Talk Derby To Me

At the butterfly show, and below, the 2 story butterfly on the building

Checking out the conservatory with Isabella

Hanging at the park

The neighbor's new puppy, Remington (Remi) and Hannah, becoming fast friends

The Easter Stash.  I wanted to put a trail of jelly beans from Hannie's room to her basket, but my dog likes jelly beans!

I think the holidays are being to run together for Hannie.  At the last of the 8 Easter Egg hunts she kept says Trick or Treat whenever she picked up an egg.

The other night at dinner, over a six dollar bottle of Sutter Home wine and Richard's pizza, my friends and I toasted the Royal Wedding.  (I am 90% happy for Kate Middleton.  The other 10% of me secretly hates her for stealing my husband and I know I have to make my peace with that).  Anyway, I guess Hannah saw the toast and liked it because now she raises her sippy cup and insists we "cheers" together all the time.  We cheers to waffles, to Clifford the Big Red Dog, to new shoes, to whatever she is feeling happy about that day.  Lately, we have been saying "Cheers to Kazakhstan!"

I am getting excited for Kazapalooza next month.  I went to KP last year, not really knowing what to expect.  Hannah was 10 month old, we had only been home since April.  I went because I wanted to meet some FB friends IRL, because I wanted Hannah to start getting to know some other kids from Kaz, but mostly because, having only been home 6 weeks, I was starting to feel overwhelmed by the magnitude of responsibility of raising an adopted child with special needs (correctable though they were) and I needed to be around someone, anyone, who could say: 

It's okay.  I've been there.  

  What I didn't expect was to connect so instantly, so wholly and primally, with so many of these families.  We Kaz families come from so many walks of life, and yet we are kindred spirits....Muriel...Lisa...Ann...Jen...Christy...Alaina, and all my other KazMamas...  It's a weekend free of stereotypes and judgment.  It's a weekend to celebrate forever families and forever friendships, no matter how unconventional they may be.  

Of course, KP is just one weekend a year, after which we all go back to our everyday lives, to the daily stresses of work, of doctors appointments, of a world where people stare questioningly at a blond woman walking though a mid-west grocery store clasping hands with a tiny Asian child.  But it is a weekend that renews us, validates us, sustains us, and inspires us to continue the crazy, fulfilling, unpredictable, wonderful journey that is adoptive parenting.

Cheers to that, Hannah.

I have a super great book recommendation for my adoption network friends.  It's called  No Biking In The House Without a Helmet and here is the synopsis:

“Love knows no bounds-and no borders-in journalist Greene’s ebullient valentine to her family of nine children. When their oldest son goes off to college, Greene and her husband, Donny, decide to repopulate their emptying Atlanta nest with a Bulgarian boy, then a girl and three boys from Ethiopia. Differences are embraced as the kids adjust: Never taught imaginative play, Jesse tries to beat a toy weasel to death with a broom; goatherd Sol keeps spears in the tree house. Greene doesn’t ignore her new kids’ roots, taking the Ethiopians to their homeland and not only locating one son’s grandmother but starting her off in the chicken farming business. “Who made you the Old Woman Who Lives in a Shoe?” a friend quips, but Greene doesn’t apologize. Instead, she shows what it means to knit together a family that “steers by the light …of what feels right and true.”
–Caroline Leavitt, PEOPLE MAGAZINE ****  

Oh yeah, and one more thing...IT'S ALMOST DERBY WEEKEND!! Time for mint juleps and fancy hats! My money is on Uncle Mo this year...