Recapping the last few weeks

Gosh, it's amazing how quickly time has flown since I was last shared an update. Our days just seem to fly by. So I will do my best to catch you all up on our latest craziness happenings.

Caleb is totally loving baseball! He practices once a week and has one game each week too. The other day I bought Caleb a new glove, which he totally loves. Since Caleb got a new glove, little Madeline had to get a glove too. They are so cute trying to play catch together.

This past Tuesday, Patrick and I celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary. How did we celebrate? By having our social worker come for a post placement visit. LOL. Really, though, she did come. And we had a great little visit. But we actually celebrated by taking a little vacation, or "cation" as Caleb referred to it. We headed over to Palm Coast, just a few hours from home. We vacationed there last year, and Caleb just loved the water park. So we opted to head there again. We invited my sister Deb, BIL, Andy, and niece Leah to join us. And a great time was had by all, despite the Floria Gators losing to LSU on Saturday night! Oh well. (They also lost to LSU on our wedding day, and I thought all my non-Gator friend fans were trying to pull a fast one on me at our reception.)

Caleb's favorite part of the "best cation ever!" was the several story water slide. Last year, he went down the slide many times with Patrick. But this year, he was determined to go all by himself. And that he did......many, many times! We were so proud of his bravery to go it alone.

One thing I was not quite prepared for was how uncomfortable I felt with soooo many people staring at Madeline's arm. Sure, I've read lots of stories from other adoptive families of kiddos with limb differences. So I thought my heart was prepared. But I felt so many people staring at once when we were swimming in the pools, that I had a hard time looking people square in the face. I know people are curious. And I don't mind that. And nobody was rude. There was just nothing I could do get to them to "stop" other than leave the pool area, which I wasn't going to do. So we continued to swim while others took turns staring at Madeline.

One situation I was quite glad for the other day was at Caleb's baseball game. Two little girls approached Madeline with me standing right there next to her while I was chatting with a friend of mine. They began poking and touching her arm. Immediately one of the girl's moms jumped up from the bleachers and pulled them aside and told them it was not okay for them to touch her. I was relieved that she handled the situation so well, to say the least. Little Madeline was so clueless that the girls were inappropriate....she came over to me and said, "See, mommy!" as she stuck her left arm up in the air with a big smile on her face.

Madeline continues to do well. She is such a little ham! She's so dramatic with her facial expressions and the tone of her voice. It's so hilarious. She continues to pick up on English and is doing quite well with it. She continues to eat and sleep well and find trouble be a typical 2 year old girlie.

I have been busy taking lots of photos with my new camera that Patrick bought me for our anniversary (muchas gracias, honey). But now I realize just how behind I am at uploading all of them and editing them. So I have my work cut out for me. Since I don't like to post without sharing photos, here are a few from Caleb's first baseball game and some of Madeline during her photo shoot playing in the yard.

Caleb and his friend, HJ

Playing second base

Swinging the bat

After making it to first base