Off to Grandmother's house we went...

We took our first out of town trip recently to visit James' mom and stepdad (Granny and Big Pa to Henry). It was a 4+ hour car trip with a toddler and two poodles--in the middle of mating season, no less--but it went amazingly well. Henry slept a huge chunk of the trip there and was content the rest of the time. Once there, we had a great visit with Granny and Big Pa. Henry warmed up to them right away and made himself at home in their house. He spent much of his time happily taking groceries off of a shelf in their kitchen and rearranging them throughout the house. He was particularly fond of a small bottle of a canjun concoction called "Shrimp and Crab Boil." We visited and watched Henry carry on this way for hours. It's funny how having a kid can become a sole source of entertainment!

Henry and Granny bonding

Henry checking out Big Pa

Henry and the beloved, infamous Shrimp and Crab Boil

Granny successfully wooed Henry with some of her famous homemade cookies that we've been missing. It was pretty much pure love between them after that! It was so precious to watch them bond. As an adoptive mother, I was initally worried that family members wouldn't love him as much as we would. Of course, everyone is crazy about him! I love nothing more than to see how excited everyone is to spend time with him.

While there, we spent an afternoon outlet shopping and spending time with Henry's great Aunt Iris. Aunt Iris is hearing impaired and has inspired us to teach Henry sign language. He's doing really well with it!

Henry, Granny, and Aunt Iris

One of the few pictures of the 3 of us

The rest of the trip was wonderful, and it actually flew by too quickly. The only rough spot we had was on the trip home. Henry was tired and out of his element. He fussed a lot of the way home, so we stopped at a roadside picnic spot to give him a snack. He did well until he fell flat on his face on some rocks. That gave him a giant scratch/bruise on his cheek, which is actually still there 10 days later.

When Henry met Zoey

This last weekend we took our first out-of-town trip to visit James' mom and stepfather. (More about that trip in a separate post later). While we were there, we met up with one of my online Holt bulletin board friends, Kim, her husband Danny, and her adorable kids Braedan and Zoey. Sweet little Zoey joined their family last April from S. Korea, and is the same age as Henry. Kim is an adoptee from S Korea as well. They graciously invited us to their home for a homemade Korean dinner and a playdate for the kiddos. The food rocked--Henry was a big fan too! It was wonderful to get together and share info about the adoption experience with each other. I'm blessed to have them as our new friends!

One cute thing that happened as we were leaving was that we encouraged Henry to give his new friend Zoey a kiss. He leaned in to plant one on her, but she blocked him with her hands. Ah, his first kiss rejection from a girl.

This picture was nearly impossible to capture with two tired toddlers.

The babies enjoying their dinner.

I believe Braedan was being a transformer in the background.

There Henry is making that funny squishy face again.

Zoey was hamming it up for the camera!

So cute! I definitely need to remove the price tag from the bottom of his shoe, though.

Please bear with me---I am terribly behind on blogging. I have several things I want to write about, but little time to do so. A few of my upcoming posts will not necessarily be in chronological order.

I just realized that I didn't write about an important event from a couple of weeks ago! We were blessed to be invited to dinner with several more adoptive families with Korean kids who I've been chatting with on the Holt bulletin boards also. It was a wonderful experience to meet with others who have been down that same road we are on. Plus, it was super cute to see all of our adorable kids together. I was a little astonished to discover that Henry was the same size or bigger than the 2 year olds who were there!!

Here is a cute picture of some of us who were there that night:

(from the left)MaryAnn and Rai, Mary and Henry, Melissa and Briana, Marni and Zach

It is very important to me to maintain ties with other Korean adoptive families so that Henry can have friends as he gets older who share his cultural heritage and the adoption experience.

Two playground trips

All summer I had been very eager to take Henry to a playground, but with the super hot Texas  heat, we had to wait for cooler temperatures before we could go. We finally made it to a playground recently. I put Henry in a toddler swing and he loved it. Unfortunately, we were only there a few minutes before a mentally ill homeless man started harrassing us. He was yelling at me from a distance away and saying how sexy I was. I turned my back on him and was determined not to let him spoil our outing. Then he yelled at Henry and said he was as sexy as his momma and proceeded to pee on a tree. You can believe that we got out of there quickly at that point, and a phone call to the police was made. Here are the cute pictures I took before the creepy man showed up.

For some reason he was really excited to find this stick on the playground.

After that bummer of a playground trip, I decided that we just had to give it another try. It had been raining a lot recently, but I didn't let that deter my plans. I took Henry to the small playground at our apartment complex. It was muddy and wet, but I helped Henry climb and slide on the equipment. And, contrary to my personal loathing of getting stains on clothes, I allowed Henry to fully get messy. I accidentally left my camera in the apartment, so I only captured a few post-playing messy photos. Honestly, I don't think Henry enjoyed the dirt. He kept trying to wipe it off....a boy after my own heart.

Cute little shoes! This was probably the last time he'll wear them because they are now too small. We just had to buy a new pair of Stride Rite's to replace them--size 6 extra wide!!!

1st Haircut

It was time. Henry had a few really long first baby hairs that were out of control, and he was starting to look a little shaggy. We decided on a whim to take him to one of those hair cutting places for kids--you know the ones---they had chairs shaped like cars, TVs everywhere, and odd (but yummy) cookie dough scented hair gel. Also, the entire place was decorated much like The Max, the cool hangout of the Saved By the Bell kids. It was a little bizarre and fun.

I wanted Henry to have a faux hawk (the sterotypical Asian cool-boy hairdo thanks to Angelina's little Maddox), but his overall lack of hair growth prevented it. Poor kiddo--he has the same hairline as his balding daddy. Hopefully we'll see some more hair coming soon. Anyway, he ended up with just a shorter, trimmed up haircut with the hair on top a tad bit longer. I've been putting a dab of gel in it and spiking up the middle portion a bit. Not a faux hawk, but very cute. He seems to enjoy all this new hair grooming. He likes to brush and comb his hair lately and also gets excited when he sees the gel bottle coming (in keeping with the late 80's-early 90's vibe, we use Dep, of course!).

Pre-haircut with Daddy

This is the point during the haircut when we had to

resort to giving him a cell phone to play with.

It ended up shorter than this on top, but I

thought he looked so cute this way.

The end result. Is it just me, or does he look underwhelmed?

Good side view. Overall, pretty cute!

Spaghetti beast

Here is our little spaghetti beast enjoying his dinner. He cracks us up so much when he's eating!


And here is the aftermath of his spaghetti attack! (Pay no attention to the America's Next Top Model music in the background).