our journey to ethiopia: May 2008

Happy Belated Mother's Day to all of you wonderful moms out there!!!

Here's a cool little 'Mother's Day find' that I stumbled upon this weekend rather unexpectedly. I think all of you adoptive (or prospective-adoptive) moms will love as much as I do:

We were in a consignment store near our house and I told Reese that she could grab a book and she just randomly picked up this one called "Little Miss Spider" by David Kirk. The story line is very short and has a cute poem/rhyming scheme to it. It is about a little spider that crawls out of her egg with all of the other baby spiders and she immediately starts looking for her mom; who is not around. She starts asking other bugs and a little beetle (Betty Beetle) helps her look and tells her that if SHE were her mom, she'd be looking for her baby too. Finally, the baby spider almost gets eaten and still no luck finding her mom; when Betty Beetle swoops in to save the day. Betty then asks the baby spider to move into her home, basically implying that she'll be her mommy. The last page says:

"FOR FINDING YOUR MOTHER,

THERE'S ONE CERTAIN TEST.

YOU MUST SEARCH FOR THE CREATURE

WHO LOVES YOU THE BEST."

What an incredible little story! How random that Reese chose it without knowing the plot!!! Maybe others already know about this book, but I had never heard of it and was very excited to stumble upon it in such a way and on Mother's Day weekend.

Okay, now a few tid bits on our lovely little girls:

I know that boys and girls are wonderful for different reasons, but I honestly have no idea what it is like to be the mom of a boy as we are fully immersed in 'little-girl-world!!' Everywhere I look there are princess books and dress up clothes. There is also A LOT of drama and emotions (I thought for sure we'd have until their pre-teens to have to deal with the emotions but NOPE--lots of girlie drama in this house). And, we love every minute of it all.

A few things that are DAILY occurrences in our house are:

DRESS-UP TIME:

This is basically all day every day. Reese usually goes through a good 5 or so outfits a day. I decided to share a few examples here (see pics below). They really run the gamut from actual dress up clothes (princess or ballerina theme) to just interesting arrangements of clothes that are hers. She is heavily recruiting Lilly into this past-time, and typically likes to throw a fancy boa around Lilly’s neck, or give her a purse to carry, or place a crown on her head. Lilly thinks it is hysterical. :) Reese has become VERY particular about what she wears. Right now, she is going through a "dresses or skirts only" phase and it can be very cute and also very testing at times. She only wants to wear dresses all day long. Even at night, she insists upon night-gowns and not pajamas. Preferably "the kind that twirl, Mama!" This can result in some serious melt-downs when such items are not clean.

daddy's little princesses

this next outfit seems to have an 80's influence to it

I don't think that any of us can begin to understand what she is pretending to be in this 'get-up':

Lilly cracks up at everything that Reese puts on!

this is a true representation of her ever-so-nutty personality

Lilly quickly came in the room with a boa on her neck, grabbed her sequenced purse and took off again! Busy girl, clearly off to some formal engagement.

If you have a girl, and aren't into the Fancy Nancy book Series yet--this is a MUST! They are so cute and have quickly become Reese's favorite books. There's 'Fancy Nancy'-the original book, 'Fancy Nancy & the Posh Puppy,' 'Fancy Nancy-Bonjour Butterfly' and more. They are great. The only draw back is that now every time we leave the house Reese wants to be fancy too and wear some outrageous earrings, necklace, hair bows, anything "fancy' that she can find! It is a lot of work to be so fancy.

PLAYING MOMMY:

Many of you may not know that I am actually a grandmother to many, many of Reese's "children!" Reese has a million stuffed animals, dolls and teddy bears and she has named them all, keeps track of their favorite clothes, favorite toys, favorite place to sleep, potty trains them, takes care of them when they are sick, etc... At any given moment, you walk into a room, and there is inevitably a "baby" there taking a nap, at which point Reese will reprimand you for "waking up her babies." They are also dressed in clothes (usually from Lilly's dresser), wearing a diaper (or panties if Reese has potty trained them; which she is always working on), tucked into a blanket, and accompanied by favorite toys. Here are some examples of just a few of my 'grand children' that I found around the house in one day alone! My sister says that it is "a lot of self-imposed responsibility for a 3 year old!" This is true. Even Reese sometimes says, "Mama, I have SO MANY babies! I am very busy" We indulge her by buying gifts for her build-a-bear (Beary) and we sometimes celebrate the babies' birthdays....it is a bit out of control! Ahhhhh, the imagination of a little girl. :)

This is "Abby and Aidey" with their favorite toys. Reese says that they are "comfy and cozy" in this box.

Here are Chester and Bunny. Bunny recently moved onto to "panties" from diapers, her mom was proud. The trick here is that as Reese changes her babies' dirty diapers, she literally throws away the "dirty ones." This is very frustrating as we don't really like the idea of throwing away unused diapers; so we have to be stealth in intercepting them on their way to the garbage! :)