It's a new year!

Hellllllooo!

Okay, where should we start...Halloween, Christmas? Sorry it has been so long guys! Since the last time we posted Lance has been an adorable skunk for Halloween (the cutest skunk I have ever seen.) We visited a few homes, but kept it pretty simple. We had Thanksgiving here in town at our cousin's home and then Oma and Opa were able to visit. Then the long awaited first Christmas. Lance has enjoyed the carols and lights everywhere. Other than that, he never really payed much attention. He wasn't even too excited about opening presents. This year he was just a little confused about what all the commotion was about. It was still fun having him there to share it with, though. Next year it will be great to see his excitement about the holidays and traditions. It should only get better. :o) We have been extremely blessed this year to be able to bring him home and share all of our lives with him. He has grown so much over the last 7 months.

Lance is now saying about 15 words consistently (even if no one but his family can understand them. hee hee) He can say: up, down, out, off, mama, dada, hi, bye, night night, help, more, banana, cracker, go, uh oh, quack, woof woof, please and maybe more that I can not think of right now. He is now wearing size 2T clothes and 7-8 shoe size!!!! What a growth curve! Our son is one amazing little boy. He is also quite comical. He keeps us laughing all the time. He is into everything except toys. Ha! Today he decided to climb to the top of the couch and reach as far as he could to grap the pendulum from the clock. Whew! You have to be ready all the time. We love that he is being a typical boy, though.

Some things Lance has overcome are being extremely scared of loud noises such as diesel trucks and motorcycles...he now ignores them or looks at us to make sure it is okay, spitting food out of his mouth...now he will give us what he does not want, he listens more each day, can bite crisp foods...now bites into an apple without it being cut, fear of being in crowds or around people he does not know...will run to poeple with open arms. Hmmm, so many other things that I can not put into words at this time. He is amazing. God is amazing for blessing him so much!

Happy New Years! It will be fun to see what this year holds!



Love you all,

John Michael, Karen, and Lance (Mattie and Rookie Woof! Woof!)

Ever changing

Wow, so much has changed since the last time I was on here. I can not believe we have already been home for over 4 months, but I can't believe we have only had Lance that long, either. He makes everything so easy for us! We have had our napping, eating, and bed time routine down for some time now and that helps tremendously. He continues to grow like a weed and change every time we turn around. He is going through many phases in 'super speed.'
Lance has gone through 2.5 sizes of shoes and up two sizes in clothes. Not to mention we love to run everywhere even if it isn't very smooth. hee hee! Lance continues to be a dare devil and is pretty rambunctious. In fact we are now having to work on sitting for longer periods of time and increasing our attention span. ha! As with everything, he is improving quickly.
Our favorite toy right now, as JM said, is the slide.
Favorite food: cottage cheese
Words he can sign: Please, help, eat, drink, sleep, milk, bath, bye bye, all done, down, more
Words we try to say: Bite, mom, da da, up, banana, and some times cookie
He can imitate parts of a lot of words now, but not necessarily know when to use them.
And...if we can't say or sign he will get his point across by showing you what he wants! It usually doesn't take a lot of guessing. He is a clever little guy.
Okay, sorry about all the bragging. I am pretty proud of our little Lance. His therapists probably wish they didn't work with me because I want to talk about him all the time. Ha!

If any of you are considering adoption...what everyone says is true...I don't think I could love him any more than I already do if he was our biological child.

I have to give a lot of credit to John Michael for being a wonderful and supportive husband and dad. He is great with Lance and me. Even more so I need to thank God for blessing us with such an awesome gift. Being a parent definitely has its good and not so good times and more guilt than anyone will probably admit, but above all it is fabulous!

Alright, I am responsible for telling you guys about the first half of the Texas trip. We were able to meet both of my sisters, our five nieces, our family's first exchange student, Cheryl and her family in Texas at my parents. It was crazy having 7 children 4 years and under in one house but fun, too. I wish I could put tons of pictures of how cute they all are, but I can't decide which ones to even start with. Needless to say, it was very nice spending time with everyone. I only wish we could have more time to do things like that. I am posting some of the pictures Cheryl took below. Enjoy...

HEEEY! Peek-a-boo!

(sorry had problems downloading to correct for red eye)
He was having a ton of fun crawling away quickly for others to chase him

He looks so big in the other pictures (which he has grown a lot) but this puts it back into perspective. This is Lance with 4 of his five female cousins and Cheryl's precious little girl in the background. The fifth was only 2 months at the time and not able to get in this picture unfortunately. Imagine this, we actually tried to have pictures taken of all 7 children together. HA! This is actually pretty good for how chaotic the setting was.

Back By Popular Demand

It's about time right?! Well, we really don't have any excuses for not updating our blog. We do however, react when people start getting on to us for not updating. You let us know and we'll emphasize getting something on the blog. Without further ado......

Back in late July we visited Aunt Susan and Uncle Larry's in Tennessee. Lance got to enjoy some time with cousins Julia and Amber and we all got to see the newest addition, Charlotte. Thanks guys for letting us stay and hooking us up with the Cracker Barrel!
Good ole' summer fun with the cool water ball. As usual, Lance cannot get enough.
Amber and Julia have a really cool swingset! We definitely need to get Lance one.

Here I gave Lance a mowhawk and put his comb in his back pocket like a greaser. Amber Kate took special interest in this and continually took the comb in and out.

These are shots from the second half of our recent Texas trip spent with Pa, Nana, Aunt Chrystal, Uncle Chris (not Unc), and the crazy cousins Clay, Colt, and Cadge. He also got to meet most of my extended family for the first time!! It was a ton of fun. It was really great to get Lance around the boys especially for such a long time(4 1/2 days). I think he learned a lot about just being a carefree boy, just one of the guys.

I'll try to get Karen to post with pics and commentary about the first half in Georgetown with all the Lance cousins plus Cheryl's cutie Christie(spelling?).

I had to show this shot of Cadge. Moma said it was time to go so as you can clearly see he has everything he needs to go back home. Hilarious.
Lance and Cadge just goofing around in the pecan tree. I remember Colton being very fond of that tree when he was their age. They are totally fearless.
And then a nice shot for all the mom's to gasp at. He was laughing the whole time. And I have mad kid catching and throwing skills so we were safe.
I took my first opportunity to introduce Lance (Class of 2022)to his future choice of college, TEXAS A&M!!!! This is in front of the MSC with the nice Nova buses in the background (Daddy's old wheels!) Be careful Lance! Don't step on the grass or some buzz-cut will give you the 3rd degree! On a sidenote: during my friend Matt's wedding festivities, Lance was able to meet 2 other future Fightin' Texas Aggies. Lance would like to send a shoutout to his boy Logan and a wink to his girl Lauren not only fellow Ags but, also fellow card carrying members of the KAPS(Kids against parents sleeping). Holla.

Tried to get a cool shot of the boys...not happening. It was hot and I had them staring into the sunset. Not smart.
Colt came over with one of the 12th Man jerseys I had given either hime or Clay so I I had to get Lance in his new 12th Man jersey for a shot.
Cadge saying good bye...in a very aggressive, loving way. He is a mess.
Fun on the slide! The slide has been getting tons of play the last couple of days. Kudos to the slide givers! I thought this was a cool mid-slide shot.
Once again Lance and water. Its like peanut butter and jelly...a great combination. We had a big bowl we filled up and tried to get him to fish things out with a colander. He just wanted to splash and dump. We went with that. As he does in the bath tub, he submerged his face and would come up real quick like it was cold. Good times.

So there's some updates. Oh yeah, he has started occupational and speech therapy and is continuing to develop in all areas constantly. We are also getting him to other health professionals for his other needs. Like I said I'll try to get Karen to post about our time in Georgetown and her thoughts. See you guys next time...hopefully sooner than later.

We couldn't be happier

Heelllo!

(By the way, it is not Christmas, don't be confused!)

Well, it is high time for a big update on Lance. He continues to amaze John Michael and I each day with how much he is learning and developing. I happened to look back at some of the pictures I had of Lance my first trip to Ukraine and it is unbelievable. He now seems like a different child than the one in the pictures. Probably because I know a little more about the true Lance and how he looks at the world.

Anyway, I have to brag on my little guy for a bit. He is now signing "more, please, eat, drink, bye, all done, and baby" and saying "Bi Bi Bi" for bite. At some points, he will combine 2 or 3 signs to communicate effectively. For example: more eat please. He is trying to climb up on his high chair, can climb into his crib (when the side is lowered) and into the tub. Lance will eat most foods now if he likes the taste, but not as much of a concern for sensory issues. He can stack 5 blocks pretty consistently, too....just a reminder, he has only been home for 2 months as of tomorrow. I am proud of our little Lance.

Our lives have been completely blessed by having Lance here. He is now a daddy's boy big time so on the weekends and evenings I try to steal as much time I can to hang out with him.

Here is a comparison of Lance from March 06, April 07 to now July 07

Don't worry, Mattie got close, but never actually was able to share the beater with Lance.

Lance is(has been) 3 years old!!!

Well, we have definitely fallen behind once again on the blog posting. Sorry to those that keep reminding us of that. So without further delay here are some recent pics and commentary.

We've got an addition for the "Lance Don't Like'em" List. He was a little curious when they were far off, but terrified when they are going off in front of the neighbor's house. If you don't know about NW Arkansas and fireworks, it is common place to set them off several days before and after Jan.1 and July 4th inside the city limits. A little different than what we were used to!

If you know about our tornado drills then you know what's going on here. BTW, he hasn't climbed in and out like that since that day.
Lance and momma(rockin' the A's lid) at his birthday party. This day was pretty rough for Lance. He did have some fun at times, but we think it was just a little too much stimulation.
First attempt at the "gift opening" did not go well. This is later inside and a little more relaxed. He got a Fisher Price Little People Noah's Ark. He is obviously not the only one interested. Leks and Myrah were stoked as well.
We didn't get to the birthday cake on the 6th so that Monday the 8th we presented his first birthday cake to him. It is well docmented on video however, the quality and length of the video made the file too big to host on the blog....for free anyway. It didn't take much coaxing and he tore into it. Karen made the cake and did an excellent job. It was still very moist 3 days after.
Cake demolished. It didn't all go into his tummy but, the parts you don't see here were at one time in his hands. Baby Bjorn bib was a lifesaver.Karen caught him just wildin' out making some funny faces. These are also unprovoked. I guess the weirdness makes him normal, eh? Gotta love the hand gesture.

And another one. He has started to do this face a little more often. Everyday is at least a little different. New sounds and quirks. He was evaluated yesterday on his speech. Thanks Cindy! With the eval. and some pointers from Aunt Judy we are starting to do a few more activities focused on his speech. We might regret this later, but I guess we should probably teach him to talk. Ha.

Tornado Drill

This is real time posting here. I'm posting this within 6 hours of this actual event. It is unscripted, unrehearsed, and absolutely occurred under natural circumstances. Its hilarious.