Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Warm weather/cold weather

What will it be today? Warm or cold. Well, as my mom would say "50 degrees isn't cold, it's cool". The weather has been all over the place this weekend. It would be 50 degrees over night and 75-80 degrees during the day. Then one day it was 60 all day. I love the cooler weather, that is for sure! I just wish mother nature would make up its mind! I never know how to dress the kids.

But anyway, we had a nice weekend. Only one day of rain, and it didn't last the whole day. Sunday was Cainan's baptism. It rained in the morning, but was done and sunny by the time we went to church. We took a few pictures, which I will post below. We tried to get a nice family picture, but Finley refused to look at the camera. Oh well. The baptism was really nice. We had a great pastor, who actually was adopted himself as a child. The person who spoke for the sermon was a guest pastor they had that was visiting from Africa. He told very intriguing stories of how he grew up as a black man in Africa and what he was taught about white people. It was really interesting! But he spoke several times about Cainan and our family and that was very moving. He grew up with so much hate and then changed his ways as an adult and became a pastor in Africa. He said that when he sees an interracial family like ours, he knows that what we (our family) see when we look at Cainan is not a foreigner, but the face of God. He was very moved by our family, and our adoption. It was the perfect Sunday to have Cainan baptized because this was the start of our world missions month.

We went out to dinner Sunday night - Aunt Betty treated us! We went to a local mexican restaurant, and it was very yummy. Mat was the only one that had been there before, so I was glad to try a new place. We had a good time and the kids behaved pretty well. Finley was the worse one. Mostly because she is "anti-eating" lately. She doesn't want anything we give her - we basically have to put the food in her mouth to get her to eat! But she did okay there.

Aunt Betty left Monday and we were sad to see her go. It is always nice to have her here for a visit. She is a lot of fun and the kids just love her. We will look forward to having her here again.

This weekend we also finished up some yard work. We have wanted to do some new things to the backyard, and we finished it up. The plants we put in look really nice and we planted some new grass. It is always nice to plant new things and watch them grow.

Today was supposed to be Cainan's circumcision, but the surgeon had an emergency, and the procedure got pushed back. It was going to be about 2 hours later than in was originally scheduled, and since Cainan wasn't allowed to eat or drink, I didn't want him to have to wait for something that was only going to last 10 minutes. So since it wasn't a major procedure, we changed the date to the 12th of February. Hopefully we can have it done at that time and get it over with. So he is safe for a few more weeks. :)

Not much up this week. Going to be kind of quiet for a change! Our biggest excitement is that we are having our grout cleaned on Friday. Not really exciting, but we are looking forward to the cleaning. Our grout is white and our tile is light and after about 6 months,it just looks awful. This is the first time we are having it professionally cleaned, and it is supposed to stay white for a long time! We shall see! If we ever move, I hope the next house had NO TILE. Or at least less grout! :)

That is about it. The kids are all doing well. Nothing much to report. Arlington got her mid-year school report from Pre-K and she is doing really well. The teacher wants her to start working on reading actual books. She is either in the developing stage or mastery stage of all the skills they are working on this year (levels are "introducing", "beginning", "developing", "mastery".) We are very proud of her. The teacher feels that she is more than prepared for Kindergarten at this point, which is good to know. We are now working on her drawing stories and then telling us about them and then learning to write some of the words she knows into sentences.

Finley, like I said, is protesting food. She just doesn't really want anything. I think she is getting a few new teeth and just going through a stage. she does want a lot of milk, though. Maybe it hurts a lot to chew. Hopefully the teeth will break through and she will be back to her old self.

Cainan is doing fine. No new skills to report. We are now working on him NOT being Finley's shadow. Even Aunt Betty noticed how Cainan follows Finley around everywhere and only wants to play with what she is playing with. He doesn't seem to want to play by himself EVER. If she has it, even if we have two of the item, he has to have it too, or be playing with it at the same time Finley is. Finley is getting kind of tired of her shadow and I have seen them fighting more. So we are trying to set up individual time to play with each of them, so that Cainan is forced to play by himself. He gets upset when he has to, but it just has to be! Finley deserves some individual attention. If she is getting some, he is constantly trying to get in front of her, sit on my lap, interrupt, etc. But we are putting a stop to that. He will deal. Finley does not show the same problem. If I am playing with Cainan, she finds something else to do. Baby steps.

Here are some pictures - enjoy!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Beautifu; pictures of such an important time in Cainan's life. Thank you SOOO much for sharing. Nanny