Here's the deal...

I never expected potty training to be a four part process that spanned...a year.  Yes, you read that correctly...a year.

In July of 2013, we began potty training Ryan (he is no doubt going to hate me when he's a teenager if he ever reads this) because I wanted to get him good and trained before Tony and I left for China and came back with his little Chinese sister.  That potty party part one was great fun (sarcasm) and so we repeated it (part two) a few months after Ryan's relapse after our return from China.

One of my favorite videos is from potty party part one which can be seen here.

A few months ago, we re-potty trained for the third time and it looks like this one is sticking.  Within a couple of days, Ryan was peeing in the potty like nobody's business and a couple of days after that, he went to bed at night sans diaper.

Success!

Except I can't get this boy to poop in the potty.  Every day he says, "mommy, I want to go poo poo in a diaper" and so I put a diaper on him, he poops and then we revert back to his big boy underpants.  For some reason, my brave little boy is deathly afraid of pooping in the potty (and yes, I understand this is fairly common).

So the other day, I decided to bribe, wheel & deal, whatever it took to get him to poop in the potty. 

Me:  Ryan, here's the deal...if you go poo poo in the potty you can have ice cream, cookies, chocolate, whatever you want.  OK?

Ryan:  OK mommy...here's the deal...(holding up 1 finger)...one elephant and one giraffe.

Needless to say, he's still pooping in his diaper. 

A belated wish

Ryan and Anna at the zoo.

Has it really been a month since I've posted something? 

I haven't really felt that inspired to write anything clever, but in the interest of trying to keep some semblance of a family history going, here are some pictures of the kiddos.

 

 
In March, we had our six month visit with our social worker and we had to submit several pictures of Anna.  I love the one below. She really is that cute. I've always thought Ryan was a pretty cute kid, but now when they are together, people never even notice Ryan and go on and on about how cute Anna is. Of course, we agree. 

I've been thinking a lot about Anna's birth mom this month since we just celebrated the mothers in our lives. I'm pretty sure Anna's birth mom has no idea that I celebrated and honored her in my heart last week. How I wish I could show her this picture of her little girl with her repaired cleft lip. I wish she could see how well Anna is adapting to her new family and how she tries everyday to talk.

I have a dream that one day we are able to find her and she will be able to go through this blog and read about her little girl and see all of these pictures.  So if by some miracle, that dream comes true, this picture is for you, the woman who gave birth to our little Anna Jing.

Easter with Ryan and Anna

Ryan's been pretty sick the past several days.  Auntie Patty called me on Thursday and said Ryan woke up from his nap with a 104 temperature. He has a bunch of white spots on his throat but has tested negative for strep.  We (the doctor, nurses and Tony and I) are assuming it's a virus and we just have to wait it out.  He's been hitting 103 and 104 about once a day and yesterday we had to give him a cool bath to bring the temp down, but today, I think we've broken the high streak.  He woke up with a 100.6 temp and has been running around playing and terrorizing Anna as usual.

We were healthy enough to search for our Easter baskets and Easter eggs this morning and the kids had a blast. 

The saddest part about being sick was missing the annual Mano family Easter egg hunt where the hunt for the little kids is first and then the "real" hunt for the big kids follows.  It's my favorite family party of the year. Auntie Linda sent some eggs to the kids so we had a lot of eggs to hunt for. Unfortunately, all I have are long videos which aren't going to post on here so here are some post hunt pics.

We attempted a short Easter lesson about the true meaning of Easter.  Anna didn't understand a word I said and I think Ryan thinks Jesus brought him his Easter basket this morning.

Hope you had a happy and healthy Easter.

just a note...

to let you know that we're still alive.  March pretty much kicked my butt. During the entire month, one or more of us were sick at any given moment.  I was sick for about two weeks during which I may or may not have become addicted to Nyquil.  To a chronic insomniac, that stuff is magic and quite frankly, still hard for me to resist. From time to time, on sleepless nights, I may or may not get up (after hours of tossing and turning) and down a 1/4 dose. Yes, I usually suffer the next morning from a Nyquil hangover, but I will admit that the Nyquil hangover is preferable to 3 hours of sleep.

I've recently become aware that there is a product call Zquil or some iteration of that spelling. Because I have been Nyquil free for a few weeks now, I am resisting the Zquil urge.

I'm also told that talking about sleeping habits is not that interesting, but there you go. Such is my life.


In the meantime, here is one of my new favorite pictures of my two little ones. I promise to write again soon and about something more interesting than my ongoing battle with sleep issues.  We have a few other interesting stories to tell...

Anna the bruiser

For the past week or so, we've been picking up Anna and Ryan from daycare and with fear in our hearts, ask the question:  How was Anna today?

For some reason, Anna has been especially mean for the past several days.  I'm not exactly sure why, but she started hitting, pushing and being just plain mean to the other kids at daycare. They had to separate her from the other children and I was told the other children were afraid of her.

Now this is something that is unpleasant for a parent to hear.  But more than that, it breaks your heart. Why is my child acting this way? Sure we've always had the daily skirmishes, but Anna wasn't a bully. Or is she? What have we done or what haven't we done to prevent this? And of course, the big question that looms is: could this be because of her background and might this be the beginning of a future pattern?

Truth be told, during the week, we have very little time to spend with our children.  We start our day at 5:30am, I wake up my kids around 6:30am and rush around until we are out the door at 7:15am - you know the drill.  And then we pick them up around 5pm, and rush around and get them ready for bed at 7-8pm.  Again, you know the drill.

So for the past week or so, I've been trying to spend some special, quality time with Anna before she goes to bed and whenever I can steal a moment. We do the traditional "nice nice" with me tenderly rubbing her cheek or her arm or tummy. Then we have her do nice nice to me. Then we repeat with Ryan, and so on and so forth. I've been taking time to cuddle her, read to her and sing to her.

And lo and behold, it worked!

Knock on wood.

On Friday afternoon, I picked up Anna and Ryan, asked how they were and received a glowing report. My happy Anna has returned!

Today is Saturday morning and we may just stay home, try to stay healthy and white-eyed (we've had colds and pink-eye) and repeat over and over:  nice, nice.....nice, nice.....nice nice.

Anna's Forever Family

You may not be able to tell, but Anna and Ryan were thrilled at the moment.

When I started researching adoption about 5 years ago, I would see these profiles of children and my heart would break.  I would see a picture of a beautiful child and read about how they just wanted to find their "forever family."  Browsing adoption sites and child profiles became a hobby of mine and the more I looked at pictures, the more confused I became.  Exactly how does one go about choosing a child to join their family?

I've told this story before, but I assumed that we would instantly know, I mean really KNOW without a shadow of a doubt, the instant we saw a child's profile, that that child was meant to be ours.  When I bought my first house in Sugarhouse, after looking at dozens of other houses, I walked in and knew instantly that this was the house for me.  When we adopted our yellow lab Abby, I knew instantly that she was the dog for us - again, after looking at about a dozen other adorable dogs.

But with Anna, I didn't feel that instant confirmation.  Tony did, but I didn't.  And that really bothered me.  But after we went to the temple and prayed about it, it felt right.  And so we moved forward and accepted the child file that our adoption agency had sent to us.  And over time, that knowledge that Anna was to be our little girl grew.  By the time we flew to China, it felt like she was already ours.  On our "Gotcha Day", I was amazed at the instant love I felt for this little girl the first time she held me.  I held her for several minutes while she screamed in fear and then she looked up at me, looked me straight in the eyes for a long time and then she held me.  It was one of the sweetest experiences in my life.

Well, last Saturday was another one of those sweetest experiences in my life.  Tony and I were sealed to Anna in the South Jordan Temple and Anna is officially, part of our forever family. 

We left for the temple around 8:30am and Ryan was especially excited to go to the temple for the first time.  Anna didn't understand what was happening, but she loves to go on any excursion.

When we arrived, we dropped off Ryan and Anna at the Youth Center where my cousin Joy (the same cousin who traveled with me in China after Tony flew home) was a volunteer worker and was able to take care of the kids.  Ryan was super excited to see Joy and but Anna was a bit anti-social.  But when the sealer came down to visit the kids, Anna climbed onto his lap where she decided to stay.  Joy then brought Ryan and Anna up to the sealing room where they waited for us.

When we walked to the room, Joy, Ryan and Anna were waiting for us just outside the door.  They both lit up when they saw us, exclaimed "mommy, daddy" and they both ran towards us.  As we scooped up our beautiful children in our arms, I started to tear up. It's hard to describe how overwhelmed by the Spirit I felt. I felt grateful, fortunate, blessed, lucky and very, very happy.

I hope I remember that moment for the rest of my life.

When we walked into the sealing room, all of our family members were there waiting for us, including my mom and dad.  Ryan again yelled:  Hi Grandpa!  Hi Grandma!" and everyone laughed.  It was adorable.

As we sat holding our children while the sealer spoke to us, I tried to keep my emotions under control. What I felt is sacred, but suffice it to say, I felt our Heavenly Father's love for each one of us. I knew He loved me, Tony, Ryan and especially our little Anna. I truly felt the power of the temple and knew that the sealing ceremony would allow our little family to live together forever. 

And most of all, I once again, felt that confirmation and knew, really KNEW, that Anna was meant to be our little girl.

popcorn parties

We have popcorn parties just about every weekend. I'm not sure which the kids like better, watching the popcorn pop or eating it, but mommy loves having the kids entertained for an hour or so. 

For the most part, Ryan and Anna love playing together and being together.  On Thursday, Anna had a medical evaluation for her speech therapy so we dropped Ryan off at Auntie Patty's in the morning as usual.  As we drove away, Anna started crying and pointing at Patty's house and saying over and over, "Ryan, Ryan, Ryan" which really sounds like "eye....ann" over and over.

It broke my heart that she was so sad that she being separated from Ryan, but it also kinda melted my heart.  Tony often says that Ryan may be the most important person in her life. 

I hope so.

living our lives...one cliche at a time

It's no secret that I went through a bit of a rough patch last year. 

We started 2013 with an ultimatum from my boss telling me they wanted me to move to North Carolina.  With that hanging over our heads, we went through Anna's adoption from China, my mom's successful but heart wrenching bout with breast cancer, probably two dozen business trips, Anna's cleft palate surgery, Ryan adapting to Anna and vice versa, and then renting out our house and packing up to get ready for the move. 

We had already started saying our good-byes when I received a series of three surprising (understatement of the year) and I have to say, not very nice, phone calls from my boss saying they had changed their minds and that instead of relocating us to North Carolina, they were terminating me.  In 24 hours, I sat looking at both the signed rental leases and a severance agreement in front of me.

To say I was shocked is yet another understatement.  I wasn't given any explanation and I felt like my life was left in a thousand scattered pieces.  Tony, understandably, took it pretty hard.  He had been working extremely hard to get both of our houses ready for our move (we have an existing rental that needed some repair work).  We had packed quite a bit and were left with pretty empty tanks when this all happened.

For the next two weeks, I was in pretty bad shape.  I couldn't sleep.  I was extremely (EXTREMELY) stressed out and anxious.  I kept my kids home with me because I was too afraid to spend a dime on daycare.  And with two little toddlers at home with me, I tried to start the job search.

Looking back now, we both found jobs pretty quickly.  I had a job within a couple of weeks and while it took Tony a bit longer, I think considering two of those months were the holiday months of November and December, he landed a good job pretty quickly as well.

During the lowest point of my emotional downspin, we went to talk to our Bishop (clergyman) in our church.  He gave us wonderful counsel which included praying together and going to the temple.  He also said that in the future, we will look back and see this with a different perspective and that the most important thing would be for us to draw close together as a couple and draw close to our Heavenly Father. 

And then he gave each of us a Priesthood blessing.  From that moment on, the anxious feeling left and I felt like my heart beat at its normal rate.  And best of all, I slept well for the first time that night.  A couple of nights later, we went to the temple and I had an overwhelming feeling that if we dedicated ourselves and our little family to our Heavenly Father that we would be ok. 

The feeling of peace that I felt in the temple is hard to describe.  I'm sure many of you have felt that in your own lives as you have had your own prayers answered.  I have felt that peace before, but that night, it seemed so powerful.

Since that moment, we have had one small miracle after another.  And it isn't only in the form of good jobs.  Almost every day, I have a moment when I realize how blessed we are.  We love our home.  We ended up with good jobs and are in a better position than we would be had we moved.  We love living in Utah.  And when I think about how things would be if we did move across the country, I literally shudder.

When the door closed, windows opened.
We took things one day at a time.
And it was meant to be.

63rd percentile

On Thursday morning, Anna was evaluated for speech therapy.  A bubbly, enthusiastic speech therapist came to our home and tested Anna in a variety of areas from gross and fine motor skills, cognitive abilities, language abilities, social/emotional and adaptive skills.

In gross and fine motor skills, she scored in the 63rd percentile which, along with these pictures, proves my claim that Anna is one active little girl.  Not surprisingly, she is a little below average in other areas, but she is one bright little girl and I think she will catch up in cognitive and adaptive areas.  Also not surprisingly, she scored below 1 percentile in expressive language.

While Tony and I see vast improvement over the last several weeks (she can say "night night" very clearly now and you can almost understand "banana"), she is obviously very delayed in her speech.  She still calls Tony "mama" and she calls Ryan "eye-aaa". 

The good news is the speech therapist said she thought Anna would do really well with speech therapy.  Next step is a medical evaluation next week and then hopefully we'll get on the speech therapy schedule and maybe Anna will start calling Tony "daddy" soon.

My hope is that someday soon, Anna can talk as well as she and her brother climb.  Because 63rd percentile seems like a pretty good place to me.
 

happy birthday to me

Yesterday was my birthday and unlike the previous dozen or so birthdays that I spent in New York City, I was home with my family and able to relax.  When Tony kept asking me what I wanted to do for my birthday, I kept thinking I just wanted to be home with my adorable children and handsome husband.

But on Saturday, I would have given anything to have some alone time for just me.  In the morning, I cleaned the house spic and span so I could enjoy a clean and tidy home on my birthday.  By late afternoon, it was a disaster.  The kids were fighting non-stop over toys and Anna was in an especially cranky mood.  Late Saturday afternoon, I texted my favorite massage therapist to see if she could squeeze me in, but alas, I was too last minute.  Then I texted my favorite babysitter around 4:30pm to see if she could watch the kids so we could go see a movie.  Again, too late.

So we ended up spending the day at home with the kids. All day. At home. With fighting, crying kids. On Sunday, Tony tried and tried to create the perfect birthday evening for me, but I ended up on a prolonged birthday phone call and with bedtime for the kids approaching, he ended up bypassing dinner for the two of us and brought out the birthday cake so the kids could sing happy birthday and have a bite of cake before they went to bed.  Then, when we finally had the kids fed and in bed, we had Tony's famous enchiladas.  After dinner, we collapsed on the couch and after a bit of enchilada digesting time, had more ice cream cake, opened presents and went to bed.

But I really wouldn't have it any other way.  Every once in a while, I realize we could be in North Carolina and then a wave of gratitude hits me as I realize, we are meant to be here.  Tony got a new job last week and we are in a better place in so many ways than we were before.  I would have been on my second of three business trips in January and I think this may be the longest I've been home without a business trip in our married life.


So as crazy as some people may think I may be, I wouldn't trade a "relaxing" weekend at home with my kids in our toy-strewn home for a birthday night in New York City.  Because, as they say...there's no place like home.

overheard

Ryan loves to sing and luckily for us, he has a cute little voice.  One of his favorite songs is "Once there was a snowman."  If you're a mom, you probably know this one.

So the other day, I heard Ryan singing in his cute little voice:

Once there was a snowman, snowman, snowman.
Once there was a snowman....PA-KOWWWW!!!

And then he said:  Mommy, I blew up the snowman.

Should I be worried?


So this is a short post (written at 4:04 am mind you) to let you now that although the snowman has had an unfortunate explosion, we are all alive and well.  I haven't written for quite some time because so much has happened, it is, quite frankly, overwhelming.  But I am starting to feel the need to write again...

In the meantime, I want to thank everyone for their kind words and support.  I honestly feel we couldn't have made it through the last several months without prayer and support.  My job is now permanent which is a huge relief and we are on our way to a bright and wonderful new year!