Huh...

This weekend I had my first interesting question about Eden....

Nonetheless, from a child but still a hard one to swallow.

Them: Where did you buy her from?

Me: We didn't buy her.

Them: Where's she from?

Me: (insert our town name)

Them: But, where's she really from, where did you get her?

Me: Ethiopia in Africa, a long ways across the ocean.

Them: Oh yeah.

End of story.

It still is a hard one to hear. I know it's just from a child and thank goodness I didn't hear an adult ask me that, or a food fight would have ensued. But where do people pick up these notions that if a child is adopted we bought them? It's ridiculous! And it's truly sad that children are picking up on this at their age.

We're starting to come to the realization that if we ever in fact decided to have a biological child, we would also be getting that...."see, you adopted one and then you had your own" can of worms. Honestly, at this time in our lives, I can't imagine not pursuing more adoptions and bringing our family into the lives of other children around the world (ok, Africa). I think we let the biological child ship sail away long ago. We've dealt with all of that and I have zero desire to do it again.

I don't even view Eden as adopted. She's our daughter. Period. I even have a friend that thinks, Eden even looks like me (too funny). And another friend says, yeah, she even talks as much and acts like you too. Well of course she does! She's our child :) Mannerisms are learned not inherited, I believe for the most part anyway. We already know she's stubborn and has a temper like her mother. Her dad wishes she'd sleep in more like him (even though 8:30 AM this morning I thought was pretty darn good for sleeping in!)...

(Happy 10th B-Day to my neice, "B" today!!)

1/4 of a Year

Yesterday marked 1/4 of a year together as a forever family. 3 months ago was our gotcha day. Unbelieveable. Even Kristin's mom said to me, "can you even imagine Eden not being in your life". Nope, unimaginable. We have our gotcha day pictures framed in our living room, and when I look at them, I can't believe how little and tiny she was just 3 months ago. She just looks so unsure of us and nervous. Now, we have such a delightful little girl. Who verges on almost/most of the time has a meltdown when her mother leaves the room these days....

And of course to celebrate our 3 months together...all bundled up beside me is the envelope to be sent off to Case Processing Centre for Eden's Canadian Citizenship. I finally have everything done and ready to go. We had her pictures taken yesterday (FYI: Costco does them), and have photocopies of every piece of her documentation. I'm kind of excited for her to get her citizenship and officially be a Canadian. I have no idea how long it'll take to get her citizenship, but once that's back, the next stop is a Canadian Passport!

Coils

My latest attempt at doing Eden's hair....let's call them coil ponytails. I think I should get a pat on the back for this one, and I bet it only took me like 15 minutes (that's quite a record time for me...)! Soon, my child will have to go to popcorn twists anonymous...it's the only way I can get her to sit to do her hair. Does anyone else have easy hair ideas for hair illiterate mothers? I guess I could do more ponytails with more coils....

And here's my baby trying to be a big girl. If we stand Eden up on her walker, she'll hold on and even take a few steps before wiping out. These days she screams most of the time until you stand her up and walk with her. And who would've thought she could pull the tips off the doorstoppers and put them in her mouth, all these tiny little things I never thought about before have suddenly become problems in our house!

Evil Tooth.....

I am feeling the wrath and fury of tooth #3. Tooth #3 is TROUBLE. Eden has her bottom two teeth now and her one top tooth is trying to make an appearance. Obviously, it's trying to make "THE APPERANCE OF A LIFETIME" because it's reeking havoc on the babe. It truly is an evil tooth. Perhaps, Dr. Evil himself would only concoct such a evil, delusional tooth plan.

I have cranky baby syndrome paired with I don't sleep anymore, or nap anymore because really who needs sleep anyway disease. My poor baby. I really hope this tooth comes through soon and we can get back to our previously happy existence together.

On the other hand, we started a real, official crawl today. Before we had the slithery, snake crawl going on and today she got up on those knees and moved, boogied, I say. Up went the baby gate because she had crawled into our entrance and started to suck the soles of our shoes. Tomorrow, is baby proofing day. I guess we have to put away stuff on our end tables, tv cabinet, etc.... No more nice things are allowed in our house until she really understands the meaning of "no", "idalem", "imbe" instead of just me saying it and her proceeding to belly laugh at me. And we have a ride on/walker thingy and by George! She's trying to pull herself up on that. And when we have her standing hanging on to it, I can let go and she stands and even took a few steps pushing it.

How come we want our babies to grow and develop and we cheer them on when they can roll, crawl, stand, walk etc??? And then we're like, "wait a minute"....it was much better when you just sat there and didn't make a mess out of everything.

In other news......we bought a camper today. Crazy, I know. Let's buy a camper when we're on parental leave. Not the smartest idea we've ever had, but of course, the deals only come when you have no money, ha, ha. Hey, whatever, if we didn't have loans in life, we wouldn't have homes, cars or any education! So we get it this week. It's new to us... a 1996 30ft 5th wheel camper with a slide out. Horray! I love it. It'll be so fun to have Eden grow up in a camping environment.

10 Months Old!

Eden's hit the double digits today. She's officially 10 months old today! 10 months has brought us to the snake crawl (slow and creepy like, but eventually we get to what we want to put in our mouth), feeding herself by herself with most of it landing in the highchair, on her shirt or the floor, sleeping all night long most of the time, starting to pull herself up on things (kind of, before she falls back on her butt), eating grass, sand and anything that remotely resembles food (I'm still waiting for her to get to Ruban's dish to taste cat food). I love that she gives me kisses anytime I ask for them, I love that whenever I say Ruban's name (the cat) she looks to see where he is, I love that whenever I say "mamamama" to try to get her to say it, she laughs and says "dadadadadada". I cannot imagine my life without this sweet baby girl in it, however our rep matched our family to Eden, how she knew how perfect she was for our family, I will never know. But I am so forever grateful. She is my daughter forever and always.

We went up the last few days to our family cabin at the lake. Ricki and Yonas came out and visited us for Canada Day. It was cool that the kids got to spend their first Canada Day together. We went walking, took them to the beach and then they went to bed so their mommies could have a visit by the campfire. It was hilarious because Eden wants to attack Yonas the minute she saw him. She just grabs him by the shirt, yanks his face close and goes for the open mouth kiss. A forward gal she is! Yonas is a little too fast for Eden's movements, so she would get mad everytime he would bum scoot by her and she wasn't quick enough to grab him for a smooch.

Crawling!

It all began yesterday.

She moved from point A to point B. Without rolling over. With using her little chubby arms and legs to push her. So, I think I would officially say, "my baby now crawls"! Clap, clap! Now its time to put up the pictures and breakables, lock up the tv cabinet that houses the vcr and dvd player. I now can say my floor will be cleaned on a regular basis because Eden will pick up every single piece of cat hair and lint and crumb and put it in her mouth or it will static cling to her clothes. CSI: Detective Eden. She's moving on, to the crawling stage.

It just hit us the other day too when I was getting her dressed and trying to put her hair in 2 pigtails (oh, so cute) and Kris and I both said that she's losing her baby look to her and looking more and more like a little girl. It's so scary to see them change that fast before your eyes. My baby is not so baby like anymore. Sniff, sniff. The 6-12 month clothing is getting stashed away fast, here we come double digit clothes. That in itself is depressing. I tried to put a little pair of plaid shorts on Eden that she wore in Ethiopia. I couldn't even pull them up over those cute, chubby little legs. She's got thighs like her mother, LOL!

Today was our beach day! Eden's cousins came out to visit from Alberta and so we decided to head to the beach. But mommy didn't pack a bathing suit for her, so off came the clothes and she sat just in her diaper. She ate a mouth full of sand, had a stick part-way in her mouth when I caught her and removed it, and was inches from a disgusting old cigarette butt landing in between those sweet lips. How are these babies so quick?!!! She loved, loved, loved the water. She kept leaning in further and further trying to get more into the water. James Bond Brave. Splishing and splashing with her hands. We finally pulled her out because her legs were starting to look a little chilly. I don't think she cared though, my water baby! I bought one of those rings they sit in and you can take them out deeper into the lake. We'll try it out later this week.

First Time Away

I managed to survive.

I left my baby.

I had a wind up staff party for our school and we thought since we were so close to home, we could try to manage leaving Eden at our house with her Oma. I did it. And I only phoned home twice in 5 hours! (pat on the back for me there!)

And she's in the same shape we left her! On the second phone call when perhaps she should be in bed (cough, cough, Oma)....she was eating popcorn twists while Oma braided her hair. I think this was much harder on mommy than Eden. It felt so weird to leave her. I kept thinking, where's Eden? What's she doing now?

She was sure excited to see me this morning, though! And Oma said that she was kind of like, where's my mom when she woke up from her nap yesterday. (yay)

Ball, Father's Day & Yes, A Hair-Do!

Another week has whizzed by us. This week Eden has really started showing us how strong she is. I swear she is going to be the big bully at the playground! She is trying desperately to pull herself up onto everything. She makes it to her knees or manages to get 1 leg up before she ploops down again. And the poor toys. They get flinged around and tossed like they're little pieces of tissue (well, not quite, because she usually eats tissue if she finds it). She LOVED the pool that we have set up on our deck. She was splishing and splashing and even rolled and went on her belly. It was so cute, see for yourself....

Yesterday we played in a ball tournament. The extended Turgeon Family had put a slowpitch team in one of our towns nearby. So, Eden was one of the hits at the ball diamonds. I had plenty of babysitters during our 3 games!! She met up with her cousin, Ebyn, and they traded their toys back and forth and even got a taste of mom's fudgesicle. Can you say BIG HIT?!

Today is Kristin's first Father's Day! I must admit, even though, my dear hubby, you're not the best diaper changer or feeder in the world, you can make your daughter smile anytime of the day! It has rained here all day, so we've had a lovely sleepy day and Eden even graced us with a wonderful 1.5 hour nap this morning and 2 hour snooze this afternoon and as we speak is in her bed for the night. We're up to over 2 weeks of Eden sleeping completely through the night. She usually goes down at about 8-8:30ish and is up about 7-7:30ish. It is excellent!

And since we had a rainy day, it was time for me to try to attempt a hair do with Eden. Up to this point, we've done the headband, barrettes and a few piggy tails in her hair. And then I read Dianne's blog.......and get depressed, LOL!! Hana always has the best hair-do's, so I thought, OH BOY, I HAVE SOME HAIR MAGIC TO WORK! Alright, it for sure needs improvement, and the picture isn't that great, but I did manage to get 4 ponytails in with braids. After bribing Eden with popcorn twists in her highchair. Hmmmm, that might be the "special treat" she gets when we do her hair. She actually sat still for that.....and an episode of Sex and the City. Who would've thought popcorn twists and Sex and the City would be the ticket to making our 9 month old sit through braids!