This picture was taken yesterday, but today Miss Ella is 4 days shy of her first birthday. I’m having a bit of a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that although she’s only been with us since October, she will soon be turning a whopping twelve months old! This week I watched the video we took on the day we first met, so that gave me pause and let me really see how she has grown and blossomed.

As she approaches this milestone of babyhood, Ella has been displaying many signs of “big girl-ness.” For instance, she loves nothing more... more

It seems that society will never wise up; will never educate themselves and will continue to ask rude and horrible questions of adoptive parents and kids. We all know that when we adopt transracially, we will be walking billboards for adoption and we'd better prepare for those ignorant questions and comments. Well, as much as we tell ourselves we will be prepared, it's often not that easy. If your personality is one that cringes at the thought of confrontation or if you have a temper that flares out of control, you may need some practice to be able to... more

Ok…seriously…what kind of baby crack is in these DVDs? I am amazed and fascinated and just a little bit disturbed by how much Ella is captivated by the Baby Einstein DVDs. The person/people who created the series must have done some serious research to find out exactly what babies respond to and how to hold their attention. Judging from the extreme popularity of the Baby Einstein name, all different kinds of babies and parents love them.

We have the Baby Van Gogh, Baby Galileo and Baby Mozart (and I really want the Baby Shakespeare,... more

I love this picture of Ella with her Uncle Adam and Aunt Kellie at our Tet party. Of course we adore them, but I’m always touched and sometimes have to catch my breath when I see just how much they adore her. I have three younger brothers and Adam is the middle one. I feel that he and I have gotten so much closer since Cole died and I’m really grateful for that. It’s really nice to have a grown up relationship with my little brother. Kellie’s not technically my sister in law (yet), but I consider her one anyway :) She is such a... more

Ok, I really, really, really need to stop buying this child more spring and summer clothes. But just because she has plenty of clothes already, doesn’t mean that she has enough accessories, right? ;)

I do a lot of second hand shopping. I love consignment stores, rummage sales, outlets and the like. I’ve been able to dress Ella in really nice, name brand clothes since we’ve had her thanks to the Salvation Army’s half off family days! The thrill of the hunt and the victory of finding some adorable little outfit with tags still... more

To quote the brilliant Oscar Hammerstein II, I have moments of cockeyed optimism. Like this morning when I went to one of my favorite Viet Nam news sites Thanh Nien News. I regularly look around at the headlines and see if there is anything new (or anything I may have missed) that would be of interest to my readers here. Well, this morning I did a simple search for "adoption" and out of 20 recent results, 11 of them were related to Angelina's adoption and the blatant intrusion and exploitation of her new... more

Love is the simple, everyday things. This picture shows my husband working on our kitchen re-do and Ella "helping" him. What it doesn't show is that he has had to work almost constantly for the past three weeks and was putting in cabinets in his precious time off. He's a high school special education teacher and puts on the school's musical. The show opens this weekend, and I know he (and I) can't wait. I can't wait for him to be done with the grueling rehearsal schedule and all that comes along with it.

We're getting ready to put our... more

Before we left for Viet Nam we had started planning Ella’s welcome home party. My husband and I were adamantly against having a baby shower before we left, because we were just too fearful that something would go wrong and then we would be left with the remnants of the party for the baby who didn’t come home with us. So, we decided to have her party about a month after we got home. We didn’t want to spring a party on her immediately after coming home; she had been through enough excitement at the... more

Love is knowing there is another person clear on the other side of the country who is so much a part of my daughter’s life that it doesn’t even matter that they don’t get to see each other as often as they would like. Ella’s Aunt Lora has been the truest friend to me for years, and even though she now lives in California, she is so involved in our everyday life. She is always interested and supportive and always goes out of her way to give me a little confidence boost in the mothering department.

Sometimes I just... more

I’ve been a mother for almost two years now, but I’ve only been able to mother a living child for a few months. There are certain times that this really sinks in.

We had a playdate with a friend and her two boys today. I have had this friend since we were in the second grade and I feel that we’ve bonded so much lately now that we have this whole child rearing thing in common  There were so many moments today that were stereotypical mom moments and when I reflected on them during the drive home I felt so grateful that I’ve... more