My Little Chef

Oliver is such a joy. 
Yes, he pushes us to the edges of our sanity some of the time — I think that’s his job (and apparently it creates a lot of purple work for him to do). But most of the time he is simply a joy to be around. His imagination is incredible and fun, bringing me back to my own younger days filled with neighborhood or playground games of Spaceship, being pioneers, turning little spaces into forts or houses for our dolls.  

Naturally, we did not have this much joy, imagination and fun when we were home together last year. Too much adjusting, too many barriers. And even as we worked our way through summer, we still struggled with so much. Therefore, I am especially enjoying all of this happiness and love right now! 

This past weekend Oliver came down with a bit of a cold. Nothing serious, but enough for us to stay home and keep the germs contained. We had wanted to spend Saturday “doing something fun,” so I tried to improvise at home. One of the solutions: making pizza! We’ve done this before (and I’ve blogged about it before) — lightly toast an english muffin, then let him spread the sauce, add the toppings and cheese. I help out a tiny bit (cut the toppings up; extended his sauce and cheese to the edges some to prevent burning), but he did a terrific job on his own. He’s a natural chef! I mean, just check out this cutie pie posing for a photo before he gets to work.

Last night I was baking a cake for tonight’s book club meeting. Oliver sweetly told me that I am good at making cakes. And cookies. Wait, what?! A 100% unprompted compliment?! I don’t know if that’s a first, but it sure was lovely to hear. What a sweetie! As for the cake, I opted for a non-chocolate item that is said to be a “good keeper”. It’s a Swedish Visiting Cake from Dorie Greenspan’s book. Simple yet (hopefully) delicious. 

On Friday, Oliver and I will be participating on a panel for families thinking of adopting (we did this in October as well, and Tony was able to be there). These classes are tough, lots of “Debbie downer” information, and the day ends with a panel discussion. I enjoy talking about our experiences, even the challenging parts, and remember the panels being the most engaging part of the day. Tony was with us last time, so I am very much hoping that Oliver is on his best behavior this time around!

Purple Work

Our life is full of new words! Oliver’s vocabulary is growing by leaps and bounds, and he is now putting together full sentences and questions. Every.Single.Day. we are caught off guard / impressed / blown away by the words he knows or the complexity of what he puts together. While he may not yet be fully caught up for his age, it feels like he’s sprinting to that finish line. Here are just a few of our recent favorites.

Purple Work.
Last night Oliver told Tony he needed the computer. When asked why, Oliver responded with “My purple work.” We take that to mean his paper work, though purple work sounds much more fun! There ended up being a lot of talk about how much purple work Oliver had to do last night, and how busy he was. 

Oh man. 
We hear this all of the time — it’s sometimes the first thing he says in the morning! He says it with the appropriate amount of disappointment / frustration, as the situation warrants. As if he has the weight of the world on him. 

Giraffes need to be warm, penguins need to be cold.
While we’ve talked about both giraffes and penguins, and what type of place they live, we’ve never put the two together. Yet Oliver did, in the car, randomly sharing that with us while we were driving to AWANA last night. 

Halloween is spooky.
The random statement we heard this morning on our way to Oma’s house. No idea where it came from, but it’s the “out of left field” kind of stuff he’s been peppering us with on a daily basis. He certainly keeps things interesting!

Needless to say, there is a lot of laughter as well as a lot of "where did that come from" looks for both Tony and I. He's still as sweet, cute and funny as ever:

Well, it's back to "purple work" for me. Have a wonderful day!

2015

Happy New Year! I hope that your new year is off to a great start.

Oliver, Tony and I had a great New Year’s celebration. On New Year’s Eve we played games, enjoyed yummy snacks, grilled pizzas (thank you, Tony), put on our jammies and watched “How To Train Your Dragon” and counted down the New Year with Oliver at about 9:00 (thank you, Netflix). After he went to sleep, Tony and I celebrated with some champagne, chocolates and the New York Times Square ball drop. A perfect way to ring in the new year!

The final family photo of 2014

New Year’s day is the annual Meyers’ celebration featuring an array of Korean dishes. We had japchae, bulgogi and mandu. Yum! Oliver wore his traditional Korean hanbook for a little while, though he didn’t want to pose for any pictures. This is the hanbook we received from his foster family over Thanksgiving. Here’s a summary of my attempt to snap just one good photo:

Cute, but he wouldn't look up!

Being shy

Being silly

Done letting us take photos, ready to move on to other things

On Friday Tony headed out of town to go ice fishing with his dad, leaving Oliver and I together for a special weekend. In true “holiday vacation” form, we kept busy with:

A trip to the car wash where he gets to squirt the cars:

He just *loves* this car wash!

An ice cream sundae picnic in our living room (he wanted to have an outdoor picnic, but it was a bit cold)

A pancake dinner at one of our local diners

A trip to the zoo with Oma (who treated Oliver to both lunch and a toy from the gift shop):

Look at me! I'm walking on water!

Oma bought me a toy! Now if only the Komodo Dragon would come out...

A daily viewing of his new favorite movie, “How To Train Your Dragon”

In addition to all the fun “stuff,” he also got to sleep in the big bed with me, something he otherwise doesn’t get to do. 

When asked what the best part of the weekend was, he said it was watching the movie. Of course, the one thing that took zero effort! At least he had fun.

He was such a joy and we had a terrific time, though he did miss Dad. Both Saturday and Sunday morning the first thing he asked was if Daddy was home.  After so much time together, returning to work (for me) and Oma’s (for Oliver) was tough on us both. 

With the start of the new year, I am especially thankful that we are now a COMFORTABLE family of three. Last year we were simply over the moon happy to just have Oliver at home. But we began 2014 as a family that didn’t know each other very well — and as two people who were in survival mode as parents. It was not an easy time for Tony, Oliver or I. As we embark on 2015, we are feeling more solid and steady, closer to one another, able to simply enjoy being around each other without constantly trying to figure everything out.

So with that, HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Christmas and One Year Home

Merry Christmas! 

We have thoroughly enjoyed the last five days together as a family. Our time together started with cookie baking, cake making, ham smoking and friend playtime before attending the Christmas Eve service on Wednesday (it was a pretty full…and filling…day and a half!). We attended the family service at 4:00 pm, which featured a time when the kids ran up to the front for a Christmas story. Watching Oliver run up there I was so overwhelmed with joy to have him HERE to celebrate the birth of Jesus that I couldn’t help but cry. Not a dainty, dab the eyes cry. A full-on sob that I was stifling so as not to draw attention, meaning that I had that “ugly cry” look while tears streamed down my cheeks. 

Sobbing (for joy) aside, celebrating as a family was simply the best gift I could have asked for. After church we headed home to enjoy a Christmas Eve dinner. I had requested a traditional Christmas ham, so Tony took the opportunity to try smoking his very first ham. It was delicious! Oliver wouldn’t try it, but did enjoy it mixed in with scrambled eggs and cheese later in the weekend. 

Before bed Tony read us “Twas the Night Before Christmas” and then Oliver set out cookies and apple juice for Santa (guess who picked the drink!), and nine carrots for Rudolph and the other reindeer.  We were surprised that he fell asleep so quickly, and he didn’t wake up until 6:30 Christmas morning.

Santa stashed Oliver's two "big" gifts behind the tree.

Christmas morning was magical. Oliver was so happy to see that Santa had come and that the snack plate was picked over. Tony tried to capture a few pictures of Oliver’s first sighting of the tree, but we’ve been so focused on family time that we haven’t gotten around to looking at the camera. Needless to say, Oliver was full of awe and excitement.

The three things he asked Santa for he received (plus a slew of other items) — the Paw Patrol Lookout (he calls it the Pup Pad), Rubble (one of the Paw Patrol) and a Hot Wheels Race Track. Way to go Santa! As much as I wanted to snap a bunch of photos, more than that I wanted to be present in the moment. Therefore we didn’t get many pictures to share, but we had a wonderful time enjoying the morning.

Post-gift opening I did get a chance to snap these of a boy with his loot:

We headed to Oma and Opa’s for Christmas lunch and more unwrapping. I love this picture of Oliver trying his hardest to open one of his gifts! The paper didn’t want to rip and he just couldn’t get the gift open, no matter how hard he tried. 

We had a terrific time celebrating with family. In an effort to create our own new traditions we once again had a Christmas Cake. While not as beautiful decorated as the ones in Korea, it was Oliver’s choice to have a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. Yum!

He crashed hard on the way home, all tuckered out from playing and opening gifts. He perked up quickly once we were home again, as there were more gifts to be played with. The rest of the weekend was a blast, with Oliver focused on staying home to play with all of his new toys and us forcing him to do crazy things like play outside in the snow, run around a shopping mall and go to church! I know, we are evil parents!

One surprising advantage to the time off together was that Tony and I had time together. Just to hang out! Oliver went to bed early a couple of nights and we stayed up late watching movies, something we haven’t done in ages (actually, it was more that I decided not to wake up at 5:00 to work out, so I was wiling to stay up later with Tony). 

We did learn a few things from our first Christmas at home:
1. We would be happy to pay a little extra to buy toys that already have all of the stickers placed in the corresponding spots. Who knew so many toys needed stickers!?

2. Buy extra batteries of all sizes. We may have thought we knew which ones we needed, but you just have to have one toy with no batteries to create a Christmas meltdown (lucky Oliver was able to be distracted long enough for us to get some batteries from Opa).

3. We need an extra recycle bin at Christmas. Our garage is now overflowing with cardboard.

4. Some assembly required. Yes, we knew this would not be fun. No, we did not expect it to take up so much of our day.

The day after Christmas marked one year home for us. One whole year. Amazing! I thank God for the opportunity to be Oliver’s mom, to celebrate the birth of Jesus as a family of three, and to get to spend so much time together over the holidays. I wish you and your families and a joyous holiday season and very Happy New Year!