OUT OUT OUT OUT OUT

Let’s hear a HUGE SIGH OF RELIEF!!!

Our paperwork cleared PGN today, I’m staring at a copy of the decree right now!

This means the adoption has been officially cleared on the Guatemala side!

Next, our attorney will -
- get a new birth certificate issued from her birthplace with her first name and our last name (woo hoo!)
- get a passport issued for her so she can travel home with us
- get a 2nd DNA test done on the baby
- take all the paperwork into translation, so there are Spanish and English copies of *everything*
- turn all the copies of all of that into the US Embassy, who will then
- issue a Pink slip - giving us the date and time for our appointment in Guatemala

The agency told me today that most families right now are waiting about 6 weeks between PGN out and Pink and then usually travel 1-2 weeks after getting Pink. So we’re hoping to travel in the 2nd half of October, squeaking her home before her birthday on November 6. Yaaaay!

It’s going to be a HAPPY WEEKEND after all!!!

Gorey’s Tribbles

As I am a fan (but not what you’d call a Fan) of both Star Trek and Edward Gorey, I was rolling with laughter this morning at reading The Trouble With Tribbles, as drawn by Edward Gorey. HT - PisecoSis.

Today holds a park day, probably, soccer practice, and a lot of crossed fingers. Another family on one of the adoption forums got out of PGN yesterday after being resubmitted the day before we were. That makes today a cliffhanger day - especially since if we don’t hear today, we’ve got an infinitely long three-day weekend ahead of us. So keep all your fingers crossed for me.

The Cat in the Hat Goes to War?

Sorry for neglecting you, my impatient blog fans.

I don’t tend to post as much towards the end of the week, as life seems to snowball around me. Friday we did some garage saling and hung out at home, as PisecoDad was still home from work. At one garage sale, we’d picked up this book:

for Piseco Dad, who studies both WWII and editorial cartoons. As JediBoy was leafing through our book pile, which was mostly for him, he came across the Dr. Seuss book. He called out, “Hey MOM! Look at this! This book is like… The Cat in the Hat Goes to War! Cool!”

The three of us spent the afternoon at Chuck E Cheese with Paula and Ben, then had soccer practice in the evening and hung out at the bookstore with Leigh and kids after that. JediBoy became a “Tower of Power Master” and was able to routinely get 9 tickets for every token he dropped into the machine. He used some of Ben’s tokens to win him many tickets too, and both boys wound up with over 400 tickets at the end of the day, instead of the 100-200 they usually have. But the best part of it was watching his face light up with pride as he realized he could do something useful and interesting that the rest of us couldn’t do. “I am the MASTER of the TOWER of POWER!”

Saturday we had JediBoy’s first soccer game of his new team, which was hot and emotional, but we got through it. In the first period, the one boy on the team who is the most assertive kicked a kick-off that had been promised to be JediBoy’s kick. That, coupled with the heat, sent JediBoy into tears. Fortunately, though, this soccer club is organized so that the nine or ten kids on each team play on two fields simultaneously, running two games with three kids on each field. So for the remaining three quarters, Coach Dad was able to keep those two boys separated, and JediBoy perked right up. He has great instincts for defense: he isn’t the fastest or most aggressive player, but when he sees the mob of kids + ball heading towards our goal, he takes the direct line down there to play defense, and most of the time he’s able to kick the ball away. I don’t think anyone has ever tried to tell him to play that way, but he’s come around to the idea on his own, seeing how he can best fit into his team. I do also like the three-on-three games, as the kids get many more touches while they’re playing.

After soccer we went to see Underdog to escape the heat. Sunday we tried several projects around the house, including beginning - but not finishing! - a huge clothing re-sort for both kids.

Today we’d planned on group soccer photos, but one of our families was out of town. JediBoy has a deep love for our favorite photographer at the local studio and also has a passion lately for dressing up, so rather than cancel the appointment I told him he could wear whatever he liked, and we’d get the $10 package of the best shot. Here he is:

Post Anniversary Post

Happy Anniversary to Us… la la la. Yesterday was our 9th wedding anniversary, and PisecoDad was home from work to share the day. We didn’t do anything spectacular, but enjoyed our day thoroughly. We played many games in the morning (probably the best gift is having a 5 year old boy who plods down the stairs, fresh from bed, and eagerly questions us: “GAME??” - our traditional way of inviting a game…). We went out for a little bit of shopping at some thrift stores and then came back to our nest and spent more time together. In the evening I had a UU meeting so the boys played at Chuck E Cheese and I met them there for a few games of skee ball before bed. It was low-key and perfectly suited to us - just like our wedding nine years ago.

Today we surprised JediBoy with a spontaneous road trip to a commercial cave about two hours from our house. He’d never been there before, and the whole ride he was asking for hints about where we were going. Even when we got to the property, he didn’t know what to expect - until the parking attendant mentioned “the cave” in his spiel. Boy, did those blue eyes get wiiiide. He was so thrilled. We had to wait about half an hour before our tour time, but we poked around outside and smushed pennies in the penny-smusher-machine while we waited. The hour-plus tour was everything he’d hoped it would be. We spent time afterwards in the gift shop and bought him a bag of silt to sift for gemstones in the trough outside. He slept happily the whole ride home. It was a marvelous day.

Game Night

This is what the three of us do on a rainy evening with no meetings and no errands to be run.

Uno

Monopoly Junior - Dig’n Dinos

Secret Sound

Scrabble Sentence Game for Juniors

Diversity and Our Day

Last night JediBoy asked me, “Mom, do you know any boys who are married to boys, or girls who are married to girls?” We’ve already talked about the existence of gay couples (Heather Has Two Mommies, and all) but he was asking who we know who is gay. Where has all my diversity gone?? When I started college, at least half of my close circle of friends was L/G/B. Today, we live in white bread suburbia where none of the parents of his friends or the friends of his parents are L/G couples. How sad is that? We had to make do with “Do you remember the ladies from the arts festival?” and “Do you remember the lady from Dad’s office?” but no one he knows personally is in a same-sex relationship. But then - there’s not much diversity in the Disney movies and Scholastic books he peruses, either. Any good suggestions for L/G/B diverse kids’ materials?

**

JediBoy and I had another happy day at home. We played with Math-U-See a bit; he enjoys watching the DVD and asked to watch some today. We worked with the Hooked on Phonics set, where he surprised me by reading up to the point in the workbook where he “could” read the big reader #15 and then grabbing #16 and #17 and read those successfully with help on just a few words each too. Since the orange workbook only has 4 readers, this means he’s functionally 3/4 of the way through it, and could certainly finish the workbook within a week or so if he’s interested.

I’ve loved his reading journey. Several months ago (around April?) he asked us to buy him this set from the clearance racks. We did, and he was very motivated to read and earn stickers and master books. We finished the first level (marked Kindergarten) before Memorial Day, and he did the first few pages of the next book, but then his interest petered out. We’ve let it sit on the shelf all summer, and yesterday he expressed a renewed interest in it. Since he’s ready, and he’s motivated, he’s flying through it now. He was SCREAMING for excitement at being able to read the three books today. I can’t wait to see how far he’ll go.

We played with a marble run, a pirate ship, and his Playmobil soccer set. He watched Robots while I worked on the computer. He played in the rain while I read on the couch and watched him.

We made him a helmet from a water jug and painted it with ALL our colors of paint. (It’s still drying, so you’ll have to wait until tomorrow to see the finished product.) It was a good day.

One NICE Day!

First, big thanks to S. over at Learning Umbrella for awarding me the Nice Matters award!

She’s too sweet. I would pass along the love - but most of my daily reads have already been awarded! Just take a look at her site to see some of the nicest bloggers going. Instead I’d like to give this award to all of HomeschoolJournal.net for being the nicest community of bloggers to share bandwith with.

**

Today was also made nice by a quick item on Good News Network reporting that US breastfeeding rates have hit an all time high.

And by a freebie lapbook about Egypt over at Homeschool eStore.

**

Of course my NICE day was also a lazy one at home with JediBoy. Here are a few of the things we did…

JediBoy woke up early to join me on the second half of my exercise DVD. He asked why there weren’t any kids on the video, so I promised him I’d look into some good ones for us to do together. I’ve heard there’s a Leslie Sansone Family Walk workout which we could try. If you know of any other family-together fitness DVDs for these dreary days - beyond Yoga Kids - I’d love to hear about it.

We spent a few hours in the middle of the day exploring books and learning materials - more “relaxed homeschooling” than “unschooling” today. We pulled out the Math-U-See blocks and played with them, getting to know which color is what length and playing the grab bag game (can you reach in and find the 1 by feel? how about the 7?).

We read My Father’s Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett. If you haven’t read this early chapter book, you should check it out. It is so much fun: the story of a boy (the narrator’s father, years ago) who travels to Wild Island to free a baby dragon who is being kept tied up there by the wild animals. It has a fun way of presenting ridiculous situations (he escapes a lion by giving him a comb and a brush and seven fancy hair ribbons for his mane) in a matter-of-fact way. JediBoy loves the story, which has a picture on nearly every page, and he loves to act out his favorite moments.

We had lunch together - JediBoy likes vegetable soup with fish crackers swimming in it. I finished up the left overs of easy chicken provencal from last night.

We read two picture books with dinosaurs: Can I Have A Stegosaurus? by Lois Grambling and Patrick’s Dinosaurs by Carol Carrick. Both are fun looks at dinosaurs inhabiting our world.

JediBoy then offered - “If I read to you from my orange book, will you read more to me?”. I wouldn’t have asked him to do that, but since he was offering… of course I took him up on it. We hadn’t pulled out the Hooked on Phonics set in a month or more, and he surprised me by reading fluidly and confidently the last pages we did - on ch- and sh-, th- and wh- blends. So we pushed on a little and did one of the word play pages - spelling words out with the cards - and it turned out to be harder for him to reproduce the blends than to read them on the page. But he did well with something that wasn’t easy.

When we finished this, he asked me to read Flat Stanley by Jeff Brown. He loves this story too, the silly tale of a boy flattened by a bulletin board, who slides under doors, gets mailed to California, flies like a kite, and catches some robbers by posing as a painting. After we read the book, I told him that there are groups of homeschoolers who make their own “flat travelers” to send around the country on adventures, and he was so enthusiastic that he wanted to make one RIGHT AWAY. I promised him we’d work on it this week, if we can get the printer driver up and running. So if any of you are interested (he specifically mentioned Carbon, since we swapped with you last year) in sharing flat travelers, let me know!

After that much quiet and still time, JediBoy spent about an hour playing in and out of the house, mostly with his new bow (he had PisecoDad help him tie a string to a stick this weekend) and acting out the characters from PisecoDad’s current video game, Fire Emblem. He tries so hard to narrate the game to me and discuss the characters, but because I’m usually working on the computer when they play on the weekends, I just don’t have a clue what he’s talking about! So he spent some time drawing the characters to help me understand.

Now it’s that slow time of the late afternoon, and he’s come to me with his energy low. We’re going to go snuggle on the couch and watch some Electric Company. Easy Reader, that’s my name. Mm, mm, mm.