Quick ear update

Tabitha had her follow up visit with the ENT doctor. He said that her ears were "perfect". The tubes are still in place and there is no sign of any infection. Yea!!! I don't really mean to complain, but this northern girl, "damn Yankee" as the locals refer to us, is having problems tolerating the heat this summer. By the way, I was told that a "damn Yankee" is a northerner who comes to the South and stays....so be it. At any rate it has been hotter than Hades this week. Don't know which is worse right now....heat and humidity or snow and cold...at least in snow and cold I can put more layers of clothes on but God knows I can't/won't take any off. Besides, the glare off of my pale white fat would probably blind you!
At any rate, here's a little picture of Tabitha having some fun despite this awful heat wave.

FFF "Friends"

I really had to dig for this week's Favorite Friday Foto, "Friends". Since Tabitha has been home I don't really have any pictures of her with any other children. She doesn't really have "friends" yet--except for the little boy across the street. He comes over every Saturday just to play with Tabitha. He'd come over more often if we'd let him. When his school got out for the summer, he asked us if he could come over more frequently and play with Tabitha. We had to explain to him that he may not have to go to school all summer, but Tabitha still has to get up every morning and go to daycare, she doesn't get home until about 5pm and then she has to have supper, get a bath and she goes to bed by 8pm. So that doesn't leave very much time for him to come over and play. Besides since we haven't seen her all day we are kind of selfish with her and want to spend the time with her as a family. He's only 9 and didn't get it that everyone isn't off for the summer until then.
Tabitha did meet some other babies while we were in Guatemala waiting out pink and I do have pictures of them. So I'm posting their pictures with Tabitha. I wish that I had a picture of her little friend Anna and her together, unfortunately I don't, I only have pictures of them apart from each other!

This is the very first little friend that she made, Elijah. This picture was taken on our first trip to Guatemala when Tabitha was only 4 months old. Look how intensely they are looking at each other!

This is her friend Logan. We all went to the zoo in Guatemala City.

These are our friends Sharon and Olivia. Olivia's Mommy, Sharon, has a blog too, you can check it out here
If you'd like to see more FFF "Friends" pictures go on over the Sarah's and check them out!

Favorite Friday Foto

This week, Sarah is out of town so we are to post and share amongst ourselves. Tabitha hasn't had such a good week. She had her room at daycare changed because she had started to bite the other students, and quite frankly she was the oldest one in the class. She's not very good at change, and has regressed some. She's not been napping well and of course that makes her a BEAR at night. I so wish that I didn't have to work and could be with her. BUT, bills have to be paid and we need 2 incomes, so I do work. I try to make time with her quality time, but sometimes because basically she's so tired, I don't feel like I do a very good job. Enough of that. Tabitha HAS had some good times this week and this picture I found very cute and just had to post it. That is Tabitha's toy "basket/box" that she decided she wanted to crawl into. She had seen our dog Ralph do it to his "basket/box" so she had to try it out. She was having a ball!

Realization and attachment

OK let me start this post by first saying this isn't one of those fluff kind of posts that say, oh the baby is so happy, well adjusted, it's as if she's been part of the family for years....As you all know, we've (Tabitha and I) have been through our ups and downs. When she was first home, I felt as if I had the "post adoption blues" and now I realize it was part of the attachment process and it wasn't all my fault. Tabitha is displaying some of the symptoms of what I feel is attachment disorder syndrome. I've been reading A LOT of things about this as of late, and have been reading stuff at a link that I discovered on one of the forum groups that I read. They had a list of "symptoms" that Ms. Tabitha unfortunately has. My dear husband and my mother think I just read too much on the internet. Life with Tabitha hasn't been all warm fuzzies and gee we all live happily ever afters, life has it's ups and downs.

The truth of it is that I realize that I'm not such a bad mother after all. To listen to Tabitha sometimes at our house, you'd think that I was the wicked witch from the North, South, East and West!

I guess what really made me look long and hard at this stuff again is how Tabitha is reacting to the "promotion" at her daycare center. She needed to graduate I realize that because she was starting to bite the kids in her old room... biting peers is one of the symptoms that the site does list as possibilities. Tabitha hasn't done well with this change though. I don't think that she likes the teacher here. Actually she's not my favorite teacher either, she somewhat implied that Tabitha had developmental delays....that's a completely different story for a different post some time. Tabitha has shown some signs though of bonding to me, she cries when I leave her, she doesn't want to go to anyone else---she didn't do that much before. BUT when Tabitha comes home she is a complete and utter wreck! She whines, has tantrums, eating issues resurface....you get the picture. So....what is all of this rambling about? I guess it's my way of working things out in my head.
Pray for Tabitha and me to get through this latest change in our lives. We'll get through this by the love of God.

And th winner is...

Looks like the current blogger header is the winner. Thank you to those of you who voted and those of you who left me comments. I honestly liked all of the headers, otherwise I wouldn't have kept them. It was actually kind of fun for me to do because it was challenging. So you will be seeing the current header....for awhile at least, you know until I get bored with it!

FFF: Red, White & Blue

This week's FFF is suppose to be "Red, White, and Blue" and I must confess, I don't have a single picture from over the 4th of July holiday weekend of Tabitha wearing red, white and blue. The only fireworks that I got to see were the little ones that our neighbors set off--Tabitha missed them, she zonked out at 7:30 that night. It rained pretty much the entire 4th of July weekend. So we stayed home and layed low. So I'll just share some random pictures from the weekend that I have. Since we couldn't go "out" to play, Tabitha decided to get in her car which was "parked" in the front office. The second picture is at the restuarant we went out to on Sunday for Tim's birthday. The last one is just one of the cute pictures of her laying on the floor being a little sweetheart. If you'd like to see some real Red, White, and Blue pictures, click over to Sarah's blog and check them out!
Oh, don't forget to vote on my poll for the header that you like best, only today and tomorrow left to vote! It's looking like the current header is the one that the majority of y'all like so far!

Vote, vote, vote

Come on! I know that there are more than 5 people who have looked at this blog since Friday. Please vote on my poll!

Tim's Birthday

Yesterday was Tim's birthday. It was a nice relaxing kind of day. We (Tim, Tabitha, my mom and I) went to the Macaroni Grill for dinner--that was Tim's choice. The food was great as usual, although our waiter left something to be desired. Everyone had a great meal. We then came home and invited our friends--the neighbors--over for coffee and cake. It's good to have people over to share cake with (that way there's less for us). The day ended with a good old fashioned thunderstorm--fireworks from God! Here are some pictures of the day.

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

Summer Time

Today is Tim's birthday,hopefully later today, I'll have pictures. In the meantime I put together this little scrapbook. Most of the pictures have been published at one time or another, but I thought that they looked cute all together in this little book by Smilebox. Hope you enjoy them.

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

New Blog Header----Please Vote!

OK,so I'm an amateur. I'm talking about this whole change the look of the blog site. I'm an easily bored person, so it's only natural that after a while I'd become a little bored with the way the blog looked. I visit lots of other blogger sites and see all of their beautiful sites and I guess I broke one of the 10 commandments and wanted a beautiful one too. Well, I at least didn't "steal" any one's, I just coveted---yes I know, sin is sin.... I'm still not good enough to write the html for the site---hats off to those of you who can! I am also a CHEAP person who doesn't want to have to pay some one to change the look of the site for me. At any rate, I played with my photo editting program and came up with a few possibilities. I'm now going to ask for everyone's opinion as to which one they like better. PLEASE leave a comment and be sure to leave your vote on the poll in the right hand column! So which will it be? The current one on the blog or one of these?

Bear with me!

Some of you may have noticed a minimalist look to the blog off and on. I'm trying to give it a facelift (if blogger lets me--I'm having some issues), and hope to be done soon. Please bear with me! Thanks

FFF "Dancin' or Shake your groove thang"

This week's topic actually was a little difficult for me. Tabitha doesn't dance per se, she does wiggle a little or rock her head some when her music toys are playing, but catching a photo of that is EXTREMELY difficult. So I finally resorted to having her and Daddy sort of "dancing". If you'd like to see more kids shakin' their groove thang, click over to Sarah's blog

The zoo...

Over the weekend we ventured out to the local zoo, Riverbanks Zoo. It was a little hot to be out for my taste, but all in all it was a good time. This is the 4th time that Tabitha has been to the zoo. We went to the zoo twice while we were in Guatemala and this is her second time here. I can tell that she was more interested in the animals this time. Every animal however is "dog". Here are a few pictures from our visit.