Portraits

Tonight I am mostly going to just post the portraits from yesterday.  I don't have a video to post becasuse Lydia had too grumpy of a day to get one!  I have several more ideas for little things she is doing lately that I can video, but I will have to hope she is in a better mood tomorrow and I can take a couple of quick videos.  Don't know what was up today, but she does have these days from time to time where she just is grumpy and testy.  I guess we all have those now and then huh?  I do have to say, on those days I am quite thankful for my two older girls so I know that it's not just my imagination, or that it isn't just ME that's off.  It does make me question if it's just me, but when we all notice it, then I know I'm not crazy!  Oh well, tomorrow is another day - at least this keeps it real!

Now on to those portraits....

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Wednesday's video

We had a busy day today!  Lydia was tired and ready to sleep from about 3:30 this afternoon through the rest of the day!  We finally got pictures done with the three girls this morning.  It took me a little longer than I would have liked to get around to getting them done, but the results were worth the effort!  It's not my favorite thing by any stretch (is it any Mom's I'd be curious?).  It's just always so much work to get them all clean and dressed and happy at the same time!  So I self admitedly procrastinated this from the time we arrived home with Lydia.  In the end, however, it went very well and I was probably the happiest I've ever been with photos from this particular studio.  We did get a photo CD, so maybe in tomorrow's post I can include some of the pictures we had taken today.

For today, I'll post a few more of my own photos as well as the video from today.

The video is of her singing in the car with a kids CD to the song Alive, Alive.  She knows several other songs quite a bit better than this one, but she certainly gives this one her best try since it has lots of words and some big ones to tackle as well, like "Hallelujah!"  Hopefully in the next couple of days we can get a good video of her two favorite songs!

The photos today are some that I took on a sunny day in our front yard after church while she was still in her dress.  I have some that I love of each Grace and Mary Emma when they were younger also in the grass.  So I decided to try and get a comparable one of Lydia.  So pretty!!  I look at her every day and wonder how we were so blessed as to be given this precious little girl to be our daughter!

And my personal favorite.....

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My long awaited Mother's Day activity

Several years ago, we made mosaic stepping stones for my mom and Jim's mom with Grace and Mary Emma's hand and/or foot prints in them.  They were a large undertaking, especially with younger children that tend to either throw fits because they have to put their hand or foot in yucky, wet, messy stuff (Grace!), or because they are young enough that when you put their hand into the wet cement they grab hold of it and make a fist!  Whatever the reason, they were a big job, and so I never repeated the project for myself to have a set.  Well the idea of someday adopting was in our hearts for a long time, so eventually I just tucked the stepping stone idea in the back of my brain with the cobwebs and said, "Someday.  Someday, I will give myself a Mother's Day gift and make stepping stones with all three girls the same year."  That splendid idea has been hiding in the cobwebs for 4 or 5 years.  I persisted in waiting year after year, liking the idea of doing all of them the same year - capturing the three different sizes of three different girls.  Until last year.  Last year just before Mother's Day I saw the mosaic stepping stone kits on sale at Michael's and I said, "Forget it.  I have NO idea if or when this adoption thing will EVER happen.  By the time we ever get this third daughter - IF we ever get this third daughter, Grace will have grown completely past the age of stamping a hand or foot into cement."  And indeed, with each year that passes, her hands and feet get a little further from that, "Aw, look how small your hand was" phase.  (Actually, her hands are bigger than mine already....)  So like I said, last year my faith waivered, I doubted our journey, I questioned our calling, and I momentarily gave up on the all-three-at-once stepping stone idea.  So I bought two kits and planned to spend my Mother's Day last year making a stone for each Grace and Mary Emma.  Well, thankfully God seems to have His hand even in the little details - even the ones we think are only important to ourselves.  So He kept me busy last year on Mother's Day - busy enough that go figure, I simply couldn't get around to doing that stepping stone project.  Maybe the next weekend, I thought.  Nope.  So busy.  So distracted.  Wouldn't you know, that project just never moved to the top of the priority list and those two kits got buried in the cobwebs in the garage just like my splendid idea.  Fast forward 6 months.  It's amazing what changes 6 months can bring!  Within 6 months we went from waivering faith and questioning our calling, through exploring the China waiting child program, doing the additional paperwork to enter the China waiting child program, struggling through hoping each month for a referral off of the new list of waiting children, struggling through turning down referrals from the new list, comparing the matching process of other agencies, asking lots of questions about different agencies, and finally seeing the face of our sweet daughter in Novemeber.  One day shortly after accepting Lydia's referral, I was in Michaels and noticed those stepping stone kits on sale again.  I honestly hadn't given them a thought, but that day in the store they brought a huge smile to my face.  I knew this would finally be the year!  So I got myself a third kit and there they sat keeping the cobwebs in the garage company just a little bit longer.  Until last Sunday on Mother's Day, when I finally dusted off the cobwebs and took the time to complete my long awaited Mommy gift...with all three of my girls.

Me and my helpers sorting through the glass pieces that we use for the mosaic

After watching both of her big sisters do their hand and foot print in the cement, Lydia was VERY ready for her turn!

"You mean, you are actually going to let me put my hand in THAT!?  And I won't even get in trouble for getting messy!?"



She thought this whole process was just plain funny and worthy of bubbly giggles!  She giggled at her sisters doing their prints, and she giggled all the way through hers!

I think she must have thought we were crazy to be doing such a strange thing.  But she didn't seem to care if she did think we were crazy - she just wanted to join in for her turn!



"These people are so funny!  They let me get messy.....on PURPOSE!"



Washing off in the bucket.  Even washing it off was entertaining!

I LOVE this picture.  It catches her standing so still, just watching and studying.  She does this a LOT with us.  I just wish I knew what she was thinking as she watches us.

The video for today is of us doing the hand and foot print with Lydia.  Turn up the sound because she has this little giggle that bubbles out of her the whole time!

The finished project....



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A video a day, the Lydia way!

As I knew I would be, I am painfully overdue on an update.  It's hard because the longer I go without blogging, the harder it is to make myself sit down and do it because I know there are so many more days to wade through and highlight!  Lydia TingTing is doing so many fun things every single day.  She is mostly happy, with her odd moments of grumpies.  She did have a couple of days in a row that she was predominantly grumpy, but even that is still pretty mild from my idea of a grumpy 3 year old.  But after a couple of off days, she is now back to her happy giggly self. 

Her language is expanding more and more all the time.  It's really a ton of fun to hear her copying us as well as coming out with new phrases on her own.  Those are the ones that make me the most excited - the ones where she considers for a moment and then recalls out of her own brain the phrase she wishes to say.  Like I posted on facebook recently, a couple of days ago she was drawing at a restaurant and she drew a tiny apple.  She said, "apple!"  which wasn't a big deal - she has known that word for a while now.  But then she drew another apple, paused, and then said, "There's another apple!"  Those are the phrases that are so fun to hear.  When she not only uses a word for an object, but the correct grammar as well to form it into a whole thought.

We had the thought recently that maybe I can post just a little bit each day for a week.  That way I'm not trying to think of everything at once and I'm not posting tons of pictures at once.  Plus, there have been several things that are just completely worth videoing and posting, so I thought a video a day for a week would be a fun way to hit some of the best things we have enjoyed with Lydia in these recent weeks and days.  The photos I'm posting today jump back a couple of weeks.....

Where's Lydia!!??



There she is!!!



Sister love!



This was the first time we pulled out scissors.  There was a delighted squeal of surprise when she first saw them, followed by enthusiastic nodding.  Then she proceeded to concentrate VERY hard on snipping a piece of yellow construction paper into tiny scraps.  Watching both her reaction and her cutting skills, I could tell she had clearly practiced scissors in China.



The question is, why would you watch something on TV in just a plain outfit when you can watch it in snazzy sunglasses and giant fake earrings?



Just too precious not to post....

 The next few pictures require a little explaining.  When Grace was born, we bought a women's long sleeve shirt and took her picture laying on it at around 2 weeks old.  We then took her picture in it a couple of times that first year, and then every year on her birthday.  We did the same thing for Mary Emma - the same shirt, several pictures during the first year, and then every year on her birthday.  They have gone from laying on it, to sitting with it wrapped around them, to standing in it with it dragging on the floor, to growing into it a little more each year.  With Lydia, we just have to start from the time when God gave her to us.  So these are some of the best ones from the shirt pictures that we took a couple of weeks ago.  The next ones we will take with her in the shirt will be in just about a month when we celebrate her 4th birthday.  My only regret is that I didn't think to take it to China.  It would've been pretty super precious to take her first shirt picture someplace really significant like the Great Wall or Forbidden City.  Oh well...hindsight is 20/20!

Monkey see, monkey do....

Corny cousins!



Sitting next to each other eating - of course eventually it turns into silly giggles!



This is my favorite though.  It looks like Lydia took Lauren's hotdog and is eating it, and Lauren is nicely asking for it back.  Actually, it was just Lydia deciding that it was time to focus on that tasty hotdog and take a break from the playful giggles in the picture above!  I thought her solution was hilarious!   A perfect example of body language filling in perfectly well for the absence of verbal language!

And now for the video.  Actually, today I'm going to do a few very short ones.  They were all taken yesterday and they are just short clips.

The first one is Lydia's reaction to pizza being delivered to our door!  I wish I would've thought to grab the camera and video her running to the door as the delivery guy was at the door!  Running, jumping and exclaiming, "PIZZAAAAA!"  This was the best we could get her to recreate the excitement - but you'll get the idea!

This next one carries a bit of Field family humor.  A favorite phrase when someone eats something spicy is to say (in a very Italian way) "Spicy Meatball!"  (pronounced more like "spicy meat-eh-ball!!")  Here was Lydia's attempt at it...we got her saying it when she decided that the pepperoni was spicy!



This last one is another funny phrase we've taught her.  It's one Mary Emma used to love when she was little too - she learned it from Donald Duck and she would go around saying it to people.  You know, the classic Donald Duck cartoons when he says, "Hi-uh, Toots!"  Lydia gets it pretty good, except for her consistent habit of adding an extra syllable to words, which in this case makes it more like Tootsie!

More tomorrow....we've got so many more cute things to catch on video!

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