Olson Family Matters

Mei Mei

2012-02-10T12:14:00.001-08:00

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 . . .

…

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)

2012-02-06T16:50:00.000-08:00

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

Jessie’s February Roundup

2012-02-03T08:41:00.001-08:00

Fun times are ahead of us this month. Jessie’s February Roundup includes the Super Bowl, a friend’s wedding, Valentine’s Day and Madelyn’s Third Birthday!!! (See previous post to learn why we call this “Jessie’s Roundup.”)

The big news of the month is that Madelyn is turning three. MADELYN IS TURNING THREE! In the words of our dear friend Atticus (who is only 6 years old himself), “I can’t believe she is turning three already!” I can’t believe it either, Atticus!

We plan to celebrate Madelyn’s birthday at the carousel, where Madelyn’s favorite carousel horse, Razzle Dazzle, will be the guest of honor. Madelyn is extremely excited about her upcoming birthday - I’m sure it will overshadow everything else this month for her. To kick off the celebrations, Jessie put together a little “trail o’ love” for Madelyn to follow (got the idea here).

The hearts along the trail share some of the things that we love about Madelyn:

Her smile
Her laugh
Her singing voice
Her dancing
Her imagination
Her curiosity
Her excitement for life
Her energy
Her memory
Her observation skills
Her sense of humor
Her fearlessness
The way she serves “cookies and ice cream” to everyone
The way she plays chase
The way she hides from monsters
Her thank yous
Her hugs and kisses
Her love of reading
Her negotiation skills
The way she runs WITH PURPOSE
The way she goes up and down stairs (WITH PURPOSE)
Her ability to quote movies
Her sweet spirit
Her personality

Obviously the hearts don’t adequately cover it because we love everything about this amazing little girl and we can’t wait to celebrate this milestone with Madelyn. Madelyn seemed to love the hearts too - insisting that they accompany her to the dinner table.

For activities at home this month and beyond, I’ve started collecting a lot of ideas for pre-reading, math, and crafts on our Olson Family Matters Pinterest boards (follow me there if you want). My favorite on our Valentine’s Day Pinterest Board is a “red heart red heart, what do you see” book that I hope to make with Madelyn. I’m also looking forward to trying the football letter match activity on our Winter Activities Pinterest Board.

One thing I have discovered as I try to implement a few of these ideas for Madelyn is that I really have to surrender my straight-A student mentality in order for both Madelyn and I to have fun with a project. If I try too hard to get her to match up letters or paste pieces of paper in a certain order, Madelyn’s “fun is all done now” as she once described it. And then all of my fun is done because I feel like I wasted all of the time I spent finding and preparing for the project. When I let Madelyn take it at her own speed, however, and with whatever method she wants, I get a glimpse into how her amazing little mind thinks and processes. A good example occurred just yesterday:

Mama: “Madelyn, please put the table top against the wall.”

Madelyn: “I can’t, Mama. It will leave a mark.”

Mama: “Madelyn, it will not leave a mark.”

Madelyn: “No Mama! It will leave a mark!”

Mama: “Madelyn, please put the table top against the wall.”

Madelyn: (proceeding to run full speed up to the wall brandishing the hard plastic table top like a weapon) “See???”

(It left a mark - a pretty good one actually).

Mama: doubled up in laughter - can’t speak for a full two minutes. She DID warn me!

Madelyn: Inspecting mark and not sure what Mama is laughing about it.

Science lesson done for the day!

You would think it would be easy to set aside my perfectionist nature and just enjoy the ride because it is typically a very fun ride. It’s not easy though - it’s actually something to which I have to devote daily purpose and thoughtful action. Fortunately, I have never had a better teacher on the subject than Madelyn. And thank goodness she has the foresight to warn me when something is “going to leave a mark.”

Back to our Pinterest boards, my favorite apparel item right now on our Toddler Girl Apparel Pinterest Board are these bright colored denim jeans:

I am sort of wondering whether these would cause Madelyn, in future years, to look back at pictures of herself and demand to know what I was thinking dressing her in neon. I ask myself the same question when I look back at some of my junior high photos. Not only did I wear neon-colored clothing back then, but I had neon colored rubber bands for the braces on my teeth to coordinate with my wardrobe. The photo below doesn’t feature neon - but I think you can see what I mean about coordinating my braces with my clothes. I was THAT cool.

Actually, I wasn’t cool - but my self esteem has improved a lot since then so at least I can think of myself as cool. By the way, do they even use colored rubber bands on braces anymore? Guess I will find out when Madelyn makes her first trip to the orthodontist in a few years...

- Tricia Olson, 2012

Short Video We Wanted To Share

2012-01-31T21:06:00.001-08:00

Xiaoyun was adopted from China last year, shortly before turning 14 and aging out of the system. She has just returned home (yay!) after undergoing several surgeries for her severe scoliosis. Before her surgeries, she wanted to share a few things about kids who wait for families in Chinese orphanages:

http://elliourgiftfromgod.blogspot.com/p/xiaoyun-speaks.html

2012 Weekly Recaps (4 of 52)

2012-01-30T08:24:00.000-08:00

(Above: Perhaps the biggest celebrity Madelyn has yet to meet)

Our recap begins over the weekend as Madelyn, Tricia, and I went over to visit Grandpa Carlisle to wish him happy birthday. We were actually the last ones there (due to Madelyn’s nap), but plenty of dessert was still left, much to Madelyn’s enjoyment. She also got to spend time playing with Tricia’s cousin, Giorgi, which she loves so much that she tried to continuously shoo us away or bargain for “five more minutes” when we came to tell her it was time to leave :)

Later that day, we began our preparations for Chinese New Year by hanging up our dragon and lucky garland (pictured below).

(Mental note: we need lessons in ladder safety -- Madelyn loves to follow me up and she seems to have no fear of falling).

On Monday, Chinese New Year began, which Tricia already wrote about in our previous post. Madelyn WAS extremely excited to be able to show me the dragon she made with Tricia and proceeded throughout the day to randomly yell out “Happy Chinese New Year!” That night Madelyn had the opportunity to meet some new friends (for her) as the Brewer family came over during their trip here from Tennessee. It’s always fascinating when Madelyn encounters other kids for the first time at our house, as she typically will stake out her territory and determine what toys she will play with and what toys the other kids will be allowed to play with. Eventually, she will warm up and begin sharing her toys with everyone, which is how things ended up on this night, with Madelyn enjoying baking cookies with Emma, legos with Liam, and just staring in awe at Benjamin (she LOVES babies).

On Tuesday, we spent the evening doing errands. I had the joy of taking Madelyn to Costco and Bed, Bath & Beyond. In Costco, we marveled at the display of big TVs showing The Lion King (“Grandma has that movie!”) and, of all things, a pair of toilets for sale (“That’s quite a potty chair”). All the while, Madelyn took her duty of “official Costco card holder” very seriously and clutched it tightly throughout the store. While waiting at Bed, Bath & Beyond, Madelyn met the green M&M in the picture at the top and was enraptured by her for the rest of the time we were there (it didn’t hurt that this display housed 100’s of bags of M&M’s in it, all of which Madelyn wanted to open).

Madelyn and I then met up with Tricia at Bridgeport Village. While I tried on some jeans, Madelyn managed to get herself stuck in a chair by trying to slide out the back, thus solidifying her status as a Palmer ;) It took three of us to extract her from the chair, if you count the nervous store employee who was supervising the crisis. I really wanted to get a picture of this, but didn’t have it in my heart to tell Madelyn to just stay there stuck while I take pictures. I was later reminded that it is sort of a Palmer family tradition to take pictures of such incidents when Tricia’s cousin dug out the infamous picture of Tricia’s brother with his head stuck in a porch railing:

With a crisis averted, we went out to for a family dinner at Native Foods (all vegan!). Madelyn examined the kid’s menu and confidently ordered the mac & cheeze. She also thanked the waiter several times as he gave her constant refills for her lemonade. During dinner, we gave Madelyn her red envelope with lucky money for Chinese New Year.

While she was very excited about the envelope, the money was quickly tossed aside (I’m guessing that won’t happen much in the future). Actually, she was MOST excited about the two lucky oranges we gave her. After dinner, we took Madelyn to the Friends of the Children bookstore and let her pick out as many books as she wanted to buy with her lucky money. She was an excellent shopper - we came out with a complete 16-volume set of “On My Way with Sesame Street” books!

- Troy Olson, 2012

Chinese New Year

2012-01-27T08:51:00.001-08:00

Chinese New Year is undoubtedly the most significant of all Chinese holidays. Its timing differs from January 1 because it is based on the Chinese lunar/solar calendar (and often referred to as “Lunar New Year”). In addition, it is celebrated over the course of 15 days. It kicks off with a traditional New Year’s Eve celebration and ends on the 15^th with a lantern festival. This year, Chinese New Year started on Monday, January 23 and it kicks off the Year of the Dragon. (Chinese years correspond with the Chinese zodiac animals on a 12-year cycle.)

My favorite Chinese New Year tradition is the family reunion that takes place on New Years Eve. Sadly, it is often the only time many Chinese family members see each other all year. The lengths to which people in China have to go just to return home for Chinese New Year astound me. It is the world’s largest yearly migration of people and it makes traveling over the holidays in the United States look like a piece of cake. As we mentioned in last year’s post, the movie Last Train Home documents this phenomenon well (IMDB link here, Troy’s review here). Also, here is a short news clip of the travel challenges faced in China this year. Puts our little Chinese New Year gathering into perspective – nobody has to travel further than 30 minutes.

Another favorite Chinese New Year tradition for me is the house cleaning. (Okay, red envelopes filled with cash are undeniably more fun, but I am the one who needs to put the cash in the envelope…) Not that I like house cleaning per se (in fact I loathe it). What I like is the notion of sweeping out the old year to make room for the new year.

Take that, dust bunnies!

Sadly, our old year is still crowding our house a bit. All we really accomplished is the literal (but apparently much-needed) sweeping of the floor. My storage/aka junk/aka “I don’t know where to put this” room has grown in frightening proportions this last year. New Years resolution: make sure those piles leave with 2012.

Madelyn enjoyed reading and talking about Chinese New Year this year. Two of her favorite New Year books were Bringing in the New Year by Grace Lin and The Dancing Dragon by Marcia K. Vaughan. Both of the books, but especially the second, have a fun fold-out dragon feature that Madelyn absolutely loved, prompting us to hang a giant dragon from our ceiling. 12-feet long, and actually pretty awesome at just $6 from Oriental Trading Company! (Again, 2012 is Year of the Dragon in case you missed it…)

I also thought this year would be a good year to try some Chinese New Year crafts with Madelyn as she is just starting to use scissors and paste somewhat proficiently. I looked online and gathered a few ideas that I also put on our Olson Family Matters “Chinese New Year” Pinterest board. I decided to personally try both the dragon puppet and cut-and-paste-lantern with Madelyn. The dragon puppet was moderately successful.

Actually, Madelyn was very excited about it! But when she started dancing with it, she kept losing control of one of the sticks leaving it to fly through the air as she twirled around. After I nearly lost my eye, I made an executive decision to put it up “for display only.” I tried to distract her with the lantern project, but it was a bit of a bust. Madelyn is still working on her scissor skills and she quickly lost interest in cutting tissue paper pieces to decorate her lantern. I might try this one with her again, but pre-cut the pieces and let her just paste them on.

We are also looking forward to hosting a small family dinner to celebrate Chinese New Year next weekend – we will be sure to post pictures in our Weekly Recap for that week.

Xīn Nián Kuài Lè! (“Happy New Year!”) (Click on link to hear pronunciation.)

Gōng xǐ fā cái, hóng bāo ná lái! (“Congratulations and be prosperous, now give me a red envelope!”)

- Tricia Olson, 2012

2012 Weekly Recaps (3 of 52)

2012-01-23T16:44:00.000-08:00

The major event this last week was a weekend with friends in Lincoln City. While we expected it to be bad weather (it is the Oregon coast in winter, after all) we weren’t expecting to get snow at the beach. And snow it did…

The cold, wind, and ice made it impossible to take little ones out to the beach, so we found ways to entertain ourselves at the house. For Madelyn, that included hanging out with her friends Ainsley and Gretchen, as well as constantly trying to get the attention of their moms, “Hedder” (aka Heather, previously known as “Hebber”) and Maria. Meanwhile Tricia and I enjoyed our time relaxing -- hanging out with everyone, chatting, reading, playing games, and consuming plenty of snacks. Chris, Brandon, Kevin, and myself managed to do a pretty good job of widdling down a Costco sized bag of sour candy (which I’m still working on finishing as I write this…mmm, Nerds…). Kevin made his customary Chex mix, which Madelyn was more than happy to help finish. And we made our way through 72 Otis Spunkmeyer cookies without too much trouble.

Sleeping arrangements were a little challenging for Madelyn because it involved a pack n’ play that she hasn’t used since summer time. She decided it was more fun to climb out and try to peek in on Ainsley next door, stare out the bedroom window at the beach (can’t really blame her for that -- the view was fantastic), or put her face into the video monitor camera and declare to us that she is “very sneaky.” Madelyn was also fascinated with the “hot swimming pool,” (aka hot tub) though not to the point that she actually wanted to go in. Instead she informed us when we got home that “when I’m older I will go in the hot swimming pool with Brandon, Chris, and Daddy.” :)

To spend a little time outside the house, we visited the Hatfield Marine Science Center (free admission!) in Newport where Madelyn enjoyed exploring all of the hands-on exhibits.

We followed that up with lunch at the Rogue Brewery, where Madelyn learned that gambling doesn’t pay (she pressed the buttons on the video poker machine while Daddy lost himself a dollar).

The night before we left, I made a small snowman and put it in the freezer for Madelyn. Madelyn was excited to see “Frosty,” but we quickly learned that trying to decorate a frozen snowman doesn’t go so well. Oh well. We left him at the beach to enjoy the ocean views.

Leaving town proved to be a bit challenging. First Madelyn and I both slipped and fell on the icy porch before getting in the car - neither of us was hurt, just shocked. Then, Chris had to rescue Kevin with a tow rope - none of us could get Kevin’s car up the snow covered hill leading from the rental house to the highway. Snow chains is not often something you think about needing when going to the beach.

Another fantastic weekend spent with all of our friends!

We returned home on MLK Jr Day, so we watched the “I Have A Dream” speech with Madelyn -- all 17 minutes of it. I hadn’t seen/heard the whole thing since maybe high school and forgot just how incredible its message is in terms of efficiency of speech and power to inspire. It’s proof to King’s speaking ability that he actually had Madelyn totally enthralled for the first 1/2 of the speech.

To end the week, we went to Wallery’s Pizza to celebrate Grandma Agnes’ birthday. Madelyn is always excited to celebrate a birthday, to the point that she’ll often just randomly start singing Happy Birthday to the person for a few days before and after the event. When you combine that with the essential playground that is Wallery’s you have the formula for an ecstatic little girl. We emptied her piggy bank of quarters and she found a way to get some extras from me and her Papa and put them to use in the egg machine, a duck and horsie ride, and even had it in her heart to give me one to play a video game :)

- Troy Olson, 2012

He Said/She Said: Technology

2012-01-21T09:02:00.000-08:00

Technology. Our house is literally full of it. I would estimate the amount of wires in our house in terms of miles, not feet. Of course, I am not known for my estimating skills. Still - its A LOT. I tend not to give the backbone of technology in our house much thought though. From my perspective, I simply press a key and get instantaneous access to just about anything. Of course, if instantaneous access does not occur within 1.2 seconds, I sound the alarm and tell Troy that the world is going to end. A friend of mine directed me to this clip that soundly puts this expectation into perspective:

Point well taken. Next time, I will wait 2.5 seconds before getting in a huff.

I thought it would be interesting to compare my and Troy’s perspective on technology and how it works in our house. Below, we have each listed: (1) the top five benefits of technology, (2) the top five downsides of technology, (3) how technology impacts our house, and (4) what we contemplate changing about our current technology usage.

He Said - The Top Five Benefits:

The ability to access information anytime and anywhere. This is most important when I’m watching a movie and need to know who that “one guy” is and can find out he was in that “one episode of that one show.”
It makes me laugh. I've probably spent countless hours repeatedly watching the Grape Stomp Woman.
Allows me to ignore things. When I’m walking through the mall and someone wants me to sign a petition, I can just pretend like I’m talking on my cellphone. Brilliant.
Lets people know how funny I am. Did you know I have a Twitter account (shameless plug)? I’m sure it will be good for plenty hilarious comments from me, in 180 characters or less.
To be a bit serious, one real benefit is the interactions we are now able to make with others. I’m specifically thinking of things like finding out about Madelyn’s friend from China (Travis), something that would have been near-impossible in the pre-social networking era.

She Said – The Top Five Benefits:

I can find pretty much any information I want. Looks like Troy and I are in agreement on this benefit. I will admit, I sometimes treat Troy like my own personal Google and ask him to look up something for me. This does not necessarily stem from laziness, but rather the fact that my work is extremely research-intensive and finding a pancake recipe does not necessarily require the “uncover every stone” approach I might inadvertently apply. Troy would have the pancakes made and on the table before I decided on “the best” recipe after comparing ingredients, reading reviews and so on.
I can work from home via technology that connects me to my office. I will forever be grateful to technology for this fact. My week days at home with Madelyn are my most favorite days of the week.
I can easily connect with my non-local friends. I was REALLY late to the whole Facebook culture (I finally opened an account last year). I have no idea why I waited so long because I now love the fact that I can easily connect with friends who I have not seen in a long while. Hi Amber and Jackie!
I can fit the equivalent of a library in my purse. Where oh where were the Nooks and Kindles when I was a child trying to pack all of my books to take on vacation? My back and shoulders have serious wear and tear from all of the books I used to carry in my backpack.
I can make some pretty cool to-do lists. I have spreadsheets, Google docs, pins, and bookmark systems for just about everything! You should see our budget spreadsheet – it is a work of art if I don’t say so myself!

He Said – The Top Five Downsides:

It has overtaken many personal interactions. It’s so much easier for me to email someone than talk to them. The ultimate example would be Facebook messaging your wife when she is sitting right next to you.
If you know a lot about or work with computers, you will certainly be asked about computers and other tech things a lot. I’ve learned to be okay with that and wear it as a badge of honor.
I’m not the paranoid type, but there is certainly the fear of “big brother is watching” that has come with all of our newfound technology. I’ve come to terms with all of my info being easily available, should someone want it, but it has opened up a whole new can of worms in regards to loss of privacy.
Money and the never-ending battle to keep up with technology. I am far from an early adopter, yet I still manage to find a way to spend a lot of money every year on some new technology or home theater item. I have convinced myself I do NOT need 3-D TV, though.
Sentient robots. If TV has taught me anything, it’s that eventually robots will turn on us and either nuke us or kill us with poisonous gases.

She Said – The Top Five Downsides:

The mass amount of information available online is an overload for my perfectionist personality. I shudder to think of all of the time I have wasted trying to find the perfect answer or the perfect deal, when the first thing I came across probably would have been good enough.
I am always "plugged in" to the office, to social networks, etc. I have yet to find the appropriate balance of unplugging and not stressing about what is happening while I am unplugged.
I get headaches from staring at a screen all day. Apparently I also get funny hair – I think I subconsciously run my fingers through my hair while processing information. Troy can always correctly guess if I have been researching for a brief or contract just by looking at my hair when I get home from work...
Stress when my computer/phone combo does not work correctly. While I know that the world won’t end if I can’t access my email for a while, I can’t shake the feeling that it MIGHT end.
I have too many cool to-do lists that I will never entirely accomplish.

He Said – How Technology Impacts Our House:

I’ll simply give a listing of the computers in our house to answer this question…

My laptop;
Tricia’s netbook;
Desktop computer in the office;
An iMac in the office for Madelyn (courtesy of Grandpa);
Unraid server with 4 TB of space that houses all of our files and media;
Home theater PC for the main floor with Xbox Media Center;
Home theater PC in the basement;
Emulation computer for my arcade machine;
2 Ipods;
PSP;
Blu-ray player;
2 DVD players;
Portable DVD player;
My BlackBerry; and
Tricia’s Android phone.

She Said – How Technology Impacts Our House:

Well, my original answer to this question demonstrates how little I really do know about the technology in our house – I thought we only had 6 computer devices!
Madelyn already knows how to reset a router.
I NEVER know how to use our television because Troy has always rerouted it through different (supposedly new and improved) computer devices and programs.

He Said – How We Might Change Technology Usage In Our Home:

Just one thing for me -- I am going to prepare an instruction manual so Tricia can watch TV and movies and listen to music without needing my help. And then I will promptly change everything again.

She Said – How We Might Change Technology Usage In Our Home:

Mandatory curfew. Most of my Internet time is while Madelyn sleeps – which means it also cuts into my sleep time. A few too many people are starting to comment about how tired I always look. Goodnight ipad!
More time without electronics. I'm already pretty intentional about this with Madelyn – we spend hours reading paper-version books and going to the library. I just need to be more intentional with myself.
Learn how to be satisfied with good-enough. I don’t have to find every single piece of information about speed-cleaning a bathroom or organizing a pantry.

- Tricia Olson, 2012

2012 Weekly Recaps (2 of 52)

2012-01-18T07:56:00.000-08:00

(Madelyn is sporting her Mini Boden outfit in these pictures -- Tricia really wanted me to point that out :) )

The three of us started the second weekend of the year with a trip to the Gilbert House (our local children’s museum) along with Grandma, Grandpa, and Uncle Andrew. Madelyn began by running from room to room, showcasing her Troy-esque attention span by not being able to focus on any one thing. However, once we got to the Bubble Room, she shifted into “Tricia mode” and had pinpoint concentration on the task at hand, which seemed to carry through for most of the rest of the trip.

Other highlights included a veterinary hospital where she was able to practice her doctor skills on a dog, see what it was like to live in a kennel, and also do some computer work at the front desk.

Next, she made her way to the Shadow Room, where she grabbed a hula hoop and made psychedelic dancing movements in front of a camera that projects time-delayed images (I can’t quite think of how to describe this better). Finally, we made a craft, which started with me making a poorly-made generic robot (Madelyn cut out the felt and the tape that was used) before Tricia had the great idea to turn the robot into Tom Servo (of Mystery Science Theater 3000 fame) by adding toilet paper roll and creamer cap to his head. Here is a comparison of our Madelyn/Daddy/Mommy-made Tom Servo and my nerdy collectable figurine:

After we were done at the museum, we went to get some Chinese food and Madelyn couldn’t stop talking about the dumplings she got to eat! A very fun day for all of us.

Later in the week we made our way to Nordstrom in order to exchange some Christmas shoes Madelyn received that were too big. While they didn’t have the exact same pair in her size, they did have another fun pair of shoes from the same brand that they offered her. As soon as Madelyn tried them on, she ran around the store and did her Happy Feet dance, insistent that these were her favorites and that she wanted to wear them out of the store! (A lesson was learned here -- find out the price of the shoes your daughter loves so much and wants to wear out of the store before agreeing to let her try them on -- they were a few dollars more than the pair we returned :P )

On Sunday, about 5 hours after leaving Sunday School, Madelyn suddenly confessed, “I not share at Sunday School.” We haven’t had a chance to talk to her teacher yet, but it was obviously weighing heavily on her little heart. So, on Monday, Madelyn and Mama decided to host a Sharing Party. They invited Pooh Bear and Matilda (her monkey) and began by sharing almonds while practicing their “pleases” and “thank yous” (with Madelyn deciding that the festivities also needed balloons).

Then, they sat in a circle and took turns sharing toys by passing them around. They tried “Simon Says” whereby Madelyn followed absolutely every direction, but completely ignored the concept of only doing what Simon says. Naturally, she then decided that her friends needed a check-up and got on her doctor outfit to make sure everyone was okay.

After the successful sharing time, the party moved to the playhouse, where Madelyn would open the door and invite people in by saying "Wellll, Welcome to the Party!!!" I even got a call at work so I could be invited (and it was as exuberant as the capitalization and extra exclamation marks make it sound).

I have to admit, I always am a little sad that I can’t take part in the weekly craft that Tricia and Madelyn do. Still, it’s always fun when I come home on Monday nights and Madelyn shows me what she got to work on with Tricia for the day and I figure I can relay what these crafts and activities are here each week to do my part in participating.

This weeks craft/activity: sorting pom poms with tweezers and reading “The Mitten” while cutting and gluing animals to a mitten (like in the book).

- Troy Olson, 2012

He Said/She Said: Favorite Experiences from 2011

2012-01-11T08:08:00.000-08:00

Looking back at 2011, we realize that we had so many wonderful experiences as a family. We thought it would be fun to look back through the year and see what stood out for each of us. There were the obvious favorites - Madelyn’s 2nd Birthday (her first birthday home!), Christmas, etc. Pretty much any experience with Madelyn stands out as fantastic. But lest this post turn into a novel, we limited ourselves to just five favorite experiences each. We also asked Madelyn to give us a little insight on some of her favorites of 2011.

He Said: Troy’s Favorites

1. Ice Cream!!

Madelyn had her first ice cream cone on Father’s Day, at Dairy Queen, and it was quite the experience. She enjoyed every single bite.

Not to be outdone, she showcased her continued love of ice cream a few months later at the Oregon State Fair.

2. Bounce Houses

Over the course of the year, Madelyn had the opportunity to play in three different bounce houses, with each one being an extremely fun time for her (and me). She was somewhat tentative when she tried a bounce house for the first time in March, but climbed in without a hesitation the next time she encountered a bounce house and was literally the last jumper standing.

3. Making Dumplings

Or, as Madelyn likes to pronounce it, “Dump El Eens.” I guess I could pick any time Madelyn and I cooked together as an "experience" (and a definite mess), but the fact that she still talks about making dumplings to this day, despite the fact that we haven't had them since the first few months of 2011, gives them the honor of being my favorite thing I've got to make with her.

4. Madelyn's visits to my office

I get the opportunity to have Madelyn stop off at my work about once every month. That hour or so that she is here is the best part of my job. Whether we are eating lunch while watching (or chasing) the geese and ducks outside, riding the elevator, or trying to make the hot chocolate machine work, it's always an adventure.

5. Swimming

Being a person who was never comfortable in the water at a young age, it's been exciting to see just how quickly Madelyn has taken to swimming and how much fun she has splashing and jumping (and hanging off of my neck!) in the pool.

She Said: Tricia’s Favorites

1. Our first family dinner at a restaurant

On a spur of the moment decision (SO not typical for us), we decided to go out for a sit-down dinner and chose Macaroni Grill. Madelyn enjoyed her spaghetti WITH GUSTO. She also left a fantastic mess and may have even sprayed a little tomato sauce on the hair of the woman sitting in the booth behind us…Best of all was the fact that we didn’t have to clean up the mess! We tipped well though.

2. Carlisle Easter Egg Hunt

Seeing Madelyn’s competitive nature in action for the first time and running around like mad women in our pretty dresses, rain boots, and coats? This may have very well been my absolute favorite moment of the year.

3. Watching Fireworks on 4th of July

Madelyn called them “sparkles.” She cuddled with me and was wide-eyed throughout the entire show. Love.

4. Picking Strawberries, then making jam

Madelyn ran up and down the rows of the strawberry field and got pretty good at spotting good ones (we went late in the season, so the pickings were slim). We made freezer jam a few days later and Madelyn was SO proud of our work. It was a rare moment of joy in the kitchen for me.

5. First Family Vacation

For our first official out-of-town vacation as a family of three, we headed to the Oregon Coast. The entire week was fantastic, but my favorite moment was when we got to watch one of the most fantastic sunsets I have ever seen. Sharing Madelyn’s excitement only added to the awesomeness.

Madelyn’s Favorites

We found a 2011 “favorites” interview for kids and asked Madelyn the questions. Here are the questions with her answers in italics.

What is your favorite breakfast? A roll.
What is your favorite movie? Jessie (aka Toy Story 2).
What is your favorite game? Pac Man.
What is your favorite snack? Cookies.
What is your favorite drink? Water.
What is your favorite song? Gloria (in Excelsis Deo).
What is your favorite dinner? Green beans.
What is your favorite book? If You Give A Mouse A Cookie and Ladybug Girl.
What is your favorite thing to go do? Christmas lights (at the zoo) and playground.

- Troy and Tricia Olson, 2012

2012 Weekly Recaps (1 of 52)

2012-01-09T07:30:00.000-08:00

We kicked off the New Year with a fantastic evening spent with our friends, the Moffits. There was lots of visiting, serious party food (nachos and cupcakes!), and plenty of fun for three very special little girls. Madelyn was SO excited about having her friends Jaili and Evie over and thoroughly enjoyed every minute until midnight. Yes, midnight -- Madelyn powered right through and was quite easily able to make it to 2012. In fact, all three girls seemed to have an easier time staying up than any of the adults did.

Just in case the girls got sleepy, we broke out the party hats, horns and confetti poppers to celebrate New Year on the East Coast time zone. We watched the ball drop via an online feed and did our very own balloon drop - one for each girl.

It was such an exciting occasion that it led to this aftermath…

After the balloons, the girls watched a movie (Rio), which concludes with dancing music and Madelyn personally insisting that everyone needed to be up on their feet and dancing. Energy was restored, and we were on track to welcome in 2012 a second time (this time with Seacrest and Dick Clark). And while the girls were awake for this second New Year, they were decidedly rummy and little more subdued than previously in the night (as this picture of Madelyn and video below can attest to).

(Please note: despite what it looks like, no alcohol, drugs, or other illegal substances led to Madelyn being in this state)

On the first day of the New Year, Madelyn played out in her playhouse where we did some remodeling, “planting” some grass in the planter box and installing an “oven” and a “table” for making cookies and entertaining (in reality an unused storage cube and a small shipping crate). We even “painted” the outside with our paintbrushes and water while discussing some other renovations we could make on it later in the year (I’d love to put a “sink” in there for her with all my leftover sprinkler parts). We also snuck over the to the house that is being built next to us and did a little exploring -- Madelyn is very excited that she is going to have neighbors.

Later in the evening, Tricia finally acquiesced to Madelyn’s non-stop asking to have her finger nails painted just like mama’s (Tricia had engaged in a self-proclaimed Treat Yo Self moment and got a manicure/pedicure with a Groupon after Christmas). In Tricia’s own words, she will not soon be pursuing a career as a nail technician, surgeon, or bomb diffuser. She did her best, but you could tell that the combination of her unsteady hands and Madelyn’s inability to not move for longer than three seconds was beginning to give her cold sweats. Still, Madelyn ended up mastering the princess waves Tricia taught her (to dry her hands)

and has been sure to show her newly painted nails to anyone who will pay attention. In the end, even if the manicure perhaps wasn’t up to professional standards Tricia was convinced that it really didn’t matter how much chipped paint was on her nails, she had a blast doing it.

One other fun event to ring in the New Year was the Rose Bowl. Tricia and I enjoyed watching the Ducks win an extremely exciting game alongside the rest of my family. Madelyn pays pretty good attention to the games, really enjoying the celebrations for touchdowns and the like, while also being sure to reprimand Kevin when he yells at the refs (simply telling him he’s too loud). For this game, she happily sat with me and watched the game during the first half, mostly trying to swipe any food that I would have on my plate -- she loves picking all the Goldfish out of the Chex Mix Kevin makes. For the second half, Madelyn pretty much usurped Aunt Tieryn’s time to have a tea party, even going as far as to usher anyone who tried to interrupt them to go back and watch the game. Of course, as the game ended, she celebrated with the rest of us. To think that she has seen the Ducks win as many Rose Bowls in her lifetime as I have in mine :)

-Troy Olson, 2012

Jessie’s January Roundup

2012-01-06T08:00:00.000-08:00

Yes, I know. It’s supposed to be Woody’s Roundup (Toy Story 2). But we are all about Jessie in this house. Jessie was, hands down, one of Madelyn’s favorite Christmas presents (although it was a VERY close tie with the playhouse ). Given Jessie’s favored status in our house right now, I thought it might be fun to have Jessie be Mama’s helper for a while.

While scrolling through Pinterest during the Christmas season, I couldn’t help but notice all of the 101+ ideas for Elf on the Shelf. Never heard of this Christmas tradition? Neither had I until it stormed the Christmas Pinterest boards. The idea of creatively hiding elf every night in December leading up to Christmas seems like a lot of fun, but also a lot of work - especially during a season that is traditionally very busy for us. That led to the idea of doing something elf-on-the-shelf-like throughout the year (once a month is hopefully realistic for me) and using Jessie instead of Elf. The rough idea is to have Jessie appear once a month with an introduction to what we will be doing that month. So, without further ado, I give you JESSIE’S ROUNDUP for January in the Olson Household:

The obvious big-ticket item for the January Roundup is Chinese New Year’s. The other fun items on the roster this month include a trip to the beach with our friends and trips to the AC Gilbert’s Discovery Village and a bookstore at Bridgeport that benefits a Portland-area non-profit with a goal of getting a million books into the hands of kids who need them. Madelyn was pretty excited about the list and seemed to love the idea of Jessie telling her about it - so we may have a family tradition in the works - we shall see!

I tried to put one “educational” item on the list, which was learning about winter during the craft and learning projects we do at home. One of the ideas that I have already tried with Madelyn is a lesson about hibernation. To start, we watched a Sesame Street clip about hibernation and read Curious George A Winter’s Nap. Per the book’s activity suggestions, we then set about helping some of her stuffed animals to hibernate. First we fed them some almonds so that they wouldn’t get too hungry while they slept.

Then we decorated their caves with a few sparkly touches.

Finally, we helped them settle in for their long winter’s nap.

They are still there - under my desk until Spring. We also found a little Hibernation Song that Madelyn likes to start singing at the most random of times.

Another fun online find was pom pom magnets that you can easily make (even if you are non-crafty like me) and then use to teach color recognition, counting, sorting, sequencing, and dexterity skills.

We originally got the idea here. Jury is still out on how Madelyn will take to this activity. When I tried to get her to put the magnets on a 2012 pattern (found here), she was more interested in putting two pom poms together, calling it a “biscuit” and serving it to “guests.” However, when Troy tried it with her, they accomplished this:

I MIGHT have tried too hard to get Madelyn to follow the patterns, while Daddy made it into a fun game…

One other cute find of the month: Mini Boden.

Madelyn totally scored and got a Mini Boden outfit from her Great Grandma for Christmas. The outfit will certainly appear in upcoming picture posts - I’m totally in love with it and secretly wish I could wear it myself.

I also discovered that Mini Boden is having an awesome year-end sale. Unfortunately, I had already spent Madelyn’s clothing budget for the year - so I will have to remember to try to save for a few Mini Boden items at the end of next year. One end-of-the-year sale item I totally scored on though?

Converse Glitter One Stars! I have had my eye on these for Madelyn for months now - originally $25 and I got them for $8.75. Now Madelyn can start the new year with some very fashionable footwear that fits (Sadly, I have been cramming her previous pink glitter shoes onto her foot for some time now!)

Happy January Roundup!

-Tricia Olson, 2012

A New Look

2012-01-04T23:35:00.001-08:00

by Troy

As you read this you probably notice that things look a little different on the blog today (and if you are reading via a reader or email, then click through at least this once to see what’s new). After three years of Olson Family Matters version 1.0, Tricia and I decided it was time to give the blog a bit of a makeover.

Now, there are probably a bunch of nice looking blogs scattered everywhere that never produce any content. Which is why, more important than how the blog looks is our newfound commitment to producing content this year, most importantly by focusing in on subjects related to adoption and China, in addition to our personal experiences. There’s also scheduled weekly recaps from me, monthly “roundups” (Tricia will be explaining that one shortly) by Tricia, and a series of fun “he-said/she-said” posts from the both of us. If it sounds like we have this all planned out in a spreadsheet…well, then you probably know us pretty well :P

Some of the changes on the blog:

Gone is the old header, and in its place is a real family picture. Thanks to Modern Exposure Photography for taking such an incredible picture of the three of us!
Under the header we have a new navigation bar for the site. Check out the “About” tab if you want to get bios on the three of us, along with our mission statement for what we’d like this blog to be.
The “Store” tab will take you to our Amazon store. We went with the Amazon storefront because it’s an easy way for us to show and link to the things we personally enjoy using in our house and may mention from time to time on our blog.
“Links” points to our Pinterest board, our Picasa photos, and our YouTube videos. Tricia is going to use the Pinterest board to pin items in her round up posts. Who knows, maybe I’ll even pin something every now and again. So even if you already subscribe to Tricia’s personal pinboard, you’ll want to subscribe to this one too, as the content will be a bit differently focused.
Finally, the “Categories” tab will soon point to all the posts related to some of the major subjects we cover on here, such as China, our travels, adoption, etc. -- it’s still a bit of a work in progress (as I’ll have to go in and cleanup the tags on all previous posts), but I hope to have the links for it working soon.

In addition to this, there are a couple of new ways to subscribe to and follow the blog:

We’ve created a Facebook page just for the blog, so if you like getting updates via Facebook then be sure to go “like” it and it will provide you with updates whenever we post. If you already subscribe via Networked Blogs on Facebook, then I’d suggest re-subscribing via the fan page -- I’m going to drop the Networked Blogs support soon as I’m not really a fan of it.
We also now have a Twitter account, so if you like to get content that way, you can follow us there. I won’t lie, I’m tempted to use it just to try to create ridiculous hash tags and attempt to get pointless things to trend, but Tricia has made me promise that it will be blog specific and will only be posted to when there are new posts.

Merry and Bright

2011-12-31T18:06:00.001-08:00

Christmas was a delight.

We started our weekend with a visit to the Carousel Santa on Friday night. It was our first official Santa visit! When Santa asked Madelyn what she wanted for Christmas, she was very confident in her answer: "Cookies!"

Afterward, Madelyn used one of the tokens she received as a Christmas gift from one of my co-workers and took a ride on the carousel. Her favorite horse, Razzle Dazzle, was claimed by another little girl before Madelyn could get to him. We were worried that we would need to ask to sit the ride out and wait until Razzle Dazzle was available (there have been tears over this fact before), but Madelyn surprised us and declared that she would ride "Larry" instead. Larry, the Circus Pony. The tiniest horse on the carousel. But his rider had the cutest smile on the whole ride.

After the carousel, we ran (there is no walking with Madelyn) to see the Christmas tree at the other end of the park. It was a magical evening for all three of us.

We ended the evening with Madelyn's request of Santa - cookies.

Never mind what I said about sprinkle-control in our last post. There was a lot of vacuuming afterward. And a bath for a little girl who was covered in green sugar sparkles after taste testing her handiwork.

We celebrated our Christmas together on Christmas Eve morning. Our gift to Madelyn was an awesome Craigslist find: a playhouse! It has been sitting in our backyard for a few weeks now and Troy and I have been beside ourselves in excitement waiting for the big unveil, which went like this:

At first we were a little disappointed by the tame response from Madelyn. But about 15 to 30 minutes after checking out the playhouse inside and out, opening and closing the windows and doors, it was as if a lightbulb went on in her mind and she started jumping up and down shouting, "I got a playhouse, I got a playhouse!" It was adorable. She started serving us pretend coffee and cookies through the window. Well, the coffee was only for Daddy. She told me I wasn't old enough. Heh. I can't wait for the spring and summer months when we can spend more time in the playhouse without puffy jackets!

We spent the rest of Christmas Eve morning relaxing, playing with our Christmas presents, and watching A Muppet Christmas Carol (a family favorite now). It has actually provided a few good talks with Madelyn about sharing happiness with others. It is such a joy to spend time like that as a family - something I will always treasure.

Christmas Eve evening was at Grandpa and Grandma's house. Madelyn was so excited for the evening, that she could not take a nap that afternoon. Daddy even tried taking her for a drive to help her calm down. It was rare fail in terms of putting her to sleep. She talked and talked and talked about Christmas as they drove around for 30 minutes. When she got home and walked through the door, I think she felt compelled to explain why she didn't sleep, so she walked up to me, shrugged her shoulders, and (before I could say anything) said, "Cuz I TOO excited Mama. I didn't sleep."

Madelyn's favorite present of the evening was a plastic ice cream set which she promptly served to everyone. The other hit of the evening was when Grandpa let Madelyn be the caller for our Bingo game!

On Christmas morning, we headed to Nana and Papa's house and Madelyn helped Nana make apple and cherry turnovers. She took her job VERY seriously. (The results were yummy!)

Her favorite gift of the morning was a doctor outfit. After making sure that she had helped everyone finish unwrapping their gifts, Madelyn spent the entire remainder of the morning giving everyone shots. Not sure why that was her favorite, especially since it usually takes 4 people to force-administer a real-life shot to Madelyn!

After a much-needed nap in the car, we headed to Grandpa and Grandma Carlisle's house for the final Christmas celebration. We sang Christmas carols (thanks Uncle Kelly!), ate lots of yummy food, and had our uber-competitive gift swap. There are no holds barred in that game - some even tried to steal gifts from my Grandma! Madelyn received a Toy Story Jessie doll and did not let go of her the. entire. evening. Madelyn tells us she is now Jessie's "owner" (have to have watched Toy Story 2 to understand that one) - and a proud owner she is!

It was Merry. It was Bright. It was Joyful. We are so thankful for our family. We are so thankful for the love of our Lord and Savior. It was a wonderful ending to 2011 - see you all in the New Year!

Tis the Season . . .

2011-12-23T20:35:00.001-08:00

by Troy and Tricia

(Troy in italics, Tricia in regular font)

… For Princesses

This is what it is all about in our house - not tiaras, necessarily. Rather, Princess Madelyn. She is very much in charge of everything these days and Troy and I can't quite but help being her faithful, loyal servants (and advisors when her royal highness needs a little assistance working through tantrums or tears).

I’d like to think of us as the King and Queen, in full control of our kingdom…but yeah, that’s probably just delusional isn’t it. Thankfully, Madelyn is a benevolent ruler :)

One of my co-workers found this tiara and immediately knew it needed to come home to Madelyn in time for Christmas. She was quite right. Madelyn was SO excited when she opened it, "Its a CROWN!" Princess Madelyn decided she should wear her crown while eating chili for dinner.

… For Making Cookies

Making cookies seems to be one of Madelyn's favorite traditions.

Her creative messiness as a baker as decreased somewhat compared to last Christmas, but it is still a pretty good idea to have the vacuum handy if sprinkles are involved.

Madelyn’s increased sprinkle control is also nice because now we don’t have the choice of only eating a cookie that is all sprinkles or, since the sprinkles were usually gone after about 2 cookies, one that had no sprinkles at all.

Making cookies with Madelyn is not only fun in our house - my aunt, uncle, and cousins have established their own "cookies with Madelyn" Christmas tradition that we had the privilege of attending and tasting for the second year in a row!

… For Christmas Lights

We attended Willamette University's Star Tree lighting again this year and enjoyed the caroling and time with family who attended with us.

I’m still disappointed that the giant lever above doesn’t really turn the Christmas lights on and off.

Note the Bearcat t-shirt that came in the mail for Madelyn. Willamette is apparently recruiting the under-3 crowd now - Hello Kitty sealed the deal for Madelyn, so I guess she already has her college decision made!

Someone should notify other schools so they can up the ante -- I do kind of need a new car…

We tried to establish a new tradition of driving around to look at Christmas lights, but not many people in our neighborhood put any or much effort into this tradition (after staring at a bunch of dark houses, Madelyn declared, "I go home - my fun all done now.")

Perhaps Tricia and I are just looking through a nostalgic fog, but there really were a lot more houses that did Christmas lights back when we were kids, right? I’m particularly thinking of lights in Keizer where each street had a theme to it. No one does that anymore, do they?

To bring a little more fun into it, we tried the Zoo Lights at the Portland Zoo. It did not disappoint!

Madelyn was able to tour the Zoo with her buddy Owen. Funny, their favorite feature (judged by the amount of time they spent at the exhibit) was a dark cave that did not have any Christmas lights but allowed them to run in circles and squeal loudly enough that other people started poking their heads in to see if they were missing a featured attraction.

“Cave” is probably making it sound even more exciting than it really was. It was pretty much just an informational booth about tigers that didn’t have any lights in it.

If you ask Madelyn what her favorite part was about the Zoo Lights (and you SHOULD ask her because she has a fantastic memory and loves to tell a good story), she will tell you it was "the worm." It was a display that lit up to show a worm running away from a bird. Madelyn tried chasing the worm with a little help from Daddy - she is determined that she will catch the worm next year.

This was my favorite thing thus far this Christmas season. Madelyn was sooo determined to catch that worm, but I have a suspicion that she had tons more fun in the chase than if we had ever found a way to truly get it :)

… For Celebrating

We had another wonderful annual Christmas party at our house with our friends and are so thankful for the opportunity to spend time with so many wonderful friends and family.

We opened our email yesterday to find a Christmas greeting from Madelyn's orphanage in China using a photo that we sent them earlier this year. It is hard to believe that it has only been about a year and a half since we were in China! It has been a time of tremendous blessing for our little family.

Merry Christmas!

Thankful

2011-11-27T21:09:00.001-08:00

by Tricia

For giggles, smiles and genuine joy.

For coziness.

For cuddles.

For silly moments that will forever put smiles on our faces.

(Yes, those are panties.)

For spunky attitudes.

For spontaneous hugs and “I love yous”

For family.

(photo credit: Modern Exposure Photography of McMinnville, Oregon)

In a Galaxy Far Far Away...

2011-11-05T09:48:00.001-07:00

by Tricia

Troy as Han Solo. Tricia as Princess Leia. Madelyn as Yoda.

I remembered to post this picture on Facebook, but forgot to do the same for the blog. If I don't say so myself, we totally rocked the costumes this year!! And now, every night, Madelyn says "Goodnight Han Solo; goodnight Princess Leia," instead of "Goodnight Daddy and Mommy." So cute. And she still likes to wear the Yoda hat: "Yoda I am!" Don't be surprised if she is demonstrating her lightsaber skills the next time you see her. Or at least maybe a roundhouse kick.

The Yoda costume made an appearance last weekend at our annual Halloween Party at the Kahler house and again on Halloween weekend at the Portland Children's Museum. As much as she adores her Yoda costume, Madelyn insists that next year she will be Elmo for Halloween, just like Owen.

She totally Jedi Mastered the face painting at Children's Museum and managed to sneak past the "sleeping" lego dragon even without her Yoda costume.

On Halloween night, we went trick or treating. Princess Leia driving a CR-V with Yoda in the car seat attracted quite a bit of attention as we drove through town. (Han Solo drove separately in a Corolla since he came straight from the Millennium Falcon aka work.) Madelyn got enough treats to last her for months. We will probably help her eat some of the goodies and shorten that time frame though. A few big thank yous for the trick-or-treating fun:

Thank you Grandpa and Grandma Carlisle for the fuzzadoodles!

Thank you Auntie Ning Ning and Uncle Dew for the flashcards, crayons, and swimming pool coupon!

Thank you Uncle Kelly, Aunt Nancy, and Cousin Natalie for the surprise dinner (especially the corn muffins - Madelyn's favorite!)

Thank you Aunt Tieryn and Uncle Kevin for the special Halloween card in the mail to welcome Madelyn before trick or treating!

Thank you Nana and Papa for the stuffed Sully (sleeps beside her every night now)!

Thank you Grandpa, Grandma and Uncle Andrew for the pumpkin and coloring books!

And thank you to the mystery friend who left a bag of treats and toys on our doorstep for Madelyn to enjoy! It has provided hours of fun!

May The Force Be With You.

Pumpkin Patch

2011-10-25T09:21:00.001-07:00

by Tricia

No month of October is complete without a trip to the Pumpkin Patch. Here is our 2011 version:

Madelyn’s new “say cheese” face.

Tractor Time.

Madelyn and Ainsely on the Cool Bus.

Measuring in at just under three feet!

Purposefully searching for the best pumpkins.

Pumpkin Patch Buddies: Madelyn and Ainsley

Jack o Lanterns are SO funny.

“Daddy, you will do as I say.”

Cowgirl Madelyn.

And we are done. (Though it was nothing that a fresh apple cider donut and nap couldn’t cure.)

Moon Festival

2011-09-30T23:11:00.001-07:00

by Tricia

Fall is officially here - I can hardly believe it! For the last several years, fall has always begun for me with pumpkin spice lattes and school morning traffic that forces me to get out the door earlier on work days. Our family now has a wonderful new tradition to kick off the fall season - Mid-Autumn Festival, a celebration of the end of harvest season.

The Chinese holiday officially fell on Monday, September 12, this year. Seriously, everyone - did you see the gorgeous Harvest Moon that evening? From our vantage point at home it was golden-hued and absolutely spectacular.

Our celebrations this year included a trip to Portland to participate in the Under the Autumn Moon Festival. We got to watch a dragon dance, practice writing Chinese characters, and try our hand at the Chinese yo-yo. We also met up with Jaili, Evie, and their parents! The girls got animals painted on their arms - Jaili chose a bird, Madelyn chose a fish, and Evie chose a butterfly. And Madelyn had her first ride on the MAX train. It was a fantastic afternoon!

Another Mid-Autumn Festival tradition we got to try this year was mooncakes.

We went without mooncakes last year because Madelyn was still on her post-surgery baby-food-only diet. This year, we bought the mung bean flavor from a Chinese bakery at the Portland Festival. I momentarily hesitated at the thought of eating anything called "mung bean" for dessert - but I am happy to report that it was very tasty. The three of us quickly devoured the entire cake. Next year, we'll buy more than one!

First Official Family Vacation

2011-09-22T08:48:00.001-07:00

by Tricia

As summer drew to a close, we had the opportunity to enjoy our first just-the-three-of-us family vacation. We kept it simple and headed just an hour from home, to the Oregon coast. Ironically, we left the summer weather at home (it was the week after Labor Day and while the Willamette Valley sat in ninety-degree weather, the coast was covered in a thick, soupy fog most of the time.) Oh well.

We stayed in a condominium unit that had an indoor pool and, on every day but one, we were the only three in the pool, We also visited the aquarium, were the only patrons for a (very) early lunch at an Asian Noodle Cafe in Newport, watched a spectacular sunset, flew a kite on the beach, ate chowder at Mo's, and visited a pirate bakery!

It was a wonderful few days spent just relaxing and having fun as a family without the everyday busyness to distract us. I'm so glad we had the opportunity to spend a few days away from home. And I can't even begin to explain how it warmed my heart every time Madelyn exclaimed (while swimming, running on the beach, etc.), "I having fun, Mommy & Daddy!!" So were we, Baby Girl. So were we.

Too Big To Miss

2011-09-20T15:58:00.001-07:00

by Tricia

Ahhh, the Oregon State Fair (aka "The Big One"). Home of The Strange Thing, the $1 Dairy Maid Ice Cream Cone (not to be missed), 4-H exhibits, hypnotist shows, the Dominator corn dog, sham wow demonstrations (totally bought one a few years ago), and the coolest free ride ever. This was Madelyn’s first time at the Oregon State Fair. We would have loved to take her last year, but we were sort of doing this:

The first thing we discovered when we arrived this year? Madelyn isn’t yet tall enough for most of the kiddie rides. We were sort of bummed until we discovered that the rides cost $4.50 each, and then we were glad for the excuse.

The one ride she measured up for? The Canoes! It’s not a very exciting ride, but I was totally stoked about her going on it because I loved going on this very same ride when I was a kid at the Oregon State Fair.

Okay, so I was probably six years older than Madelyn at the time I went on this 0.05 mph ride . . . but it was the only ride I felt brave enough to go on being the little scaredy-cat that I was. I tried to use the excuse that I was simply going on the ride to accompany my little sister, but that stopped once my sister wanted to go on the upside down rides.

In addition to the fast-paced canoe adventure, Madelyn got her face painted. It was adorable: we showed Madelyn all of the options in her price range and she picked the smiley face.

We also visited the petting zoo.

And the animal exhibition barns, where Madelyn repeatedly asked "What that noise?" when a horse neighed and where she watched in utter fascination while some bovines did their Number Two business.

Troy did get pooped on. Not by one of the fair animals, but rather a stray pigeon. YUCK!

We ate corn dogs and scones (my two favorite fair foods) to celebrate my birthday (hence the birthday hat).

Don’t worry - we stayed away from the Dominator. Although, Madelyn DID eat her entire corn dog. In about 5 minutes.

I've spent many birthdays at the fair with my family. It used to be tradition during my awkward tween years for my uncle to stand up on the picnic tables during the middle of the lunch crowd and announce my birthday so that the entire food crowd could sing Happy Birthday to me. I've matured somewhat since then and was able to wear the birthday hat my dad brought without my face turning red from embarrassment. I was just happy to be with family!

After a two-hour nap in the car for the three of us . . .

…we were back and ready for more adventures at the Fair. We ate the famed $1 Dairy Maid ice cream cones.

Madelyn would have definitely eaten every. single. bite. of that ice cream cone. Except the bottom of her cone fell out.

Next, we meandered through the 4-H exhibts.

We watched the imaginary circus.

We played hopscotch.

We got paper antlers.

And we ended the night with the best ride in the house - something we were tipped off about several years ago by a carnival ride attendant who was very, very high when he made the recommendation. Basically, you stand under the Sinbad ride and look up. Then, enjoy the “ride.” It has now become a solid tradition for our friends and us.

Until next year, Oregon State Fair.

The Mess

2011-09-02T14:34:00.001-07:00

By Tricia

This has been happening a lot lately around dinner time:

Mainly because THIS has been happening during “nap” time:

I should note that Madelyn does nap for her grandmas, and even Troy – just not for me. I have tried all sorts of things to encourage sleep rather than play during nap time on my watch, but, honestly, I don’t think I will ever win and my battle resolve is waning. In fact, I’m not even sure that this is a battle I need to wage. I tried locking her closet doors (required two chain locks and creative installation by Troy), and that successfully kept all of Madelyn’s clothes hung in her closet. But it also led to the destruction (or should I say “creative rearrangement”) of one of the wall decals that took me several hours to apply to her bedroom wall.

Wall Decal Prior to Creative Rearrangement

Wall Decal After Creative Rearrangement

I’m trying to decide whether I should attempt to fix it or leave it as is. I have to admit to being a little cross when I first laid eyes on the Creative Rearrangement. Rather than say something to Madelyn, though, I decided to wait and later asked Troy to talk to her about it. When Troy was putting her to bed that night, he asked her what happened to her wall. She looked at it and told him, “I make mess.” Troy then asked how Madelyn thought I might feel about “the mess” and she responded that I would be sad. Troy asked Madelyn if she would like to apologize and she immediately ran out of her room, came to find me, and exclaimed, “Mama! Sowwy fo mess!” It was her first heartfelt apology. Totally melted my heart. I might just leave the Create Rearrangement aka “The Mess” as is.

One other thing I have discovered about play time during nap time? Sometimes a spontaneous cat nap in Mama’s arms becomes necessary. You'll never hear me complaining about THIS . . .

Madelyn is Listening!

2011-08-25T20:30:00.001-07:00

By Tricia

We have been talking a lot about listening in our house lately. There have been a few time outs because of not listening (trying to underscore that it really IS important when we say “Don’t run into the street!”). After such time outs, Madelyn always assures me, “I listening!” And, it appears she really is – when she wants to. A few examples:

I told Troy the other day that I was “mad” about something and Madelyn promptly responded, “Don’t get mad, get glad!” (Her Grandma reports that Madelyn has seen the Glad Bag commercial on television maybe ONCE that she can think of.)
A comment was made that Madelyn’s feet were smelly after being on the playground. (Smelly is an understatement – we need to get some sort of deodorizer.) Two days later, Madelyn walked into the house after playing outside and said, “Pee ewwww. My feet stink!”
“Oh gosh.” We aren’t sure who this originated from – probably me. But it is now Madelyn’s favorite catch phrase. She applies it to almost everything I do. “Oh gosh, Mama…”
“That’s wacky!” This one definitely originated from Troy. Everything we do is now “wacky” according to Madelyn.
We have often told Madelyn that there are things, but specifically coffee, that she can only have when she is older. So now, whenever we tell her no, she assumes that she will have to wait until she is older. I.e. “I older coffee?” She also applies it to things she herself does not want to do. For example, today at lunch she told me she didn’t want jam on her PB&J sandwich. “I older jam,” she told me. After she took a bite of the peanut butter sandwich I made her, she told me, “I older peanut butter.” She just ate bread for lunch.
Coffee has a big presence around our house. The other day, Madelyn was lining up pretend drinks for all of us: “Coffee for Daddy, Coffee for Mommy, Milk for You!” Note: Madelyn sometimes mixes up “you” and “me” or “my,” which, when you think about it, makes some sense because we usually refer to Madelyn with a “you” (i.e. “Madelyn, you need to help Mama pick up the toys.”) So when Madelyn needs help, she says, “help You?” When she wants to be chased, she asks, “chase You?” (Took us a while to figure that one out – we thought she wanted to chase us – not the other way around. Everyone took off running in opposite directions.)

I honestly did not think we had made even a dent in Madelyn’s mind regarding the concept of sharing. But at dinner the other night, she picked up a few of her tortilla chips, handed them to me, and said “I sharing!” I was pretty proud of this out-of-the-blue action on her part, but my pride was short lived. Troy then asked if Madelyn would share some chips with him and she responded by reaching over to his plate, removing his chips, and putting them on her plate. THEN, she put said chips on my plate and said, “THAT IT, Mama,” while wagging her finger in my face. Hmmmm. Sharing is something we still need to work on…
This last one sort of blew our minds. We saw a large display candy “M&M” in the store. Madelyn talked about “I older M&Ms.” (Actually, we have let her have a few M&M candies on her frozen yogurt, but she still thinks this is a privilege for when she is older. Or maybe she just knew that we wouldn’t let her buy any.) Later, she was being quiet in the car until she suddenly exclaimed, “M&M – only one M?” Troy and I paused and then realized, yes, there is only one M on the front of an M&M candy, but two M’s in the name. We will let you think about that one for a while!

Our Baby Girl Is Growing Up!

2011-08-23T08:36:00.001-07:00

by Tricia

Doernbecher Children’s Hospital recently called to schedule our next check-up in March 2012. We will see all of the professionals on the team: nurse practitioner, speech pathologist, audiologist, Ear/Nose/Throat Specialist, and Cleft Surgeon. It will be an all-day marathon of seeing specialists with a lunch break scheduled between the appointments so that some are in the morning and some are in the afternoon.

My first thought was to think I better bring plenty of snacks and entertainment options for Madelyn – it will be a long day for her, but really so much better than individual trips to see each of them. My crazy mind then progressed to the thought that the appointments will occur shortly after her third birthday. Being the planner that I am, I immediately started brainstorming options for her party. Then it dawned on me – WAIT! Madelyn will be THREE when we go to that appointment!!!!!!! Where did the time go??????

Does anyone know how to slow time down just a little? These are days to be treasured.

Swimming in her pool Summer 2010

Swimming in her pool Summer 2011

Holt Picnic Summer 2010

Holt Picnic Summer 2011

Sunriver

2011-08-16T22:29:00.001-07:00

by Tricia

We recently had the privilege of spending a fantastic long weekend in Sun River with Troy's family. There was lots of time by the pool, bike rides, and plenty of ice cream. It is fascinating to experience family vacations through Madelyn's eyes - I don't think I had this much FUN at Sun River since I was two! Emphasis on the capital letters - everything is fun when you are two. Especially when there is pink ice cream.

More Lessons Learned…

2011-08-05T10:19:00.001-07:00

by Tricia

Madelyn certainly keeps us on our toes, but Troy and I always somehow manage to be a few steps behind her. Here are a few of our latest lessons learned:

Plan An Alternate Escape Route.

Troy was recently putting hamburgers on the barbeque while Madelyn watched from the house. Swoosh. Click. He turned around to discover that Madelyn had closed AND LOCKED the patio door. For those of you who have not been to our house, the patio is on the second story with no stairs to the basement below. Troy considered yelling for help toward our neighbors' houses and/or breaking our kitchen window to get back in the house before he realized the obvious. He called through the door and asked Madelyn to open it. She sat there smiling at him, "I help Daddy!" But she didn't open the door. He tried again, "Can you help Daddy by opening the door?" She unlocked and opened the door. Madelyn is always a good helper! I think Daddy plans to give her some other things to help with next time he barbeques though…
Implement A Code Word Response.

On a recent trip to the library with Madelyn, she was excitedly helping me check out our books. It took me approximately 10 seconds to get my library card back from the librarian and drop Madelyn's books in our Summer Reading Club book bag, after which I realized Madelyn was no longer standing next to me. I don't think I have every felt such panic, which escalated very quickly once I realized Madelyn could have gone one of three ways: (1) library staff room behind the counter, (2) into the library amongst the rows and rows of shelves, or (3) out the exit door that opens automatically to the parking lot. I called her name. No response. I dashed toward the exit since that seemed like the scariest of the three options, still calling her name. Then a fellow library patron over by the book shelves started waving her arms at me and pointing to the shelves by her. Sure enough, there was Madelyn. She was perusing the adult fiction paper backs. Since then, we have been working on teaching her to say "I right here Mama!" when I say "Madelyn, where are you?" instead of remaining stealthily silent. We have also put games of hide and seek on pause.
Know When To Surrender.

We officially gave up on the bedtime battle. Madelyn wins. We have moved naps to an earlier time and shortened their duration, put a gate on her door, locked off her closet and dresser, removed all the toys, and duck taped her diaper (because she learned that if she took it off and waved it in front of the video monitor, we would come running). Despite all these attempted defense tactics, Madelyn still likes her play time before taking a nap or going to sleep at night. We surrender - it's not worth the battle. She will sleep when she is tired. Now, Madelyn, if you could just hand us a victory occasionally, we might feel a little better about ourselves. Oh, but if you do kick down your gate again, and come barging through our door, and climb over your Daddy, just so you can say hello to me at 2am? THEN we may need to redraw our battle lines. It was pretty darn cute of you though - I love you.
It's Okay To Recruit Reinforcements.

Troy and I recently started eating green oatmeal. Yup, green. Cuz it has spinach in it. And honestly, it's yummy. You add a little banana and peanut butter and, other than the fact that it is green, you would never dream that you are eating spinach. It FAR surpasses our previous method of trying to get veggies at breakfast: chugging down a glass of V8. Anyway, Madelyn typically eats oatmeal for breakfast, but when we offered her some of the special green stuff she responded, "Ewww gross!" Enter, stage right, the power of persuasion: Atticus, age 6, and Becket, age 4. Being friends with Madelyn, they recently loaned her their old stroller for our trip to the zoo. Madelyn has not wanted to be in her stroller much lately, but when we got to the zoo, we showed her that we didn't have her stroller but rather Atticus and Becket's special zoo stroller! Amazingly, Madelyn enthusiastically climbed into that stroller and strapped herself in! If it worked with the stroller, would it work with green oatmeal? Inquiring minds wanted to know . . . Atticus and Becket were willing to participate in the experiment, so they sent Madelyn the following picture of themselves with some green smoothies:

Guess what Madelyn ate for breakfast the next day? You guessed it - green oatmeal! Thanks Atticus and Becket - did we mention that you are both pretty cool?
Smile, You Are On Candid Camera. Madelyn has such an enthusiastic personality that it literally bubbles out of her everywhere we go. There is almost always a smile on her face. No matter where we go, people seem to stop and smile back at her and wave or say hello. Take tonight for example. We took Madelyn for a walk in our neighborhood. She was in the stroller (her stroller - the Atticus and Becket stroller is reserved for super special occasions) for the first half of the walk. A car with people we did not know slowed down to wave at her in her stroller. A few blocks from our house, we got Madelyn out of the stroller so that she could run (she never walks). A man (again someone who we did not know - yet) was outside mowing his lawn. He stopped mowing his lawn mid-grass patch and walked over to us to say hello to Madelyn. Oh- and we made one other stop. There was a puppy outside another house and Madelyn wanted to point out the moon in the early evening sky to the puppy. "Hi Puppy! Moon up there!" No response. "Moon! Up there!" Still no response. "Bye Puppy!" Awwww. Madelyn - thank you for bringing so many smiles to our faces!

Poopy Elephants and Hairy Monkeys

2011-07-22T15:14:00.001-07:00

by Tricia

One of the bonuses that came from Madelyn's speech therapy appointment at OHSU was that it gave us a chance to also take her on her first trip to the Oregon Zoo! We had been talking about it for days in advance and Madelyn put together quite a list of animals she wanted to see - it grew every time we asked. It ended up being an extremely fun day. If you ask Madelyn what the highlights of the zoo visit were, she will probably tell you:

Hairy monkey.
Elephant go poopy.
Owl sick. In hospital. All better.

My three personal highlights of the day were:

Watching Madelyn jump a mile high when the big black bear first walked to the window in front of her. It was pacing back and forth and she squealed in delight every time it walked in front of her and exclaimed "ow!" (because we are all about imaginary injuries that may need a band-aid right now).
Madelyn falling asleep with a cracker in her hand. Believe me, I have hardly ever seen Madelyn give up a chance to eat cracker treats. But we plumb wore her out. She slept for a solid hour in the stroller despite the crowds and noises swirling around us. Troy and I ate an elephant ear while she slept. Sorry Madelyn - you snooze you lose!
When the zookeeper offered to let Madelyn "pet the otter" (it was an otter skin that the zookeeper had on a table) and Madelyn went up and petted the statute of the otter next to the table. Heh.

Here’s some video of Madelyn and the bear:

Troy's three personal highlights (per my informal survey):

Watching Madelyn see the bear, orangutan, owl, elephant, and dinosaur. (He cheated - this was actually five highlights in one.)
Watching Madelyn play on the different animal statues. She especially liked the camel and even patiently waited her turn for that one. (An absolute first - usually there are tears when we have to wait for something or share with others.)
His own personal tantrum when he got a little frustrated at his inability to stop Madelyn's tantrum. (The camel was apparently an isolated incident as she later started wailing and screaming when we had to let other kids take a turn with the animal sound board. Oh well. It happens. As I reminded Troy before I lost my temper with HIM - she is only TWO. After all three of our temper tantrums subsided, we were once again a very happy family.)

Buh Buh Buh

2011-07-19T15:24:00.001-07:00

by Tricia

Last week, we took Madelyn for a check-in with her speech therapist at OHSU. Her last check-in was in December, before she was talking much. At that time, they advised that we regularly work with Madelyn on the hard consonant sounds (B, P, D, T, K and G) because these are often problematic sounds after a cleft repair. Madelyn looked at me like I had lost my marbles when I first sat her in front of a mirror and exclaimed "Buh, buh, buh" (the B sound). I tried getting silly with it and she eventually tried making the sound along with me, as you will see in this video taken in February. (Yes - those are Madelyn's pants on our head. It's amazing what a toddler will find funny…)

At Auntie Ning Ning's suggestion, we also logged onto starfall.com a few days a week. They have a great assortment of animated shorts that focus on the various sounds of letters. Madelyn loves it! We started with the letter B, then moved on to the other hard consonant sounds after a week or so. Madelyn eventually learned all of her letters and now likes to select her own letter of the day (she still calls it the B game though - I might have over-focused on that letter at first…)

The following months brought amazing advancement in Madelyn's speech as she moved from putting two words together, then three, and now four in a sentence. I firmly believe that all of the credit goes to Madelyn - she is so observant that you can practically SEE the wheels turning in her mind before she tries something out. I bet all of those words were already in there at our December check - they were just waiting to spill out.

Last week, the speech therapist said there are absolutely no concerns at this point. This is a HUGE blessing, as cleft often necessitates intensive speech therapy or even follow-up surgery to help speech-related problems. We will continue to monitor Madelyn's progress with the speech therapist. Our current assignment is to focus on words containing some of the letters that Madelyn does not always pronounce correctly (she is hit and miss on R, T, and S sometimes - but the speech therapist said that is common for ANY two year old.) For example, Madelyn's version of "watermelon" sounds more like "wamelon." But she can easily say "toy" or "rain," so it will hopefully just be a matter of a little more exposure to those sounds and practice for now.

It absolutely delights me that I can now have a two-way conversation with Madelyn. She has lots to say! AND she recently started singing, which never fails to put a smile on my face. We spent the spring months in a Toddler Tunes class, but Madelyn never tried to sing along - she just did some of the hand motions and played on the instruments. Now she is singing along to half of the songs on the CD! Check out her version of Twinkle, Twinkle and the ABCs:

Sparkles and Pretzels

2011-07-11T06:18:00.001-07:00

by Tricia

Fourth of July weekend was one we were really looking forward to this year. Over the last 9 years or so, we have spent Fourth of July weekend with a wonderful group of friends that we have known since our high school youth group years. Last year was the first year we had to cancel due to Madelyn's cleft lip surgery on June 30 and Ainsley's early arrival.

We were pretty excited to introduce a new generation to our tradition. There were 13 of us there this year, counting Madelyn and Ainsley. We rented a house at the beach for three days and spent our days playing games, talking, playing on the beach, and eating lots and lots of snacks (Aunt Tieryn even made Madelyn her very-own chocolate chip cookie shaped like Mickey Mouse). We also celebrated Ainsley's first birthday and watched fireworks from the porch on the fourth.

A few favorite moments:

Watching fireworks was, hands down, both Troy and I's favorite moment of the trip. We had tried to keep Madelyn up late enough to see them but, after she asked to take a nap three times, we put her to bed. When the fireworks finally started, we decided to get her out of bed so that she wouldn't miss them. We will never forget her reaction. She was wide-eyed and called them “sparkles” at first. She stayed cuddled in a blanket the entire time and talked about the “boom” sound. When the fireworks subsided, she commented “sparkles all done.”

Madelyn and Ainsley had their first official play time. Madelyn was great at sharing at first until she figured out that Ainsley was too young to defend herself and that she could simply take toys out of Ainsley's arms. There were a few tears (on Madelyn's part) when we caught her in the act. Otherwise, Madelyn was very gentle with Ainsley and enjoyed sharing sand toys with her and standing close by during Ainsley's meal time.

Madelyn put her feet in the ocean for the first time! She didn't ask to repeat the experience though…

Our baby video monitor provided an amazing amount of entertainment. Everyone enjoyed watching Madelyn's bedtime antics (which include a commentary about the day's events; taking her pajamas off so that she can just sleep in her diaper, and a lot of gymnastics – all in the pack n play).

Madelyn was very happy about the amount of snacks available over the weekend. It took us a while after getting home to convince her that treats are not a part of our regular diet. Although we do have a large supply of peanut butter pretzels at her disposal. At the end of the trip, we divided up the remaining food to take home and one of the items left was about half a Costco tub of peanut butter-filled pretzels. When Madelyn heard that someone got to take it home, she raised her hand to volunteer to give it a home.

Super Why! - this is Madelyn's favorite shows on PBS. We again apologize to everyone for getting the theme song stuck in their heads.

Some more pictures from the weekend:

Blog Maintenance

2011-07-06T21:46:00.001-07:00

Troy here. You may have noticed my most recent post is off the front page of the blog.

I still want to complete the series of my afternoon with Madelyn, mostly because I still have lots of videos and pictures left to post that haven’t seen the light of day yet and I’d love to complete it for posterity sake, but it seems strange to be posting 4-month old things as something new.

So, I backdated the most recent post, Part 2, to April and will do so with all the other posts in the series from here on out. I’ll be sure to post some kind of update whenever I add a post in the series, but beyond that you won’t see those popping up on the front page anymore.

What you will be seeing soon is a 4th of July post. We need to get something up quickly discussing the incredible weekend we had with our friends at the Oregon Coast because next week brings a whole new set of events and excitement, with a speech therapy appointment, our first dentist appointment, and a trip to the zoo!

Happy Father's Day!

2011-06-26T20:38:00.001-07:00

by Tricia

Better late than never . . . Actually, I had this post ready to go but couldn't figure out how to get the pictures off of my new cell phone. Turns out a $7 trip to Fry's was necessary.

Troy, thank you for all of the grace and humor that you bring into your role as a parent. You jumped into this adventure with both feet and never looked back - and you are doing an amazing job. I am so lucky to get to be a parent with you. Madelyn and I both adore and love you - so much.

Oh - and thanks for teaching her all about Crow T. Robot and Earth Vs. The Spider :-)

Father's Day weekend was a busy few days for us as we helped moved my grandma out of her house of 20 plus years and worked on de-weeding our backyard in preparation for grass (finally!). We kept the celebration simple and went to one of Troy's favorite dessert places: Dairy Queen. First up on the menu was a corn dog - Madelyn's first. She wasn't a big fan, which was a huge surprise to us because she loves hot dogs and corn bread on their own. Oh well. The second item on the menu was also a first for Madelyn - an ice cream cone! Not surprisingly, she LOVED it. Every. Single. Bite.

UPDATE -- Poster Child

2011-06-22T21:26:00.001-07:00

by Troy and Tricia

Thanks to our friends at Holt, we were able to get the aforementioned picture translated. It reads:

The change of a “little ugly duck”

The happy life of “Que que” (Zhang Yihong) who was a foreign baby adoptee Zhang Yihong, Que que as the nickname, was an abandoned girl in our orphanage. She had cleft lip and palate, but she was adorable with big and round eyes and happy smile.

This May, Que que was adopted by an American family, the new parents gave her surgery. Now she is not little “Que que” any more, she changes into a beautiful and lovely “Swan”.

We would like to add this thought for Madelyn when she is someday able to read these posts:

Sweet Madelyn Yihong,

Words cannot even describe how joyful we are to be your parents. We are so very sorry for the losses you experienced in your life before we were brought together as a family. We know that, someday, you will start to think about those losses a little more. There are two important things that we want you to know as you embark on that journey: (1) We will stand by your side. Always. (2) You were beautiful the moment you were born. You were born a beautiful swan and still are a beautiful swan. You always will be. We love you.

Love, Mommy and Daddy

Picnic

2011-06-17T16:57:00.000-07:00

by Tricia

Madelyn has been blessed with a very active imagination that especially comes alive when she is SUPPOSED to be sleeping. Before Madelyn falls asleep at nap time or bed time, there is all sorts of fun that we get to witness via the video monitor. Her stuffed Wall-E and Eve often go flying through the air in a reenactment of the movie, they play hide and seek, and they talk about the general goings on during the day. My favorite scene so far, however, occurred a few weeks ago when the talking with her stuffed animals continued well over an hour into nap time. Per our typical routine, I came in to remove the furry friends so that Madelyn could settle down but was surprised by a torrent of tears. "Picnic, mama, PICNIC!" Apparently, Madelyn had been having a picnic with her friends and I rudely brought it to an abrupt end by placing them in the hallway to "sleep." Her tears subsided, but when I turned the video monitor back on, I overheard her telling her stuffed penguin (a stowaway!) her sad tale: "Mama, picnic, sleep!" Sigh. Daggers to the Heart. Etc.

After nap, I wanted to find out a little more about her picnic adventures so, as we were playing with her legos, I asked if we should set up a picnic. She enthusiastically started setting all of the lego characters in a circle and we found a spoon to feed them their picnic food. I asked if we should give them strawberries or oranges (two of her favorite fruits), but she immediately sweetened the pot and told me that they needed to have "stawbewwies and cream" (she is hitting her 'r's about half of the time right now). Okay - strawberries and cream it was.

Last weekend, Madelyn had her first night away from us (she stayed at Nana and Papa's house while Troy and I went to the beach to celebrate our 9th anniversary). She had a fantastic time and even got to go to a local farm and pick strawberries, which she proudly brought home in an enormous glass bowl. So what did we do with all of those strawberries???? We went on a picnic, of course! We packed up a blanket and a few food items and headed to the closest park the next day. Amazingly, we had the place to ourselves and Madelyn got to feast on strawberries, play ball, slide, climb, and chase birds. There will DEFINITELY be more picnics in our near future.

Poster Child?

2011-06-15T18:01:00.000-07:00

by Troy

In addition to helping to reunite two young friends, another thing the Browns pointed us toward was the fact that Madelyn’s orphanage, the Sanming City Social Welfare Institute (SWI), has a website. We began perusing the translated site, which you can also do -- http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=zh-CN&tl=en&u=http://www.smfly.com.cn. There’s a 10-minute video about the Sanming City SWI that plays when the page loads that you can attempt to do your best to translate. You can see a picture of us around the 8:20 mark.

We then continued looking around the site and found that they release a booklet/magazine/pamphlet on the institute. We opened the most recent one and after scrolling down to the second page, we found this:

It appears that Madelyn is literally a poster child for the orphanage :) Unfortunately, the page is a jpeg, so it’s going to take some work for me to translate it. I did find a program that can convert images into text and works specifically with Chinese characters, but beyond the word at the top being something like “metamorphosis” and the words below it consisting of her name, the rest isn’t so easy to translate in this manner. So, we are going to ask for some help on the translation and will come back later with the results.

(Update -- see this post for a translation)

Regardless of what the words say, we love the pictures they chose to use for this (from among the pictures we have emailed to them) -- a great showcase of Madelyn’s progression in the last year!

A Friend

2011-06-14T21:16:00.001-07:00

by Tricia

We received this picture when we were in Beijing, waiting to travel to Madelyn's province. The report accompanying the picture said that it was a picture of Madelyn with her best friend in the orphanage, Xu En. The only description of him was that he was two years old and deaf. Our heart immediately ached at the thought of this lost friendship and we have thought of this precious little boy often throughout the last year.

So imagine our absolute delight when we received this comment on our blog. Xu En is being adopted by the Brown family of Dallas, Texas! The Browns are actually adopting two little boys from China and are hoping to receive their travel approvals any day now. Xu En's pictures from the orphanage included pictures of his friend, Yihong (Madelyn). The Browns did an amazing amount of research to see if they could get more information on Yihong and, through Google picture searches, located our blog! (Here is the Brown's post on their search: http://signstogether.blogspot.com/2011/06/friend.html).

The Browns also pointed us to Xu En's biography on the orphanage’s website (which we didn’t previously know about) the translated text of which states that Madelyn and Xu En were like brother and sister while at the orphanage, and that Xu En was terribly sad when Madelyn left to join her parents in the United States (it breaks my heart just to write that). The orphanage staff apparently calls Xu En "En En" - similar to their nickname for Madelyn ("Hong Hong"). The Browns have named Xu En "Travis."

We are so overwhelmed and overjoyed at the thought of God connecting these two buddies both in China AND the United States. In fact, we consider it a small miracle - seriously - what are the odds? We will certainly be in contact with the Browns and are eagerly following their story as they wait to bring Travis home!

If you would like to check out some of the other pictures we have of Madelyn and Travis together in the orphanage, check our Picasa Album at: https://picasaweb.google.com/troyolson1/MadelynOrphanagePhotos?feat=directlink

Gotcha Day - One Year Anniversary

2011-05-09T21:53:00.001-07:00

by Troy and Tricia

On the one year anniversary of Madelyn’s “Gotcha” Day, May 9th, Tricia and I thought it would be a good time to look back at the last year and recount some of our favorite moments.

Describe your feelings on Gotcha Day (May 9, 2010).

Tricia: I was so nervous in the hours leading up to the moment we first met Madelyn - I had no idea what to expect! Would she like us? Would we be able to comfort her? When the elevator doors opened on the 18th floor of our hotel, and Madelyn was put in our arms for the first time, I felt an overwhelming sense of love wash over me. I wanted nothing more than to comfort the sweet little baby I was holding. Madelyn’s heart was racing - she was obviously scared and in emotional distress. We were surrounded by seven wonderful people from her orphanage, and when they all left, we heard Madelyn’s cry for the first time. It was the quietest, saddest cry ever. We heard a lot more of that cry for the next few days and Madelyn did a lot of finger sucking to try to comfort herself. I will forever remember the first time that she finally let her guard down and smiled - we were playing with stacking cups in our hotel room. It was the best feeling in the whole world and it drove me to work harder and harder to bring those smiles out of her.

Troy: The entire day leading up to the moment we first saw Madelyn in person was one of anticipation, to the point that I can’t quite recall the exact order of events. I don’t really remember the time up until we landed in Fujian (I remember watching a movie with Tricia on the plane, that’s about it) and then we had what felt like a several hour van ride ride from the airport to the hotel. We found out that Madelyn was actually going to be at the hotel, so when we got there, we were whisked up to the 18th floor and, as Tricia mentions, there she was, a look of confusion and fear in her eyes as she was placed into Tricia’s arms immediately upon exiting the elevator. There was a euphoria and adrenaline rush that then came as we held her and worked on signing all of the papers (at this point in any proceedings involving important documents I’m glad Tricia is there, as she is so much better on concentrating). Having so much of the orphanage staff show up was both encouraging -- THIS many people came all the way here to see this -- and bittersweet -- we were taking her away from all of these people who you could tell cared so much for her.

The rest of that first night is a blur, so I’m glad Tricia remembers things so well and that we documented it on our blog to keep things straight. The one thing I do distinctly remember is when we first got back to our hotel room, just the three of us, and we looked at Madelyn and she looked at us and we all were like “what do we do now?” Of course, then she did that gut-wrenching cry (one of her very few moments in those first few weeks where she was overwhelmingly sad -- we were extremely blessed with her quick attachment to us) and my heart broke with sadness. When she did finally decide to smile and laugh with us in the next few nights, it was one of the happiest moments of my life.

Describe your feelings one year later.

Tricia: I feel so very privileged to be Madelyn’s Mama. Madelyn has such a sweet spirit, incredible sense of humor, endless curiosity, and an amazing memory. When we walk through any public place, she exudes charisma and typically gets people to wave at her or comment on her general cuteness and love of life. Madelyn is also a fighter and a survivor. In the last year she has: entered into a new family unit, moved to a new country, learned a new language, and had two major surgeries. Wow. I want nothing more than to open the world of possibilities for Madelyn as we help her chart the course of her future. I feel so honored to be the one who gets to be by her side at this time in her life helping her to learn and grow. And just like our time in China one year ago, getting Madelyn to smile or laugh is still my all-time favorite thing to do.

Also, I count myself pretty luck that Madelyn likes to go shoe shopping, dance to eighties music, and read countless books. All of those things put a big smile on MY face!

Troy: It’s hard to believe this much has happened in JUST one year. Unlike Tricia, I’ll never admit to being nervous, as I always had the utmost of confidence in our ability to be good parents and in Madelyn’s ability to just plain be awesome. I am in complete awe of just how much she has grown in one year and I’m actually somewhat fearful of just how smart she is already -- I thought I had more time to be able to use diversion tactics with her, but she’s on to me! I am so extremely proud of her resilience. Sure, her life as it stands now isn’t necessarily hard, but she’s gone through a ton of loss, has had a ton of new people and situations thrust upon her, and had the two cleft surgeries, and yet she seems happier today than she’s ever been, displaying a love of life and an excitement for experiencing the world around her that is a constant source of joy for me. I could go on and on about how great she is (yeah, I’m THAT parent) -- from her sweet disposition with wanting to make us happy, the pride I get when it’s obvious that she listens to me and tries so hard to do what I ask (as with the whole “stay in bed” series of events), or the fun she brings to the house by always wanting to play chase, fly, jump on the bed/couch, or get a ride on my back.

Oh, and she likes to watch Mystery Science Theater 3000, football, basketball, and play arcade games with me...what more could I ask for :P

What have you learned this past year?

Tricia:

To lighten up, plan ahead, and then lighten up some more.
Madelyn is not a happy camper when we break our routine or schedule - especially if we are late with a meal time! (Honestly, the same goes for me . . .)
That someone who weighs less than 25 pounds can generate more laundry than two adults - especially when there is drool involved.
That the world is pretty amazing from a toddler’s point of view.
That toddler songs are hard to get out of your head.
That it is fun to speak Madelyn-speak. (i.e. “peeky boo” instead of “peek-a-boo” and “oh my!” applied to just about anything)
To enjoy every moment, especially when I hear Madelyn laugh. (Have I mentioned how much joy that gives me?)

Troy:

Raising kids takes a LOT of time ;)
Changing diapers isn’t as disgusting as I assumed it would be.

Cleaning up the floors by Madelyn’s high chair is pointless, as it just gets equally messy each and every night.
The wheels on the bus definitely go ‘round and ‘round.
Lift with your legs and don’t forget to stretch -- even a 25 pound kid can throw out your back if you lift too fast!
Always have snacks on hand when out-and-about to avoid tantrums (though I always forget to follow this rule).
I’ve never been happier in my entire life -- Madelyn is such a blessing :)

What has Madelyn learned this past year?

Tricia:

Madelyn has amassed an amazing vocabulary in just a year. At this point, she seems to remember a word after just one prior use!
Her letters and numbers (through 10).
That she is the boss. “Mama sit.” I sit.
The difference between happy and sad.
How to unlock Mama’s cell phone.
How to blow bubbles in the swimming pool.
How to jump.
That grass is ok to walk on.
How to use a color crayon.
How to open any and all doors.
The names of all of our extended family, her friends, and her friends’ parents.

Troy:

“Big spider,” “Only Daddy open door,” “Touchdown,” “Back,” (which could mean she wants a ride on my back or that she’ll be right back), Wall-E’s catchphrases (“Woah” and “Eeeeeevaaaaah”), “Happy (insert holiday/birthday),”Small bites,” “All the people” and so many, many more phrases that make me smile every time she says them.
How to count to ten and, with a little help, to twenty.
Her alphabet (80% of the credit here goes to Tricia).
Jumping and slides are both fun.
How to start the washer and dryer, get water out of the dispenser in the fridge, turn on/off the TV and the dvd player, turn on/off our clock radio, and use the keyboard with the computer (haven’t got her to figure out the mouse yet).
I swear she’s memorized most of her books, as she will always tell me the last word on a page if I don’t say it out loud when reading to her. Same goes for her songs she’s learned, though she’s yet to actually sing.
Crackers and cookies are yummy.
Thumbs ups and high fives.

What is your favorite picture from this last year?

Tricia: From Thanksgiving.

Troy: That’s actually my favorite too...but to keep things diverse, I’ll go with this pre-surgery one, catching her in full lion’s roar :).

What is your favorite video from this last year?

Tricia:

Troy:

Happy Mother’s Day

2011-05-08T21:46:00.001-07:00

Mother’s Day 2010

Mother’s Day 2011

April Showers Bring...Part 2

2011-05-03T12:14:00.001-07:00

by Tricia

Playing hopscotch in our driveway – the outfit was ENTIRELY picked out by Madelyn. She has definite opinions when it comes to her fashion!

Look out Martha Stewart! Madelyn made some pretty awesome funfetti Easter cupcakes, which were exciting by themselves until she discovered buttercream frosting! Her method of applying sugar sprinkles to the tops is what I call the “helicopter” method – we had lots of sprinkles on the cupcakes, floors, counters, etc.

Madelyn’s first Easter egg hunt was on Good Friday, when we had dinner with Grandpa and Grandma Olson. She got the concept fairly quickly, but was mostly interested in opening the eggs to find the treats inside. And wow, were there plenty of treats!

All dressed up for Easter! It was so exciting to celebrate this special holiday as a family.

The Carlisle Easter egg hunt has been a HUGE affair, ever since I was a little girl. It takes about 45 minutes to hide all of the eggs. There are money prizes . . . nuff said – all of the participating grandchildren (all of us now adults) take it pretty seriously and bring running shoes or boots (depending on the weather). So with a toddler in the family, we had to resurface some of our old rules. For the first three minutes of the hunt, the low-lying eggs (i.e. the ones in the grass and barkdust) were fair game only for those under 3 years old. We explained the rules to Madelyn and when the start was announced, she went running around my grandparent’s yard as fast as her little legs would carry her. She was literally throwing her eggs in the basket and not even taking a pause as everyone cheered her on. I guess it doesn’t really come as a surprise that she is competitive - I’m proud to report that she tied for first with 30 eggs!

So what did we do with Madelyn’s prize money?? We took a visit to the tulip farm!!

The tulip farm was pretty fun and definitely something we will repeat, but hopefully in better weather. Madelyn had a fantastic time splashing around in the mud puddles (somehow she doesn’t seem to mind mud – just fingerpaints – go figure!) Once the wind and rain came, though, Madelyn got pretty cold, especially since her pants were soaked from splashing. She put her hood on, announced that we needed to go home, and started heading for the car. It wasn’t a short walk, so she ended up getting a ride from Daddy.

April Showers Bring...Part 1

2011-04-29T15:00:00.001-07:00

by Tricia

After months and months of nothing but rain, we have finally had a few days of sunshine around here. Just a few, though. In addition to our normal activities, we travelled to the coast for a weekend with my family, spent a day at the Chinese Gardens, celebrated Easter, and visited the Tulip Farm. There are so many pictures that we thought we would split the rest of the month's pictures into two posts and share just the pictures with a few comments.

Madelyn is ready for Easter with Duck. Duck seems to go everywhere with us lately, and it is hard to have bedtime without him. You will often find Duck wearing Madelyn's hair clips.

Digging in the sand at Netarts (Oregon coast). Madelyn has grown up so much since our first visit to the coast when she hardly knew what to do with the sand and almost blew over in the wind.

The leader of the pack.

Enjoying life outside after months of rain and runny noses.

Thinking that parasailing looks like a pretty cool thing. Madelyn did call it a balloon, though.

Happy family.

Making cookies with Nana. (Don't worry – the adults put the cookies in the oven.)

Decorating Easter eggs. FYI – Madelyn used a spoon – still not into getting her fingers messy.

Getting ready for the circle song in Toddler Tunes class. We now sing the songs from that class at every opportunity. Mommy and Daddy wake up with them going through their heads. Daddy's current 3 am song: “Wake me, shake me, don't let me sleep too late!” Mama's song: “Why oh why oh why, are the birdies in the sky? Up so high, in the sky, why oh why oh why?”

Showing Mama how to use all of the musical instruments. The drums are a favorite. Madelyn is learning that practically anything at home can be a drum! The drum song? “We play and we play and we play and we stop!” (Sometimes its hard to remember the stopping part though, and sometimes we get so distracted by watching the other toddlers that we stop when we are still supposed to be playing.)

Touring the Portland Chinese Gardens.

Checking on Baby Amelie, who joined us (along with her parents) for a tour of the garden. The highlight of Madelyn's trip to the Gardens was Amelie. She was the talk of our house for days afterward!

Having the run of the place.

Checking to make sure Baby Amelie could see out of her hat.

Princess Madelyn getting a ride from Daddy. (She didn't want the stroller, so we used it to carry coats. Yup, we are pushovers on some things.)

Hi, Daddy.

One small step for man . . . one giant leap for Madelyn.

Family picture (Sorry, Daddy needed his sunglasses).

Finishing the day off with a big bowl of noodles – Madelyn's request before she even saw the menu pictures.

Yeah, Happy

2011-04-20T12:32:00.000-07:00

by Tricia

Last month, I wrote about trying to teach Madelyn the difference between "happy" and "sad" after she tore up one of her Dr. Seuss books. Another torn Dr. Seuss book recently provided a new chance for an education on the difference:

I know, I know. You are wondering how we didn't learn our lesson with the first book. Well - take a look at the picture - this one is a board book! We naively assumed that board books were "toddler safe." As Madelyn so aptly demonstrated, however, you can apparently peel the pictures off the boards. This time, Madelyn understood that we were "sad," and there were some tears as she tried to make things "happy" again. We told her that the book would have to take a rest for a while Mommy and Daddy figured out if they could fix it. Is anyone out there good with puzzles and tape? This one is going to take some time to put back together.

It just melts my heart, though, to hear Madelyn start vocalizing how she is feeling about things. I can't wait to hear more about her feelings and emotions - she is so observant and I know there is a lot racing through her mind at all times. One of the best examples of her sharing her feelings happened a few weeks ago when her friends Jaili and Evie came over to play. It was way past Madelyn's typical bedtime when we called it a night, but the girls were having so much fun that we frankly didn't care about bedtime. This video demonstrates just HOW much fun was being had:

Madelyn was absolutely rummy at the end of the night as we tried to get her upstairs and into her pajamas. But, as we were headed up the stairs, she suddenly turned around to face us with a huge smile and said, "Happy!" We asked her if she was happy because she had fun with her friends and she affirmed, "Yeah, happy," then returned to her dream-like state and promptly went to sleep when we laid her down. I will forever carry that moment in my heart as it was so absolutely sincere and sweet.

Don’t Open The Door! (or Madelyn After Dark)

2011-04-11T07:24:00.000-07:00

by Troy

First off, don’t worry, I haven’t accidentally posted a horror movie post on our family blog, but the phrase “don’t open the door” is something that has come to typify part of Madelyn’s new nighttime ritual. Since during the weekdays I mostly only see Madelyn in the evenings, it’s her bedtime procedure that I’m most involved in. Parts of this routine, including the whole door opening issue, have begun changing in the last few weeks, so I thought I’d give an example of how it typically goes, some of the learning experiences for both Madelyn and myself, as well as just giving you a chance to enjoy hearing about how stinking cute she can be (and laugh at me while you’re at it):

After dinner is done, “we” pick up “our” toys downstairs (Tricia has more patience with Madelyn on this, waiting for her to actually do a majority of the work, while I tend to hand her one thing to put away while at the same time putting away four or five other things on my own).
Next, it’s an airplane ride up the stairs and to the bathtub. We turn the water on to fill up the tub and then run into her room to get her pajamas and diaper for the post-bath process.

For a few days last week, Madelyn didn’t follow me in to get her pajamas and while I was out of the bathroom, she decided to play with the tub faucet, turning the water alllll the way to ultra-hot. The first time she did this, I put my hand in and surprised myself by being scalded, so we had a talk about how that hurts and how we don’t want to do that (you’ll notice these “talks” are a recurring theme here). The next night, the same thing happens and we have the same conversation (though I didn’t scald myself this time).

A couple nights later, I’m talking to Tricia while the tub is filling and I go back in to the bathroom and set Madelyn in it, to which her eyes widen in horror and she yells at me “hothothothothot,” at which point I notice the lever is turned all the way to hot. I quickly removed her from the tub then tried to have the conversation about how we can get hurt when we mess with things we aren’t supposed to, but she was to busy blaming me, yelling “Daddy!!” and wanting Tricia to hold her.

She hasn’t messed with the hot water since then ;)
Bath time is the most random part of the night. Sometimes Madelyn wants to play a lot -- which lately includes getting on her belly and swimming/blowing bubbles, stomping around to splash, or having me create a whirlpool a splash her. Other times, she is ready to get out and go play elsewhere.
Madelyn has learned that after you get out of the hot bath into the cold air, you shiver and chatter your teeth, which she seems to make a good production of. I dry her off and, if I’m lucky, she’ll lay right down for a diaper, though sometimes she would rather run in and nakedly surprise mama in the office :) With a process that involves diaper cream, diaper, body lotion, lip massage, face lotion, pajamas, and sleeper, it isn’t any wonder that she sometimes doesn’t want to do it all and tries to escape us to go play. But if we make a game of the process and sing or make silly sounds, she’s usually more than willing to go along with us easily.
Next comes 15 or 30 minutes of play time, typically either having Tricia read her a book, playing her computer games, or jumping/playing “night-night” in our bed.

If we are in our bed, then she must have control of a) the lights (we are told “light on” or “light off”) b) the doors (typically she must go and close them all), c) who sleeps on which pillow (I am always yelled at if I dare lay on mama’s side of the bed), and d) if the radio is on or off (she has our alarm clock entirely figured out).
After this it’s time for “good nights.” Tricia and Madelyn go to the laundry room and look out the window out the front of the house and say goodnight to the various cars, trees, rocks, garbage cans, people, house fixtures, and celestial bodies. Then, when leaving the laundry room, they say good night to all of the people in the framed pictures in the hallway (essentially saying good night to daddy, mama, and Madelyn about 12 times).
Meanwhile, I’m waiting for Madelyn in her room and Tricia hands her over to me and she gives mama her kiss good night, closes the door almost all the way, only to open it again, peek her head through the crack, and give mama another kiss, before finally closing the door completely and exclaiming to me “mama,” just to make sure I know who it was we just said good night to (this whole ritual has been fairly consistent for several months now).
Then, it’s time for us to read a story. We sit in her chair and read one book -- if she has requested something or brought something in with her, we read that, otherwise I try to mix things up so we don’t read the same thing every night. As of late, we MUST recline the rocking chair while we read and she MUST sit on my left (which is funny -- because with Tricia she seems to almost always request to sit on her right).
When the book is done, she will without fail request that she take the book to bed with her. After the whole book ripping fiasco that Tricia outlined a while back, we have a “board book only” rule for the bed. So I simply tell her that this is a “special” book that has to stay in the hallway and she will typically nod once and say “yeah,” try to grab it to take it to bed, I’ll reiterate that it’s “special” and she’ll be fine with that and go into bed, where her board books are waiting.

Now, this has become a bit of an issue lately as she is managing to quite easily destroy her board books as well. So, for the past week or so, with each of those she rips we discuss taking care of our books and that the books she has defaced have to “rest” for a bit to get better (I guess we’ll try to tape them up). Much to my surprise she has handled this well, repeating to me “no ripping books” and then being very understanding when I take them out of the room. Of course, as I’ll point out in a bit, repeating what I say and following through on it aren’t quite going hand in hand yet.
As she scurries to her bed, I arrange her stuffed animals for her along one side of the bed (last night there were 10 of them in there), she then sits at the front-left corner of the bed (she will not lay down to go to sleep), I drape her blanket over her legs, then her pillow goes on her lap, and then her books go on the pillow (so she can read to all of her friends).

In the past, this would be the end of things, as I’d give her a kiss good night, turn out the lights, and leave, but the past couple of weeks have introduced a new twist on things. Again, as Tricia mentioned in a previous post, now Madelyn can quite easily open her door. When this first started I would have a nightly discussion with her about staying in bed and not opening the door. We even came up with a reward system for her, but we quickly realized that it wasn’t getting through to her, so we decided it would be easiest to just put a gate up in front of her door so that at least she can’t roam free around the house. While this bugged her at first, she’s quickly gotten used to it.

The whole thing has obviously got through to her to a point, because for the past few nights, after I tuck her in and tell her I love her, she looks at me and says “don’t open door,” “daddy open door,” “stay in bed,” and “gate.” And each night I smile at her, tell her how proud I am for listening to me and remembering what I say, turn off her light, walk to the door, close it, and as I’m putting up the gate, I hear footsteps, the doorknob turns, and a little head pokes out at me, staring right at me. I ask her if we are supposed to open the door and she says “no” and runs back to her bed. I walk down the hallway, only for her to open her door 10 seconds later.

At this point, if she sees me, she slams the door shut and runs to her bed in a most un-stealthy manner. If she doesn’t see me, then she stands by her gate and reels off what to us seem like non-sequiturs, but what to her must obviously make sense.

We’ve taken video of this whole process, but our camera doesn’t have night vision on it, so all it is is darkness with Madelyn’s voice coming out of it. It’s just a short video where she talks about eggs, mommy, daddy and getting out of her room, before giving up and going back to bed.

There’s another video that goes on longer (but that I’m not posting at this time since I don’t have it edited) that is more typical of how it’s been the last few nights -- it’s her first 30 minutes in bed and you hear her get out of bed, run to the door, open it, attempt to read her book in the limited hallway light (you hear her talking about “ducks” and “quack,” which is in one of her books), and then shut the door, repeat about 15 times. Sadly, the end result of this night, when after an hour she was still opening and closing her door and not going to sleep, was to put her in her pack and play so she would actually go to sleep. It seems we have a 2-year old who can’t yet control her impulses, which, now that I think about it, is something I can totally relate to :)

An Afternoon With Madelyn, Part 2

2011-04-08T13:31:00.000-07:00

by Troy

(All posts in this series -- Introduction, Part 1, Part 2)

After playing in the playroom, Madelyn decided she then wanted to venture into Tricia’s and my bedroom. This begin with nothing more than simply wanting to play “night night” and pretending to sleep on mama’s side of the bed. “Pretending” is the operative word here, as Madelyn can lay still in our bed for about 10 seconds before becoming too antsy and needing to either get our attention again or else run off to do something else.

In this case, the idea she had was to run off and do something else. She told me “Back, daddy, back” and gave me her universal hand signal for “I’ll be right back” and then off she went…

So, I decided to turn the video camera on and record whatever book or stuffed animal she would decide to bring in. I’m glad I did, because she had an even bigger surprise for me up her sleeve:

Yes, she decided it was time to bring her rocking horse in from the playroom to mommy and daddy’s bedroom. Apparently all that dragging made her too tired to use it, as she quickly went into the bathroom and grabbed her stool to help herself climb up on the bed (and the horsey sat in our bedroom for at least a month after this, occasionally being ridden at the most random of moments when she noticed it was there).

Next up was the video monitor -- she quickly learned how to turn it on and off and also seemed quite interested in how it she can see her bed in it. Luckily for me, there aren’t too many thing to mess with on the monitor, because Madelyn (as I assume many other kids are as well) is fantastic at pushing random buttons on electronic equipment and somehow managing to create odd settings on them. The worst case here was adjusting the sensitivity of the monitor and turning the light on the camera, both of which I was quickly able to change when she tired of playing with it and moved on to the next thing.

At this time I’d now like to point out that Madelyn has quite an impressive glistening sheet of drool encasing her t-shirt.

We finish up this portion of the series with one of my favorite things Madelyn does, which is use my earbuds to “listen” to the radio with me. Quick side story first -- I haven’t been quite as big a fan of her being enamored with my earbuds lately, as she’s taken to popping the plastic pieces that fit in the ear off of them, which will really suck the one time she loses one and I have to go buy replacements. Moral of the story is I should probably put these somewhere she can’t get to them, but then I figure I wouldn’t be able to get to them easily. Shouldn’t she just listen to me and not pop those off to help with my convenience :)

So in addition to liking the earbuds, Madelyn also quite quickly learned the on/off buttons on our alarm clock radio. Since these pictures and this video were taken, the typical scenario is her “nudging” (or you could say demanding) me to take one earbud in my ear, put the other in her ear, and then she turns on the radio and we bob our heads and dance, and then she turns it off and we freeze. This repeats for quite a while, with her being sure to say “on” and “off” whenever she presses the button on the radio (as you’ll see her also doing in the video below).

Here, I decided to be the DJ and turned the radio on and off for her, while she danced on the bed. I probably am tempting fate by letting her treat my nice noise-cancelling earbuds as toys (especially when I have the free ones that came with my ipod sitting around somewhere), aren’t I?

Next up -- jumping…lots and lots of jumping.

An Afternoon With Madelyn, Part 1

2011-04-08T12:30:00.000-07:00

by Troy

(All posts in this series -- Introduction, Part 1, Part 2)

As promised well over a month ago, here is part one of the many part series on "An Afternoon With Madelyn.” Of course, the material I had for this is now about two months old and it seems that Madelyn has grown up and changed so much in that short time. Still, these videos, pictures, and stories still point towards her personality and how much fun it is to hang out with her, so it would be a shame to let them go to waste by not posting them…

So with Madelyn and I all by ourselves, I thought a good first thing to do would be to go to her playroom and start by coloring/drawing. She would request a specific coloring book, flip through a few pages of it, click her marker lids on and off, and then request a different coloring book. In the span of about 10 minutes we went through just about every coloring and sticker book she had, with the end result being a bunch of stickers on her hands and my feet.

Soon after this, Madelyn decided it was time to do some dancing. So she played all the songs on her musical chair and danced around the room. The chair’s batteries are nearly dead, so every song plays just a little bit slower (two months later and I still haven’t replaced those batteries :P), but that doesn’t seem to deter her from marching to the beat.

Next on the agenda, nothing more than playing peek-a-boo by opening and shutting the door. This probably lasted longer than the coloring and dancing did, consisting of opening the door, saying goodbye, leaving the room and shutting the door, running down the hall, coming back to say hello, rinse and repeat. Little did I know that by encouraging this I was likely leading to our whole staying in bed conundrum in the coming weeks :)

Finally, I decided to just film her in her natural habitat. So, I let her loose and here are the results…

Some things that are obvious from this video:

This seems like decent proof that Madelyn has a much shorter attention span when playing with me than she does playing with Tricia.
When Madelyn doesn’t want you to put your arm somewhere or requires you to sit somewhere, she lets you know.
2-year old kids have no idea the pain they can cause by pushing down with all their force on certain areas of your body when you aren’t paying attention :P
Madelyn’s never-ending supply of drool is a trademark, but did you know that her snot is just about equally never-ending?

Next up -- some silliness with Madelyn’s horsey and listening to the radio.

An Afternoon With Madelyn - Introduction

2011-04-08T10:30:00.001-07:00

by Troy

(All posts in this series -- Introduction, Part 1, Part 2)

On weeks where I go to Blazer games, Tricia and I have a deal whereby she has some time on the weekend to go to Starbucks, drink a coffee, and read a book in solitude. This is a win/win for me, as it allows Tricia some much needed relaxation and I get several hours of Madelyn/Daddy time.

Not that it should come as a huge surprise, but after hearing other family member’s stories of time spent with Madelyn, our one-on-one time together has made it quite apparent that Madelyn adapts to whomever it is that is watching her at the time, with quite a different set of attitudes, games, and nuances depending on the person. For instance, she will calmly sit while Tricia reads her an entire book, while with me, she flips the pages hurriedly and simply wants to play. Of course, we haven’t quite yet determined how much of that is her adapting to us and how much is us projecting our patience/hyperactivity on her :P

There’s certainly an entire post that could be written as Tricia and I list the ways that Madelyn is like each of us (and I’ll mark that as something to write later, as it could be pretty funny), but the point of this post is to give a glimpse into how Madelyn interacts with me in our time together. For the past few weekends I’ve captured in video and pictures what we’ve done and am going to do some short posts highlighting these moments over the next few weeks so you can all see how we interact with each other.

I’ll be back next week with part 1 of this series, but before that, I’m putting the finishing touches on a post that will go up on Monday that gives an all too thorough description of Madelyn’s night time rituals, so look forward to that as well.

I leave you with a few teasers of what you have in store with this series of posts…

Arts and Crafts Anyone?

2011-04-06T07:00:00.000-07:00

by Tricia

I think that anyone who knows me knows that my “mechanical” skills are not my strongpoint. Just last week, I broke a stapler at work by somehow loading it backwards. Don’t ask. Let’s just say that my assistant kindly reminded me to “stick to the legal stuff.” It should therefore come as no surprise that my ability to do “arts and crafts” projects is also lacking. One need look no further than the pottery projects I came home with in high school that my Mom insists she kept out of motherly affection and I insist she kept just to mock me. Yup, they are BAD – had to beg for an A from the art teacher so I wouldn’t ruin my 4.0 – I think she gave me the grade so that I would stop pleading with her and showing her more sorry attempts at art.

Anyway, I’ve been trying to find ways to encourage Madelyn’s creative side. We are in a Toddler Tunes class, and she loves to break into song and dance with me, but art projects might not be either of our strong suit. When I get the crayons out for her, she neatly puts them all away and proudly proclaims that she is “all done.” I excitedly took her to a finger-painting play date last week and while her friend created masterpieces, Madelyn could barely bring herself to put one dot of paint on the paper before clamoring to have her hands cleaned off. Again – that might be my fault. My Mom informs me that I refused to get into sandboxes when I was little because they were “dirty.” Despite my still-strong aversion to getting messy, I valiantly tried to demonstrate finger-painting to Madelyn. It didn’t work. She still wanted her hands washed.

So, I was pretty excited when I saw Nina and Star (two characters on the preschool Sprout channel) doing an art project for toddlers that looked manageable:

http://www.sproutonline.com/sprout/crafts/detail.aspx?id=fcaa99db-bb87-4d15-b86b-99cc00ae2adf

It is a rain stick that looks very simple to create in the video, but I somehow managed to make it horribly complicated. Madelyn and I headed to the Dollar Store to pick out stickers for her rain stick. Stickers are stickers, right? First learning experience on this project: not all stickers are created equal and the ones we got were horribly unsuitable for the project. They were foam stickers with very little stick – especially when we tried to apply them to the rounded surface of a wrapping paper tube. They started falling off immediately, so I tried gluing them on while Madelyn lost interest. Then I discovered that I was missing tape. We searched all over the house (still can’t find it), and ended up having to use double sided scrapbook tape to secure the top and bottom covers. Lesson number two: always prepare in advance! Then it was time to fill the rain stick with rice and, as I was pouring, Madelyn decided to eat some of the rice. Before I could sweep it out of her mouth, I heard a CRUNCH, GULP. Oh well. Lesson number three: stick to edible projects for a while. To top it all off, Madelyn has absolutely NO interest in the rain stick that I worked on for well over an hour. She preferred to read her books – and she has been sneakily tearing off the stickers on the rain stick and placing them elsewhere.

Fortunately, I am persistent. I may stink at the crafty stuff, but I can still try. Today, we made Jello Jigglers for our project and I followed all of my new rules: (1) I read the directions three times to make sure my supplies were right (I know – Jigglers are virtually foolproof, but you would be surprised at what I can manage to mess up – remember the stapler); (2) I made the Jello after Madelyn went to bed last night and tracked down the cookie cutters I needed so that I was all ready this morning; and (3) I let Madelyn eat ALL the Jello she wanted while we made the Jigglers. And I asked her to use her hands to dig the scraps out of the pan – she didn’t seem to mind getting Jello on her hands. I think we deserve an A on this project!

Check-Up

2011-03-29T16:58:00.001-07:00

by Tricia

Last week, we took Madelyn back up to Doernbecher to check in with the surgeon, ENT (Ear, Nose, Throat) specialist, and audiologist. The surgeon was VERY pleased with Madelyn's progress – yay! We are still massaging Madelyn's lip one or two times a day, and the surgeon told us to keep pressing on so that we keep the scar tissue to a minimum. The surgeon said that Madelyn can wait another year before seeing her again. Madelyn's next surgery will probably be around age 5, when they will work a little on the gum line and nose. Madelyn will also need to start seeing an orthodontist regularly at age 7. (We will see if she beats my personal record of having 10 teeth pulled, not counting wisdom teeth, and having braces 3 times!)

The surgeon also heard Madelyn talk a little and was pleased to hear some hard consonant sounds. If Madelyn can keep articulating those sounds, she may not need much speech therapy – but we will continue to check in with Doernbecher on that. Her next check-in with their speech therapist is this summer.

The reports from the audiologist and ENT doctor were a little different than expected. The audiologist reported that the ear tests revealed some sort of blockage, and the ENT confirmed that the tubes have already dislodged (but have not yet fallen out). The ENT opted not to take them out himself because he was the third person to check Madelyn's ears and the poor girl was practically in hysterics at that point (she was really a very good trooper through the whole day).

Troy note: It was as we were holding her down so that they could check her ears that Madelyn began crying out “Daaaaaady,” in the absolutely saddest manner :( It made me feel horrible for the poor kid.

The fact that the tubes are no longer in is not necessarily of concern – their main purpose was to help with the drainage prior to the cleft repairs. The ENT wants us to watch for ear infections and any backward progress in speech. The last month has truly seemed to bring exponential forward progress in speech, but we will be on the alert. If any problems come up, we will check in with the ENT prior to the next yearly check-up.

To encourage the forward progress with Madelyn's speech, we are trying to regularly work on the hard consonant sounds right now. We've spent the last few weeks on the letters B and T. In the next few weeks, I will work to put together a post of some of the things we are doing in this respect – some of the exercises were recommended by the speech therapist and some were recommended by Auntie Tiffany to help Madelyn with phonemic awareness (an important step toward ultimate reading). We are also setting up a little reading/learning area for Madelyn in our office, so we will post some "before and after" pictures on that project – hopefully soon.

Here are a few pictures of our Cutie the day we went up to Doernbecher:

Latest Videos from YouTube

2011-03-25T16:59:00.000-07:00

by Troy

I’ve uploaded all of our videos from the last three months to our YouTube page (save for a few, which we are saving for some specific blog posts in the coming weeks -- yes, we will be writing again!).

You can view all of the videos at YouTube, if you wish, but I hate the YouTube interface (you can’t even sort by name, which is incredibly stupid) so I’m also posting each month’s videos as a playlist, with the videos in chronological order.

Here is January, with the first two swimming lessons and Madelyn first (fearful) trip on the carousel (her second trip was tons more fun for her, as Tricia mentioned last time).

In February, we have Madelyn’s birthday and Chinese New Year celebrations, along with some general Madelyn-style goofiness.

And even though it’s in the playlist, I wanted to make special notice of the slideshow that Tricia and I put together to hand out to family members for Chinese New Year with pictures of our family’s journey together thus far -- it’s a fun encapsulation of our first 10+ months together.

March doesn’t have as many videos (yet -- just wait for my 8-part video expose I'll be posting shortly), but it does have more Madelyn silliness, with her chasing a cat, running around an inflatable playhouse, and dancing while eating a hot dog.

Up Down

2011-03-13T20:25:00.001-07:00

by Tricia

“Updown” - that's jumping in Madelyn speak. And boy did she get to do a lot of updown this week! My friend, Linnea, found a place called Pump It Up that houses several different bounce house structures, including a giant slide. We took Madelyn and Owen to their morning play time for pre-schoolers. They loved it! Madelyn was a little unsure at first about the unsteadiness of running around on the inflatables, but she caught onto it after the first half hour and was a professional jumper by the end. As a bonus, Pump it Up is only 5 minutes away from Troy's work – so he got to see some of the updown:

This weekend brought a variation on our updown trend when we went to the Salem waterfront to try out the carousel again. When we first tried a carousel ride last month, Madelyn wouldn't get on the horses and instead opted to ride in the stationary wagon behind one of the horses. This time, to our surprise, she picked out one of the biggest horses and climbed on! The whole time she rode, she proudly proclaimed “updown” as the horse went up and down, up and down. . .

We finished the afternoon with lunch at Casey's Cafe, where Madelyn got some of her favorite food – hot dog and french fries! She also got to groove to The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. I was trying to figure out a way to classify this as updown – but it was really more side to side action and pretty darn spontaneous cuteness:

Happy?

2011-03-08T20:39:00.001-08:00

by Tricia

On the morning of Madelyn's birthday, we put up a “Happy Birthday” banner and balloons on her door. Every time we went through her door the next few days, we made a point of reading “Happy Birthday” to her. To my surprise, when we were later cleaning out our office closet and she found a “Happy 30^th Birthday” sign from my sister's party last fall, she exclaimed “Happy!” I wanted to count this as her first reading (at 2!), but my pride quickly deflated when my sister (who IS a children's literacy expert) explained that word recognition/memory recall is NOT technically reading, which requires the ability to sound out words, etc. My sister and I had a very interesting discussion, though, about techniques for encouraging young readers. I will be sure to post more about that soon – we are working right now to begin implementing Tiffany's ideas for Madelyn in conjunction with her speech therapy.

We did take the immediate opportunity to start teaching Madelyn about what “happy” means. She now points to faces in her storybooks and asks whether they are “happy?” We have tried to demonstrate the difference between happy, sad, mad faces, etc. I think it is starting to sink in and it is pretty cute because she is starting to tell us that she is “happy” a lot. She is also trying to encourage “happy” in Troy and I. For example, when we discovered that she tore up one of her Dr. Seuss books while in her room last Saturday morning, she asked us if we were “happy?” We told her that we were not “happy,” but “sad.” With a concerned look and tears welling up in her eyes, she looked at me and asked more urgently, “Happy? Happy?” What could I say? I gave her a hug.

The lesson was Daddy and Mommy's to learn that day – no more paper books in Madelyn's room at night. Just board books. Bed time/nap time seems to be where Troy and I have the steepest leaning curve. It all started several months ago when Madelyn threw herself out of her crib, prompting us to put her in a big girl bed much sooner than we anticipated. This last month, Madelyn started skipping naps intermittently – opting instead to play. Thinking there was an easy solution, we removed all of her toys from her room – but of course that didn't stop her! Her arms are just small enough to retrieve a few items from her dresser, despite the child locks we have on the drawers. She started pulling out diapers and bibs and turning THEM into toys.

One afternoon, I came in and found a line of bibs across the room and Madelyn with a big smile on her face. The next step was to bring in the pack n play. That has been hit and miss too – although at least it confines her to her bed. Sometimes she still spends an hour (or two) just jumping up and down, twirling, and chatting with her stuffed animals. Interestingly, bed time had not been much of an issue – it was just naps – until recently when she finally acquired the ability to open her bedroom door :) I'm not sure who was more surprised – us or her when she came marching out last night. I think she was surprised to discover that Mommy and Daddy weren't sleeping also (I was doing laundry and Troy was doing bills.) So now we have gated Madelyn's door and will make sure we lock the gate on the stairs at night too. I'm curious what we will learn next…