Tag Archives: birthday

08/10/10
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Third Birthday Letters

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(Please ignore the bruise under his left eye he got that when I was out of town, no one is 100% sure what happened.)

Dear Little Man,

Today you turn 3, seems like just yesterday I was sitting down to type out your letter to you as you turn two. To say that watching you grow over the last year has been amazing just does not quite cover all of the things I have seen you learn in the last year. I have watched you go from a baby/toddler to a full on toddler and as much as my heart as well as my eyes do not want to see you grow anymore I know that I am about to watch you become a full on preschooler any day now.

To say that you love music is a drastic understatement. I would have to say that music is a part of your soul and a part of who you are. No matter the instrument you are right there trying to play it and keep up with what you hear. You are completely in love with the drums and the piano, so much so I even agreed to the one thing I as a mom said I would never allow, a full on drum set in my house for you to play on! Even though the piano is 120% out of tune, you will play it as if it is not. You pull your little stool over to the piano, stand up on the piano and then play like you watch them do on tv or wherever you have seen someone play the right way! It amazes me that it almost sounds like a song and that you are always so careful about which note is next!

Your other great love is sports, all of them. In the last year you have learned how to swing a golf club and a baseball bat as well as throw a pretty good pitch. You sat through yet another Cardinals game with your dad and your Pop this year without a single fit. You also sat through volleyball games and basketball games. You love to watch football on tv and will sit on your dad’s lap to watch sports with him on tv. You also are known for bringing us the wii remotes so that you can play Tiger Woods golf!

Also, for now you love anything that moves – cars, trucks, tractors, planes, trains and so much more. You make the noises and request to watch the movie Cars the minute you wake up and 20 more times every day. I have such a hard time telling you no but you are just as content playing with your cars characters as you would be watching the movie!

You are such a sensitive little boy. You will go to time out when your sister has to go to time out just so she is not alone and when she has been told not to hit you and to give you hugs and kisses to tell you she is sorry, you immediately go to her to give her hugs and kisses so she will only have to meet you half way. You worry about Tinkerbell our cat so much, you will let us know when she needs food, a hug or a pet and usually will try to take care of these things yourself. Your favorite person in the world is your sister and even though she may not always feel the same way about you, I just know in my heart she loves you as much as you love her; but you could try every once in a while to tell her no!

Your daddy and I love you very much! We watch you in wonder every day, thank you for being you!

Love,

Mommy and Daddy

Dear Little Princess,

Some how this last year passed like a lightening fast train and you are now 3, complete with your amazing personality that you continue to show us more and more every day! Just as I said to your brother, I have watched you go from a baby/toddler to a full on toddler and as much as my heart as well as my eyes do not want to see you grow anymore I know that I am about to watch you become a full on preschooler any day now.

Your one full on love is books, and I am not just talking about bound books here. You will read or be read to from anything that has words and/or pictures in it. One of your favorite things to do is look at magazines just for the pictures you might see there. You have your own stash of magazines and two or three places we keep books and magazines just for you. If I actually sat down and counted one day you probably read or are read 50+ books in a day. You sleep with them, eat with them and travel with them. Somehow those books you love bring you an amazing source of comfort, which brings some kind of joy to my heart as Mommy works the same way! Please do not let your love of books or learning ever go away, as you eat up letters and numbers like they have a special power and can identify all of them through your own doing!

The only thing that comes close to your love of books is your love of all things “pretty pretty pretty.” And that is a wide range of things. Pretty much the range goes from hair bows and BIG twirl dresses and skirts to all things Disney princess and Tinkerbell. Your favorite princess is Mulan but you love them all! I have to beg, plead and barter to get you to wear anything that is not a huge fancy twirl dress or a skirt, jeans are out of the question.

Your personality is well all I can is your Grandma and Great-Grandpa say “what comes around goes around” meaning mommy is in for it as mommy was the same way! I think blissfully strong willed is the best way to describe you! I love that you are so determined to show mommy that you can do it and you can do it your way, maybe because mommy knows what determination is mommy does not always try to stop you but even if you are getting in trouble mommy is trying inside to remember not to try to crush that determination that is part of who you are!

We love you so much and cannot wait to see the young lady you will become!

Love,

Mommy and Daddy

03/13/10

{72/365} Happy Birthday Daddy!

Today is Aaron’s birthday ~ here is my post from last year talking about the 37 things I love about him ~ he is 38 today and let me add to the one thing to that list: Even though it is his birthday and he should be having a great day he helps to calm me while I reduce a 103 temperature in one of our children and even helps make his birthday dinner because the child whose temperature we had to reduce is still very very clingy!

So Happy Birthday Daddy ~ sorry it was not absolutely perfect:

09/15/09

Redefining Perfect at Age 35…..

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Many of you know that on Sunday I turned 35 years old…and all of you know that this is the first year I was able to celebrate with my babies! While it was generally a great day – I woke up at my sister’s house after a fun night of bachelorette activities, ate lunch with my husband’s family complete with a birthday cake and had an amazing Korean dinner that Sonny and I cooked together! The day was a great one!

Many of you know that I am a planner and that I have been for most of my life and for some reason 35 was the number on my list when I had planned to have it all. I was going to have the perfect career, the perfect family and life was just going to be perfect! Have I mentioned the perfectionist in me helped make this list? But over the last year I have watched that list fall to pieces and had to redefine “perfect.”

My old definition of perfect did not include a husband or children and included a great job that had me on the path to becoming a judge and not just any judge a federal judge with her eye on a spot on the United States Supreme Court. Had you asked what I was going to do when I was in my 20′s I would have told you “I am going to be the first woman Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court provided Sandra Day O’Conner does not beat me to it” without batting an eye. But somewhere in the middle of law school I saw my definition of perfect start to change one small step at a time, I fell head over heals in love for the first time in my life and realized that maybe marriage and children were not so bad but I still believed I could do it all.

Fast forward a few years and two major heartbreaks later and life is not working how I want it to, but I still have a plan when I meet Aaron and life changes again. I knew when I married Aaron that my old plan needed to be reworked a bit but did nothing to change my idea of what perfect was…I continued to try to be the best at everything and then infertility hit and the adoption process. I never reevaluated my idea of perfect, I just kept my eye on the end of the process.

In one month it will be a year since the twins came home and one month since I finally reevaluated what perfect means to me. Perfect means happy, healthy kids, a happy healthy husband and a happy healthy me – no more and no less. While I no longer aspire to sit on the US Supreme Court, I do still aspire to make a difference only now it is to the two little people in my life only. This is not the life I planned for me and not the picture I would have painted for myself at 35 but I like the picture now even though I am still working on the details!

08/16/09

thisMoment and "Our Second Birthday…."

From picture day to party day to actual birthday follow us on our journey!

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thisMoment enables users to capture the context, emotion and meaning of the Moments they experience and saves them on an interactive timeline that serves as a digital reflection of their lives. thisMoment’s proprietary Moment Maker feature gives users the ability to quickly and easily create visually rich, multi-media presentations (aka: “Moments”) that include videos, pictures, links and text and then share them with friends and family via email, blogs and a variety of social-networking sites. thisMoment also recognizes the time investment people have already made online – uploading photos, videos and other content and developing relationships via Facebook and Twitter – and leverages that investment that through seamless, two-way integration with their existing media, social networking and communication services. (this paragragh is from thisMoment – I didn’t write it just so you all don’t think I did!)

I have been asked by the people at thisMoment to let you all know about a new contest they have going where you can win a Flip video camera, $150 visa gift card or Svan Scooter and The Learning Tower! They are AMAZING and I love making moments! To learn more about their contest that ends on August 21, 2009 go to thisMoment or click HERE….

And then become a friend of mine on thisMoment and LIKE my moment! The one above!

08/10/09

2nd Birthday Letters

 

Dear Little Man:

Today you turn two and I am not sure where the time went, it feels like just yesterday I was typing the post telling everyone you were turning a year old in Korea and then on a plane where you refused to sleep and wanted to be walked around. In this last ten months, I have seen you go from a very scared little boy who could not figure out why we were turning his life upside down and clung to me as if letting go would cause him serious harm to an amazing little boy with the cutest laugh and the biggest obsession I have ever seen with light fixtures! While you only say a precious few words out loud the ones you do make me smile – every time you see a new light fixture you like we hear “Wow” like you have never seen anything like that before, every time your dad gets home from work you scream “da da” at the top of your lungs and if you hear hello or good bye you start waving to yourself before you wave to the person who said hello or good bye! You absolutely LOVE to dance — all it takes is music playing and you are dancing, and you dance JUST like the Wiggles! You are totally and completely obsessed with the Imagination Movers and I cannot wait to see your face when you get to see them in person in November!

I love that you let me chase you and when I catch you I can tickle you and you laugh SO hard! I love that we play airplane to put you in your crib for nap time and night time and you laugh when you land on your mattress! You are completely and totally obsessed with tigers, balls and cars! You have JUST started saying “ball” and bring them all to me! The scared little boy I met in Korea has given way to the most curious happy little boy! Every time I look at you I am remind of how much you love to learn and will stick with something until you learn what you think you need to, like how to climb on the couch. You have the longest attention span of any two year old I know!

You are so sensitive – no matter who or what I say no to, you start to cry as if it was you who heard the word and were being told no (maybe this is why your sister completely ignores me when I tell her no!). When are done with being in trouble you give me a kiss, smile and take off to your next adventure (can you keep this for a few more years)! You also take care of everything – you will pat the baby, pet the cat, etc….and you still carry the phone around all the time as if you are talking on it!

You are our little boy and we love you more than life!Your smile and laugh light my day and can get you out of trouble so fast! Please continue to stay just the way you are and may you have many many many more happy years! Happy Birthday to Mama’s Little Boy!

Love,

Mommy and Daddy

 

Dear Little Princess:

Once again I cannot believe it was a year ago today that you were turning one in Korea and only ten months ago that you pulled your daddy’s dinner tray onto the floor of the airplane on the way home from Korea! We thought you were easy to read at first but learned later that is how you deal with stress! Now that we are ten months into this I have met my strong willed and head strong little girl, the one who smiles and runs from me when she has something she should not and then when I catch her she giggles so hard it makes me wish that she would do it again! I love how she is OBSESSED with Jen Hinton’s voice and comes running to the computer when she hears it while I listen to Jen’s radio show!

Your first word was Quack and your obsession with ducks continues to this day! The only body part you can firmly identify is a nose and you do so every chance you get on me, daddy, a duck, a baby doll etc… Every day I think you learn a new word though you only use them for me and maybe if he is lucky daddy! Just like your brother you are 100% obsessed with Imagination Movers BUT unlike your brother when you want to watch you will find the remote, bring it to me and point to the TV – I rarely can resist! Also when you are done with anything you do the all done sign – you get very well that when things are empty, closed or gone that it is all done!

You get so proud of yourself when you accomplish anything! You smile and clap for yourself and sometimes scream the happiest scream EVER which makes me smile! Of late you have been accomplishing so much that I get to see this all the time! You also have an amazing love of being tickled!

You love the birds at the zoo AND the word elephant – you absolutely LAUGH when you hear that word and can identify the few elephants we have in the house! Books are your first love and I hope that NEVER changes!

And while I may not tell you this when you are older – I love when you wake up at night and insist on sleeping on my chest just me and you like you want to be one with me, or when your hand touches mine while we sleep! I am sure I will lose that experience with you soon and I will miss it. And something else I may tease you about some day but really think is funny is that you still call me “da da” even though your “da da” tries VERY hard to get you to say “ma ma” which you can say but almost NEVER call me!

I love how when your daddy takes you downstairs in the morning so I can try to catch up on sleep when you hear me come down the stairs and meet me at the bottom of the stairs with the biggest smile and that happy scream! Some day I hope you are screaming “ma ma” but for now I love the way you do it!

And finally I love how you do things on your time — well at least now I do I may not later as I see you and me butting heads more times than I care to count! You are so a princess – we have convinced you that is you and you will flirt with people to get what you want or before you smile at them!

You are our little girl and we love you more than life! Thank you for adding the smiles and magic touches to our day! Please continue to laugh and smile and may you have many many many more happy years! Happy Birthday to Daddy’s Little Girl!!

Love,

Mommy and Daddy