Halloween - Morning

Halloween was a big day for Katerina.

First up was a brunch at a colleague's of Kelly. There were about 7 or 8 children present and all of them were within 6 months of Katerina's age. Most of them just a couple of months older. She had a blast. She also got to play with the toys in the house which were different from those in our house. She looks like a natural playing a piano.

One of the little boys kept coming up to her and hugging her. It was so cute! On the downside, one little boy kicked her in the stomach a couple of times. It was not hard at all and barely touched her but tough to see nonetheless. I was with his father at the time who reprimanded him, although what do you really tell a 2 year old other than no/bad. As we discussed it, it is a learn as you go thing for both of us.

Thank you to Angela and Jose who had us over to their house and had a great spread of brunch foods.

Our little girl has a cold

For the first time since we brought Katerina home, she is getting a cold. Late this afternoon, her nose started running and her eyes watering. This is a first for us. I am not looking forward to tomorrow but I have to get used to Katerina having colds. I think seven months is a good run for her not getting sick.

Tough news today

We had a meeting with an orthopedic specializing in feet today and received some tough news. What we hoped might be a relatively straight forward surgery to remove an extra toe, turned out to not be straight forward. After discussing it, we have determined that it is best to just leave it as is for the time being. Until the extra toe starts to cause Katerina pain or major discomfort, we are going to do nothing. Unfortunately, the surgery would have entailed plastic surgery as well as a more intrusive procedure than first hoped and thought.

It is not the end of the world of course, not even close. We just hoped for Katerina's sake she would not have to deal with any sort of teasing and mocking. At her current age we are not worried but in a few years it could be different. Time will tell if and when we are to have it removed. For now, we leave it as is.

Pictures of Katerina

One of Kelly's former office members told Kelly to get on me about putting more pictures since we have moved and she does not get to see Katerina nearly weekly like before our move. So here are a few more pics.

Thist one is Katerina at Kelly's birthday dinner. As you can tell she loved the cake. If you look a little bit closer you will note she loved the chicken parm and pasta too.

These two are her at home after her x-rays for her little procedure which will be coming soon. She has her tinkerbell sticker that she got for being a good patient on her chest.

Winning Hearts Everywhere

I will start with the obvious caveat: we are bias because Katerina is an angel in our eyes.

That being said, Katerina had x-rays taken at Kelly's hospital today for a nearing procedure. For 30 minutes we waited for a person to do our intake. Katerina in that 30 minute wait (you would think Kelly being a surgeon at the hospital would give us some pull) said "hi" and waved at just about every person to walk by. Smiling and giggling all the time except when she was drinking Kelly's juice.

Then we get into the x-ray waiting area and she continues to charm. I had to wait because there was only room for one of us in the x-ray room so Kelly took her. When they came out, I took Katerina to start towards the car. Kelly had a surgery to perform before coming home on her "off" day. When she got home, she said that everyone loved Katerina in the x-ray room. The techs were saying what a beautiful little girl she was and how friendly.

Every day, it becomes apparent, that this little girl is quite outgoing and loves saying "hi" to people. The good news is, even when she is saying her hellos, she will get shy every once in awhile and curl up in our arms. We love that. It also becomes more and more apparent that she is such a special little girl. We are lucky to be her parents.

Great Blogs

The one great thing about our adoption besides Katerina, is the people we have met because of it. From the organizations who have helped us to the other adopting families. Through one of our friend's blog, we have linked to others and read their stories. Sometimes this makes us feel a bit lucky because our process went quickly and relatively smoothly. Other times, it makes us feel bad for our friends and fellow adopting families. It also makes us feel happy to see so many cute little boys and girls coming to loving families in the USA.

The other great thing about reading these blogs is it gives us ideas and things we should look into and look forward to. They also make me think, "I wish I had done that." To name a few, Randy and Maggie had a timeline of there process which we liked so we did something similar. It was nice because we were able to. The one that is a bit disappointing is Amy & Kevin's taking a picture of their little girl every month in the same, or at least very similar, outfit. I wish I had thought of something like that. We have pictures but that is such a great thing guys. Kudos.

There are other blogs I have read some of or most of which have had great things. But those two have stuck out.

When I first started writing our blog it was to be more or less a notebook for Katerina's future use. So she could see what her parents did to bring her home. I guess some of these other things would have added to that for her.

Scrap Books & Pictures

So I am trying to finalize Katerina's "my family, my journey, Memory Book" for her. Trying to use the right terminology and find appropriate pictures is not as easy as it may seem.

We also decided to clean out old clothes that no longer fit Katerina which led us to looking at other things we have. This is included two scrap books.

The first one, Randy and Maggie's, is so beautifully done. Maggie must have spent a ton of time on it. This made it easy on me because it meant I only needed to find pictures to fit the pages.

The second one, a gift from Kelly's best friend, is a gorgeous album and nice suggestions. But, I have to fill in the data and pictures. That one is going to be a lot of work.

All of this leads me to the conclusion that while we feel like we take a lot of pictures and video of Katerina, we really don't. We take a lot of photos of the event we are at but not at a lot of events. Hopefully that makes sense. We need to take more pictures of our little princess.