BabyHawk anyone?

We have two BabyHawk carriers that we got before we received our referral. One we purchased and one was a gift. We took one of them to China with us, but never even used it. I think if Lauren was younger, we would have gotten some use out of it.

I thought I'd post them here and see if anyone is interested before I list them on Ebay.

They both have the espresso colored straps in the extra long size. Here's the first one, it has this fabric design on one size...


The second one has this fabric design on one side...


and this design on the other...


It also has a toy ring...



You can check out the BabyHawk carriers at their website here. The single sided one with the extra long straps retails for $85 and the double sided one with the extra long straps and toy ring retails for $100. If anyone is interested, I'd sell the single sided one for $50 and the double sided one for $65 (I'll cover the shipping cost). Please e-mail me through my Blog Profile or leave a comment here.

UPDATE: They are both gone...thank you so much!

Keeping busy...

Thank you all for the compliments on our travel video. I'm going to tuck a copy away in Lauren's box of goodies from our trip along with a CD of all our travel photos.

Today we met a friend at Gymboree for some play-time. I think Lauren enjoyed it, so I signed us up for a month. It's a combination of structured and unstructured play and I think it will be really good for her.

Tomorrow we have an appointment for a developmental specialist and I'm hoping that she will give us a referral to our state program so they can come out to our home for an assessment. I would like to get a jump start on anything we need to work on. I know that language is something we definitely will need help with. I think it's great that Lauren tries to repeat a lot of words we say and does have a small English vocabulary already. She's added "bye-bye" and "juice" to the other words she was saying.

Here's a little scrapbook layout in the infamous "Brown eyed girl" t-shirt. She looked so darn cute and even left her clippie in for half the day before she yanked it out.


On Monday we assembled the Radio Flyer red wagon we bought while Black Friday shopping and took for a spin at the park. It was a big hit! It's so much fun watching Lauren use the items we bought for her when she was still just a dream to us!

Our travel video...

I finished our travel video but was having some trouble uploading it. It's 15 minutes long and YouTube has a 10 minute limit. Also, the file size is too large for most of the other popular web hosting sites. After hunting around on the internet, I found a hosting site called Viddler which allows large file upload. I'm so glad I found it because the picture quality seems to be light years better than YouTube, which I find to be grainy and pixelated during video transitions.

So, when you have a spare 15 minutes take a peek at our video. It's a combination of photos and video clips taken on our trip. What I like best about how it turned out is that you can totally see Lauren's transition over the two week period as she starts to show her true personality.

Attention mommies to be...

I hate to burst your bubble, but you might as well give up your fantasy now of outfits with those cute little matching headbands like these...


NO WAY, mommy, I'm NOT wearing this thing...


But I'll live with this little clip, but only for a little while...ok?

Some pics...

Just time for a quick post with some pictures today. I need to start getting to bed at a reasonable hour. I've been staying up way too late after Lauren is asleep and it's starting to take it's toll on me. I've been working on a China travel video and that's been sucking up some time. It's done and I'll be posting it soon.

Lately, I've noticed that Little Miss seems to be a multi-tasker of sorts. She likes to Swiffer while walking her baby...



double-fisted hair brusher...



and likes to walk her doggie and crocodile together...


and then takes them up on the sofa to rest together...


I finally found a park with baby swings...


and as you can tell, she loved it...

A lot of fun...

We are having so much fun with Lauren and she is doing so well. She's been slowly warming up to Gramma and had lots of smiles and a high five for her last night...


Thanks to my local bloggy friend, Jeanette, I found out about an English/Chinese story time at one of the libraries nearby. We went yesterday and it was really nice. They sung songs and read books in both English and Mandarin and had playtime at the end. I think she enjoyed playtime the most. She really liked climbing through the long tube. Here's a couple of pics of that in the cutest shirt I picked up off the Gymboree sale rack. It says...100% sweet - made of pure sugar. I think that just about says it all!


Today we went to a Valentine's Day party hosted by our friends, Laura and Dan, and their beautiful son Dominic. There were lots of kids there adopted from both China and Guatemala. It was so wonderful to see the happy faces of all the kids with their forever families...it's so heartwarming to think that these kids, including Lauren, were dreamed of for so long and now loved so much...


So, can you tell we are having lots of fun being parents? We just love her to pieces! I'm just now finally feeling like I'm getting the knack of being a mommy. I think now that we have a routine going during the day, everything flows a lot smoother. Lauren is definitely everything I ever dreamed of and more!

Thanks...

Thank you for all your kind words about not looking like a grandma! I always thought I looked younger than my age, but as the years creep away I think I'm losing that a bit. I know I technically can be a grandma, but I guess it just bugs me that people just jump to that conclusion without thinking. That's the key...people feel the need to open their mouths without thinking. I guess I'd better get real used to it.

Here's my little shopper at it again. If she sees me with a bag, she grabs it and wants to carry it on the side of the stroller. She carried this one all the way to the car and kept it the entire time while in her car seat.

What's funny is she doesn't even pull anything out of it...she just wants to hold it.

This evening she thought it was funny to walk around with momma's slippers on...


and then she loved her horsey-back ride with baba...


and then some snuggling time...

The dreaded question...

Here's the scene...we are at the children's play area at a nearby mall and the women sitting next to me leaned over and asked..."is that your granddaughter?" Ughh...dagger right through the heart! I was expecting my first question to be "is she adopted?" or some other equally nosy question...but this one caught me off guard. After she left, the young mom on the other side of me said she overheard her and couldn't believe she asked me that. Ahhhh...that made me feel much better! I know I'm an older mom, but I just wasn't expecting this and I hope it's not a frequently asked question when we go out...I don't think I look THAT old!

Yesterday we took Lauren to Toys R Us to find some kind of push toy she can ride on. We got this cute little FisherPrice horse with a little basket in front to carry stuff along for the ride. She didn't know how to push her self at first, but it only took a couple of minutes for her to figure it out...




This evening we spent some time at my brother's place and Lauren actually warmed up to everyone and played with her cousins for the very first time. It was so much fun to watch!

First trip to the Zoo...

Today we went to the zoo with a couple we meet through the FCC when we first started the wait. They have a beautiful daughter named Lily who will be three years old this month. Lauren did very well with them even though this was her first time meeting them. I think Lily went a long way towards breaking the ice for her.

Here's some pics from the day (click to enlarge)...



And here's a little video...

Just an update...

I went into work yesterday morning for a meeting and found this sign on my office door. Theresa has been filling in for me and changing the number of days each morning. Ha! It's nice to be missed.

Here's Lauren's new ride...



After hunching over to push around that little stroller in China, this one is a dream and I love it. It's a Graco Quattro Tour Deluxe Stroller in French Roast. It's very smooth, turns on a dime, folds up very easily, and has a huge basket for bags.

Speaking of bags, I think I have a little shopper on my hands...




Oh, and by the way...I didn't realize that motherhood meant never going to the bathroom along again...





Now there's two in there with me!

For an update on our Little Miss, she seems to be adjusted to the time here now. She's been napping by 1pm each day for about 1.5 hours and we've had her to bed by 9:30pm for the past five or so days. We are hoping to creep her bed-time up slowly until she's to bed by about 8pm. We'll see how that goes.

She's been letting us put her in the crib while awake now, but we need to stay in the room until she is asleep. If one of us tries to leave, there is hell to pay! I think at this point, we're just so happy with her progress so far that this is fine with us for now.

Blowing kisses...

Lauren has learned how to blow kisses and she's stealing Grandma's heart in this little video clip...



Our Arizona Cardinals may not have won the big game, but we still had a very nice day. We started at my brother's place for some great food and to introduce Lauren to my sister-in-law's family. Lauren played shy most of the time because there were lots of new people there, but came out of her shell a little bit for Grandma when she blew those kisses. Next it was off to our friend Linda Marie's house for the rest of the game. It took Lauren a good hour and a half, but she finally warmed up to Linda and Christine and was soon running around playing and laughing.

Our baby is definitely very shy and it takes her quite a while to show her true personality...but when she does she is so much fun. We've only been home a little over a week and she's doing incredibly well. On the way home tonight she fell asleep in her car seat and we were able to get her straight into the crib for the night. Ahhh...this is the earliest so far.