Let's Get Cookin'

As I have stated before, Erik is wanting to be held more. The first two weeks he was happy to walk around, didn't mind being held, but didn't reach for us all of the time. And then...he started to want to be up a lot. I had tried the backpack before but it was a no go. This time I got all of the dinner prepped up to the shrimp in the hot oil, for which I passed him off to Daddy. It may however have been the balloon!

He loves to be under the table and to crawl under the chairs. Doesn't matter how many times he bumps his head, he goes right back to it.

One of the many special birthday presents. Our adoption pals gave him these cute cart veggies and fruit. They worked!

Dol After Party

There was no reason for the fun to stop after the party! Some friends stayed a little later and we played in the sandbox and then Daddy turned on the sprinklers!

Not a fan of the sprinklers!

More Dol!

One of our new adoption buddies takes such artistic photos I wanted to share them:

Erik's Chut Dol

What a great time we had! We had a wonderful day celebrating with family and friends. It was our version of a traditional dol and I think it was perfect. There are four elements to the party: friends and family, food, a prayer for the baby, and the baby choosing an item that predicts their future profession. Here are some photos to give you a taste of our day:

A traditional table has towers of fruit, candy...this was our interpretation.

The hanbok chosen by Erik's foster mom

Traditional rice balls

Traditional Costco cake!

I got this idea from another dol I found online. On the right are the items we picked for Erik to choose from.

We chose:

paints/brush: artist

shot: doctor

bowl of rice: prosperity or never go hungry

money: wealth/business

string: long life

pencil: scholar

ball: athlete

Harvey made these cute tickets so everyone could choose what item they thought Erik would pick. The winners got a prize.

And he chose....the ball of course!!

Big Brother!

The traditional rice cake was really quite good. Very simple and not too sweet. ( But almost impossible to cut through)!

A friend took some really great pictures as well that I'll put up tomorrow.

12 Hours 'til Party!

Just a little teaser (which took um...took the whole day)!!

Erik's birthday party is tomorrow! It has been fun putting it together. We're looking forward to Harvey's aunt, uncle, and cousins, as well as out of town friends getting to meet him

Getting Ready

Erik is back in the saddle again. Unfortunately, we are two steps back in crib time. He was not interested in staying in his crib while he was sick. He went down at 7:30 tonight and is still in the crib...hopefully he'll stretch it out tonight. We've been busy getting ready for Erik's dol (1st birthday party). We'll have family and some adoption friends join us. It's been fun putting it together (though I don't know that all the errands today is Erik's idea of fun). I'll share photos of the party afterwards. We're going with a multi-cultural lunch...Chinese, Korean, and Italian (I had to pick one because a Chinese, Korean, Austrian, Italian, Irish, Welsh, Scottish, English lunch starts to be a little overwhelming! And anyways, what do the Welsh eat? Grandma Jones would be so disappointed. Would anyone ever come back if I served haggis?). I'll make sure we have fish 'n chips another day! Wait until you see the tower! I went with the big one!! Tomorrow is cleaning day and last minute errands. Then it is on to the garage sale! I postponed it because, well, we've been busy. I do not want all the stuff we set aside to stay in the garage all winter. If you are local and have things you think have a chance at selling, let me know. I'll use all of the money for shoeboxes for Operation Christmas Child.

Batter Down

Erik had a fever for two days so that put a kink in my blogging time! He was a little more clingy which is on top of a little more clingy. Today the fever is gone and energy and smiles are back. I thought I would put him down around 7:30, he thought he would go down around 10. He was way too busy catching up on playing.

Ryan loves playing baseball. He was insistent in not using the stand. He actually got quite a few hits without it.

Must be all of the power that brought him down every time...

Guess who likes bubbles now?!

Mommy finally got smart and moved the moon sand outside!

Erik loves the backpack!

See ya!

I knew it was going to happen...we were sitting at dinner and Ryan, after drinking half his glass, says, "this milk tastes bad." It tasted delicious of course; it was whole milk! His deprived taste buds don't know a good thing when they taste it. So out came the Benadryl...and he only had one small spot by his mouth. Yeah! Not the way I want to test his allergic reactions, but I am happy to see the improvement. I just knew that with three different milks in our refrigerator I would eventually blow it.