Long time, no see...

What is the difference between maternity leave and working even part time?  Well last week, it was the difference that I didn't get time to blog!  I wish I would have finished up some of the partial blogs that I started throughout the week, but sleep usually won out by the end of each night.  Here are some of the highlights of the things that kept us so busy!

On Monday, Julia got her first trip to our pediatrician.  We absolutely love our pediatrician, so we were excited to have her meet Julia and get us started in the right directions.  Julia was an absolute champ about it all!  We were able to get some good things accomplished that day since the clinic also houses specialists, a lab and a pharmacy!  By the end of our day, Julia had given up three vials of blood for labs, had a hearing test from the audiologist and we had our laundry list of specialists to schedule with.

There are so many reasons we love our pediatrician, but by the end of Monday night, she had added a few more.  She called us at 9:30 at night because they'd just posted some of Julia's lab results that they'd drawn for that afternoon!  The only thing that turned up so far was a vitamin D deficiency so she told us about her prescription.  Not too long after that, she emailed asking about our preference on the form of the supplement, as well as providing us a written break down of her new immunization schedule.

We also got to celebrate that in just two weeks, Julia had gained two pounds already!  I started out being a bit disappointed that it wasn't more, but I do have to remind myself that two pounds is almost ten percent of her body weight at this point!

We broke up the time between appointments and labs with a trip to my mom's work.  It was fun to bring Julia in to meet some of the people that had supported us without knowing us that well and that had celebrated alongside my mom as our adoption progressed.

On Wednesday, Lily and I had a mommy-daughter date.  Yo Gabba Gabba has been Lily's favorite show for a while and we'd found out just the week before that they would be live at a venue nearby.  Robert and I decided that since Julia didn't have the attention span to watch it and he didn't really have a desire to go, that it would be fun for just the two of us to go and it could be an early Christmas present to Lil.  

Oh my goodness--we had a blast!  A week later and Lily is still talking about it!  She sang just about every word to every song and danced and wiggled for almost two hours.  She was entirely glued to watching the characters and just so happy to be there!  She clapped so hard after each song I thought her hands would start hurting.  I know her cheeks had to have hurt after as much as she smiled.  She loved everything about it--from riding on the parking shuttle bus to getting souvenirs to bring home.  Neither of us could get the smile off our faces the rest of the night!

On Thursday morning, we got to play with some carrots that we got from my boss.  Lily liked playing with them while they were still dirty and Julia preferred them to be washed a edible.  In fact, I wish my hands weren't so messy so I could have gotten a picture of Julia waiting for me to get her carrots ready.  I had grated some 8 cups of carrots to baked with later and was squeezing some of the excess moisture out of them at one point.  I decided to squeeze into a glass to cut back on mess and decided to give her some of the juice after a few squeezes.  That's all it took.  She didn't leave my side until all 8 cups of those carrots were bone dry!  I'd have to stop after just a couple handfuls and give her the 1/4 inch of juice that had accumulated each time!  Needless to say, I quickly grabbed the other bag of carrots my boss left when I went back to work the next day and will be juicing a few pounds of carrots in a couple of days.

And although I didn't get a picture of my little carrot fanatic, I did get a shot of Lily and her 'octopus' carrot since she was the only one with dirty hands at this point--

On Saturday, Robert's favorite boxer was fighting on Pay Per View.  It is the one sport and the one fighter that he checks headlines for every single day.  He only has one or maybe two bouts per year, so we usually make it a big to-do when he is on.  We had originally thought we'd have a really big get-together and make it a big welcome-home-Julia party too, but as plans dwindled down and we ran out of time to plan things, we scaled back and it wound up being my mom going with us to his dad and step-mom's house.  It was actually perfect that way. 

It is so nice to spend time around people that are as head over heels for our kids as these three people are.  Robert's dad could hardly finish his meal because he was so enthralled watching Julia eat.  His step-mom patiently played Julia's pack and un-pack and re-pack things game on the couch just about all night long.  My mom took turns with me making a game out of distracting both girls from the stairs and tickling and lifting them in the air instead.  As awesome as it is to love these two girls with all of our hearts, it is exponentially wonderful to have some family and friends around us embrace both of them just as they are too.

Besides, who could think these two are anything but perfect, just as they are?