the many words of Iona

Iona has a ton of words now, and I just wanted to document what she can say at 15.5 months old. I may be adding to this as I think of more.

mama
dada
all done (signs and says)
more (signs)
please (signs)
up
open
Aidan (sounds like ada)
yuck (sounds like uck)
shakes her head yes and no
yes
no
cup
poop
night-night
bear
ducky
cracker
hot dog (this is what she calls most foods)
off
shoes
socks
eyes
ears
nose
mouth
hair
be-bo (belly button)
wet
hug
muah (kiss)
book
elmo
ball
bath
hi
bye
have that?

readoption day

With our lawyer.

Our family.

With the judge.


On Monday we were able to finally readopt Iona! She came to the US as a resident alien though she was legally our daughter. The readoption process allowed us to legally change her name and made her a US citizen. We'll get an IL birth certificate with our names and her new name on it.

weapons

I loved this post.

Aidan is a total boy. His dress up bin is half-full of nothing but weapons--discards from friends' collections, clearance Halloween costume parts, an old jump rope, and even weapons made out of paper towel and wrapping paper rolls and just rolled up construction paper taped together. He loves to go in the basement and fight with swords any time we will do it with him. He's even gotten his sister in on the action--she can wield a sword, at 15 months old, with the best of them. She just laughs and laughs! Aidan loves to take his swords outside and run around the yard fighting imaginary enemies. We don't let him play with guns, although he did acquire a small water gun from somewhere.

Sometimes his obsession with Ninja Turtles is irritating--instead of drawing a picture about the Sunday School lesson at church he wants to draw a turtle and his matching weapon. He even has notebooks full of them. But, as one of the SS teachers always reminds me, this is who God made him to be.

I pray that he will be a man who fights for honor justice and truth and will know how to wield the Word of God so that he falls more in love with Jesus each day. And I pray God will give him unique eyes to see the spiritual warfare happening around him and fight through prayer, surrendered to Jesus.

And I hope to even teach him a little about the artists the Ninja Turtles were named after. :)

pictures

These were taken on Aidan's first day of school.

Me and Iona with Kristen Lunceford and Selah in the Chicago suburbs.


My mouth waters just looking at this plate. This was our Ethiopian meal in Evanston on Sunday.

Danielle Black and Selah, me and Iona, and Karen Bowman and Natalie. I love how the moms look excited and the kids couldn't care less.

first week

We've completed our first week of homeschooling. Whew!

We fell "behind" in the middle of the week due to a last-minute field trip to Sugar Grove Nature Center, but by the end of Friday we were almost completely "caught up." Not that it really matters, especially this early in the year. Some of my highlights this week were seeing Aidan "get it" with writing some of his numbers and watching his excitement when we did a few science experiments.

Iona gained 3 lbs and 2 inches in the last 3 months. And the doc confirmed she's getting her molars. That explains a lot from this week. But she was a real trooper with the homeschooling goings-on around here...I even got her to sit at the table and eat a snack and play with some small toys for quite a while when we did art yesterday. We do a lot of the school time when she is sleeping, but she enjoyed watching the art process.

Yesterday we watched Randy and Amy's daughter Kiri for the morning as we thought Amy might be having her baby, but alas, no go. It was really a good situation all around, but we just want to meet the new little princess. Even with our visitor for the morning, we got SO much school done yesterday and had a ton of fun with it.

This afternoon we're going up to Chicago for a whirlwind trip. Tonight we're having Chicago pizza with the Luncefords. Tomorrow for lunch we will be in Racine, WI for a baby shower for my second cousin, also known as a big family reunion on my mom's side where everyone will get to meet Iona. Then for dinner we'll be back in the suburbs for an Ethiopian dinner with the Bowmans and Blacks. Then back home that night. We're excited to see our friends again. Today is also our 11-year anniversary, and while this will be a fun family trip to celebrate, I think we'll do a date night by ourselves sometime soon. :)

I'll try to post pictures next time...

exercise

So I'm back at it again. Early this year I started running and after two months I ran my first (and only) 5K. I came in second to last, but I finished. I had big plans to run a half-marathon by this time this year, but after the 5K I stopped. All forms of exercise. Done.

This summer I've dabbled a bit with walking and running, and thanks to my friend KP, I decided this week to start the Couch to 5K program. Don't know if I'll do another 5K this year, but at least it breaks down the running into manageable chunks.

So Saturday night I went for a 30-minute walk. Sunday night (it was a HOT one!) I did my first couch to 5K walk/run for 30 minutes. Then tonight I walked with a friend for an hour. The plan is to try to get out every night for a short time. If I set certain days to go work out, I always find an excuse. I hope this way I will actually do it most of the time.

My legs are SORE tonight. But it's really nice to get out of the house without kids...I usually listen to a talk or music on my iPod. It's a nice break. Hopefully I'll finally be able to lose the last of my Aidan baby weight.

Just watch, I'll do all of this and then we'll get pregnant again...

That would be nice!

first day of school--kindergarten

Today we started homeschooling Aidan. It went remarkably well! I think I learned a lot as well. I felt like we rushed through this morning...I think I was really concerned with how to fit everything in and how long each subject would take. All and all, we were done in 1.5 hours, but we split that up a bit. I hope I will be a little more relaxed tomorrow! But we both had fun, and I even got to play with his playmobil castle with him a bit before Iona woke up. I'll post photos sometime soon...

I was disciplining ALL day though. I think both kids had time outs before 9 am. Iona melted down all day, though. She even took 2 naps. I finally determined she must be teething something awful...she was drooling MUCH more than usual and was very clingy and crabby. We go for her 15-month appointment this week, so I wonder if we'll discover more teeth by then, or maybe the beginnings of molars...

referralversary and cloth diapers

One year ago today we got "the call." We had waited 9 months and 5 days for our referral. It was such a happy day here! Iona was almost 3 months old in these photos.

Iona's getting so big!! Almost 15 months old now.

She is outgrowing some of her cloth diapers (just the ones that are sized S-M-L; most of them are one-size), so today I took the kids to my favorite local diaper store to make a purchase. Fun!

We got two more one-size diapers and three size large diapers. One for nighttime and four for day. And we got a really fun wet-and-dry bag in pink swirl. Now I don't have to carry the big diaper bag everywhere! And maybe I can go more than two days between washes...we'll see.

In Iona's diaper wardrobe are: Swaddlebees, Blueberry (including a couple minkys), Knicker Nappies, and Tiny Tush. Tee Hee!

The Big Curriculum Clean-Out

I am taking part in a slew of giveaways through a homeschool blog I read. From Aug 2-Aug 15, many homeschool moms will be giving away gently used homeschool resources. What a great deal for newbie homeschool moms like myself!!

Please click here for more information. You can enter her giveaways and then see who is linked in the comments section for even more from other readers.

Let me know if you win anything!! I'll let you know if I win too. And maybe I'll find more fun homeschool blogs to read!