Happily Ever After...

Aria loves, loves, LOVES her lil' Bentley boy. She likes to leave him notes and pictures in the laundry room so he won't miss us when we're gone. She is SO SWEET! Here is a sampling of her love notes.... Overwhelmed by all the sappiness, her brother just couldn't take it any longer. So, Aria woke up to THIS note next to hers: My little spitfire just couldn't let THAT go. She ran to her schoolroom, and begin her counter-attack: And, if that wasn't bad enough, she decided to add humiliation to her arsenal. Bogey is waving the white flag of surrender and defeat. He just can't take it any more. The hurtful words, the parading around looking like a clown... How much can one Boxer take? SOOOO Big Brother, I guess that means Aria won the battle???

I'm not getting the "Mother of the Year" award this year. Again. I've been disqualified each and every year since I became a mom in 1986. Sigh... It would be helpful to remember, if I was actually hoping to win, that if you have just taken your children to see Toy Story 3, you may not want to role play the traumatic parts unknowingly. So yeah, it goes like this: Toy Story 3 is about toys that are broken, or outgrown that are thrown in the trash or donated to a daycare to be tortured. The toys are heartbroken and try to get back to their home before their owner leaves for college, where they would prefer to be put in the attic than discarded or abused. After making it home in the knick of time, the owner donates them to a little girl who will love them and play with them. The End. Fast forward to yesterday.. After a long frustrating day full of arguing, discipline and chores, I told the girls that if they had too many toys to clean up, we would get rid of some. An hou...

Well, THAT was short lived... You rush around for 3 months getting all your documents compiled. You drive to counties you have never heard of to get certificates for each notary. (We had TWO that were an hour and a half away. That's 3 hours round trip. And not in the same direction.) You make a few mad dashes to the Secretary of States office while your husband circles the city waiting to pick you up on a street corner when you are done. You excitedly stalk the mailman each day for something, ANYTHING you might be waiting for in regards to your adoption paperwork. You cancel a day full of fun-filled plans with friends, because, DUH, a Fedex package is due to arrive with authenticated documents. No way are you leaving those on your porch for an hour. NO. POSSIBLE. WAY. And then the moment you have fervently waited for finally comes..... DTC. And the SHEER BLISS associated with that lasts, for.... well, about 2.5 days. Give or take an hour. And then the realization hits you.... The...

Today, our D ossier is headed T o C hina. (In the adoption world, it is one of many acronyms.) DTC. DTC, DTC. We are DTC . Today. We celebrated by giving D onuts T o C hildren. It seemed only fitting.   D on't ya  T hink it's C ool?? Okay, I'll stop now. We are DTC baby!!!! Now, I'm done. YIPPPPEEEEEE!!!!!!!

Duh... If you love a princess, you obviously love Aria. Because, we all know that.... Belle is, well.....sooooooo... 1991 . Let's be honest here. Cinderella? She's off making babies with Prince Charming and is now bloated and has cankles. Ariel just isn't the same since she lost her mermaid status. Flounder and Sebastian just don't respect her swimming skills anymore and frankly, it's gotten quite ugly between them.  (But you didn't hear that from me.) And poor, poor Jasmine. Her lack of modesty has landed her with the wrong crowd. Cavorting with the thieves in Agrabah has landed her in the Clink. She now spends her days wishing she had never taken that magic carpet ride. But Aria? She is as radiant and lovely as she has ever been, so OF COURSE if you love a princess, you MUST be talking about her. Glad there are no self esteem issues here. Ha!! *This is a page in her journal that she shared with me. We are still laughing about it.

Our agency received our approval letter from uscis TODAY. We didn't know they got a copy. We were expecting it to come in the mail next Tuesday at the earliest. She scanned it to us TODAY.  TOMORROW, I get to run to the county to get a certificate, and then to Atlanta for a certification, and then mail it to a courier in Houston. The courier will take it to the Chinese Consulate for a certification on MONDAY, and then overnight it to our agency. SOOOOOO, the day we were hoping for our approval letter to start the certification process is actually the day OUR DOSSIER IS  HEADED TO CHINA!!!!!! Another several days shaved off a ridiculously long wait to finally hold my babies. I'll take that! From the day we filed our petition to China to adopt them the day after we saw their sweet faces  in March to the day our dossier is off to China is just 12 weeks. The average timeframe is 4-6 months with the new Hague requirements.  I'd say these are GOD sized miracles!!

I"m having a ladies tea party tonight so the obvious decision to groom the dog myself over say, making finger sandwiches, scones, tea breads, or ahem, CLEANING, was a brillant one. I'd like to share a few of my thoughts on what I'd like to call the " dog incident" of 2010: ~Grooming your dog is not as easy as it looks. ~ Cutting it shorter and shorter is not always the best idea to try to  cover up a mistake. ~Under all that hair,  a dog's skin is very pink. ~Even the most obediant dog WILL NOT HOLD STILL when you have a shaver near their, ahem.. delicate areas. ~I learned this the hard way. ~Thankfully, he is already neutered. ~Your groomer is underpaid. $45 seems like a fortune to pay for a 5lb Yorkie- it's not. Pay them double next time. It's a thankless job. ~Being covered in dog hair is not fun and rather itchy. ~Dog's can actually show embarrassment. ~So can their owner/groomer. ~ I'm now a retired dog groomer. ~Or I was fired. ~ Either ...