Adopting is a gift

It’s been too long since the last post - the main reason of course being that I’m too busy these days to post. In the evening, when I’m not busy with the children, and not sick or exhausted, I’ve been working on a website design for the Heart Gallery North Florida. I’m the founding president of our local Heart Gallery which serves 12 counties across northwest Florida. Heart Galleries are incredible websites and museum-quality exhibits which feature children in the state foster care system that are available for adoption. Ours is just starting, but we are the 15^th Heart Gallery in the state of Florida. I’ve only just begun to work on the website – go to www.heartgallerynorthflorida.org.

Our children are fantastic. I’ve wanted to post to let you know all the new things that are happening.

Petra is talking up a storm. She is repeating nearly every thing we say. She will try to count with us, try to repeat the letters in her name, chime in every once in a while with the correct letter when we sing the ABCs, she tell us I love you now, she also says jasper, oval, circle, she even said triangle yesterday.

But her favorite words seem to be No and Stop. For instance, I will try and put her hair in a ponytail and she will yell "oww", "no, stop it." Over the last week, Thomas and I have made an effort to say “Yes sir” and “Yes ma'am” frequently. The result has been wonderful, Petra has also picked up the word “yes.” She now often responds to questions affirmatively. She will say yes now if you ask her if she wants her juice, and she uses it in other ways. By example, two days ago when I was trying to pull my lunch out of the fridge before I ran off to work, she decided she wanted to play in the fridge. She loves to pull things out, etc. So, I told her we had to close the door. “No” she yelled, “stop it.” (we hear that a lot). I looked at her very pleasantly and said “who do you think you are talking to, do you want a knuckle sandwich.” Real sweetly, she responded “yes.” Either she really likes knuckle sandwiches (which she does, in case you are wondering this is when we playfully put our fist up to her mouth) or she likes any sentence which has the words “do you want” in it. I think it is probably the later. Anyway, the point being is that it is really helping to balance out her use of the word no and it has made a tremendous difference in her responses to us.

Petra also is getting really good at her shape sorters and starting to get the hang of her puzzles!

Jasper is our chunk of hunk. He seems so much bigger and older than last month. But, I don’t think he is much heavier based on our doctor visits over the last couple weeks. He is doing great. Thomas put his crib together this past weekend and now he is sleeping in the nursery with Petra. He is doing really well in the crib – he is still waking up every 3-4 hours to eat, but at least he is in his own bed. I still usually have to bring him to bed with us around 5am because he starts to get restless, but this is much better for me than having him in our room or in our bed all night … which is the direction things were heading last week.

Jasper has some interesting squealing going on these days, I guess you could say he is singing or listening to himself make noise. It’s very high-pitched which is why it sounds like singing. He is also very strong. He will be rolling over any day now. Right now he is leaning toward a career as a boxer … let me explain. He is thrilled each morning to sit in his bouncy seat while we fix breakfast, for about 20 minutes he repeatedly punches his toys in rapid succession like a speed drill with both hands. It is hilarious; he does it with such force that the toys wrap around and we have to unwind them for him. He loves it. He never really pulls on them or touches them, just punches them. Oh, well he does pull the middle one which plays music. There are three total – he punches the ones on each side. I’ll try to get it on video one morning.