Happy Thanksgiving & My Little Turkey

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! To celebrate this Thanksgiving with our daughter makes me think of all of the wonderful people we are grateful for. Without our friends and family we could not have endured the ups and downs of our adoption adventure. Without a young birth mother in Russia we would never have been able to become Angelina's mama and papa. To say that I am thankful for this woman who I will never meet would be an understatement. And of course, even through all of her new terrible two behavior, I am beyond grateful for my little girl. She has changed our lives and filled us with so much happiness and joy.

Now, a little turkey story. Angelina and I were playing upstairs in her room yesterday. I needed to start some laundry so I closed some of the doors of the other rooms. You see, if I leave Angelina alone and she does not want to be left alone, she will go to places where she should not be and get into things she should not be getting into. So, laundry was in and I started to make my way back upstairs. When I turned the corner, I notice that the bathroom door was open. My first thought was: great, there is a block in the toilet. I look around and see Angelina running into her room. I call her name, she turns around with the biggest grin on her face. In her hand, she is holding the m&m Tupperware that we keep in the bathroom for her potty prizes. She thought she was pretty clever. I did too, but did not show it! Little turkey.

I hope that everyone has a happy and healthy Thanksgiving. I think of all of the people I know who will be celebrating Thanksgiving for the first time with their newly adopted children, and it brings me much joy.

Another New Look

Please be patient as I make up my mind about my blog layout!

Success With Potty Training

In the beginning of October, on a whim, I started to re-introduce Angelina to the idea of the potty. I say "re" introduce because when we took her from the baby home, she was already out of diapers and in underpants. We knew, and our facilitator told us, that she truly was not potty trained, but was out of diapers as a way to conserve for the younger children.

I first started to put her on the potty when I noticed her take the squat position. However, I was trying to think of a way to get Angelina more involved, which is hard considering she does not speak too many words yet. Then, I remembered sign language, and taught her the sign for potty. The rest is history!

Angelina has been doing wonders with potty training. Now, on one hand, this is great news to me! On the other hand, when I see her make the potty sign for the third time in a half hour, I want to pull my hair out! At first, she was fueled by our praise, but that slowly wore off. Now, we have been rewarding her with an m&m each time she is successful. This has lead to more trips to the potty and trying like heck to squeeze anything out to try to get a prize. A drop of pee lands in the toilet, she smiles and claps then holds out her hand for a treat. This child is unbelievable.

The past few days have been interesting because I've been letting Angelina be free of diapers while we are around the house. I think that she likes the freedom and has been great at telling us when she has to go. I know that we still have a long road to go with regards to being potty trained, but we are off to a great start. And, if Angelina does not drive me too crazy with the potty sign, all will be well!

The following picture has nothing to do with my blog topic post, but I thought it was cute:

Home 3 Months!

Angelina has been home for three months now. As each day passes, we fall more in love with her! She truly is becoming not just our adopted daughter, but rather, just our daughter. She has been changing so much over the past few weeks. We are laughing so much at all of the new things she tries to do, and are enjoying watching her learn. So I thought that I'd re-cap some changes that we have seen in her.

For me, it has been a somewhat frustrating month on the attachment front. I have felt that our attachment process was becoming stagnant. I spent many days over the past few weeks frustrated with my parenting and our attachment progress. Though, as the month has moved on, I have seen some great attachment breakthroughs. Angelina has learned that when she gets a boo boo, I will kiss it and make her feel better. So, I have been kissing fingers, feet, knees, forehead, etc... non-stop for two weeks straight. It would not be inaccurate to say that if she feels a draft on her thumb, she holds it up to me and says "bu bu".

Also, Angelina has been wanting us to hold her more, and is becoming more involved in the holding process. She will try to climb up us and cling on to us when we try to put her down. This is certainly a great milestone! And, just over the past few nights, while I am rocking Angelina, she has been turning into me to get closer and snuggle more. She practically made me cry on Sunday when she did that for the first time. Still, we have miles to go. Angelina still is very comfortable with strangers, I am just hoping that my perseverance will pay off eventually in this area.

On the glasses front, Angelina is doing remarkably well. She asks for them in the morning and after her nap, and 95% of the time keeps them on. When she does not like what I have to say to her, or if I am not giving her enough attention, then off the glasses go. I do feel that she really can see a difference in her own vision and that fuels her to want to wear them. Thank goodness!

One of the best things that has happened over the past month is that I taught Angelina the sign for "potty"! She loves this sign, and has been using it very well. In fact, I have only changed one poop-filled diaper in almost 4 weeks! Yeah! By no means are we close to being potty-trained, but Angelina certainly knows what the sign means and when she gives it to me, she will usually do something. So, I am so happy on this front!


So, things are going well on our home front for now. I am glad to have gotten 3 months under our belts before the upcoming holiday season. I will leave a few pictures taken from this week.

Angelina's Halloween

We have been celebrating Halloween in our home for a week straight! We started with trick-or-treating at Grammy's house last Sunday, then had trick-or-treat on Friday night in our neighborhood. Angelina had a great time going from house to house and trying to say trick-or-treat, but only getting out the "t" sound! She has not had candy at all, so she really did not get what people were putting in her bucket, but loved getting it put there anyway! Actually, once she got her eyes set on a bucket, she ran right to each and grabbed a handful. It was quite cute.


I was reminiscing with Ken about what we were doing last Halloween. We were handing out candy while completing paperwork for our adoption. I really can't believe that within a year, we went to Russia three times and became parents to the most wonderful little girl! So, this year, we walked around our neighborhood holding hands with a little pumpkin, so happy, as she has changed our life. Where once we thought we would never have this experience, Angelina has opened our world up to such simple activities that we have only dreamed of.

Here are some more pictures of Angelina the Pumpkin: