I am in love.

As agonizing as the wait for Camden is (and will continue to be for the quite awhile), it's moments like this afternoon when we got new pictures of our little guy that keep us going. 

How could you not fall in love with the little guy in this picture?

If you're wondering why we are not expecting to make our way to South Korea until at least next summer, allow me to briefly explain.  Our agency is currently estimating the time between the date our referral acceptance paperwork is sent to Korea and the date we board a flight bound for Seoul at up to 14 months. 

That date for us was June 14. 

14 months from June 14 is August 14, 2012. 

You would think we might be old pros at this wait thing after our previous three adoptions, but sadly that's not the case. 

Lordy, Lordy, Look Who's 2!

Today was the day Addy had been waiting for, her 2nd birthday.   What a difference a year makes.  Suffice to say that she had a tad bit sweeter disposition today than she had 365 days ago...

Her brothers were more than willing to shower their little sis with attention all day long, and she didn't mind that one bit.  She kind of likes the spotlight.

(Please forgive Parker for the UK basketball shirt below, he must have either got dressed in the dark or meant to grab the IU or Butler shirt and inadvertently picked the Kentucky blue one instead)

Sara came up huge yet again and created not only this very fine looking ice cream cake, but since our two little one's taste buds are a bit fickle at times, she also whipped together a batch of unbelievably decadent and pleasing to the eye cupcakes.  Would you believe that Lleyton chose not to eat either option?  Kid is weird.

The Addster certainly didn't mind wearing her princess party hat during this evening's festivities.

Nor did she mind opening up her presents.

Our little lady got a number of presents, but it wasn't too difficult to tell which one ranked the highest on her list.  I think the boys would vote for this being their favorite present as well, as they are hoping that she will turn to bossing her new babies around instead of bossing them around.   They can dream.

In honor of her big day, allow me to share a little known fact about our not-so-little girl...

She enjoys reading books while sitting in the refrigerator with nothing on but a diaper on. 

She really does.



ETHIOPIA CALENDAR FUNDRAISER...you can sell them too!

Need a gift for the person that has everything...or would you just like to learn about a beautiful country while enjoying some fantastic photography?

How about picking up a unique 2012 wall calendar featuring fantastic photography and plenty of interesting facts and information about one of the countries our family has come to love, Ethiopia. (The calendars measure 9.5" x 12.25")

Thanks to the success we had during our Superman was Adopted fundraiser we decided to take on another one. Each month of our 13 month calendar includes not only a snapshot taken by one of two very talented photographers (Nina from Nina Mullins Photography, and Jessie from Speckled Bird Art) while in Ethiopia, but it also has either a tidbit of info about the country or an explanation of the one of the Ethiopian holidays for that month.

Take a sneak peak…

  

If you’re anything like Sara and I, you want to make sure to embrace the heritage and culture from the countries your children were born. For us that means integrating Russian, Ethiopian, and Korean customs into our daily lives. Sometimes it can be tough to keep track of the holidays and anniversaries celebrated in the other countries. This calendar will help you not overlook or forget about those important days in Ethiopia.

Not unlike our last fundraiser, we will accumulate all of the orders and make one large order from the printer. Thus, our sale will begin today and run through November 1. That will give us ample time to accumulate orders and get the calendars printed and sent out prior to the holidays.

You can either choose to pay via the PayPal button on our site or if you would rather, you can send us a check in the mail.  If you would rather pay by check, just email me with your order and we will go from there.

If you are an adoptive family interested in fundraising (or know of one), feel free to contact us.  We are more than happy to share this fundraiser with families like ours by allowing those folks to sell these calendars and raise money for their own cause. If you’re anything like us, any dollar that you can earn through a fundraiser takes a little bit of the stress away that comes with the financial aspect of adoption.

Plus, we think these calendars are fantastic, so the more families that can enjoy them, the better!

Feel free to email me at abrotherforlleyton@yahoo.com if you're interested.

Thank you so much for you continued support. 

Matt and Sara

Thank you Martha Stewart.

Kids aren't supposed to write on walls.  That is unless one could turn said wall into a chalkboard, and thanks to Martha Stewart that is just what we did. 

Sara recently found a recipe online for making your own chalkboard paint and was instantly smitten.  So smitten, in fact, that we took on the first part or a two part chalkboard wall project this week.  The kids didn't know about it, so you can imagine their delight this morning when I pulled them into the laundry room and actually encouraged them to write on the wall...and write on the wall they did.

They had quite a time.  Lleyton was busy drawing seahorses while Parker perfected his shark scene, and after that masterpiece was complete, they erased and started over with...

Self portraits!

Parker did his own and I helped with Lleyton's.  Now I don't want to sound like I am tooting my own horn, but I am pretty sure that if banking doesn't work out I could have a future in art. 

You be the judge.

Picking up the pieces.

At first glance, this picture our boys teaming up to take on Club Penguin online is rather benign.

That is until you notice the tiny hand in the background.  That's our little princess' hand.  Prior to me snapping this photo because I thought the young fellas looked cute working on the computer together, Addy was right there with them.  She was cheering them on, eager to be a part of the action.  It was that eagerness that led our little man to kindly ask his shadow to back off. 

Well, back off she did.

While Sara and I were busy trying to put something decent on the table for dinner, Addy obviously found her way to our other computer and decided to dismantle it.  If they weren't going let her play with them, she was determined to make sure that they weren't going to play on the other computer. 

Succeed she did, but little did she know that the boys rarely play on that computer. 

If you need me I will be busy trying to locate any of the keys that she may have chucked across the room after I realized what she was doing and tried to corral her.

New week...New casts

The little guy was back in the therapist's office with bells on today.  We decided to switch it up this week and go with two different colors casts, and  I think he looks smashing.

It never fails...his biggest fan does everything that he does.  He can run, but he can't hide from his little shadow.

How much can you fit in a 1 gallon bag?

The wait for Camden has been/will be a difficult one.  Knowing our little guy is in Seoul and we can't go get him for quite awhile is really tough.  One thing we are able to do during our wait is send our littlest man care packages.  I feel bad that I didn't capture an image of the first package we sent over, but I didn't let that happen twice.  Above is a picture of everything that Sara was able to systematically place into our allotted one gallon plastic bag that is now on its way to Minnesota en route to South Korea.

I hope he enjoys his new clothes and toys, but I am most excited about him getting his photo album.

Here's hoping that it reaches him happy and healthy.

TRANSFORMER update

Our little man is hanging in there.  Most of time he doesn't seem to mind the casts too much, but as of late he has been really wanting them off.  I just walked downstairs from his room after listening to him lobby for me to take them off right now.  I wish I could.

It's tough to see him struggle.

He did spend some time outside this afternoon demonstrating that although his foot speed isn't quite where it is sans casts, his hand/eye coordination hasn't suffered since getting his moon boots. 

This is one of the two faces we see when he is complaining about wanting the casts off.  This is actually the better of the two, as the other one involves a similarly pathetic looking face but it is also accompanied by plenty of free flowing tears.

The good news for Lleyton is that we do get to take his casts off on Monday night and get him in the shower, but he will only be without his very fashionable leg decorations for about 16 hours, as it's back to the therapist's office on Tuesday afternoon.

Lenny Kravitz sighting

Our little TRANSFORMER.

Our little guy was a champ today at his appointment.  I am not sure the therapists had ever had such an easy patient. 

He just laid there and honed his Angry Bird skills during the hour or so that it took for his legs to be transformed from tiny sticks to dangerous weapons that will undoubtedly help him catch bad guys.

The happiest little guy ever after just getting casts on each leg...

Catch 'em while you can.

Take your last look at our little man's lower legs for awhile. 

Tomorrow afternoon Lleyton will be visiting his physical therapist at the Children's Hospital to get casts on each of his legs.  Thanks to his sensory issues that have caused him to walk solely on this toes he will be starting a month long friendship with serial casting.  The casts will be changed once per week, increasing his range of motion with each new cast.  Following that month, you will see our guy wearing leg braces for up to a year.  Should be interesting.  We have been trying to convince him that casts are cool, but as of late he isn't buying it. 

With a difficult month ahead of him we set out today to do whatever he wanted.  Aside from the brief pit stop at buybuy Baby I think we succeeded.  This morning we were up and at 'em early as usual.  Knowing that our little man had lost some weight during his illness over the last week we were quick to jump in the van and hit up Dunkin Donuts.  Later in the morning we took off to do some bouncing.  We hadn't been to this particular bounce house, but it didn't disappoint.  The kids has a great time.

This this afternoon he decided he wanted to play some indoor golf.  His wish was our command.

The next pictures of our little guy you will see will be with a Spiderman decoration below each knee...hopefully he's smiling.

Cousins, bowling, and a future nightmare.

Just prior to our little man coming down sick (... and thanks to all who have inquired about him, he is doing much better now) we were in Indianapolis to celebrate the birthday of two of his best friends, cousins Nick and Drew. 

As you can probably tell from the pictures, I call him "little man" for a reason.  His cousins, who beat him to the age of 5 by a mere couple of months, tower over our slightly built fella.

The twins' party was at a cool venue in Carmel that offered plenty for the little partiers to do to keep them occupied.  One of the events was bowling.  Here is Lleyton demonstrating to his sister/biggest fan how one should not bowl.  Sorry to Snapperz management, our little guy gets carried away sometimes...this being one of those times.  We are working with him on rolling the bowling ball, rather than attempting to shot put it all the way down the lane.

One great thing about having little ones with strong imaginations is that when you go to an arcade you don't have to spend any money.  They just jump on the games and pretend they are playing.  Hopefully this picture is them just pretending to want to ride a motorcycle together.  I haven't yet had a nightmare about this picture, but I know it's coming.  These two are going to be out of control when they get older.  What am I talking about...they are borderline out of control right now.

Maybe out of control.

Definitely ridiculously cute.