Ramble On

Have I mentioned lately that fall is one of my four favorite seasons of the whole year?

Leaves are fun (when they're not filled with gross bugs and stuff).

Dye My Eyes and Call Me Pretty

This is Owen. He's our man-child boy-cat. Earlier today he stole a slab of stromboli right off my plate, so he spent part of the evening on punishment.

We found the bib in the couch -- it is one of Shae's, from about a hundred million years ago. It says "Thank Heaven for Little Girls." We went with this particular punishment because we don't have any ballerina outfits for Shae's Cabbage Patch doll (yet).

{ Incidentally: I have absolutely no idea what we did with the adoption papers for Shae's doll. So I don't know what her doll's name is. However, I do remember the name of my first Cabbage Patch Kid: Bobbette Janet. What does this say about me, as an adoptive parent? Anything? (It was a first birthday present, which feels like it was a completely different lifetime ago.) }

Wordless Wednesday: Go Go Godzilla

Tulum, Quintana Roo, Mexico -- May 2005.

24-Hour Party People

A couple more pictures from Kim & Phil's party, because ... why not? I took more than a hundred of these things. Yes, I know I need professional help.

This is the alternate version of the bubble machine picture -- I almost went with this shot at first, but I decided on the other one instead because I like Shae's smile better.

Kids and pom-poms, amirite? She could play with pom-poms all day, every day, but we don't let her because for some weird reason she likes to chew on the strings. I think maybe she is spending too much time around the cats, because they do the same thing.

Guess what she just did here ... and I'll give you a hint. Right as I was taking this picture, she said, very quietly, "Tell Daddy to change me." HAHAHAHA. One day she is going to be in intensive electroshock therapy because I keep putting pictures like this on the Internet.

But at least we never made her sleep in a dresser drawer. (She's too tall, anyway.)

Cupcake Calendar: October

Okay, I'll come right out and admit that this calendar page is not my best work -- not in this calendar, and definitely not since. But I find these pictures very useful as a reference tool.

For one thing, that picture on the left, where Shae is dressed as a skunk? That's one of the earliest pictures we have of her, taken by her former foster family. And I'm not sure if you can tell in the small version, but if you make the image larger, you will be able to tell that Shae was ... chunk-style back then. She's a sturdy girl now, tall and strong, but nobody can call her "chunky" any more, not even after she eats three pancakes and a whole 15-ounce can of peaches for breakfast. (We think another growth spurt is coming.)

Two-thirds of these pictures are from only a year ago, and still I cannot believe how much different she looks now, and yet how much she is still the same. I've said it before, but she is definitely not a baby any more. She's too old for Blue's Clues now, but not yet ready for The Simpsons. She doesn't have the chubby cheeks, and she doesn't fit into that orange shirt any more (which is a pity, because I love that outfit), but you can already see a bit of the devil in her eyes. Which is exactly the way we love her.