Potty Training.... Funny stuff

Potty training in underwear has been really successful. Monkey walked right into church, threw up her dress and showed off her new Doc McStuffins underwear this morning for the man that opened the door, and anyone that would look, haha. What was REALLY funny was his response... "No, No, No, don't do that... put your dress down." He was very nice about it, but he was not expecting Monkey's underwear excitement. She did not have any "mistakes" in her underwear at church or the last three days. She did have one not long after we got home, but I was still so proud of her. It is going great!! She has been going on errands with me, and having no problems. She is so proud of herself, and we are of her. 

Anyone got anything "funny" to share on your kids or friend's/family's kids potty training?

Handmade journal from The Nib and Quill

I received my gorgeous homemade journal from The Nib and Quill today that I won in a contest. Check out the detail just in the wrapping! The little book that arrived is one that my daughter is going to use as a bible for Barbies.

The journal has a wonderful feel to it and feels very durable. I could not be more pleased with this beautiful journal. Imagine my surprise when it arrived with cute cameras on it, and I LOVE photography! Check out her shop on Etsy and her blog. This journal would be an incredible gift for someone that is normally hard to shop for say a teenager or adult who loves to write, draw or enjoys a small scrapbook.

Potty Training....

Yesterday, Monkey picked out two packs of underwear! She picked out Doc McStuffins and Disney Princesses. She wore one of the Princess ones for a few hours yesterday with no problems. She was hysterical. There really is no other word for it. She was so emotionally happy. She would dance, shake her booty in the mirror, laugh and shake her booty more, sing and and then dance and shake her booty more while singing, "Shake Your Booty". She would then run into the kitchen and check herself out in the oven door reflection. She is in another pair of princess underwear this morning and the plan is to wear all day, and yes, to the store. I think she can do this. I think she needs the push. She still will go in her pull-ups, but she knows to go to the bathroom. She is almost always dry at night. And is usually dry when we run errands because she always asks to go to the bathroom.

Eggless Tapioca

One of my favorite desserts growing up was tapioca. When you have an egg allergy this is something that you give up because face it, the store bought all ready-made tapioca kind does not taste like tapioca. I always loved the make-it-on-the-stove-kind. Not to mention the sweet smells in the kitchen. 

You will need 3 tablespoons of Kraft Minute tapioca

1/3 cup white sugar

2 tablespoon of water

2 ¾ cup milk, I use fat free and it tasted great

2 tablespoons cornstarch

2 teaspoon pure vanilla

Cinnamon for topping, if you like

Add tapioca, milk and sugar to your pot and cook for 5 minutes on medium heat.

Mix cornstarch and water in a small cup and put to the side.

Boil and sir tapioca in the pot constantly, then add cornstarch mixture, and continue to boil until tapioca thickens.

Add vanilla and remove from heat and allow to cool. Once you serve, top with cinnamon.

Original recipe was found on food.com, but I slightly adapted this recipe for my own tastes as I felt the original recipe was a little bland. 

 

Slime or something other.....

So me and the kiddos decided to make slime today. 

We got out a bowl and added 1/2 cup of warm water, a little green food coloring, 1/2 teaspoon of glitter glue (you need more as you can not see that we used any) and a 1 1/2 teaspoon of borax. We then added 8 oz of Elmer's glue. We stirred and stirred then added more borax, then more borax and then more borax, hahaha. So we have slime, but it is a little firm, but it is making some very nice models. And it still stretches really nice. I think next time, we will just pull the slime out of the water and kneed it more than add more borax. I think that is where we went wrong, but since we are having so much fun, maybe we were not wrong!

Update on Monkey's skin and the Band aid issue

     A while back, I blogged about an issue we were having with Monkey’s skin. You can read about it here. Two days after I posted, I took her to urgent care because her wrist looked strange. Her wound went to being dry to being wet. She had what I was trying to prevent, Impetigo (skin infection that must be controlled or your child will become very ill). She did not have ANY fever, and acted fine. Urgent care was excellent with her. They recognized that she was terrified and did not want anyone near her and took us back immediately. The doctor prescribed antibiotic cream and antibiotic medication. We had a follow-up with her pediatrician after a few days. Her pediatrician had us add bleach to her bath for a few days. She is healing nicely. Both doctors stated with her eczema problems that any bug bite or anything suspicious needs to be covered up and then followed-up since she likes to scratch.

     During all of this, we found band aids that do not break her skin out, and do not pull her skin off when removed. The band aids are sold under two different names. Johnson and Johnson Comfort Sheer is what I am buying, but it was previously sold by searching the code on the bottom of the box as Johnson and Johnson Sheer Strips. From what I am seeing in the stores, Comfort Sheer is the NEW name for them, but they are indeed the same thing. I had great difficulty finding them at first. If you know anyone that has skin problem such as diabetic, eczema or adhesive problems, these are wonderful! You should be able to find them at most department stores in different sizes.

What do you do when your preschooler hates Band-Aids?

     Monkey, my 3-year-old, cannot stand Band-Aids. Yes, even the super cute ones. Little bug would wear them on her with pride. In fact, Little bug would wear them when she did not need them as most kids do. Monkey hates anything on her skin. There is no way first aid tape is touching her skin. She suffers from Eczema and refuses lotion or prescription creams. When she falls down and needs a Band-Aid it is heartbreaking. She recently started picking at a bug bite so we put a Band-Aid over it. She let me since it has been so long. It didn’t stay on long. Then she really started messing with the bug bite. I finally put medicine on it, gauze and then wrapped it with cute Angry Bird first aid elastic wrap. It looked like everything would be okay. Well the gauze that was not supposed to stick DID. Poor kid, it pulled some of the bug bit wound off. Next we tried liquid Band-Aid. She left it alone, but it doesn’t look much better. Today, I am going to put on medicated baby powder and take her to the doctor tomorrow or the next there is not any improvement since she will not let me tend to it properly. Little bug got bug bites under her arm a while back that would not heal because she was scratching and the medicated powder worked wonders. Since Monkey will not let us touch her skin much, I figure it would not be a good solution but I now think without a doctor visit it is the only one.

     Anyone have any suggestions? Maybe a product that I am unaware of that might help my sweet girl? 

     The summer has been a nightmare with the bugs. We are using bug spray when we stay out. It is the times when we head somewhere quickly that we seem to get bit. I think bug spray is going to have to be used all year round now. 

Update: I found burn gauze in our local drugstore today, and paid much more for it. Hopefully, it will work better than the off store brand that I reluctantly had on hand. I medicated her wrist with the medicated powder, put the new gauze on it, and the used the angry bird wrap. She seems satisfied. Someone on Facebook suggested clip on bug spray, which I would like to use due to her eczema. Our store was out so I will try another store soon. My biggest worry is impetigo, which is why I am asking all the questions. She does not have fever, and it has not spread. She is happily eating Lima beans and sausage right now. Doctor visits are a nightmare whether for a well visit or a sick visit, which became worse after she was extremely sick last year with a 105 fever. After being repeatedly stuck with needles, and receiving a catheter to check her kidneys, as you can imagine, doctors visits are not fun for her. We usually leave with vomit on her, the doctor, nurses and me. A friend, with a child with sensory issues, recommended a book, The Out-of-Sync Child. I ordered it and look forward to reading it. Has anyone read it?  

Tomatoes!

We have our first bunch of tomatoes! So excited! 

Spinach Stuffed Mushrooms

Spinach Stuffed Mushrooms.

I have been making these for years. I guess you can say this is my signature dish.

I like to bake these in a throwaway container and then transfer to another container after I cook them due to the mess the mushrooms make to the pan after cooking.

2 boxes of large button mushrooms

¼ chopped onion

1 tablespoon mince garlic

1 package of cream cheese (prefer 1/3 less fat)

4 handful of fresh spinach (do not use frozen, very important)

Small bag of grated Parmesan cheese

1 cup crumbled feta cheese

2 pieces of bacon, fully cooked, then crumbled

Olive oil for drizzling

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon black pepper

Take the stems out of the mushrooms. Wash stems and caps.  Put caps in a baking dish (or throwaway one).

     

Drizzle olive oil in a hot skillet. Crush the stems with your fingers and put in the skillet. Add onions, garlic, salt and pepper, and cook until all is lightly brown stirring a few times. Remove from heat.

In a mixing bowl add the mushroom mixture with 1/2 of a small tub of cream cheese. (I like to add the cream cheese on top of the hot mushroom mixture because it stirs better due to the heat) Then add a handful of Parmesan cheese, ½ cup of feta cheese, spinach and bacon. Mix all together and gently stuff the caps.

Top the mushrooms with feta cheese and Parmesan cheese. Bake 400 until brown.

Bonus: If you have any spinach mixture left, save for chicken. Bake chicken with seasoned salt and olive oil.When chicken is done, add spinach mixture on top. Then bake another 5 minutes. Incredible flavor!!!

Please link back to this recipe if you want to use on your blog, etc. Thank you. The cookbook will be out soon.
© Melody Lynn

Introduction

     Let me reintroduce myself. It has been so long since I have been in the blogging world; I forgot that I have not been personal. My name is Melody. I have been married for over 11 years. We have two gorgeous daughters, many thanks to their biological families. They are the loves of my husband and my lives, their biological families lives, our families and friends lives. Children are indeed a blessing.

     We live in the South, and love it. I am an Air Force brat so I moved around many times. I am so happy to live in the South, and to have my girls live in one place and in one school district. I loved my childhood though. I spent a big part of it in Germany, and met many people.

     I have been a stay-at-home mommy for a year. Before this past year, I worked either in something medical or with children. I was a stay-at-home mommy to Little Bug for a little over 4 years. I plan on staying home with Monkey until she can attend Kindergarten. We had a rough start, I only had one week maternity leave with Monkey due to me being employed less than 6 months with the job I had during the time of her birth. I would have quit my job, but I was the victim of a fairly bad car wreck that damaged my shoulder and neck, and destroyed my vehicle (needed to buy a new one). That set us back a lot money wise so I had to continue to work. Thankfully, we are doing much better now, and being frugal allows me to stay home with our girls.

     When my husband and I were dating, we talked about children many times. We also talked about adoption. Many of my family are adopted and friends. Adoption has been the normal for me. It really was no wonder when we started to look into adopting to start our family. We did do what most people do when they get married, try and get pregnant. When it was time for me to go to my yearly doctor, she said I should have been pregnant by now. We both were tested to make sure we were okay. We were told, y’all are going to need fertility treatments. We went home, then we looked at each other and were like, nope, why? Adoption was never a second choice. Why, not look into what we need to do to adopt now? Within 6 months, we receive a call that a baby was born and was in private foster care. Her biological mom wanted to meet us. Little bug was a week old then. We took Little bug home that very same day.

     A few years later, we decided to start adopting again. Since we adopted once, most of the biological families that saw our profile wanted a family that did not have any children so we knew it was going to take longer. We did have one failed placement (matched for 5 ½ months and contact with the biological family). I will discuss more about failed placements later in another post.

     Monkey, our youngest girl, was born nearly 5 years after Little bug. Their birthdays are 5 days apart. How cool is that? Well, until they get older and hate it, haha. We met Monkey’s biological family about three months before she was born. This was our first experience with a baby being born in the hospital. When she was born, her biological dad text me the sweetest text, “Congrats, your baby girl is born. She is beautiful and healthy.” We were in church and I had my phone on silent and never heard it. If you could have seen me when I saw it! I was running around like a true crazy person. I also had all kinds of voice mails. I ran outside to listen to my voice mails. I called Monkey’s biological dad and our lawyer. We grabbed Little bug and headed to the hospital. Since we had the failed placement last year, we did not tell Little bug that we were matched. Well, she kept asking whose baby were we seeing and finally, is it my baby? Is it my baby sister? We told her, yes, we believe it is her sister. We visited with Monkey and her biological family every day until Monkey was able to come home after 5 days in the hospital.

     We are fortunate to have an open adoption with both our girls’ biological families. The openness does vary. Our eldest daughter physically sees her biological mother a couple times a year. We email and talk. Our youngest has not seen her biological family since the hospital. I have seen her biological mother. She, they, want to wait until Monkey is older before they have an relationship with her. We do email. Both families receive many pictures. Again, every open adoption is going to be different. Make sure everything is done for the child in question. An open adoption will help a child in the long run. It does not mean we are any less our daughters’ parents. Also, I am sure there are cases when an open adoption is not in the best interest of a child. Take a foster/adopt situation. The child was placed in foster care for a reason. The biological family was unable to do what the court needed to parent their child. The court gives many, many chances to parent your child. Just think ahead: When your child is an adult, did you do what you could with his/her biological family to form a relationship when he/she was a child?

If you are wanting to adopt, here is the book I wrote about our adoption process. 

Have you heard of Graze?

You receive your first and fifth box free. You can cancel anytime, even after your first box. You choose what items you never want and the items that you would like to try.  If you do continue after your first box, it is only $6 a month.

 

List of Adoption Books and Movies

List of Adoption Books and Movies

     There have been so many adoption theme books and movies lately. Obviously, I have not read or watched them all, but I thought I would give my input on what I have read and seen recently. I would love others input as well in the comments. I am not going to review my own adoption book. You can read the reviews on Amazon if you want to know more about my book. Be sure to check out the reviews on the books and movies listed in this post as well. I will post links throughout this post. You may find some of these movies on Neflix or Amazon Prime. 

     We read so many books about 9 years ago, that I cannot remember all of them, but I know we had to read a lot of “how to adopt books” to feel somewhat comfortable on how to pick an agency or attorney. I am not including the books we read back then because I cannot remember much about them.

    These are domestic adoption books and one foster/adopt book. I read a lot about international adoption during the beginning of our journey, but I do not remember which ones.

   First off, we rarely watch movies without our kids so it is rare for me to see a movie without them. So most of the movies on this list are family friendly unless I state otherwise. Spoiler alerts ahead:

Despicable Me 1 and Despicable Me 2

We (me, husband and kids) enjoyed both of these movies. The first one did not portray adoption well at first, but the movie did have a good ending. The second did a much better job. I know some people that did not give these movies a chance since the children were given away in the first movie, but the main character, Mr. Gru, needed to know what he lost to find that he did indeed love them and did need them and wanted to be a parent. He was not looking to be a dad. He was evil, remember? Again, it had a good ending. We watch these movies all the time.

Lilo and Stitch

Lilo and her sister, Nani, lost their parents. So Nani takes care of both of them. Being young, she makes a lot of mistakes and risks loosing her sister Lilo. Stitch is an alien who is looking for a place to fit in. There is a social worker in the movie. This is a good movie, and there is a happy ending.

Annie

Wow, who hasn’t seen Annie?  LOVE this movie. We have to take in account that this movie took place back when laws were not enforce for the good of kids.  So Ms. Hanniagan was not the best role model for kids. Another happy ending.

Anne of Green Gables

Adoption is not heavily talked about in this series except in the beginning of the movie. Anne is adopted. Other than that, it is not mention much after she lives with her new parents. I have always loved this sweet series. All girls love Anne.

Kung Fu Panda 1 and Kung Fu Panda 2

These movies are hilarious. They hardly get into adoption themes in the first one, but it is known that he is adopted. We find out more about his biological family in the 2^nd one, which is sad as they had no choice. He loves his dad, the one that adopted him. Excellent movies.  

Meet the Robinsons

My daughter saw this at school and enjoyed it. I did not like the beginning of this movie when I saw it. Each potential adoptive family that met him kept passing the boy and did not want to adopt him. So much rejection. It went on and on. My daughter said the movie was funny, and he got his family in the end. So I will leave it up to you. 

The Rescuers 

Penny is kidnapped and needs help. She wants a family. Another happy ending.

Tarzan

Tarzan is adopted by, Kala, a female Gorilla. Her son recently died as did Tarzan’s biological parents. Tarzan searches for where he belongs throughout the movie.

Hercules

Born a God, but stolen and left on Earth. A nice family adopts him. He continues to search for “where he belongs”, but discovers it was where he was after all. We love the music.

I know there are most likely more adoption theme kid’s movies, but these are what come to mind.

October Baby

(Adult themes due to abortion) I would not recommend this movie for children.

This movie was quite good, but also very grim. This is a Christian based movie. There is a good ending in the sense of forgiveness, but I still found the movie quite sad. There is also a book.

The Blind Side

Wow, this movie rocks. Loved it! Excellent story about adoption. Based on a true story. I would watch this with teenagers and up.

Juno

Interesting movie. Shows that open adoption can work. I didn’t like the potential adoptive dad’s attitude throughout the movie, but again, this is a movie, not real life. Not my favorite adoption movie, but I know a lot of people seemed to like it.

Baby Boom

This is an older movie. Relative passes away and leaves the baby with the main character. She is going to place the baby for adoption but falls in love with her and now has to figure out how to parent her. This is a cute movie.

Man of Steel

Yeah, I know, Superman was adopted, but this movie focuses on it more. We get to see him struggle with his identity. Maybe it could spark some conversations in teenagers? And I really, really liked this movie too. 

You will find all kinds of made-for-TV-movies that take a black and white approach. The biological parents or adopted parents are evil and the other is good. There is no gray area. Nothing realistic. I cannot stand these movies. Sadly, this is usually how the media portrays adoption. I also have a hard time when a celebrity person dies and they list the children and always call out the ones that are adopted. Why do we need to know that? They are their children. They do not need an extra label. (Beauty of this being MY blog, I can state what I like and as random as I like) :-)

Books:

Instant Mom

I loved this book. It was full of humor, but it still was serious enough to show you that adoption is wonderful. This book was written by Nia Vardalos, screenwriter and actress from My Big Fat Greek Wedding. She writes about adopting her daughter from foster care and becoming an instant mom to a three-year-old.

Twenty Things Adopted Kids Wish Their Adopted Parents Knew

I think anyone adopting or if they are even thinking of adopting should read this book. The title speaks for itself.

Philomena: A Mother, Her Son, and a Fifty-Year Search

This is the most heartbreaking book I have read in a long time. (There is also a movie) I could barely get through the book, as it was so sad! This book shows you why we must have laws protecting everyone, and why we must have open adoption. (Extreme adult themes throughout this book, and I hear the movie)

Kids' Books:
 

I love you so

Wow, this is the cutest book from the illustrations to the beautiful written words. Whereas this is not an adoption book it will work for any child as it is that beautiful. This book will not disappoint.  

Tell Me Again About the Night I was Born

My daughters ask to read this over and over. Even though we did not fly on a plane to bring our daughters home, this book is a funny treasure. It nearly always brings up “Please tell me about the night you brought me home”. I wish I had gotten the hard copy since we have read it so much.

A Blessing From Above

This is such a cute little book. A Blessing From Above is a Christian book with some scripture. I think this book explains quite well what a blessing children are.

I am looking forward to reading your comments. 

Help Save Baylor!

      I recently saw a post on Facebook about a little boy with cancer. He needs a bone marrow transplant quickly. He needs a nearly perfect match, but this little boy is Japanese/German (Caucasian). He needs someone who is Japanese/Caucasian to be his donor. Could it be you? Do you know someone? My nephew is. He was tested this week after hearing about this little boy on another site.

Click here or click here for another site: http://marrowdrives.org/bone_marrow_donor_programs.html

     Apparently, there are not a lot of donors who are Japanese/Caucasian. What if it was your family member or friend? All I ask if you know someone that you could pass this to, can you?

     Here is this sweet boy: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2643237/Familys-desperate-search-bone-marrow-rare-donor-German-Japanese-heritage-attempt-save-Baylor-7-aggressive-childhood-leukemia.html 

You can also click on the picture to take you to the link to find out about donating your marrow.

As of 6.21.2014, Baylor still does NOT have a match. Please continue to share on social media and email. You can follow his family's quest on Facebook.  

7.21.14, Baylor is going to have a cord blood transfer (not a complete match at 5/6). A marrow transplant is still better for him. There are also other mixed race people waiting for transplants. Please continue to spread the word about Baylor.