2012 Weekly Recaps (8 of 52)

It was a “Father of the Bride” moment.  The 1991 Steve Martin movie version, specifically the scene of the night before the wedding where Dad dreams about his favorite moments of his daughter’s growing up (first day of school, riding her bike, playing basketball, etc.)  Troy steered clear of this movie in 1991, while I watched it and rewatched it probably 20 times.  So I had to explain exactly what a “Father of the Bride” moment was.  But when I did, Troy wholeheartedly agreed that the moment captured above (sorry for the blurry cell phone photo – it’s all I had) was indeed such a moment and will forever be etched in our memories of Madelyn’s growing up years.

Backing up a little bit, Madelyn started swim lessons last week – without Mommy and Daddy in the pool!  I think it is safe to say that she is the littlest and youngest one in the class because the minimum age is three.  But she has been asking to take this class for months now, so we knew she was ready.  She spent most of the first class on the edge of the pool because she was too distracted watching the bigger kids on the other end and failed to hear her instructors say that she had to specifically ask them to get into the pool.  She also got quite a bit of attention from the lifeguard as she leaned over into the pool as far as humanly possible to play with the pool toys without leaving the edge.

In the second class, we were a little confused at her lack of exuberance.  She hardly reacted to her instructors other than when she got her one-on-one kick and paddle time.  After listening closely, we finally figured out that they were calling Madelyn “Aubrey” (I think it was the name of a little girl who was not there) and Madelyn did not correct them – nor did she respond to them whenever they called to her.  After a few minutes of debating back and forth between ourselves on whether it was appropriate to step in, I finally walked over and told the instructor Madelyn’s name.  THEN things turned around, with about five minutes left in class.  The little girl who had remained silent through almost two entire classes asked if she could get in the pool with her foam pool noodle (green to match her swimsuit of course).  And then Madelyn asked “I do it all by myself?”  The instructor was shocked, but acquiesced.  And THAT is what you see above.  The most exuberant glee we have ever seen on Madelyn’s face as she paddled herself around her corner of the pool.  I think she drank about a gallon of the pool water, but she did it!  And she was SO proud of herself – and we were even more proud of her.

The rest of our week was pretty quiet as we all three recovered from colds at the same time.  We did make a little time for cleaning and organizing, however, as this is how future Mei Mei’s room recently looked (the site of to-do projects and all other things that I generally try to keep out of sight and out of mind):

I’m happy to report that the room is now much more likely to pass a homestudy visit.

We also made time for a Madelyn and Mommy tea party so that we could work on our grown up conversation skills.  The cutest outcome of this is that Madelyn now asks me how my day was every time we sit down to eat.  Love it!  I know I can't keep Madelyn from growing up too quickly, but I certainly will treasure these moments forever.

- Tricia Olson, 2012

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2012 Weekly Recaps (7 of 52)

(Proof that Cookie Monster is still in the big leagues)

The major event of last week, for us, was obviously Madelyn's Third Birthday.  There was a lot of other things going on, though.  Here are a few highlights:

Madelyn got to go on a much-anticipated trip to the swimming pool with Uncle Dew and Auntie Ning Ning.  She did lots of "bobs" (aka jumping into the pool while holding onto Drew's hands) and swimming with a green foam noodle ("because it match my swimsuit").  While Madelyn was swimming, Troy and I got to enjoy a meal out for Valentine's Day weekend.  There was chocolate.  All was good.

On Monday, Madelyn and I had the chance to do some shopping in Portland with Nana.

Madelyn entertained several salespersons with her Eeyore impersonation (a new one for her!)  She also seriously impressed a few salespersons with her opinions about fashion.  Mom and I were trying to get a few ideas of things Madelyn might like for future presents.  As we showed various options to Madelyn, she gave us not only a "yay" or "nay" but a REASON why the yay or nay.  Our favorite salesperson of the evening, by far, was Uncle Timmy.

While shopping, we had our first encounter with someone who assumed that Madelyn would be able to speak Chinese.  I had Madelyn's "Ni Hao Kai Lan" backpack on the stroller and a little girl (probably about 5 or 6) spotted it and pointed it out to her mom (neither the mom nor little girl were Chinese).  The mom took a look at Madelyn and told her little girl to go over and practice her Chinese words with Madelyn.  Silence - from both me and Madelyn - until I gathered my wits and started a conversation in English between the two girls.  While it renewed my commitment to find Madelyn some Chinese language lessons (if she wants them), it does leave me incredulous about the grand assumptions people make based on race, ethnicity, etc. 

As a side note, I'm pretty sure Madelyn would do great learning a second language (or learning more of her first language) in the near future.  She learned "jie jie" and "mei mei" (big sister and little sister) simply from a book we recently read together.  She has recently started calling Troy "Baba" (Chinese for Dad) based on the same book.  (Mama in Chinese is Mama - so no change-up there.)  It is pretty cute when she chooses to call Troy "Baba."  She does it VERY affectionately.

Madelyn made a handmade Valentine for her Baba on Valentine's Day - mostly decked out in her current favorite crayon color, brown.  To add a little color to the presentation, I suggested that she and I go get Daddy some strawberries at the grocery store.  Madelyn was pretty excited about that idea.

Little did I know how much work the simple task would take.  We parked and entered the grocery store on the produce side, only to discover that the special "shopper in training" carts were parked on the opposite side of the store.  Madelyn HAD to have the special cart (duh), so we retrieved one and headed back to produce.  She picked out two gorgeous boxes of strawberries and then suddenly grimaced and announced that she needed to go potty right away.  We headed out to take care of business (nearest facility was the potty chair in the back of our car) and returned 5 minutes later only to discover that our strawberries and cart had already been put away (super efficiency in that store!).  So we headed BACK to the other side of the store for another special cart, BACK to the strawberries, you get the picture . . .

At least the strawberries were worth the effort!  Madelyn helped me wash and cut them and they were a pretty tasty accompaniment to the Macaroni and Cheese that I allowed Madelyn to have even though she was having it on her birthday too.

(The stove was off in this picture - Madelyn just wanted to try to stir like I did.)

Daddy loved his Valentine treats - and he brought one home for Madelyn too - a balloon :)

Daddy was also more than happy to help Madelyn play with some of the fun games she received as birthday gifts:

The week ended on a very sweet note - we finally got to Skype with Travis and his family.  Travis has been home with his family for about 7 months and is doing great.  (Check out their blog here.)  This was Madelyn and Travis' first encounter since Madelyn's departure from the orphanage in China.  It was a success on both ends, I think, and we are going to try to set up regular times to Skype in the future - hopefully on a monthly basis.  On the recommendation of Travis' mom, I reserved a particular sign language DVD from our library so that we can teach Madelyn a few communication words for our next Skype.  We are all pretty excited to learn!

- Tricia Olson, 2012

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It Was the Rootinest Tootinest Party in The Wild Wild West!

Oh my!  That was the most fun I have had celebrating a birthday in a long time!  (Yes, I know that the sign says “Happy 3th Birthday” – we didn’t have the heart to change it after the employees at the carousel put it up.)

Madelyn’s birthday morning (Thursday) started with balloons on her bedroom door.  She was too drowsy to look at the camera, but Mommy & Daddy wanted to make sure that they got at least a little acknowledgement for blowing up all the balloons before they headed off to work!  Madelyn perked up pretty quickly, however, when she remembered that she was going out to a pancake breakfast with Grandpa, Grandma, Uncle Andrew & Nana!  The waitress surprised Madelyn and put a candle in a peach, with blueberries for eyes and strawberries for a mouth and ears.  Top that with presents, and she was one incredibly excited little girl.

Birthday dinner consisted of Madelyn’s favorites: macaroni & cheese + chocolate cake.  I had grand plans to make the chocolate cake into a heart according to one of my fave Pinterest finds, but the results in my hands were not very aesthetic.  It sort of looked like a mud pie that vaguely resembled a heart with a wobbly “3” on it.  No pictures – I’m too embarrassed.  It tasted great though (used the 2 ingredient method of Duncan Hines + canned pumpkin and nothing else)!

Madelyn’s favorite gift of the evening seemed to be a little wooden fruit & veggie set that I got on clearance at Toys R Us.  Each piece has velcro so that she can “cut” it in half.  She has been serving Troy and I a lot of fruits and veggies . . .

(note Mini Boden tee from Great Grandma Carlisle!!!!)

The BIG EVENT occurred on Saturday morning when we met up with friends and family for a party at the carousel.  The guest of honor was, of course, Razzle Dazzle the carousel horse.

Madelyn was literally showered in love by all of the family and friends in attendance.  Our hearts were full with gratefulness.

(Pictured with Great Grandpa and Grandma Carlisle above – Hi Grandpa and Grandma!  Thanks for reading our blog!!)

In the party room, we stuck with a Cowgirl Jessie theme, complete with cowboy/girl hats.  Troy initially protested when I wanted to buy the hats (it was not the price – they were only a dollar each – he just thought it was overkill).  He has since learned all about little girl parties the Tricia way.  He was also introduced to descriptions of the 1981 awesomeness of my third birthday party that included an appearance by my uncle and aunt as “Cowboy Kelly” and “Cowboy Shelley.”  When I offered to forego the hats if Troy would show up as Toy Story Sheriff Woody, he let me buy the hats :)  And the hats were all sorts of fun:

I would like to briefly point out, that despite my inability to ever make a cool cake, I can at least add decorations to a Costco cake AND I managed to make special labels for the crayons.

Anyway . . .

We asked Madelyn what her favorite part of the party was and she told us it was the balloons.  Duly noted!

We love you Baby Girl!

- Tricia Olson, 2012

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Happy 3rd Birthday, Madelyn!

We love you -- love Mommy and Daddy.

(more to come on Madelyn’s birthday and upcoming party next week)

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2012 Weekly Recaps (6 of 52)

The big event of last weekend was the Super Bowl party which we hosted. Madelyn attempted to split her time amongst the many people and events that were going on. One minute, she was climbing on my back and watching football, then the next she was doing football crafts and activities with Tricia (pom pom helmets and letter matching, as seen in the pictures below). Suddenly she would be outside playing in her playhouse with Grandma, before climbing on the couch with uncles Kevin and Andrew. She also had fun showing Ainsley all of the fun stuff that our downstairs had to offer, such as her slide or my arcade machine (Madelyn really loves mashing on the buttons, reminiscent of how I play Street Fighter II, and Ainsley joined right in with her in the excitement).

On Monday, Madelyn took her second trip to the dentist, but it was the first time she actually had her teeth cleaned.  She got to wear sunglasses while she laid in the chair and was able to contain her wiggles long enough to sit through the procedure. I have to admit, I find these pictures incredibly adorable...

Her prize for all of this?  A Winnie The Pooh toothbrush and a balloon!

After this, Madelyn procured another balloon on a trip to Nordstrom where we found out her shoe size has increased from a 6 to an 8 in one month - thank goodness for Nordstrom’s generous exchange policy!

Speaking of feet, we also realized this week that Madelyn apparently knows her left from her right, which kind of surprised us as we haven’t explicitly worked on that concept much beyond reading her “The Foot Book.” After a series of “grueling” quizzing from us, she managed to correctly show us her left or right hand/foot each time we asked, so unless she is extremely lucky, she’s somehow managed to get this concept figured out already.

This weeks project with Tricia had a Valentine's theme to it, as Madelyn made her own book called "Red Heart, Red Heart, What Do You See" (which Tricia created, using the theme from the Eric Carle/Bill Martin Jr books). She carefully placed the heart stickers on each page and then stapled them all together into a book. You can tell by the sticker placement that her concentration and attention to detail are certainly getting better (it used to be that all of the stickers would be placed on top of one another in an extremely random and haphazard manner).

Finally, an important update on stuffed animal pecking order. Tricia and I are in the process of reorganizing Madelyn's play area (more to come on this in a later post) and in the process we have decided to place all of her stuffed animals back in her room.  Madelyn typically has some combination of Wall-E, Eve, Matilda the Monkey, Duck, Winnie The Pooh, and Bambi in her bed with her when she goes to sleep (with Max the Rabbit often being hidden somewhere in the room as well). So, when she found out that all of her stuffed animals were going to be in her room, she immediately wanted her giant Cookie Monster to be in there as well, and proceeded to talk to him (I'd like to think she was introducing him to the rest of the crew) throughout the night.  So congratulations to Cookie Monster on his promotion to the big leagues! We anxiously await to see who is next to make the cut.

- Troy Olson, 2012

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Mei Mei

Madelyn learned a few new characters this week. In case you can’t read Chinese, please allow Madelyn to translate for you:

If you did not watch the video, spoiler alert regarding the rest of the post . . .

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…

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Madelyn is going to be a Jie Jie (Big Sister) because we have officially submitted our second adoption application for a Mei Mei (Little Sister)!

To answer a few obvious questions: (1) We will adopt a child younger than Madelyn; (2) We have applied to adopt a girl; and (3) We have applied to adopt a girl with cleft lip and/or palate. The journey will likely look a lot like our journey to Madelyn – it is already giving us some excellent opportunities to talk with Madelyn about the adoption process. Also, the most frequently viewed posts on our blog are the ones about adopting a child from China with cleft. We are hoping to share more relevant details about our process and preparation this time around and are certainly open to contacting people personally if they want to talk about our experience in that regard.

It seems a little surreal to make the adoption announcement at this point because the timeline isn’t short. When we talked about a second adoption with our social worker before Christmas, she told us that our adoption agency is currently estimating a 12-18 month process from application to “Gotcha Day.” The process doesn’t change much for a second adoption – we just have the advantage of knowing a little better what to expect. Until our file actually gets matched with a precious little one, the process at this point is mostly paperwork, paperwork, and some more paperwork. Our application to “Gotcha Day” timeframe with Madelyn was actually 20 months and looked something like this:

9/10/08	Submitted our application to adoption agency
9/08-12/08	Gathered personal records and referrals, filled out detail information forms, got medical exams
10/23/08-10/24/08	First required parenting class
1/16/09	First home study visit (at adoption agency)
1/22/09	Final home study visit (at our house)
2/08/09	Submitted our Form I-800A (form used by the United States government to “determine our suitability to adopt a child from another country”)
2/10/09	Home study approved
2/13/09	Finished checklist of medical conditions we were open to considering (note that this was done with our initial application this time)
3/11/09	Appointment at Portland office of United States Citizenship & Immigration Services for fingerprinting
3/16/09	Received approval of our I-800A!
5/18/09	Dossier completed and sent to consulate for authentication
6/12/09	Dossier sent to China Centre For Adoption Affairs
6/22/09	Dossier logged with CCAA (Log-In Date)
8/11/09	Social worker calls with possible match and we see Yi Hong (Madelyn) for the first time!
8/17/09	Submitted Letter of Intent to adopt Madelyn
8/20/09	Home study update visit (at our new house)
8/26/09	Letter of Intent is accepted!
11/7/09	Last required parenting class
12/7/09	Letter of Acceptance received, submitted Form I-800 to adopt Madelyn as our daughter
12/22/09	I-800 Provisional Approval received
1/8/10	Hague documents sent to China
1/12/10	Received National Visa Center letter
1/19/10	Visa applications sent to consulate
2/2/10	Received our visas for entry into China
2/26/10	Received Article 5 approval (necessary to get travel approval)
3/16/10	Received Travel Approval
5/5/10-5/21/10	Travel Dates
5/9/10	Madelyn's Gotcha Day

I’m realizing that I am a little fuzzy about what was involved with each of these forms. Fortunately, our agency (Holt International) was fantastic about walking us through each step and I anticipate that this time will be no different (plus I kept copies of all of the forms from last time!). We will try to post more detailed information about the paperwork process once we receive it from our agency. For now, please join us in celebrating that our family will soon (albeit sometime in 2013) grow by one more!

- Tricia Olson, 2012

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2012 Weekly Recaps (5 of 52)

It goes without saying that the major event of the past week in the Olson house was our Chinese New Year party. We had the immediate family over to celebrate the Year of the Dragon. After feasting on a dinner of dumplings, fried rice, lo mein, and orange chicken, Madelyn absolutely couldn't wait to devour her dragon donuts (which Tricia quite cleverly reappropriated from these elaborate dragon cakes):

Madelyn also received a card from Tiffany's classroom -- one of the students in Tiffany’s class is Chinese and she wrote the characters on the card (which reads “Happy Year of the Dragon”) and all the students in the class signed it for Madelyn!

After this, Madelyn opened up her red envelopes, tearing in to find carousel tokens, chocolate, Nordstrom gift cards, and cash! One downside to opening gifts so close to her birthday is that Madelyn did get a bit mixed-up on just what we were celebrating and proceeded to tell us that she was now three (we had to break the news that she will still be two for a few more weeks). We followed red envelopes with a slideshow of photos of our family from the past year. Madelyn implored us to play it multiple times - she laughs at the same pictures every single time :) Since it's set to copyrighted songs, Tricia gave me unsolicited legal advice that I should not post it on YouTube. If you would like to come over to our house for dinner, however, I’m sure Madelyn would be glad to rewatch it with you!

While Chinese New Year was the big news, there was still time for some quiet moments of fun throughout the week. Over the weekend, Madelyn and I had the opportunity for lots of playtime together. It began with a morning session of coffee and playdoh where we worked to perfect her playdoh cutting skills (and where I realized I should probably learn to be okay with the playdoh colors mixing together -- after all, that's part of the fun, isn't' it).

After some adventures inside her tent where she told me some crazy stories about Brandon, Heather, and Ainsley being in the sky(?), we made our way to finally ride her new tricycle which she received thanks to Atticus and Becket (and she even thanked them in the following video!)

After we were done with the bikes, she headed to the backyard to play in her playhouse while I finished something up in the garage. A mere minute later, when I got back there, I saw a sheepish little girl holding a door in her hands, as it had come completely off of the playhouse. I asked if she was hanging on it and she replied "I was. I was hanging on it." So all 6 screws that held it on have been stripped out and I need to figure out how to keep it on there as it sits in the garage (though today she didn't really seem to care that it was gone as she played in the playhouse).

In addition to their weekly trip to gymnastics and toddler tunes, Madelyn and Tricia also had some fun learning time as they went through this set of winter learning lessons. Madelyn did great with her shapes, matching, colors, and counting.

I especially loved that she pointed out an error in the print-out where there were actually 10 hats on the number "9" card. Her struggles came with the concept of ordering things from largest to smallest. Madelyn was able to understand which was the biggest and which was the smallest, but the sequencing of multiple items in this way was something new to her. I'm confident that with the impressive job Tricia continues to do committing time to teaching these things to Madelyn and with the way Madelyn quickly picks things up, they'll have that down in no time -- both of them amaze me :)

- Troy Olson, 2012

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