August 6, 2007, was the first day that Chloe woke up with me and we spent our entire day together.  It was also the day that we became a family according to Vietnamese law.  It was the first morning that I tried to make it through a shower listening to her scream outside the bathroom door the entire time while P was probably about to join in the crying since there wasn’t anything you could do to calm her down at that point.  Luckily for all of us, I can take a really quick shower when I need to.  The bathroom set up was very different and not conducive to long relaxing showers anyway!  We had gone to bed early the night before from sheer exhaustion, but had gotten up repeatedly during the night for feedings, comfortings, typhoon checks, and just checking to see if she’s ok moments, too.  That usually makes me sleepy, but I was definitely running on nerves that morning just waiting for something to happen that would put a kink in the process and delay our trip back to the city so I was up even earlier than I had to be and so was everyone else.  We all got cleaned up and packed up and headed down to find Thuy for breakfast again.  This was the morning that I finally started getting my appetite back and had a great breakfast of noodles and iced coffee, which I would be happy having every morning of my life if I could!  

Everything was so great and peaceful that morning at breakfast.  I wish we could have spent some more time in the province because the hotel, the restaurant next door, and the center were the only places I got to go inside during our less than 48 hour stay.  P&D walked around a little on their trip for supplies and got to go through the grocery-type store, but that was it for them, too.  Most of our pictures were taken from inside the van and from the minute Chloe joined us my attention was obviously focused mainly on her and left little brain-power for absorbing the landscape.  The speed and the noise in the rural province were much more relaxed than the city, and that’s the main difference I remember.  I also remember that many of the buildings near the hotel we stayed in had scaffolding in front of them, evidence that the area was growing and developing and will probably be much different the next time we’re able to visit.  When I got back home and started looking through travel guides to try to remember what all we had seen and start looking forward to catching the things we missed on our next trip I realized that there were a few things in the area that even made it into the guide books, and hopefully there would be things we could spend some time exploring on our next stay.  And maybe next time we won’t go to the coast during typhoon season!!  Seriously the wind and the rain were incredible!

We drove into town to the “city hall” and waited for our ceremony.  It was very nice, attended by the director of the center, our agency facilitator, and three province officials.  They were all quite friendly and from what I remember of it, it was a lovely ceremony.  Chloe had already started to come out of her shell a little by this point so she would not sit quietly on my lap listening to the speeches that were given by everyone.  She wanted to grab papers and pens out of my hands, turn the pages in the official book we had to sign, clap and talk fairly loudly whenever there was a lull in the action, and basically terrify me that they’d realize I had no idea how to control my child!  Luckily they thought she was pretty funny and laughed at her or ignored her.  We have a video of that day, one of the few we took on the trip, but for some reason I just can’t watch it.  I don’t know why.  Maybe I’m worried about seeing things I missed, or having the pleasant memory of that day skewed somehow by the expression on someone’s face or a tone in their voice I didn’t notice the first time.  Maybe I’m just worried that I sounded like a dork during my speech and I’m embarrassed to listen to it?  

At any rate, we made it through and were once again back in the van.  We drove back to the center and dropped the director off and said our thank-you’s and P&D took some pictures of some babies I had promised to look in on.  Chloe was asleep so I stayed in the van.  Thuy didn’t want her to see her nanny again and neither did I–right or wrong, I didn’t want her to have to go through that painful separation again even though I had read mixed opinions on the benefits to the child of saying goodbye again.  At 9 months I don’t know that she would have understood enough to enjoy that benefit, I think it would have just been painful for both of them.   All my conversations with KG parents since I came home really make me wish that this part of the trip had gone differently.  It’s probably my biggest regret of the trip.  I wish I could have spent some time in the baby room.  I wish I could have seen some of the interaction of the nannies with the babies, I wish I could have spent some time hugging all of those precious children, some of whom had to wait several more months for their families to come get them and some who might not have even been that lucky.  I wish I could have walked around more and looked in on the older children and spent some time with them to get an idea of what their lives were like.  I wish I would have learned to speak Vietnamese before I left so I could have understood some of what they were saying.  Lots of wishes.  Not enough time.  I just wasn’t prepared for those first two days in the country.  I read and listened to everything and everyone I could, but I just don’t think it’s something you can be ready for.  Maybe it’s just me and my personality.  I always claim to prepare for the worst and hope for the best, but maybe my hoping outweighs my preparation?  

After the short visit at the center we drove back into town to get our luggage and then headed back to Saigon, HCMC.  Here’s a picture of Chloe on the bus…starting to relax and show us some of her personality!  This is still one of my favorite pictures of her.  I really can’t believe how tiny she looks in these pictures, or how much weight I’ve gained on top of the weight I gained during the wait to travel, which you can see here!~

After Chloe’s crying during our first visit the day before I guess nothing should have surprised me during Day 1 of our life together, but I’ll admit I was a little surprised.  I don’t really know what I expected, but I know that I was hoping for the story I had read on so many other blogs about the baby coming in and just snuggling right into life with the new family.  Not. so. much.  It seems to me that looking back my baby was very wise for being just over 9 months old.  She knew her name and responded to it when I said it.  She knew exactly who I was and that I was about to take her away from everything familiar to her, good or bad.  She wasn’t thrilled about it.  Even at that age she hated change.  Still not a huge fan of it, but that’s an entirely different post!  

She cried that day like I hope to never hear again, out of anyone, ever.  Crying doesn’t even seem like the right word.  I don’t know if there is a word for it, which makes sense because that emotion shouldn’t even exist for someone so young.  Finally after an hour, or two I don’t know how long because time doesn’t move properly when your child is grieving like that. She exhausted herself and fell asleep.  After that happened we were able to leave and head back to the hotel.  I was afraid that if she didn’t stop crying they wouldn’t let me leave with her, and that if she started crying again they’d just tell me I had to come back and try again tomorrow.  She fell asleep and slept all through the van ride to the hotel.  We went straight up to the room and my cousins (P&D) got some directions for where to go shopping for food and supplies.  She was fine (by fine I mean sobbing silently in her sleep, but the tears stopped) for a few minutes while she slept, and then she woke up and started crying again.   She had some momentary relief from her sadness when we introduced her to the little shaking baseball that Suz gave her.  I don’t know how many times we pulled that string, but I would have pulled it a hundred times more if I’d had to.  Every time she fell asleep and then woke up again her crying seemed to be a little less devastating, but still very intense.

After we got back P&D went to buy diapers, formula, juice, and cereal for Chloe and snacks and drinks for the adults.  That Coke Light was the greatest thing ever!!!  They also bought cereal and cookies for us, but for once in my life I didn’t even eat an Oreo.  They had food delivered from the restaurant next door, which I remember being very good, but I could only get down about 4 bites that D actually fed to me because I didn’t even have the desire or energy to move a hand from under the sleeping princess.  She was broken-hearted and that’s about all I can say about Day One.  It isn’t a day we celebrate with a party.  It’s a day I remember all day with a longing to make her life happy.  I know I only have so much involvement in her happiness, but while she’s young and I’m a big part of it I’m doing what I can.  We have less than a dozen pictures from this day, and I’m not posting any of them.  Not really a day of photo ops, but such an important day in both of our lives.

Surely no one had real expectations that I would keep up with my goal of posting my 2-yr memories every day, right?!  I am still going to try to recap the trip, but I’m obviously not too stressed about being a few days late.  My goal now is to get it recapped by the end of August, we’ll see how that goes.

On August 4, 2007, Polly and Dave and I arrived in Saigon after many, many hours of travel that I rambled incessantly about in my last post.  Guess what we did as soon as we got our luggage and made it through customs, yep, got in a van and traveled another 7 hours!  Due to the delayed flight we missed our day of relaxing, getting organized, dropping off some of our luggage at the Rex, etc. and just hopped into the van and took off, headed to Chloe’s province.  In our 7-hour drive we crossed over 100 bridges because her home province is located in the Mekong Delta region of very far south Vietnam.  Kien Giang province borders both Cambodia and the Gulf of Thailand, and there are streams, rivers, and shoreline everywhere you look.  We had an unbelievable opportunity to observe the lives of people living between HCMC and KG because their homes had very open constructions and because the amount of traffic and number of bridges forced us to travel at slow speeds.  The countryside and the people living in it both took my breath away at times with the beauty and at times with the harshness of the living conditions.  The people we encountered in that  province were very friendly, but we definitely stood out and had more trouble communicating than we did in the cities.  I feel so lucky that we got the chance to see that part of Vietnam, but like I was telling my friend Sara tonight (in a very incoherent email!) there was so much going on with Chloe  that I need to go back so I can see the things I missed.  

Back to the trip!  We had the opportunity to talk with my agency’s in-country coordinator during those seven hours about everything from Chloe to the hand signals drivers were giving each other to avoid cops that might be waiting up ahead.  I tried so hard to focus on everything Thuy was saying and process it quickly so I’d remember it, but after 40 hours of traveling the nice air conditioned van kept trying to put me to sleep.  I don’t think I could have slept at that point if I’d tried because of the adreneline, but carrying on an intelligent conversation was also basically out of the question!  We stopped for lunch, stopped to use the restroom, stopped for some amazing sticky rice from a street vendor, and stopped to get on two different ferries.  

To be very honest, I was relieved that there were so many stops.  As anxious as I was to get there and meet Chloe I will admit now that I was also feeling an incredible panic beginning to set in.  Things were going to change, and I had known that and hoped and prayed for it for over a year at this point.  That doesn’t make it easier when you’re riding down a bumpy road surrounded by people with every blog of every rough adoption journey flying through your head at inconvenient moments!   Then all of a sudden we were turning in the driveway.  Again, all the pictures from prior travelers cannot prepare you for that sight.  I was very nervous that I wouldn’t recognize her and they’d decide they had made a horrible mistake and change their minds and let some other lucky parent become her mom.  See, perfectly coherent!  I shouldn’t have worried about that.  I should have worried about how loud the pumpkin could and still can scream!!!  Her nanny had left her with another nanny, probably so that Chloe would let me hold her, and she was not pleased about it!  She cried uncontrollably until the second her nanny came back into the room and then she stopped on a dime and started crawling across the room to her and giggling!

She is still this way, and it never ceases to amaze me when I see her do it.  It takes less than a second to go from devastated to joyful and that just describes her personality overall.  She covers the whole spectrum.  Every day.  Sometimes every hour.  Or every minute.  She has a very entertaining command of most audiences and enjoys being control.  Big surprise that I love her independent streak!  She has opinions on everything and now that her verbal development is catching up with her imagination and I can understand her better, she just seems to be growing and changing every day.  This week she showed me that she can wiggle her eyebrows up and down.  Not so surprising that she can do it, she’s very tricky, but surprising that she said so plainly to me “Mama, look!” and then repeatedly showed me the trick until she had all of us laughing out loud!

Again, back to the trip.  In the midst of Chloe’s very loud reaction to meeting me I got to meet several children of friends of mine I met through our agency and other bloggers.  With the tone of our first meeting I didn’t get to take the pictures I would have like to take of them, but I can still remember their sweet faces that night.  After only an hour or so with my new little princess we had to leave.  We made it to the hotel, picked a room, decided what time we’d meet for breakfast in the morning and then almost immediately fell asleep.  The sheer exhaustion of the trip caused me to do this several times during those two weeks.  That led to an exciting weight loss that made none of my clothes fit during the trip.  That excitement was dashed almost immediately upon returning home  to my kitchen stocked with delicious stress-eating snacks.  Oh well, again, that’s another story.  And again this was probably not as coherent as I would have liked, but I want to get this out.  I need to get this written down.  My memory slips away a little more each day and that makes me so sad.  But then I look at the princess and that part doesn’t seem as important.  Not until she needs to know the answers that I can’t remember.  Then we’ll just have to make another trip back, I guess!

I apologize for the thumbnails, but that’s as good as I can get it tonight.  This first set is my wonderful family waiting to see me off on my journey on August 1.  That night they dropped me back off at home and I flew off without much fanfare the next day after our flight was delayed.

Well, I almost got off to a bad start on my goal of posting a recap of 2 years ago before I even started.  This post and maybe several others are going to sound more like a travel journal than a blog post, but that’s ok with me, and I hope you’ll indulge me and keep reading and maybe even send a comment or two!  I have a new computer since my trip so I don’t have all the pictures on this computer yet.  I am planning to locate the CD I put them on and upload pictures for the next several posts, but I know there wasn’t much of the departure day and it’s late, and I’m tired so I’m not going to bother trying to find it tonight.  The trip was so overwhelming and exhausting that I didn’t get to record it very well at all when I was there and that was very disappointing to me.  Also when we got home we had so much to work through around here that it didn’t get done the way I wanted it to either.  I did paraphrased recaps of everything on the travel journal so I could upload it all before I ordered a CD of our site and let everything expire, but it’s really important to me to record some of these details before they start to fade from my very questionable memory, and now that Chloe will sleep for more than 30-45 minutes at a time without waking up, I’m going to take advantage of it and try to get it all down in writing.  And hopefully add pictures, but we’ll see!

This erratic start to the recap posts is kind of like how our departure to VietNam was delayed before it even started.  I was supposed to leave from my hometown airport on August 1 and arrive August 3, spend the day resting and preparing for the trip to Chloe’s province and then head out the morning of August 4th, but there were storms in Dallas the evening of August 1 so I had to take my hyped-up self home after waiting at the airport for hours, hoping against hope that the rains would clear and the storms would magically move away so that my plans wouldn’t be disrupted.  God chuckles at the plans I make for myself a lot!  

My cousin, her husband, and I left on a plane the afternoon of August 2nd and arrived in VietNam on August 4th.  The date line messes me up every time, but my best guess of how much time we spent traveling was 43 hours and that was before we got on the van to ride 7 hours to visit Chloe for the first time!  All of that excitement will have to wait until the post I hope to do on the 4th, though.  August 2nd was actually a much better day to leave.  I had tried to work all the way up until I had to leave so that I could conserve my vacation and sick leave for during the trip and after we got back.  That didn’t work well as my brain almost completely shut off at work on July 19 because that’s the day I got the call that I would get to travel in the next group from our agency.  Having that extra night at home let me repack my bags for the 10th time in that many days and it let me rethink my outfit choice for the trip, which was also good.  Don’t get your hopes up, I certainly wasn’t dressed up for my long, long trip, but I was comfortable and the black shirt and gray stretchy pants hid the grunginess of that long stretch without a shower very well!!

We flew to Dallas and then on to LAX where we had a nice, 9-hour long layover in their international airport.  The travel agent said they’d had trouble with Dallas and summer storms delaying people all summer so they changed from the evening flight to the afternoon flight to avoid that, thus the ridiculously long layover.  It’s nice not to worry about missing your flight because you didn’t have enough time to find your gate or something, but come on!  Thankfully my cousin had his laptop and brought a splitter for the earphones and the three of us were able to watch a movie or two and cause everyone around us to stare while we laughed out loud to something they couldn’t hear.  Normally I hate people staring at me, but I needed any distraction I could latch onto and the movies did the trick!  

We flew out of LAX on an 11:45 pm flight, if I remember correctly, on a 13.5 hour flight to Hong Kong.  I love the Hong Kong airport!  We had a lovely breakfast, walked around thankful to be off that enormous plane and thankful to be over solid ground again.  Let me just say, I’m not a fan of the little TV screen on the back of the chair in front of you that tracks your progress on the flight as you fly over a vast black openness called the Pacific Ocean! Kind of interesting at first, but really started to freak me out after the first couple of hours.  I don’t fly all that well and this was my first flight of more than 3 hours and my first flight over any body of water wider than the Mississippi River.  Not good news!  I will also say that when I go back to VietNam I will be taking a different kind of anti-malaria medication.  The one I was on is apparently not a great choice for those with tendencies toward anxiety and when we’re talking about a plane ride like that, I’m definitely anxiety-prone.  It is a miracle that I did not have to be sedated because I had to talk myself down from several near panic attacks, and I wish I were kidding about that!  

I can still feel that feeling I carried with me across the Pacific, but as I’ve said before I feel like my mind isn’t working clearly enough to explain it.  I’m going to try any way.  I felt like I surely might throw up for much of the weeks and days leading up to this flight and the travel days were certainly no different.  We ate at several Vietnamese restaurants in town in those 2 weeks before we left so we were familiar with a variety of different dishes, but also so we could vote on the authenticity of our local food vs. the real deal when we finally made it to Vietnam (that is not why I felt like I’d throw up, I love Vietnamese food!)  One of my last meals in town was with a group of friends from work, one of whom had traveled back to Vietnam recently and told me that judging from the people he traveled with, I would probably be sick the first three days I was there and then my stomach would get used to the food and I would be fine so don’t worry.  That’s about all you have to say to me to make me worry!  With the normal travel worries of flights, and liquids in your carryon baggage and misplacing your passport and not being allowed into the country and travelers’ stomach issues, I added a whole heap of others that I’m embarrassed to write about.  I was also legitimately (in my own mind any way) worried that when I arrived Chloe would be sick or she would get sick once I had her and she’d need medical help I couldn’t get for her in time, that there would be problems with the paperwork that would prevent me from taking her home with me, that the orphanage director would take one look at me and decide he could do better for her and find some other incredibly lucky family to make her their daughter, the list goes on and on.  

The internet is a huge blessing in a lot of ways, in my opinion.  For me, it did not do me many favors in those weeks leading up to my travel.  I know that the process of adoption is not for the squeamish, and that it’s good to be knowledgeable, but I found some of the worst horror stories out there at very inopportune times.  They were true, they were valid, they were important for me to read, but I wish I had found them after we returned.  Oh well.  Definitely not something I can change now, but I really am sad that the worry they caused me had the effect of stealing some of the joy out of my first days with Chloe.  They were such hard days for her and I just wish I could have been more joyful and less worried.  We survived and things are going well so I’ve almost forgiven myself because of the “no harm, no foul” rule, but still.  

My friend Denise sent me a video just a night or two before we left, two days ahead of her, I think, and it showed something horrible and purple growing on Chloe’s head that someone from my agency told me was just related to her “special need”.  An adoptive mom from my agency had taken the video and emailed it to her.  I don’t remember who it was, but I had asked a couple of people that traveled in the month or so before me to send videos and pictures, but I never got anything from them.  Now I know it was probably just an overwhelming transition when they arrived home and after that they just got busy with life.  At the time, I convinced myself that they didn’t want to email me the proof of the horrible thing growing out of her head.   For those who are appalled at this point that I’m sharing all of this personal information about my child online, don’t be.  Chloe’s head was fine.  She has a strange cowlick thing on the back of her head and when her little shaved hairs first grew in they grew in a strange pattern.  I took a couple of pictures once we got home where this thing showed up too, and I assure you there was no giant purple growth to blame for it!  She had rashes covering 75% of her body, but those were quickly treated and not too hard on her after the initial adjustment.  Her “special need” was also not a factor when the pictures were taken, but a few flippant words here and there caused me a great deal of stress and heartache while I was counting down the final hours to travel.  I could not get any of that off my mind during this 43 hours of travel and that made it a very long trip with not much sleep.  

We finally arrived in Ho Chi Mihn City on the morning of August 4th after a short flight from Hong Kong.  I’ll save the rest of the travel story for Tuesday.  Hope everyone has a great week!  With our anniversary coming up, Chloe and I are going to have a wonderful week!!

Here’s a couple of pictures from my cousin’s wedding weekend extravaganza.  We had an incredible weekend, and I’m exhausted from all the excitement.  Hopefully tonight will be an early night!

Chloe had an amazing time on the dance floor!  Could hardly drag her away from the party even though it was about 2 hours past bedtime.

What I mean by the title is that while whining about the huge photoshop books I have to try to read was super-productive in my last post, I decided to try a different approach.  I actually went onto the world wide web, maybe you’ve heard of it?, and I looked up photography classes in my hometown.  Shockingly enough there are some!  Duh!  Why do I think this stuff is rocket science?  Probably because photo*shop has more bells and whistles than any instrument I ever used in a chemistry or physics lab:)  I am really excited to see how far I can go with my little obsession hobby.  

I’m trying not to pat myself on the back too much, but I think I’ve been making some really good progress on taking pictures that I like lately.  Notice I did not say “good” photos, but photos that I like and at this stage that’s all that matters because no one’s paying me to take pictures they like!  I’m hoping a little tutoring from a pro can help me take things up a notch.  My dad keeps telling me I have lighting problems, but that does not actually solve the problems, it just points them out.  I think he’s just a little bitter because I got a sweet deal on a giant Nikkon camera a few months ago and a) it’s bigger than his camera, and b) I’ve betrayed my Canon-loving family by embracing the other side.  Jokes on me because I really bought myself out of being able to share lenses, but as I said it was an amazing buy!

I digress!  We made it back home safe and sound and it’s been a chaotic week trying to get things back under control at work.  As always my staff is great and they had no problems without me, but the administrative stuff has been a bit excessive the last few weeks and we’ve been having computer troubles on top of that!  Here’s hoping tomorrow is the end of that because I’m not going to be pleasant if I have to look at that “trying to connect to the server” error message every 2 minutes again next week:)

Luckily Chloe’s preschool started a new unit for June and it is on water.  I cannot tell you how much the pumpkin LOVES water!  It just makes me smile how unbelievably excited she gets when she sees any little puddle or raindrop.  She did not make it home in her cute skirt on Tuesday afternoon because she had found some mud puddles to jump in during outside play time.  Maybe I can help encourage her to turn her love of water into a career defending the integrity of the Clean Water Act?  Maybe not, but I sure would love it!  

The only tricky thing about the water unit is that they now have water play day one day a week.  No problem, right?  Well we’re supposed to bring a swim suit to leave there or remember to bring one every week (not going to happen, I know my limitations!)  I tried to buy her a cheapy at wally last night, but they had nothing in her size with the mermaid on it, which is what she wanted at the time and what they did have were kind of skimpy bikinis for a 2-yr-old so we tried tarjay.  Found some cute mermaid suits, but guess what was hanging next to them?  Thomas swim trunks!  She loves that silly train so much she already has a blanket and sheet at day car with him on it.  I am trying not to force her into gender roles, but swim trunks do not come with shirts, nor did they have even a semi-matching shirt to be found in her size.  So to make myself feel like people would know it was her idea not mine to get swim trunks I also had to buy a hot pink and black swim shirt and bottoms from the girl’s rack to wear with it.  

Why do I care what people at day care think of what she wears to swim day?  I don’t know, it’s an issue probably left over from childhood or something.  I didn’t see her in the trunks, but I’m sure she was still the cutest little swimmer around even if people were a little confused about which boy’s trunks Chloe had stolen:)

We had an exhausting evening and now my tiny girl is sleeping next to me on the couch.  I can’t bring myself to move her yet because she looks too dang cute!  It’s funny how you can kind of see how busy our day was by the look on her face when she’s sleeping.  She’s worn out tonight!

Wow that was long for me!  I’m going to sign off with one of my favorite pics from our photo tour of the bridges last week.  I haven’t done the editing I want, but I love this one just like it is!

The sky was absolutely fabulous that day, which gave a beautiful blue background to the red bridges, but the bright sun led to some squinting and half-closed eyes, too, so it was challenging.  I don’t know what Harry was doing for sure, but he was a real trooper on our tour!  I miss all of you guys already!!!

Ok, I’ll just add one or two of the tiny attitude I referred to before so you might get an idea of what I’m talking about…

Chillin’-

I’m busy driving here mother-

I’m outta here!

And here’s the sweetness that almost always follows the fiesty!  Love this!!!

How many people do you know who can pull off this outfit without looking at least a little trashy?!  Yep, that’s a metallic silver peace sign!  LOVE. THIS. GIRL.

My camera hobby may be turning into something of an obsession.  We went to the mall to play on the toys last night and Harry smiled at me and then asked, “Hey, where’s your camera, Al?”  He and Chloe had a great time playing and I really wish I had proof of that!  I have a grand idea for a side photography business that eventually turns into my retirement gig (I’ve even named my business-yep, I’m a dork!) and I’m going to feed that crazy dream by stopping in Madison Coutny, Iowa on our way back home this weekend.  I cried through the wonderful Bridges of Madison County twice in the movie theatre and I rarely make it to watch a movie outside of my own home so that is saying a lot.  I am now going to get my chance to shoot the bridges and I am hope, hope, hoping that the kids will cooperate and give me a little time and even a few smiles while we’re there!  I’m kicking myself that I did not bring my new camera that I’ve been afraid to take out of the box. It is way too much camera for me at this point, but it would have been great to break it in this weekend on such a great location shoot!  Oh well!!  

I’m a little impressed with my photograpy on this first pic.  I don’t know what this effect is called, but I saw it on Pioneer Woman’s photo blog and I love it, and am pretty proud that I already have my own example of it.  I love that my mom is blurry in the background, but you can tell she’s watching Jack and smiling.  If anyone knows the name of it please share so I can look like a real photographer when I talk about this!!

We had fun with bubbles on day one of our visit…

Grace really had fun!

Chloe did some work on the shed my dad was helping my sister and her husband build.

This tea party picture was completely staged and the party lasted about 3.5 minutes.  We just wanted a picture of all 4 of them together, but I guess that was too much to ask!

Since Chloe has not been out of arms reach of my mom this whole vacation Jack and I have had a little bonding time…doesn’t it look like he’s having a blast?!

Harry is also loving our bonding time:)  I just love this kid so much!!!

He doesn’t always love my camera, though!!  I’ll keep working on him because this beautiful face is meant for close-ups!

The thing I love best about this picture is that she’s snuggling my knee here…

Seriously Mom, I’m tired of this bow…

This weekend I discovered the secret to really cute pictures of Chloe.  Are you ready for this?!  Take pictures of someone or something else.  That’s it.  So simple!  Why didn’t I think of it sooner???  This is Chloe at her cousin’s birthday party when she realized I was trying to take pics of all the guests…

And here she is at the baby shower we had for my friend on Sunday…

We had a fun and busy weekend last weekend and this coming week is going to be even more of the same!!  Tomorrow we’re heading back to visit my sister up North!  It’s going to be a great, but full 10 days together, which we haven’t had in at least 5 years:( so I can’t wait!  There will certainly be cute pictures to follow.  

My blog is getting even less dedicated to thoughtful entries and even more heavily weighted to pictures, but I’m just not sure how to fix that.  I haven’t been able to put my feelings into words let alone into writing for months now.  I think it goes back to the answer my law school professors loved to use when someone asked them to define something lovely like “due diligence” or “adequate consideration”…it’s like beauty, you just know it when you see it.  Unfortunately you can’t write that into a legal brief and you can’t write it into a blog entry!!  I look at Chloe and I know what I’m feeling, but trying to explain it to anyone is pretty close to impossible.  I’ll keep trying periodically, but at least I’ve almost been able to get my thought process into black and white–even if it’s just explaining why my thought process isn’t leading to anything these days.  Any words of wisdom about how to get through this fuzziness are warmly welcomed!  

Still working on my new photo editing software, but haven’t made much progress on it.  I wish I could just take a class on it so I didn’t have to read through all these books to figure out how to use it all!  I’m not much for studying any more.  Glad I went to law school straight from undergrad because I don’t think I’m ever going to regain that momentum even though I’d love to have a PhD to tack onto my name!

Chloe and Harry

baby jay's

Jack

get out Harry!

Ok, that’s a bunch of pictures with no explanation!  It’s late so I’m going to try to keep this short.  These are some of my new favorite pictures from our trip to visit my sister and nephews after Easter.  I’m showing them to you now as the “before” versions because I just installed Photo*Shop on my computer and can’t wait to figure out how to use it!  As soon as I get some good “afters” I’ll let you see them.  I have a bunch more of Chloe from our trip to play on the toys at the mall, but I want to do a comparison with pics of her on the same toys just a few months ago over labor day to show you how she’s growing up way too fast!  I don’t want to rush through that one.  The last picture of Chloe by herself is a priceless face that anyone who spends much time with Chloe will observe and probably receive, too!!  She is very fond of calling the shots and when there’s another child around challenging her authority it takes a while for her to decide if she’s going to go along with it or not.  Luckily in this case she did and just hopped and danced down the paths at this little zoo/wildlife center and enjoyed her freedom from the stroller.  I’m mostly impressed with myself for capturing one of her many “looks”!

Everyone stay healthy!!!