Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to work I go.....

The party's over...yes, the time has come for me to go back to work! I've been back almost a full week now and things aren't going too badly. Ursula has transitioned well, which is more than I can say for myself :) I was really starting to enjoy the stay at home mom thing. I do have to say though, being able to go to the bathroom whenever I want is actually a nice perk. The absolute highlight of my day is the reaction I get when I walk in the door to pick Ursi up after work. She gets sooo excited and today she actually threw herself on the floor with excitement and just rolled over and over....so awesome to receive a welcome like that! So, other than being away from my little girl for hours a day, things are as good as they can be. Steve is enjoying his "Daddy time" on Saturdays and he is in charge of bedtime every night, so they have plenty of bonding time.
I haven't taken a lot of new pictures lately, but I will post one that we took this weekend...it is of Steve, his mom, his grandmother and Ursi to show 4 generations in their family. Gram is the only great-grandmother that Ursi has and his parents are her only grandparents (technically, no offense Nana and Pappy!) so it's pretty special to us that she is able to get to know her Great Gammie!
So, there are many new things going on in Ursi's world....let's see, she can now do the signs for eat, more, birdie, all done/finished, sleepy/tired, and juice/drink. She is still only saying a few things clearly. Kitty and uh-oh are easily understood, and she is working on thank you, doggie and some other random words. She can point to her eyes, nose, mouth, ears, legs and feet when asked and also to many things around the house. She says "bock, bock", when asked what a chicken says, and we're trying to get her to do the sounds for the doggies and kitties too. If you ask her if she is one, she holds one finger high in the air, she's so proud. She's also starting to know when people ask her questions...if you say "Are you cute?", she nods her head up and down...it's priceless! I wonder if there will ever be a day that she doesn't do something that amazes me....

Four generations...

Our fun filled weekend...

This weekend we had a great time...we had something planned every day, from Friday evening to Monday night. We met some friends for dinner on Friday and on Saturday, we went to Lake Tobias. Other than the fact that it quite possibly was the hottest day of the year here in Harrisburg, we had a great time! We loved the safari tour, which was almost completely in the sun on a bus with the top cut off. We saw some really cool animals, all of which were able to come up to the bus to be hand fed. We did not buy any food to feed them, since we wanted to keep an eye on Ursula and take pictures too, but the people around us had food for them, so we enjoyed the animals at close range. We did a small walking tour of the exhibits and hit the petting zoo before calling it a day and retreating to our air conditioned car...whew!
Sunday, we had Ursula's pictures taken and later in the day she got to meet her Great Gammie who arrived from Pittsburgh. They loved playing together and shared some silly time before we went home to bed. We got up early on Monday to head an hour and a half to our first real playdate with friends we met on our adoption journey. We stayed almost the entire day and had fun playing in the pool, with the slip and slide, on the swingset, and with the many toys they had that were new to us. It was a long, but really fun day and we hope to get together again soon! We send a great big thanks to our new friends Nathan and Rylie and their parents for the hospitality and an overall great day!
Now we are just enjoying our last few days before I go back to work on Friday.
Enjoy the pictures!

My 1st headband...Did we have to come on the hottest day of the year?
Wow, look at that thing...Oooooh, here comes a Zedonk...No, Mommy, don't feed me to the goat....Another friend I met at the petting zoo....Here are my new friends...aren't we cute????Here we are about ready to fall asleep on the swing....Saying goodbye....

Seven weeks home!!!!

Well, today marks the seven week point of our arrival home with Ursula and I have to say, we have a great kid! She is so much fun to have around and we get compliments from people wherever we go on a daily (sometimes hourly) basis :) People stop us at random to comment on how beautiful she is, how well behaved, happy, content, you name it, the list goes on and on. People are surprised at how well adjusted she is and how much she understands us for only being home a short time. I, myself, am pretty amazed at what she comprehends. I'll ask her to do something not really expecting her to do it, and out of the blue, she does! It's funny, because I was reading the "What To Expect" book for toddlers and they said that now is the time to work on language comprehension and to "remember, your child has only had 1 year of English to this point, so don't get discouraged if they don't understand you right away". Funny, my daughter has had about 2 months of English and understands plenty :)
So, we've been working pretty hard on getting her to say more things, so far, we think she is starting to say doggy and/or Sadie...kinda sounds the same. There have also been random moments where she says something that sounds EXACTLY like a word or phrase or song we used earlier, and Steve and I will look at each other like, did we just hear that???? I at least feel better when he hears it too, so I don't look completely crazy all by myself!
She is taking more of an interest in her surroundings, really noticing trees and birds (she loves birds) and other fascinating things. We are using sign language for common words that we use often in the hopes that she'll be able to communicate with us and not get to the point of grunting, whining or pointing and us playing the "is this what you want?" game. So far, she can sign birdie, more and eat herself and understands drink/juice, kitty, sleepy/tired and a few others. She's also able to feed herself with utensils, though still needs some practice, and she is so proud to do it on her own.
We've been working on a schedule change here for when I go back to work late next week (UGH!), and it hasn't been going too badly. She originally was waking up around 7:30/8:00 and we've been waking her up now by 7, soon to be 6:40 or so. Since she likes to sleep about 12 hours, we figure there might be a time where she's going to be at dinnertime :) Naptime is proving to be a challenge, sometimes she does down without a hitch and other times is takes a little bit of time and some crying to get there, but we're still working on it. We're trying to get a good routine down for Gammie who will be watching her while we work....thanks Gammie! And G-pa too, we don't want to forget him!
Cute thing....I wanted to post a couple of pictures from this morning....what do you get when Daddy is in charge of dinner and bedtime? See pics below. Many of the guys on this blog will say...What? What's the problem? Whereas the women who visit our site will probably notice right away like I did...did Ursula pick out her own jammies? I even noticed the fashion faux pas in the dark! :) Anyway, I'm just poking fun...she did get her belly filled and got to bed in one piece, so all is well.

On a different note....last night I was coming home from running errands and a short visit with Aunt Tina, when I came upon an accident that just occurred. Myself and one other guy were the first to arrive and the collision was a pretty bad one. Luckily, no one was seriously injured, although the people that were hit, a woman about my age, her little boy, about 2-3 yrs old, and her mother, who has a pacemaker, were taken to the hospital to get checked out. The other driver, a man in his late 20's - early 30's, caused the accident by turning into their path and pretty much hitting them head on. Both cars were totaled and the man was eventually taken into custody for driving while intoxicated. Usually I'm not too weirded out by these things, but for some reason, it really hit me this time, knowing that if I were to leave Tina's 1-2 minutes earlier, I could have been the one that he hit....scary! And luckily, I was by myself and didn't have Steve or Ursula in the car with me! Just a quick realization how life can change in an instant.....

Ok, back to a happy blog...this weekend is pretty jam packed for us. Friday, Ursula and I are meeting friends for dinner. Saturday, we're going to Lake Tobias Wildlife Park and Sunday, we're getting Ursi's pictures taken and she'll get to meet her Great Gammie for the first time as she's coming here from Pittsburgh to stay for a few months. Then, on Monday, we're headed to Pottstown to visit a friend I met through my agency in Minnesota. She has 2 little Guatemalan beauties, a son, who has been home about 1 1/2 yrs and a little girl that has been home for a few months and happens to be exactly 2 weeks older than Ursula. She was my lifeline throughout this process and I'm so excited to finally get to meet her and the cuties in person. I'll be sure to post pics next week!

Mommy, look what I found....It's not pretty, but we actually got 2 ponies!What do you mean they don't match?My morning ritual...playing with my best friend Sadie.One of my other friends, Jake, doing what he does best!

Hersheypark happy......

We made in back from Hersheypark late last night and boy, were we all tired! We started our day with breakfast at the local diner near the park around 9am and we didn't finish dinner until close to 10PM! Ursula was awesome, she didn't take any sort of nap until 4:00 and only then it was about 1/2 hour. She started to crash during dinner, so we brought her stroller into the restaurant and I put her down there (see last pic). She rode lots of rides, all of which I think she liked, including the Coal Cracker, which is a "big people" flume ride. The weather once again was pretty sweltering and we even took her over to the Boardwalk area to get splashed from some of the water rides, but that still didn't keep us all from sweating like piggies! We're really excited for next year so we can actually take her in the Waterworks Park, this year she was just a little small to really enjoy everything. She was fascinated with all of the BIG roller coasters, so I believe we're going to have a future coaster addict on our hands :) Get ready G-pa and Pappy!
A big THANK YOU goes out to Nana and Pappy for our annual trip to the park and we can't wait for next year!

Riding the carousel with my Daddy!Now a jet ski....(no, not really!)Being silly with Aunt Tina.Our family with Mr Milk Duds.Hersheypark pooped.

Happy 4th!

We went to our annual 4th of July picnic at Nana and Pappy K's house this year with Ursi in tow and I think she had a blast! There were many kids there this year covering many different age groups so everyone had someone to play with, which made it nice. The weather once again wasn't very cooperative and it rained most of the time and even ended up being the reason for the cancellation of the fireworks display that Pappy puts on every year....oh well, hopefully next year will be better! At least we didn't have the tornado sirens that we had last year, that's a plus! Hovering in a concrete block garage was memorable, to say the least, but not something I'd like to do again anytime soon :)
Ursi ate lots of great picnic food and played all day, finally crashing into bed a mere 2 hours later than usual. Mommy and Daddy did enjoy sleeping in the next morning until 9!
As you can see by the pictures, she was dressed in her most patriotic gear and it was very fitting since the day before, we received her COC (Certificate of Citizenship) in the mail! Yippee! Now we can get on to getting her a social security number and start with our re-adoption process to legally change her name and get her a US birth certificate.
Short post this time...we're off early tomorrow morning to Hersheypark for another of our annual traditions. I'll let you all know how Ursi does and what rides she likes the best! Until then, here are pics from the 4th...

Enjoying some goodies before everyone arrives...Where's Ursi?Checking out the weeds...Why is everything almost as big as me?Mommy, I want out of here!!!!

Ursi's first beach trip.....

Well, we are back from our first trip to the beach and we had a great time! After the first 1/2 hour in the car with Ursula being a not-so-happy camper(she needed a diaper change and bottle for bed) we did ok. We are still working on how to keep her happy during car rides...she doesn't like the fact that she is confined and gets bored very quickly! It also doesn't help if the car is not moving, so I was thinking of getting a flashing red light for on top of our car for traffic jams and such :)
Anyway, we got to the shore pretty late and got everybody settled in and to bed. The girls woke us up early every morning, anywhere between 5:30-7 am, so needless to say our days were pretty full! We went to the pool several days, the beach a few times, in town for shopping and one day went to Smithville which is a cute little village with quaint shops. We do the boardwalk several times a day for food, exercise, shopping, mini golf and rides for the kids. The weather was hot and humid and we had some rain overnight, but all in all we had a great time. Ursula loved the pool and liked the beach the first time we took her, and I think she prefers wet sand over dry as does her Mommy :) She didn't want to stay too long the second time we went, which was ok with me. I actually prefer the pool too! She loved her ladybug float toy and we even practiced putting her under the water a few times, which she didn't seem to mind. Hopefully soon we can get her into swim lessons for next year!
She loved the excitement of the goings on on the boardwalk and watching all the people, again, just like her Mommy! We go back again in August for a long weekend and we're going to take her to Cape May then and maybe walk around Atlantic City too.
So, overall, I think we had a great first family vacation and I'm excited for all the future trips we'll take with her!
Let's see, a few new things for this week....she can now say "Uh oh", instead of her old version "Uh" without the oh. She still points to lights and now points to ceiling fans too. She knows how to blow bubbles, though doesn't do it very well yet :) If I ask her "do you need a huggie?", she comes over to me and gives me a big hug! Also, she now gives kisses when asked and puckers up her lips and goes...."mmmmm" first, it's so cute! She knows where her nose is and we're working on her eyes next. She knows how to turn lights off and on, though she needs a lift to get to the switches, and her reaction to this new discovery is priceless! It's so fun to see her learning and discovering new things everyday!
Here are some pics from our first vacation as a family of 3.....

Splashing around in my ladybug floatie....
Playing in the grass.
My first time touching the sand...
Cute piggies!
Trying out the water...
Mommy and me.Playing with my friend Kylie. No! Not the baby! :)(yes, I know only some of the captions are underlined and others aren't...I still don't know how to work this yet! ugh!)