The Big Chill

For the last week or so Florida has been suffering through some majorly cold weather (for Florida anyways!) It's been down in the 20's at night and only getting into the low 40's during the day. It supposed to warm up a bit this weekend (to around 60) and I'm hoping that Livi and I can get out to the park or something. Maybe the circus... although I'm not sure she's ready for that just yet.

My knee doesn't hurt at all and fortunately won't need surgery, although I do have to wear a hinged brace for three months. They will be doing xrays every few weeks to make sure the fracture doesn't depress and as long as it doesn't I should be good to go by the end of April. Right now it's mostly an inconvenience.

We did get some not so good news with regard to surgery for Alivia, this week, though. The first is okay--they are going to remove her ear tubes in March. The other is very disappointing. It appears her lower jaw is not growing as fast as the rest of her face and they are going to have to repeat the jaw surgery on her this summer. I just hope she tolerates it as well this time around. Now that she's older she's a lot more difficult to handle at times.

Otherwise, things are going well. We are looking forward to the results of the Most Photogenic Baby Contest in a couple weeks. We have two photos entered this time--one in the comical category and one in the precious category. I love them both and hope the judges like them, too.

We are also looking forward to Spring Break even though it's still a couple months away. I don't think we'll do anything other than *maybe* a trip to Disney, but it will be nice to have the time off. (Yeah, I know I just had two weeks off for the holidays... it wasn't nearly long enough!)

Speaking of Disney, Alivia is no longer just a Blue's Clues girl. She now loves to watch the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and she'll watch Sesame Street, too. Hurray! Now that she knows the Disney characters I can't wait to take her back to the Magic Kingdom. She gets so excited when she sees Mickey on the tv--just imagine her reaction to seeing him in person!

~ Jeana

Post Holiday Blues...

Normally I don't get them, but this year... Actually we had a great Christmas. Livi loved every minute of it and I hope to post some pictures shortly. It was the days after Christmas where things got a bit rough. Livi and I were riding the metro train in downtown looking at Christmas lights and had an unfortunate accident. We tried to slide over on the seat to allow other passengers to sit down, but part of my leg slid and part of it didn't. OUCH!!!! I seriously injured my left knee (tore cartilage and fractured the tibia.) I won't know until next week if it's going to require surgery, but at the moment it's looking like a minimum of 3 months in a cast... We won't be going to the zoo for a while...

~ Jeana

And the Classic Elf Dance...

Couldn't resist doing another one...

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Alivia the Christmas Elf

I played around with this a bit last year--it's really cute. This year they've added a couple new dances for your elves. Here's one of my favorites starring none other than my own dearest Alivia...

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Happy Holidays!

I realize it's been forever (well, since September anyway) since I've had any time to post and I do apologize! This has been an incredibly hectic term at work and we've also been busy with Alivia's doctor appointments, vacation travel, and, of course, Livi's school.

This week I'm wrapping up three of the four classes I had on my teaching schedule for this term. I can't believe how much work it was keeping up with the grading and the discussion boards for these classes! It's been really crazy! I'm hoping things will slow down at least a bit after the new year... Since Spring is generally my busiest time at work, we'll just have to wait and see how that works out! Ha!

Back in October we went on a wonderful cruise with my parents and some of our friends who are also families formed by adoption--the group we get together with each year in St. Louis. Alivia, Grace and Kelly all got along great, as usual, and had a wonderful time! We did a dolphin encounter that was so much fun for the girls! We moms all tried scuba diving--tried is the operative word there. Let's just say that it's not a hobby I'm going to be taking up. I did okay during the initial training session, but when it came to the deep water dive, my ears wouldn't clear and I couldn't go down past about 15 feet. I ended up injuring one of my ear drums and I never did get what I would call "comfortable" being under water like that. I'd much rather stay in the boat and drink margaritas...

Alivia is still loving school. She adores her teachers and get's excited every morning when it's time to leave. And she's got a boyfriend! She and one of the boys in her class, Brandon, are "an item". It's so funny to watch them together. They insist on sitting by each other at lunch, they play together, talk all the time... it's the cutest thing! He's in a wheelchair (cerebral palsy, I believe) and let's her climb all over him and ride with him on the back of his chair. They're just adorable together. Even the teachers comment on it all the time.

We are dealing with some behavioral issues at school, though. Livi just can't seem to resist biting. We're trying some new ideas to try to nip her nipping, but so far we aren't seeing much success. We actually have a team of about eight people working on this right now! She also likes to pull hair, but they've given the other kids hats to wear which seems to block that activity pretty well.

She also has difficulty sitting still and paying attention and the teacher has asked about having her medicated for ADHD, but we're not going to go that route. Livi's still having problems gaining weight and the drugs for ADHD kill the appetite. Not the direction we want to go for her at all! I think her attention span can be managed by behavior therapy so we're working on that right now, too. Academically, Livi is doing well, it's just the behavioral stuff that's a problem at the moment.

I got Livi's holiday photos done--and I'm delighted with how they turned out! She can photograph so beautifully! She's still so tiny that most people are shocked to find out she's almost 3 and half years old now. Of course, in photos it's hard to tell how small she is, but she's still wearing 18 month sizes in most things. She's the smallest kid in her class--and probably always will be.

I decided not to do a Santa photo this year, although Livi has been to see Santa twice. She never seems to photograph well in those rushed kind of situations. She really needs a photographer who can take his/her time with her and then we can get wonderful photos like these. I'm looking forward to the photogenic baby contest again this year for that very reason. The photographers they use really seem to know how to engage the kids and the photos we got from them last year were great!

Mom, Dad, Livi and I are planning a little jaunt up to Savannah over the holidays. We're going to go to Lady and Sons Restaurant and tour the historic district. That will be a nice little break. Otherwise we plan to take it easy and relax. I've got all my Christmas shopping done--most of it was done online--and now I just have to get everything put together and wrapped. I'm SO looking forward to Christmas this year! Livi is now starting to "get the hang of it" so to speak. She loves seeing Santa and is excited about getting presents. It's going to be so much fun!

~ Jeana

September Already?

Where did the summer go?

Alivia, contrary to all my fears, absolutely LOVES school! She hasn't cried one single day at this school, and she cried EVERY day when I took her to daycare. It's a nice change! She's also getting chattier every day and mastering new skills, too! She's even started singing along with the music in the car! (I've been trying to get her to do that for months!)

I'm busier than a postman at Christmas these days--I'm teaching three classes (with a fourth to be added in November) in addition to my regular 9-5 stuff. Plus there's all the post-storm cleanup and the storms just seem to keep coming and coming. Thankfully Hanna has stayed off shore, but Ike looks rather threatening at the moment. And I'm hoping the storms will die down by the time of our cruise in just one month.

These lovely photos were taken by my friend Justin at different times over the last few months. The one on the train is from July 4th when we went downtown to see the fireworks. The others are from a few weeks ago at the zoo. If it's nice enough this weekend I'm going to try to take Livi to the zoo again. She loves it there! The last couple days have been a little more pleasant with comfortable temps and only a little rain. Here's hoping that holds for a few more days.

Mom and I have already figured out Livi's Halloween costume for this year. She's going to be a ballerina. She has the cutest little tutu outfit. We also picked up a Princess Belle (Disney's Beauty and the Beast) gown for her, but it's a bit too big. It should do well next year, though! Of course, by then I hope to have a few other Disney costumes for her, too. Playing dress up is so much fun!

~ Jeana

First Day of School

Today was Alivia's first day of school! Granted, she's in a Pre-K3 program, but it is at the regular elementary school with kids all the way to 5th grade! She's probably the tiniest student at the school. We took the obligatory first day of school photo--Livi wasn't too excited about having her picture taken first thing in the morning... Dropping her off for the first day was a lot harder on me than on her, too. She seemed enthralled with the new sights and people. Gran and Papa picked her up after school and said she was happy to see them (translation--she was more than ready to go HOME.) We'll see how she acts when I drop her off tomorrow... I have a feeling it won't go quite as smoothly as today did.

Here's another photo from our trip to St. Louis last month. Livi was in her element playing tea party! I think purple is a pretty good color for her, too... In other news, Livi had eye surgery last week. It went pretty well results-wise, but she's been very "needy" ever since. Or maybe she's just coming in to the terrible 2s-3s. It's hard to tell.

Only 7 more weeks until our cruise... Can't wait!

~ Jeana