Pictures

I have uploaded lots of pictures to flickr from our Christmas celebrations.

Enjoy and Happy New Year!

Spring in December!

Poppy here... it's been quite a long time since I've blogged. Today was a terrific day, almost as much fun as Christmas! Here in the "Berry" the temperature hit 68F! Of course, when the temperatures near the mid-50s Poppy begins thinking about doing things outside. Mommy isn't too keen on chilly-weather activity but I thought it would be good to get Karla out of the house. So out on the deck we went at 10am much to Mommy's chagrin. BUT! I was nice outside. We looked afterwards and it was 63 degrees. So on went jeans, shoes and a light jacket and out into the great wild we went. I was just planning on standing at the end of the deck since previous encounters with grass and the outdoors were very tentative. However we're apparently past all of that. Karla heard the neighbor girls dancing outside to music (a common summertime occurrence) and shot off the deck like a rocket and went running uphill to them all. She went right up to them and said "Hola!" So they were all excited and curious to know who Karla was and then why Karla wouldn't say anything to them they could understand. I explained that Karla spoke both Spanish and English. That got the girls even MORE excited because they wanted to know the Spanish words for all sorts of stuff so they could interact with Karla. Fortunately I knew most of what they asked. Pelota (ball) was a huge hit with them and they kept calling the balls "pelotas" long after Karla had wandered away from them. So Karla pretty much instantly made 7 new friends. They invited her to play "Fairy" (which seems to involved lots of standing around calling each either other boy names) but Karla was much more interested in finding "doggie!!" We met even more of our neighbors today when they brought their dog Sydney outside. It was chasing frisbees in the cul-de-sac and ran up to Karla when she went running over ("DOGGIE!! AQUI!!!"). Karla then immediately huddled against me and didn't want to pet the dog. So the neighbor let me toss the frisbee a few times and Karla just screamed "DOGGIE!! YAY!!!" or "DOGGIE!! AQUI!!" every time. Then Jennifer came out and we walked along Blackmoore down to the other cul-de-sac and encountered 4 more dogs which was just the greatest possible thing ever (according to Karla). Finally Karla looked ready to drop and we came in to find out we'd been outside over an hour and a half. Karla ate a little bit and then went right up to bed. She woke up a little over 2 hours later, called "Poppy! Poppy!" and wanted to go right back outside. We got a little more food in her first, put on new pants and boots (the others were soaked) and headed out for round two. More fun with another neighbor doggie (more shouting!). Then we did a couple of laps around Grandview, played with the neighbor girls again and slid on the slide A LOT. A great time was had by all.

I've uploaded a special set of Flickr images to document our day.

Happy "Day After Christmas" To You!

Karla must have been a good girl this year because she got lots of great, fun gifts! I'll have to upload more pictures when I am not so worn out from all of the excitement!


A picture from earlier this month of the three of us. :)

Best Christmas Present Ever!

Here she is:



Merry Christmas!

Social Security Card

Karla got her social security card today in the mail!! Yeah!!
Making progress towards re-adoption in PA.

We also filled out the necessary forms to receive Karla's file from immigration services. It may contain information about Karla or her birth family that we have never seen before. Either way, it will be great to have for her and for our legal records.

Who needs toys?

Not a post topic you want to see before Christmas. :)

I bought these storage drawers at Target on Sunday for about $18 - and they have entertained Karla for the past day and a half. Oso goes in and out. She gets in and out. Other little things get put on and in. Quite amazing how many different things she can think of to do with it.

The drawers are to keep her Play-Doh, crayons, and other "craft" things in. They may have to be placed higher up if I actually want them to be functional.

I didn't finish my shopping yet...I don't like being this last minute! I was almost done on Sunday when I went out when I received a call from home. Karla was getting upset that I couldn't be found in any of the rooms of the house. So, I rushed right home. I didn't want to take her out in this horribly cold weather today - so tomorrow it is! At least I know what I need/want to get now and can hopefully be in and out.

This weekend Karla had a visit from her great-grandparents. She was calling them by name and had lots of fun playing with them. It was hard to tell who was having the most fun! I think it is pretty awesome that Karla has 4 great-grandparents. I have to say I haven't seen these two down on the floor (even crawling!) like they were Saturday in quite some time. :) Here is a picture of Karla opening a gift from Mammy and Pappy.


Today Karla and I stayed inside where it is nice and warm. We did some cleaning. I finally got out my winter clothes and put them in my closet. (I guess I was hoping we would have Guatemala-like weather this winter but no such luck). Karla was entertained by looking at and trying on all of my shoes.

This evening Aunt Brenda stopped by for a little while. She had fun reading a story to Karla. She may be famous for being able to use several silly voices. Tonight when she was reading "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" Karla tried imitating one of the voices - and did pretty well. It was SO funny. Brenda and I were laughing like crazy and Karla was fake laughing. She has just started fake laughing and fake crying. I don't think she really knew why we were laughing so much but knew she should be laughing too. That made Bren and I laugh even more. I tell ya, Aunt Brenda and Karla seem to have a lot in common sometimes. One thing is for sure they both always make me smile and laugh!

I took fun (beautiful) pictures of Karla yesterday in her fancy dress. I'm saving them for a Christmas Eve post! :)

Words

I forgot to mention the new words Karla is saying:

hungry, please (yeah, been working on that for a while!), excuse me, Sugar (for the cat), Nana Shirley, Judy, Nice to meet you (I almost fell over), pajamas, napkin, pony, camera, and mess.

Karla was doing something cute today when I said "hold on, I have to get the camera". She patiently and calmly stopped what she was doing, walked to the table and pointed to the camera. HA! I didn't even know it was there. Then she went back to what she was doing so I could take a picture and said "camera"! :)

Jason and I just got to watch a movie! The first one I have watched since sometime before I left for Guatemala.

Have a good weekend!