Russian Adoption Journal

Our Little Texan

2008-08-19T19:55:00.000-05:00

When we first brought Liam home, I immediately went to work on getting his Social Security card and other documents for him. When I inquired about getting him a U.S. passport, I found out that the process would require me to send in his one and only original Russian birth certificate. I was willing to make the 10 hour drive to Houston or wherever to show the birth certficate in person but I was told that it would have to be mailed on to another agency no matter what. This is something that I refused to do since it is the only certified copy I have or can ever get.

So we began searching for a local attorney who could help us do a readoption so Liam would have a Texas birth certificate before we applied for his passport. After lots of phone calls, we quickly found out that there are no attorneys in this area with experience in this sort of procedure. So, back in July we talked to an attorney in Austin about doing the readoption and she informed us that the state of Texas only requires a Recognition of Foreign Adoption unless we felt for some reason that our international adoption was not leagal. This was great news especially since the cost was less than a readoption.

The paperwork process was pretty easy (especially compared to the mountain of paperwork we completing for the actual adoption). We sent all the forms in and copies of documents they needed to get us scheduled for court. The attorney talked to the judge and arranged for our court hearing to be over the phone so we wouldn’t have to make the drive to Austin.

So, this morning from 8:45 to 9:00 a.m. we had our court tele-hearing and now our little man is not only an American, but also officially a Texan. We’ll be receiving his Texas birth certificate in about a week. Woo hoo! Another thing to check off the list!

Happy Birthday, Momma!

2008-08-16T21:42:00.000-05:00

Liam helped me celebrate my 29th birthday again today! Here we are getting ready to blow out the candle.

Spending my birthday with my 2 favorite boys is the best present I could ever wish for!

Now I Know My ABC's.... Sorta

2008-08-15T22:46:00.003-05:00

I think I’ve mentioned before how much Liam likes to sing. We hear him singing on the monitor when he goes to bed and he will wake up and sing until we go get him. His repertoire of songs include Twinkle Twinkle, E-I-E-I-O, Thumbkin, and his personal favorite right now is ABC.

Normally, when I pull out the video camera he gets more interested in the camera than whatever he was doing that I wanted to film but tonight he was very cooperative and sang his ABC song for me. So without further ado, here is Mr. Liam singing his rendition of the ABC song and not quite knowing how to end it. ;-)

Click here if the embedded video above doesn’t play properly in your browser.

Better Late Than Never

2008-08-10T08:28:00.007-05:00

We have been home for 6 months with Liam and I just now finally found some time to get our Moscow pictures from trips 1 and 2 posted online. Whew, there were a bunch of them but I weeded through them and put captions on some of them so you would know what you are looking at.

Moscow Trip 1 - Dec. 2-8, 2007

Moscow Trip 2 - Jan. 18 - Feb. 9, 2008

Also, I’m including a video of the coldest day we spent in Moscow. I’ll take an afternoon on our new veranda in the triple digit heat over the harsh Moscow winters anyday.

Enjoy!

Click here if the embedded video above doesn’t play properly in your browser.

6 Months Later

2008-08-01T06:52:00.002-05:00

Today marks our 6 month anniversary with Liam. It’s hard to believe that much time has already passed. It seems like just yesterday that we were in Moscow getting him ready to leave the baby home but at the same time it is amazing when we think about how far he has come in such a short time.

I can’t say that I miss the late night blogging that I did from our apartment on Novy Arbat or the brutal winter weather but I do miss seeing the friends that we made there: Susan & Randy, Carlos & Sally, Sinziana & Mark, Kathy & Doug, Teresa & Chris (happy anniversary Anna), Pasche, and of course Ron & Dinia.

Can you believe how much Liam has changed?

Party Animal

2008-07-27T14:40:00.001-05:00

Yesterday was packed full of festivities. We started our day with what seems to be becoming a traditional Saturday morning Target shopping event. Since we got started a little later (Liam slept until 9:00 a.m.) than usual, it ran into our normal lunch time. Liam was trying to fall asleep in the shopping basket before we finished but we managed to keep him awake until we got him home for lunch. Poor little guy was literally falling asleep while he was eating his lunch.

After naptime, we had birthday party #1 to attend at Chick-Fil-A. Our friend Shawna’s daughter Hailey turned 4 years old and there were lots of other little girls there. Living up to his initials L.M. (aka Ladies Man), Liam was working the room with his charm. He seemed a little distressed that there were no purple crayons (I guess that’s our new favorite color of the week) and blue just wasn’t going to cut it but he managed to suffer through with just the blue, red, yellow and green ones that were available. Of course the singing and the cake is his favorite part of birthday parties and Shawna made sure that he got purple icing on his piece so it was just win-win for him. After cake, all the kids went to the playroom. The bigger kids helped Liam climb through the plastic tubes and go down the slide, which of course he loved. Here’s a picture of him coming out the tube:

After Chick-Fil-A, we rushed home to change into our swim clothes to get ready for birthday party #2. This party was for our friend Clems' nephew Ethan, he turned 1 year old. It was held at a local aquatic park. The party started at 7 p.m. and it had been overcast for most of the day so the water was a bit cold. Here’s a picture of Liam after his inital slide into the water:

As you can see, he was a bit shocked but that didn’t stop him from going down the water slide a few more times. Once again, he proved that he truly is fearless and not afraid to tackle anything. Good thing or bad thing...I’m not sure!

Potty Award

2008-07-21T18:11:00.003-05:00

I guess it’s getting to be potty training time for quite a few of us in bloggerland. I read recently that Iliya and Andrei have had a few celebrations. Now it seems Liam has joined the ranks!

We have tried to encourage him for the past few months to sit on his potty but he really had no interest so we didn’t push it. Recently he’s become more open to the idea and last week he received an official potty award (shown below) from his learning center.

This past weekend, he used the potty about 5 times at home. I figure we still have a long way to go before he completely gets it but for now we’re just so proud of our little guy for his efforts!

Liam vs. "The Slide"

2008-07-15T23:04:00.001-05:00

We took Liam to one of our friend’s daugthers birthday party over the weekend. Liam lit up the moment we got there and he saw the huge inflatable jumper. You could almost hear the angelic chorus ringing as he approached it.

I personally don’t get the attraction of those things but it seems that every kid loves them and it sure burns up a lot of their energy so I’m all for it! This one was a castle with a giant slide on it. The slide was about 9 feet off the ground and I think most kids would be a bit intimidated by something 3 times their size but not mine. I was a bit concerned about him going on it but if there’s one thing I’ve learned in the last 5 months from my son, it is that there’s no stopping him from jumping, climbing, & just being an all-around daredevil especially when you have a brightly colored jumper just inviting him in.

Here’s a video of Liam conquering "The Slide":

Click here if the embedded video above doesn’t play properly in your browser.

First Post-Placement Visit

2008-07-12T20:37:00.003-05:00

We had our first post-placement visit this afternoon. Everything went well. Liam had just woke up from his nap when the social worker arrived and he was a bit shy around her at first but he was working his charm on her by the end of the visit.

It was a pretty pain-free visit. Since we had to do 3 home studies throughout our adoption process, we’re kind of used to social workers visiting our house by now. She mostly asked the standard set of questions; his height, weight, eating habits, daily routine, social interactions, etc. She was quite impressed with his speech and said that speech development is usually the biggest problem she sees with foreign adoptions but she seemed to think he was right on target or even a little ahead for his age. She was also impressed that he knows his colors so well, which she said is advanced for his age. Yeah... we were so happy to hear this!

I hope our little guy can keep up the good work until the next visit in January.

Taking Care of Business

2008-07-11T12:30:00.002-05:00

Liam’s Aunt Karen came for a visit this past week, making good on her vow to come see him at least every 3 months. The last time she was here was for Easter. As usual, we spent lots of time shopping & reminiscing about the past.

One of the purchases we made during our shopping was a bubble lawn mower for Liam at Toys "R" Us. He really loves the mower and likes to help his Daddy work in the yard. Here’s a video of the boys taking care of business:

Click here if the embedded video above doesn’t play properly in your browser.

July 4th Fireworks

2008-07-08T18:23:00.003-05:00

We were a bit hesitant about taking Liam to the fireworks because we were not sure if he would enjoy them or be scared by them but he had a blast! We met up with Candy, Marlee, Vicki, & Jimmy (a.k.a. "Pops") to share the celebration. Here’s a picture of Liam when the fireworks first started and he was trying to figure out what was going on:

This was the closest we’ve ever been to the location where they actually shoot the fireworks. It was an awesome view but we got peppered by some of the ashes.

Although the fireworks didn’t start until 10:00 P.M., which is way past Liam’s bedtime, he stayed awake for the whole show! But he was sound asleep as soon as he got in the car for the trip back home.

What a great day for celebrating Liam’s new American independence!

Red Car Road Trip

2008-06-30T22:04:00.000-05:00

The red car needed repairs so we drove it to the Lubbock VW dealership on Saturday and dropped it off. Since we had a few hours to kill, we went to the Science Spectrum museum where they were having Critterfest 2008. It was Liam's first chance to see camels, ponies, & monkeys close-up. We got more than we bargained for when Walter the monkey broke lose and ran into the crowd. He ran right up next to Liam’s stroller and the little girl standing next to us started screaming but Liam didn’t really react. He just looked at him until the trainer came over and took him back. We found out that Walter is 2 1/2 years old, so I guess his behavior is right on par. :-)

Liam is quite obsessive about shoes. He wants his on at all times and he gets out my sandals as soon as I change clothes after work and insists that I put them on. You can imagine how happy he was to see that Sparkles the pony had her shoes on too:

We also saw April the cow and learned about her life on a dairy farm. I had no idea that dairy cows are milked 6 times a day to produce up to 5 gallons a day. That's a lot of milk for one cow! We also learned that milk is one of the cleanest food products there is because, from the cow to the carton, it’s never touched by human hands.

Liam also had the chance to play with a lot of dogs from the SPCA that were there and did well with most of them. He’s still not crazy about them licking him but he will at least pet them & give them hugs now.

There were also various activities in the museum that were age appropriate for Liam. A couple of his favorites were the ball roll and big bubbles.

All in all, it was a great day and another successful road trip!

Say Cheez!

2008-06-21T22:11:00.001-05:00

We finally got around to having some family photos taken. It took us awhile to find a photo studio that wasn’t within a retail outlet (like Sear’s or Walmart) and had package prices that we liked. We discovered Wende Hernandez at Capture Studios, who takes great photos and has a great variety of package options so you don’t end up with a bunch of photos that you don’t need. She also gave us permission to use any of her photos on our website which is way cool since most photo studios don’t allow that.

Here is our first professional family photo:

We also did a couple of poses of each of us with Liam:

Rob had also requested that I do a black and white photo of Liam & me for his Father’s Day gift. The one below is what I gave him. The kiss wasn’t planned but Liam turned and kissed me after she took the one of us up above and Wende thought it was a great pose.

While we were in Moscow, we bought some traditional Russian shirts for Liam and our friends Brad & Marsha’s kids; Sasha and Dimitry. The shirts were priced quite expensive in the touristy shops down on Old Arbat but thanks to Dinia & Ron, we were able to get much nicer versions at a much lower price at the Vernisage Ismailovo market. Wende printed a collage of the shirt photos she took:

Sasha especially loved his shirt and commented that he felt like one of the Emperor’s soldiers from Star Wars. Perhaps he has been watching way too many movies! ;-)

Kinduva Big Deal

2008-06-15T15:21:00.001-05:00

Liam has been making the news lately! It all started when Renee featured us in the March/April edition of The Odessan Magazine. And now, within the past month, our adoption story has been covered by both of the 2 local newspapers!

The Midland Reporter-Telegram newspaper featured excerpts from our adoption blog in their May 19th issue.

After that, we received an email from The Odessa American newspaper requesting to do an interview with us. The reporter & photographer came to our house a few days later and did the interview. They held the article to run in today’s paper for Father’s Day. It is posted on their website along with a video. Here’s the article that is on their website and the link to the video.

So, while it’s too bad these aren’t paying gigs, we hope the information will help others who’re considering adoption. All this attention is kinda making us feel a bit like micro-celebrities, so I’ll leave you with a sound clip that explains the title of this post:

(Press the "Play" button above to hear a great sound clip
from Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
or click here if the audio control doesn’t appear.)

Red Car

2008-06-09T21:11:00.001-05:00

As mentioned in my last post, Liam just loves my Volkswagen New Beetle Convertible a.k.a. Caliente — but now known as "Red Car." Yes, my car has a name, doesn’t yours? ;-)

He can hardly contain himself in the mornings when we are getting ready to leave the house. All he says is "red car, go-go-go." Of course, I’ve given in and most days we’re driving the red car now. I just can’t stand that his little heart gets broken if we start gearing up to leave in the other car.

This morning he even tolerated having the top down. Most days he doesn’t like the wind in his face but it was mild today. Here is a picture of us in the red car waiting in the driveway before we left this morning. Don’t worry, he was securely fastened in his car seat in the back seat before we left the driveway. Notice the dolphin on his shirt... now I just need to find him a shirt with a VW Beetle on it — a red one, of course.

New Words and Balls

2008-06-08T01:58:00.003-05:00

Rob & I were commenting today about how it seems like Liam has hit another cycle of talking more again. He’ll go for weeks when it doesn’t seem like there’s anything new and then all of the sudden several new words and lots of chatter just start pouring out of his mouth.

His newest words include mine, baseball, cheese, red car, wow and extended bye-bye’s. Not only has he learned these new words but he has learned to combine them with some of his old words to form phrases. For example, tonight he was asking for cheese and when I gave his some, he said my cheese. I asked him if he loves momma and he said, "I love bananas." Oh well, I know how much he loves bananas so if I’m a close 2nd, then I’m still happy!

The extended bye-bye’s started last week as we were leaving the house in the "red car" (my New Beetle that he absolutely loves) and he started telling everything bye-bye on the way out of the house and on the way to daycare. We heard bye-bye light, bye-bye cup, bye-bye ball, bye-bye house, bye-bye Da-Da’s car, bye-bye red car (to every other red car we passed). I’m thinking he’d work out great as one of those flight attendants that stands at the door as you are exiting the plane!

We always laugh when we hear all these bye-bye’s because it reminds us of Melissa’s video of Nathan saying bye-bye to all the farm animals. We always think of "Bye-bye, billy goat."

Liam has also really been obsessed with playing with balls lately. Rob mentioned that his ball-throwing coordination and aim have improved dramatically just in the past few days!

When we were in Brady a couple of weeks ago, he loved playing with Slaydn’s whiffle baseballs so we went to Academy Sports today and bought him a pack of the balls. I highly recommend these because they are small enough for him to hold onto, they’re hard plastic so he can’t eat chunks out of them the way he does with the foam rubber balls, and they’re so light they shouldn’t cause damage to anything they bounce off of. Also, since they come in a pack of 6 assorted colors, these balls are good for teaching colors too. (They also have a pack of softball-sized "whiffle" balls that’re a little larger, but the baseball version fits his little hands better.)

First Road Trip

2008-05-27T07:09:00.001-05:00

We took Liam on his first extended road trip over Memorial Day weekend and he did great! We left Friday after work and drove to Brady, TX to visit friends. It’s about a 3½ hour drive and Liam stayed awake for the entire drive and never complained. On the way there, we passed several fields with cows, sheep, & goats in them and along the way, he’d remind us of the sounds they make.

We stayed at our friend Glenda’s house and she spoiled him rotten all weekend. He got to eat & drink all sorts of sugary items that we would never give him at home, but since it was a mini-vacation for him and gave Glenda such pleasure, we let him be spoiled. She has a swimming pool at her house and unlike our last swimming adventure, the water there was warm and the temp outside hovered around 100° all weekend. We started him off in a tube floaty that has a seat in the middle but he didn’t like that at all because he was too far removed from the water. Next, we put arm floaty’s on him and he did pretty well with those but never felt confident enough to try to swim on his own. The next day I bought him a swim vest that clipped on to his swim trunks and that worked out perfect for him! Rob taught him how to kick & dog paddle and he let go and swam from one side of the pool to the other on his own and would get in and out of the pool by himself. He’s definitely going to be a swimmer!

After mastering the pool, Liam was very interested in Sladyn’s Razor so he convinced him to take him for a ride on it around the pool:

On Saturday, we took Liam to Georgina (GiGi) & Joey’s farm in Calf Creek, TX to visit the cows and sheep. Joey’s dad, "Pappy," is 88 years old and still lives on the farm. He was thrilled to have Liam come visit the animals. GiGi rode in the back of the farm truck and held Liam while we drove out to the pasture. When we got out to the pasture, Joey blew the horn and cows came running in to the truck from every direction. Joey put out feed for the cows and then took Liam and walked in the middle of all the cows so he could pet them. Rob & I felt like really city-slickers at that moment not knowing anything about cows or farms and asking stupid questions like, "Can you milk these cows?" We were quickly educated that cattle are either raised as dairy cows (for milking) or free range cows. The cattle we were looking at were the latter variety — or in other words... steak. Either way, they all say "moo" and Liam was so excited to hear them:

After leaving the cows, we drove through the pastures hunting the sheep. I’m sure glad Joey knows his way around those pastures because there was nothing in sight but trees and I had no sense of direction out there. He finally spotted the sheep in one of the three pastures they hang out and took Liam up to see them. The sheep were much more skittish than the cows so Liam was not able to pet them but he did get close to them and hear them say their "baa’s."

After that, we headed back to the farm house and thanked "Pappy" for letting us visit the animals and Liam blew kisses goodbye to him & Joey:

On Sunday, we drove to Brownwood and ate at Underwood’s; which is the best BBQ place in the world! Liam loved the cherry & apple cobbler and the fresh hot rolls. After lunch, we did some shopping and then it was back to the swimming pool for the rest of the day!

We drove home yesterday and Liam stayed awake for most of the ride, but was exhausted by the time we got home. He ate a late lunch and then went down for a long nap. He learned a new word in Brady which pretty much sums up the whole exciting weekend... Wow!

My First Mother's Day

2008-05-12T22:17:00.000-05:00

I hope all the new moms and about-to-be moms out here in blogger land had a happy Mother’s Day.

It was a very special day for me. I’d like to say thanks to all those who took the time to send me email, e-cards, and mentioned me on their blogs passing on their congrats for my first Mother’s Day. (Thanks again, Eric!)

We took my Mom out to eat at her favorite place, Furr’s Cafeteria. It was Liam’s first time to experience a cafeteria-style meal and he didn’t seem pleased about passing by all the food without getting to sample it. Once we were seated though, he dove in and tried a little bit of everything. The fish, okra and of course mac & cheese seemed to be his favorites.

It was also a bittersweet day since it was Rob’s first Mother’s Day without his Mom. After lunch, we all went to the cemetary to place flowers on her grave. After that, we took my Mom home and gave her a framed studio picture of Liam that had been taken a couple of weeks ago. She was thrilled! Since he’s her only grandchild, I’m sure it’ll be the beginning of a shrine-like display. ;-)

The rest of the day was spent relaxing at home with just my 2 boys — which is the best gift I could ever ask for!

I Like It!

2008-05-09T07:17:00.006-05:00

We’ve noticed a huge difference in Liam’s speech skills the past few weeks. He’s becoming much more vocal and saying all sorts of new words and singing pieces of songs he’s learned at daycare. One of the books I’ve been reading to him every night has animals in it and I always point to the animals and say their name along with the sound they make. Last week he surprised me by doing the sounds for each animal himself. I guess he had been paying attention all this time after all!

Well last night, he surprised us again. We were eating dinner and I asked him if his food was good and he said "I like it!" Rob & I were both shocked and started laughing. Our baby spoke his first real sentence!

I had to capture it on video to share with all of you. Here he is saying "I like it!" while we are showing him his new shirt that his Aunt Karen sent him for his birthday.

Click here if the embedded video above doesn’t play properly in your browser.

Water Baby

2008-05-05T21:37:00.006-05:00

For a boy who didn’t even like his baths 3 months ago, Liam has quickly turned into a water baby! He gets so excited every night at the mention of bath time and starts shedding off his clothes on the way to the bathroom. He’ll stay in the tub until all the water has drained out and frequently tries to cover the drain with his hand to keep the water from going away. We recently discovered that the bath tub was the perfect place to play with his bubbles. He loves watching the bubbles & trying to catch them. Here’s a picture of him mesmerized by them:

Given that he likes baths so much, we figured he’d take to swimming pretty easily. He was supposed to start swim lessons last week but they cancelled the class to do pool renovations so he won’t get to start class until June. He was invited to a birthday/pool party Sunday afternoon so we thought it would be a good opportunity for him to do his first swim.

Unfortunately, when we got there the pool was ice cold and the day was cloudy and overcast. We just thought that nobody was going to get in the pool. Sasha decided nothing was going to stop him from swimming and Liam decided it looked like too much fun to pass up so he insisted on getting in. Rob let him dangle his feet in the water so he would see how cold it was but that didn’t sway him. So... guess who got to get in the ice water with him??? Yep, it was FREEZING and Liam kept hugging up against me to get warm but then would get back down in the water again. Here we are braving the cold:

He should have no problem swimming in the Pacific Ocean after this! We were laughing saying it was easy to spot the Russian kids at the party — they were the only ones that could handle the water being that cold!

Battling With the Glasses

2008-05-04T21:24:00.000-05:00

We’re on Day 5 of wearing the glasses and it’s still a battle but I think we might win someday. He does okay wearing them as long as his hands are occupied but as soon as he thinks about them, off they come! He has definitely put those titanium memory metal frame’s flexibility & durability to the test — and so far, they’re still in one piece!

We didn’t figure the daycare staff had time to work with him on keeping his glasses on so for now he only wears them after daycare until bedtime during the week. He did wear them all day yesterday & most of today. We also decided to take them off of him in the car after watching him try to mangle them in the rear view mirror!

I had to laugh when we went out to lunch today and a lady came over to our table and asked our advice on how we kept his glasses on him. Like I said, he does really well as long as his hands are occupied and since eating is a sport for him, the glasses rarely come off at mealtime!

I’ve also been rewarding him with stickers whenever he leaves his glasses on and that seems to be working pretty well too. There are times though when he just refuses to have them on. The other day I pointed out that his Daddy & I both had our glasses on and asked if he’d like to put his glasses on too. His response? "Nah."

Glasses

2008-04-29T21:38:00.000-05:00

Liam received a late birthday gift today but I’m pretty sure it’s one that he is not going to want to keep. We had his eyes examined a few weeks ago and found out that he is farsighted. The doctor suggested that if he wears glasses now for a few years that there is a good chance that he won’t have to wear glasses in the future. He thinks this will also fix the slight strabismus he has which is caused by the muscles in the weak eye having to work too hard.

We have little faith that Liam is going to tolerate wearing glasses since we have not been able to keep his sunglasses on him for more than a few minutes at a time. We shopped around locally for glasses for him and the cheapest pair we could find was over $100 and the frames didn’t seem very kid friendly. Since we are fairly sure that we will be buying more than one pair of glasses, we decided to look on the Internet for something less expensive and better made. We found the glasses below at Zenni Optical and they were only $35 (with shipping!) and he’s already tested the kid-proofedness of them — and they held up!

Funny thing is, we get lots of comments that Liam couldn’t be more like us even if he were our biological child. Well, here’s yet another trait he has in common with both Rob & me...

I’m going to have the glasses checked by the doctor’s office just to make sure that the prescription is correct and they fit him right but it seems like this was a really good deal.

I welcome any advice that any of you might have as to how to keep the glasses on him. I feel it is going to be a real struggle!

Happy 2nd Birthday Liam!

2008-04-28T22:20:00.000-05:00

Our little man turned 2 today!

We had a small family get-together yesterday with Grandma & Uncle Whit. Liam seemed a little confused at first when everyone was singing a song he wasn’t familiar with but he got into it by the end. He was also a little unsure about the whole blowing out the candles thing, but with a little practice was able to get the job done. Eating the cake on the other hand caused no confusion whatsoever!!

Here are a few pictures from his birthday:

We’re hoping that he will be able to test drive his pool this coming weekend. Also, if you look close in the last couple of photos, you can see the cut on his arm that was the reason for his first E.R. visit (which is healing up nicely) and of course just in time for his photo sitting last Saturday, he got another bump on his forehead. That’s my boy!

I baked cupcakes and took them to Liam’s daycare class today. They had a birthday party for him there too. I left them a disposable camera for pictures so I’m hoping some of those turn out cute. On the way home he was singing part of the birthday song and we could hear him making blowing noises. I can’t imagine that they had candles for him at daycare too so I think he just figured out that it goes with the song. Anyway, it made me happy to hear him so happy and celebrating to himself on the way home!

Today’s Post is Brought to You by the Number 2

2008-04-26T18:38:00.000-05:00

It took us 2 years to get Liam, he’s been with us for 2 months, and in 2 days, he will be 2 years old! I’m not sure if there’s any significance to all that, but it seemed too cool not to share.

I’m sure your next question is do we have any big birthday plans? Well, actually, no we don’t. We plan to keep this birthday kind of low-key. I’m making cupcakes for his daycare class on Monday and they’ll have a small party for him. At home, we’re having a cake and a small family get-together. One of his birthday gifts from us is a little inflatable pool that we were hoping to setup today but rain is predicted to start any minute now and continue through tomorrow. I guess that gift will have to wait. But there’ll be plenty of hot Texas days to come for him to cool off in his pool.

I took Liam to have his first professional photo made this morning. The photographer was quite impressed with how easy he was to photograph. He smiled on cue and looked adorable in all the poses, so of course I had to buy most of them. Once I get them back, maybe I can finally send out our adoption announcements. I’ve been intending to that for several weeks now but I didn’t think any of my photographs were quite good enough to print.

Speaking of photos, in case you missed the post on our 2Dolphins blog, I’ll leave you with a photo of Liam taken on Earth Day:

Liam’s First Trip to the E.R.

2008-04-16T21:01:00.000-05:00

Did I ever mention that on the Russian database that they had listed Liam’s nature as "mobile"? Well, they couldn’t have picked a more perfect description for him. That boy will not sit still for more than 10 seconds at a time; he likes to "go, go, go" (as he says). On top of being mobile, he’s also a climber and that’s just not a good combo for Momma. I am constantly worried that he is going to fall and hurt himself (even moreso than the bumps & bruises he collects on a regular basis). Everyone tells me to quit worrying that he is just a boy and that’s what boys do.

Well last night he was running around climbing on things and managed to fall just right so that he hit his arm on the corner of the closet door and it cut a nasty gash into his arm. I was terrified at the sight of his blood (usually I just see him rubbing a bump and there’s no blood involved). After we got his arm cleaned up enough to see how bad the cut was we decided that it might be deep enough for stitches so we bandaged him up and took him to the E.R.

We arrived at the E.R. at approximately 8:00 p.m. and about 3 1/2 hours later he was finally called to the back and they looked at the cut. By then the blood had dried and the wound was sealing up so they decided that he probably did’nt need stitches so they put some ointment on it and sent us home. Liam tore the bandage off before we got home and then fell sound asleep. Today he hardly noticed that he had an injury. I’ll just never get used to this. I’ve saved his first E.R. bracelet which I’m guessing will be just one of many in the years to come... :::sigh:::