Friday Quick Takes (51)

--- 1 ---

The weather was absolutely beautiful earlier this week (not so much now, it's been raining and cold for 3-4 days now).  We had a family picnic out in our front yard.  It was very fun and I love that the mess was outside and easier to clean up!  Especially with Anthony eating all table food now, that kid's a mess!  I vacuum under the kitchen table once or twice a day.  I used to be able to go a week...

 We had to sit them with their backs together to prevent Anthony from stealing Anna's food.  That baby's a piggy!

--- 2 ---

I had a dumb moment with our Foster to Adopt paperwork.  First of all, our caseworker gave us 2 copies because she'll have us fill it out again in 6 months if we're still waiting, to re-evaluate.  I filled the whole packet out (4-5 pages, lots of questions).  Then something distracted me and I didn't get a chance to fill out the last page.  The next day, we were going to drop it off to turn it in, so I quickly filled out the back page, we signed it, and I dropped it off.  That was at least a month ago.  

No word from our caseworker since then (I love our caseworker, but sometimes she's a little airheaded and it's a little frustrating).  This week, Jeremy was going through his bin of paperwork and found our packet, filled out, except for the last page.  I knew I didn't fill out both packets.  I realized that we signed the last page of the empty packet and turned in an almost empty packet of paperwork.  We had the unsigned, last page empty, totally filled out packet here at home. 

I felt dumb having to email my caseworker.  Until I realized she should feel embarrassed for not looking at our paperwork at all.  We have it turned in now, and hopefully that lit a fire under her butt...

--- 3 ---

Back to the beautiful weather that teased us like crazy last week and earlier this week...

Lots of walks happening around here!  Anna almost always pushes her giraffe in the stroller.

I asked her to turn around and smile and she said "Anna busy Mama".  She wears those sunglasses around all the time, inside and out.

He loves to be outside, especially when Anna walks ahead of us and he gets to watch her.

Shortly after telling me she was too busy to take a picture, she said, "Picture GeeGee Mama, GeeGee cute!"

--- 4 ---

He's finally using some fine motor skills to pick up food.  So we've stopped purees and he's chowing on real food.  He loves it, and he loves sitting in his booster up at the table.  But boy is it messy!

And because I took his picture at dinner, Anna had to have "Anna's turn".

--- 5 ---

We had Anthony's screening on Monday.  He scored a whopping ZERO in gross motor skills...  His fine motor skills weren't a whole lot better (although he did get some points for picking up food, it's about the only thing he'll pick up without it being handed to him).  However, he scored almost perfect in communication skills.  He's way too social to be bothered with moving and using his hands...  The screener referred us to someone else to do a more global screening, she's pretty sure he'll qualify and benefit from early intervention.  Especially since his birthmom has developmental delays (although, oddly enough, hers have always been in the communication/social area...) and he had zero prenatal care and some other risk factors in utero.  So I'm waiting for them to call me back to set something up with them.  And he totally charmed the daylights out of the lady doing the screening.  What he lacks in motor skills, he definitely makes up for in personality :-).

--- 6 ---

I really love having a 2 year old around.  She definitely has her moments (or days) of drama, but overall it's such a fun age.  It's so fun to watch her figure things out.  Her vocabulary has just boomed lately (it's always been above average, but she's surprising us a lot lately) and her critical thinking skills are developing.  It's funny to hear her train of thought.  She talks all day long. Here are a few of my favorites from today:

Me: (8am, setting out pizza dough for our pizza Fridays)

Anna: Roll it, make pizzy!

Me: (showing her that it's frozen and needs to thaw) We have to let it warm up, we can roll it out and make our pizza after naptime.

Anna: Otay, ni-night Mama.

She then proceeded to walk upstairs.

Me: Anna, who are you friends?

Anna: Anne (who is 2) and JuJu (her aunt, whose 21, who is in school in St. Louis)

Anna: JuJu play at Donald's (McDonald's) today?

--- 7 ---

 My parents are on another cruise (yes, they went on once a month ago too).  Anna doesn't like it when they're gone.  She begs to go to "gamma's" to eat dip (all dips are her favorite foods).  My in-laws are on vacation too, so Anna will be very excited when Grandma and Grandpa and Nana and Papa are done with the "cation" and she can go back to having them all wrapped around her little finger.

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