio bent over and chased her through the throngs of people, Mama not far behind. That rascal was following the sounds of a polka band, playing at an open cafe for Oktoberfest. She stood outside the cafe and did a lion dance for a few minutes, very much to the delight of the beer drinkers there. "Uninhibited" comes to mind. Just the way we like it.

We bumped into Vanessa's bff, Andrea, and her mom, Jen. They live right by us and they babysat Vanessa a couple times last week. They treat VH1 like family. The feeling is mutual. Andrea is 10 - the age Auntie Anne was when I was two.


We also bumped into a couple of Daddio's athletes, Chadnei and Jerae. Little Bananakins was sans costume at this point, and needing that nap.



When Jack put her into her car seat to go home, Nessa asked, "Daddy, you ride in the back seat?" Hello: a complete sentence. It was an exciting day for a lion cub, but, when we got home, Daddio had new pumpkins to carve.

Vanessa didn't get to bed until 10 p.m., and even then it was under protest.

TWENTY TWO ON THE 22ND

Months, that is... Vanessa is 22 months old now, as of October 22nd. New in her life? The word mayonnaise. Tonight we had roast chicken, white rice and broccoli. We let her put a dab of mayonnaise on her food, which she immediately ate, then shouted "Mayonnaise! Mayonnaise! Mayonnaise!" the rest of the meal. [She has mayonnaise on her turkey sandwiches with Daddio. That's how she got hooked.]

She has also developed a popsicle habit. We bought a Costco box of Flav-o-Ice popsicles for her baby dedication back in June. Daddio discovered them since we've been home from our travels and don't you know the two of them curl up together every evening with a popsicle. Nanners can wait, but don't try to put her to bed without a popsicle. Good thing she loves to brush her teeth.



Over the weekend Vanessa got a cold. I pulled out my box labeled "Pediatric Rx" and wee Bananakins insisted on running the show. First she asked her toy kitty, China, "Do you need some medicine?" in a sincere and gentle voice. She stared into China's eyes and waited for a response. Whatever China said, Vanessa took it upon herself to use every item in the Pediatric Rx box on her: Motrin drops, Tylenol drops, Mylicon gas drops, ear thermometer, tape measure, nasal aspirator, toenail clippers, eye dropper, Vics Vapo-Rub (she can say that), and a brush. After she administered to China and wiped her nose with a tissue, she let me doctor her. It was very, very cute. "I fix it," she said.



We've been playing around with Van's buddies. It's always fun at the organic farm feeding the goats, and those hayrides to the pumpkin patch are a real treat this time of year. Nothing can compare, though, to Daddio carving a Jack-o-Lantern. Never has Van imagined such a thing. When he put a candle in it, turned off the lights and lit it... you should have heard the MONKEY SCREECHING! After that, just saying the word "pumpkin" would produce a screech.



Of course our temperatures here have been near 100 degrees, so the Jack-o-Lantern has already collapsed and been sent to the green and clean recycling pit. She's picking up our decorative baby pumpkins, asking, "I cut it?" (We must get more pumpkins.)



Van's vocabulary continues to grow. She has her pronouns down pat this week. She doesn't always choose to use them, but when she does, they are correct. Thank God, because that would be hard to teach, I think. We read her Halloween book from Gramma Patty and her three Nursery Rhyme books every day. Like ten times a day. We don't know why she's fixated on the pumpkin book. The Nursery Rhymes are fun because we sing them, shout them, act them out... we are downright raucous with our Mother Goose around here. Today it was Cheech and Chong do Pussycat, Pussycat Where Have You Been? Her favorite song to sing is still Tomorrow, but she only knows the one line.



We have to watch what we say around her. We've known for a very long time that she understands absolutely everything, but now it's weird that she can talk. I hung up after talking with Daddio about which of our three favorite take-out places to go to and Vanessa shouted, "Taco Rico!" which had been one of the options. "You don't even know what that is," I shot back. "Food," she said. I got Daddy back on the phone and said, "Tell Daddy what you just told me." Van said, "Taco Rico, Mexico food." Hola! Where did she learn the word Mexico?

At Taco Rico that night we met a little blonde haired girl her same size whose birth day is one week after Vanessa's. Her due date was also one week after Vanessa's. They were like twins, except the other little girl, Brooke, had two pigtails on the top of her head. The two blonde toddlers entertained everyone at Taco Rico with their aisle sprinting. We exchanged numbers. The next day Vanessa wore two pigtails.



Favorite phrases these days: "It's broken." "Not working." "Needs batteries." "I fix it." Last night she used a Phillips head on one of her toys that needs batteries. I no longer need to leave the couch when she wants to change out her DVDs.

Here are videos from the past two weeks. Sorry, this layout is funny: there's something up with the blog editor.

Co

KITTENS DRINK MILK

Yesterday was fun. We went to our very first toddler story hour at the library. It was great. Too bad Vanessa has no idea how to sit still. There were 15 children aged 2 months to 4 years, and an equal number of parents. Vanessa sat on my lap for the first story. For the second one, she crept up to the story teller, stared into her eyes at close range, then exited, stage left. (Wendy, I thought of you.) Nanners was the first (only?) one to defect. All the other parents seemed to have children who stuck around. I guess story time was a little to passive for our active go-getter.

We left the library for a few short errands - the bank, DMV, and the pediatrician's office. Vanessa was quite a hit and very energetic at all three places. Most notable was the DMV, which was packed with sullen drivers waiting their turn in uncomfortable, plastic chairs. Vanessa walked through the entire room making eye contact and saying, "Hello!" You'd think she was in China. It was actually great fun to see people's scowls and frowns melt into smiles. She was particularly charming at the DMV.

When my number was finally called, I had to hold her writhing body in one arm while trying to pull papers out and sign legibly with the other. It didn't work very well. I stood Van on the counter, then had to put her down. She bolted, of course. I had to run through the DMV, all eyes upon us, to capture her, then run her back to my window. One or two more times of that, and we pretty much had stolen the show for the day. I carried Vanessa out as she waved and said, "Bye-Bye!" to each of her adoring fans.

By the time we got home from our errands, it was time for lunch. Here are two videos of that. Mom, click on the triangle on the bottom left of the picture to play the following two videos... you may have to click them twice (or more).

The first one is dedicated to cousin Corey:

[got milk?]
[That's a belch at the end.]

The second is dedicated to Daddio:

Somehow I missed the fact that September 19th is International Pirate Day. Arrgh! Have you heard me speak to Vanessa like a pirate? I do. Not sure why. Anyway, I thought it fitting we find out what my pirate name is. This is for Kraybear. Arrgh! Nancy-girl!

Red Mary Kidd

Passion is a big part of your life, which makes sense for a pirate. Even though you're not always the traditional swaggering gallant, your steadiness and planning make you a fine, reliable pirate. Arr!

Should I include this summary in the home study? Check yourself out at:

http://www.piratequiz.com/

THEN YOU SHALL HAVE NO PIE

This week Vanessa has taken her reading to a whole new level. In addition to being able to be trusted with books that have (gasp!) real, paper pages, she has latched on to nursery rhymes with a real passion. Her favorites? "The Three Little Kittens," and "Pussy Cat, Pussy Cat." I detect a theme. She can also spot Humpty Dumpty and Yankee Doodle a mile away, which I find fascinating. No wonder these crazy nursery rhymes have survived.

This week she discovered that her new size diapers - size 5 - have Mickey Mouse on them. You'd think she'd been reunited with a long, lost relative. In fact, we have no Mickey Mouse stuff about the house, so I'm not sure how she recognized him or why she's obsesseed with him. She pulled out every single diaper to check and remark, "Oh! Mickey Mouse!"

We've been singing a lot this week, too. At one point I told Daddio I wanted to see two of my childhood favorites, "Bedknobs and Broomsticks" and "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang." Well, he ordered Bedknobs from Netflix and I purchased Chitty for $6. The movies, we found, were excessively long, a trifle corny, and short on plot. They do have, however, a couple fabulous dance sequences that Vanessa could watch as a loop for easily a week. We jump up and sing and dance for these scenes.

I sing, "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" with such gusto I'm nervous the police might appear at our door. Vanessa sings along. In fact, we recorded "Annie" and, after I stormed around the room for a full-body rendition of "It's a Hard Knock Life," Vanessa felt at liberty to chime in to sing "Tomorrow" - I kid you not. Sure, she sings, "Tomano," which sounds suspiciously like her version of Tomato, but hey, it still made us about burst with pride.

Last week we had another home visit as part of our adoption process. It went quite well and we are nearing completion with our home study. This is the part where social workers document our life details to show the government we can be trusted with a child. It seems silly to many people, but some adopted children have been harmed or even killed by their parents, so we subject to this process without complaint. Our home study social worker was in the convent from age 19-26, before getting married and having four children. She's a nurse and has an MSW, so we had quite a bit to chat about. She thinks we're fit to adopt.

Our adoption placement agency, Lifetime, is working on our behalf to speak to birth parents and match us to them for an open adoption. In an open adoption, the birth mother chooses the family for her baby. Birth fathers are only occasionally involved in open adoptions. We found out last Tuesday that one birth mother saw our profile online and has us as her "first choice" adoptive family. Hearing that was really, really exciting for me. Even if we don't go on to match with this person, I'm thrilled our profile appealed to her.

If you want to see our online profile, and give us your baby, you can check us out, here.

http://lifetimeadoption.com/for_birtmothers/families/jack_mary/index.html

In addition to this profile, we have a 12 page scrapbook style profile that is mailed out to birth parents. Special thanks to all our peeps who sent in character references to the home study agency and letters of references for our birth parent profiles. Thank you!

We went to the beach and the park with Andrea and baby Kennedy last week - our friends from 2006 birthing classes. The girls went on the slide and swings and met some other nice kids. I love seeing Nanners with her peers. She loves kids.

This week Milo turns four and we've had Chica in the family for three years. Tonight Chica is eating pretzels out of Van's hand and flying around the house to watch what we do. Chica even landed on the floor and was calm enough to let Milo approach her to sniff those ever elusive tail feathers. Happy Birthday, Milo!

We had a 100 degree heat wave that melted suddenly into 60 degree days. Brrrrr. Vanessa went out to the back yard for a tennis ball one day and returned with a baby snail.

Today it warmed back up to normal, so we were out back for an afternoon dip in the kiddie pool, when VH1 requested to take off her swim suit. Then her diaper. Then Nature Girl explored the perimeter of the yard in her birthday suit, with evident freedom and wild abandon. I wondered what the heck she was doing, hiding in the shadows for so long, then I hear, "Mama!" and out she came, with a bit of a grin. She looked relieved, if you know what I mean.

This was another day, but the same look:

I forgot to mention that "Auntie" Nell, in addition to moving to L.A. and getting engaged to her soul puppy, Braidy, has a new gig as a sports model. Her first job? Cover story for HerSports magazine. Way to launch, girl!

http://www.hersports.com/