We’ve been able to do many Christmas activities this year and it is so fun that he sort of gets it this year.

So far we went to the local treelighting ceremony and singalong, watched Elf, looked at Santa at the mall, watched Elf, baked Christmas cookies that didn’t turn out, watched Elf, looked at Santa at the mall, made an advent wreath, watched Elf, had a little St. Nicholas themed gettogether with our friends, watched Elf, got boots filled by St. Nicholas, and sat with Santa at the mall.

We’re off to a great start!

I’ve missed documenting so many of those little things that happen every day and I’ve forgotten most of them, but I need to record at least some of what’s been going on.

Ben is now talking in sentences that other people can understand (some of the time). For a while, one of his favorites was to say “me liking this” and “me no liking this”, but now he has graduated to saying ” I like this” and “I no like this”. Makes me a little sad. My baby is growing up.

Some of the funny things he’s said include:

“Mommy hair like Pappo”. We have a white cat. His name is Casper. Ben calls him Pappo. There you go.

“I hope nobody takes my food” upon getting up from the dinner table to run around the kitchen for a while

“Daddy old man” I love this one.

“Mommy lets me do this” (after being told by daddy that he is not allowed to do something)

“No touch, only look” (uh-huh)

“No,  I do it”

“Ben have it chocolate now”

“Mommy, time out” trying to send me to sit on the stairs instead of him.

And, the highlight of last weekend “I have it poopy” in the middle of mass.

He was always pretty good with the cats, but lately he has started chasing them around the house and yelling at them. Some days Casper can count his lucky stars that he is deaf.

He’s also developed a little ritual for when daddy leaves to go to work, which includes a hug, a kiss, and a handshake.

Ben loves to play tent in the bed, ride his tricylce (he still won’t peddle),

For weeks Ben has been excited about Halloween. I don’t really think he knew what it was, but he kept on mentioning Halloween and that he would be a dragon “Me draaaagoooon”. I also don’t think he knew what a dragon was, but when I have him a choice of dressing up as a cow, a dragon, or a pirate, he chose a dragon. Of course he also had no clue what a pirate was, instead he thought I was talking about an airplane pilot.

We started the day off with a visit to our favorite children’s musician/band. The kid is OBSESSED. To his dismay, the drummer wasn’t there and he kept on asking and asking about him until he realized that he would have to make do with the guitar player/singer.

Then in the afternoon we went to a birthday party and rushed home just in time for our awesome neighborhood parade.

Ben and his neighborhood friends. The adoration is mutual. 

After the parade there were hot dogs to be eaten and Ben also enjoyed petting the live dogs that came out to the parade. And then it was time for trick or treating. We didn’t take him last year, so this year was the first time he went from door to door. We had been practicing saying “trick or treat” for weeks and he was really good about saying it. Ben didn’t really realize that he was getting candy, but he really enjoyed going house to house and getting something in his basket. He kept on saying “next house, next house”.

All in all Ben really enjoyed the day, and I am finally starting to like Halloween too. Oh, and my brilliant plan to only buy candy I don’t like kind of backfired. Now I am stuck with all of this Hershey’s chocolate I won’t eat.

When you have family overseas, it’s never too early to start getting prepared for Christmas. As a matter of fact, I am already running behind. In light of the insane shipping costs these days, I opt for compact and lightweight gifts, and as a mom who thinks that her kid is just the most adorable thing in the world, I think that everyone should have a gift with Ben’s picture on it. Or maybe just the grandparents… Shutterfly has tons of great gift ideas to choose from. I am also thinking of choosing something small to send to Ben’s foster family.

I send a couple of Shutterfly photo books to my parents each year, and last year they received a calendar that they loved.

Last year we also ordered our Christmas cards through Shutterfly and we got many compliments on them. My only problem is that they have so many to choose from (y’all know that I don’t like to make decisions). I think I have narrowed it down to just a few though (after spending hours looking at the designs and playing around with some pictures I may use). Have you noticed that some of their sample pictures include adoptive families? I simply love seeing families like ours on those cards.

My current favorite is this one:

I have a picture of my cutie pie that will match the color scheme perfectly. Oh what has become of me….

If I were a parent by birth, I probably would have had about 250 pictures of my baby by the time he was a week old. As an adoptive parent, I counted myself lucky to have a handful of pictures of my son when he was approximately 4-5 months old. I never thought it would be possible for me to see what my son looked like soon after he was born, and then I lucked into a photo from when he was only weeks old.

This picture was in my inbox this morning and I have been staring at it on and off all day. It is unmistakable, this is my son. I feel lucky beyond words to have this photo. But I also felt something that I haven’t felt since Ben came home. When I was waiting for Ben to finally be ready for travel, I was aware that I was missing out on his life. Ever since he’s been home, I have been a little too busy to dwell on all the little moments I missed.

It only took one little picture to turn me into an emotional mess. All I can think of when I look at my sweet son is that I wish I had been able to be there and take care of him. He is so tiny and so innocent and by the time this picture was taken, he has probably already been through several caregivers. It simply breaks my heart.

A few weekends ago, a group of us decided to test how much we actually like each other by going on a weekend trip together. We headed up North (West?) to spend 3 days at a lake house. Yes, that would be 8 adults, 4 toddlers, and 2 dogs in one house. Next time we may add 4 cats to the mix (just kidding). The forecast called for rain, but we got incredibly lucky and instead it was only extremly windy. We found out that the magic trick to make the wind die down is to have Ivana take out her magical kite.

Ben was SO excited about spending time with his friends, and everyone behaved really, really well. Considering they are two year olds, of course. Aren’t they cute?

It was so fun to see them interact and see their personalities come out so much more than during a two hour playdate.

The grown-ups had fun too even though the men somehow neglected their chores and insisted that their shopping list only included beer rather than the milk they’d been tasked to get.

Ben even slept in until 6:15 each morning, which meant that we only had two hours to kill before everyone else got up. Try keeping a toddler quiet for two hours. Yikes. Why does everyone else sleep that long?

According to Ben the highlight wasn’t the delicious food, or the campfire and smores, or playing in the leaves with his friends, but Miley the dog. While Ben started shrieking every time sweet Piper got near him, he ran after Miley all.day.long and gave him kisses and wanted to walk him (Me walk Miley).

I think it’s safe to say that the weekend was a huge success as we are making plans for next year.

Fall started out hot and rainy and yucky, and then quickly turned cold and rainy and yucky. I was pretty disappointed since I have been looking forward to fall ever since last fall ended.

Our yard was/is covered in mushrooms and outdoor playing was hindered by mushy ground and mosquitos and puddles.

But last week we finally started having perfect fall weather and I can’t even begin to put into words how much I love it!

Finally the air feels crisp, but it has been warm enough to spend plenty of time outside.

I have been feeling especially blessed that I get to spend my days at home with my little man and we are enjoying fall to the fullest. To top it off,  Ben actually let me take pictures of him, something he usually detests.

Ben has picked up a few new favorite things to do, which mostly
involve jumping from odd places followed by a tumble. He currently still loves play-doh, and his guitar.

Even though he is still behind his peers when it comes to his ability to put sentences together, his sentences are becoming longer and longer. It is so cute! In the morning he usually says “mommy (or daddy) up
me” and he loves to share food with us and say “mommy share food me” or “ben share food mommy”. He also loves to wave, blow kisses, and say “see you soon” upon leaving. Or he’ll say “be right back” and disappear around the corner. He pretends to go shopping at Harris Teeter, where he buys balloons and toes. Yes, toes. Sometimes he goes to Trader Joe for toes though, because in addition to body parts they also have stickers. This kid is too cute for words. It is still so weird to me when kids his age come up to me and start speaking in complete sentences. Freaks me out.
Secretly I am a little glad that he’s taking things slow, I don’t think I am ready for big boy Ben.

This time I have been a little more indifferent about the process (really, friends, even though it might not seem that way to you) but I thought it was great that we got our I-600a approval just in time so our home study could be sent to Korea on the 2 year anniversary of our first home study going over there. I know it’s totally ridiculous, but I was kind of excited about the possible parallel (didn’t happen though). It turns out that the obsessive adoptive mama in me came out and I was stalking our Korea coordinator about sending our papers to SWS. She finally promised she would send them last Thursday, and that she would confirm with me. Well, I never heard back and won’t for over another week. I know that you are thinking, what does it matter, and I know that in the grand scheme of things it won’t matter whether they went a week ago or in two weeks, but with a wait that long I am antsy to start the official wait. I must be the most impatient person in the world, and apparently adoption #1 didn’t teach me anything.

Ben is now into pretend play and it is so cute!

His favorite activity is to get on a phone and say “Hello. order pizza please. Ben. Big. Petter-oooooni (pepperoni). Spicy. Daddy too. Danke. See you soon”.

Apparently I don’t have to eat as he usually does not order one for me.

He also plays drive-through and holds out his hand and says “fries please” and “money please”. I can’t even remember if I’ve ever taken him through one and I most certainly have never taken him anywhere you can just ask for money.

He also loves playing with his play food and making dinner. He’ll pile it on a plate and then feed it to his baby and his stuffed animals. And himself. It’s accompanied by a constant “Ben make dinner”.

Another recent obsession is ice cream. He has a play ice cream he carries around non-stop and he constantly wants us to make him ice cream out of playdough. He also insists on having ice cream from the freezer, but that doesn’t happen as often as he’d like.

His memory is CRAZY. I wish my memory was half as good. The other week we went to Trader Joe’s and they didn’t have any stickers and he is still talking about it. He keeps on saying “Trader Joe. Ask sticker. I’m sorry.”

And weeks, if not months, ago, we were on a playdate with some friends and rode a train around the park and his buddy Andrew shared his bottle of water with him. To this day I keep on hearing about “Choo choo. Andrew. Share water.”

The kid loves play-doh. We have to play every single day and his favorite thing (next to play-doh ice cream) is for me to make people and for him to “squeeze” them. He also enjoys cutting them up. This morning he was asking me to create the Choi family (he asked for all three of them by name) and very excitedly cut off their heads. Sorry guys, please still play with us! He really does love you.

Let’s see, what else happend? Ben and his buddies went on their first big boy ride at a fair. I was planning a whole big post for that one, but just in case I don’t get around to it, here’s a picture.

Peer pressure is a beautiful thing. I was absolutely convinced that Ben would start screaming the minute I left his side, but he just sat there, somewhat stunned. If it had been up me, he wouldn’t have gone on his first ride until he was 4.

This fall we’re starting two different mommy and me classes in an effort to keep busy and thus limit the whining. We are doing one gymnastics class and one class that focuses on stories and crafts. We attended one class calles “Little Hand on the Farm” and Ben LOVED it. The one we went to focused on cows, and the kids learned all about where milk comes from, they got to pet and feed a baby cow, fill water in buckets, and milk a fake cow. They focus on a different animal each time and I think we will have to go back.

Yet another favorite is the local kid’s band (is it a band when there are two people?). Ben stands at the bongos the entire time we are there and will not take his hands off them. Which is fine by me, at least I no longer have to hold him.

*edited to add: darn you wordpress ate my post again, but naptime is over, so I will have to update later*