Needed some pictures on here, so I finally uploaded the photos.

Sometimes she can be so sweet, the other times...

I'm talking about Avery. Becoming a big sister was not an easy adjustment for Avery (that is an understatement). Often, she would ask me when Brennyn would be going back to China. She would take toys away, causing Brennyn to hysterically scream. Avery would push/hit/annoy Brennyn, again causing her to hysterically scream.

You can imagine my surprise when Avery asked me a few months ago why we did not have a pig for Brennyn. When we were in China on our adoption journey to Avery, we visited the usual tourist traps including the jade factory. I bought Avery a tiny jade (sort of jade) dog (since she was born in the year of the dog).

I will admit to forgetting to buy Brennyn a little jade pig on this journey. Frankly, once we met Brennyn, we did not buy much of anything. We just did not have time, energy, or an inclination to shop. Our focus was on Miss Brennyn and helping her through her adjustment to us.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago and Avery is in the possession of a few yuan coins left over from our trip to China. Avery wants to know if she can have this money and I explained it was only good in China. Avery told me "I know mom, I am saving it for when we go to China so I can buy Brennyn her pig".

My heart melted.

I really need to upload/download the camera again. It's full of pictures that no-one gets to see.
Let's see what's new and exciting:
Avery had her last soccer game. She scored her first goal, and 2 more after that. She really is good, and she actually begs her dad to practice. He's convinced me to sign her up for indoor soccer this winter. I still think it may burn her out, but right now she is loving the soccer. She's like a female version of my husband, a mini Blair. He has her hooked on star trek and Dr. Who already, and wrestling. Somehow it's always mommy who is on the bad end of the "wrestling moves". I told her to go wrestle her father, since he is the bad influence of WWE X-Box gaming.

Brennyn isn't quite into sports, she's a little more like mommy. However, she loves to dance. I may be seeing dance classes in the future.
Her vocabulary is exploding and she is very annoyed if you don't understand what she just said.
She always needs to know what is making sounds. Her favourite sentence right now is "What that noise mommy"? She'll laugh if she already knows the answer. Brennyn is also at the jokester stage. She loves to run up to you and yell "boog" (meaning boo of course).

Must get some sleep, real estate agent visiting tomorrow. Have a lot of housecleaning to due early in the morning.

I may be slightly crazy

I guess I don't have enough on my plate these days, or I really am crazy (I'm leaning towards the latter).
We are thinking of making a change in housing. Our neighbours have had their house up for sale for a few months and it started me thinking (which isn't always a good thing).
We love where our house is located and I LOOOVE the backyard (no neighbours behind, just a woodlot, however there will eventually be something built back there). However, when we bought this house 8 years ago, we bought it for the location and not functionality. It was a spec home, this was the first time the builder had tried out this model and the foundation was already poured when we purchased. The kitchen is small, you can't have more than one person in there at a time. There are only 3 bedrooms, which is not a problem really except when the grandparents come to visit and Grandma gets stuck on the couch.

We've been stalking Avery's new school neighbourhood and something about those homes has peaked my interest. They are a lot older than this home, but some of them have been renovated. The only problem is that the homes in that area do not go up for sale very often. Also, there really aren't as many stores, etc. within walking distance like in this neighbourhood.
The upside is that Avery could walk to school, but no more walking to the library or gymnastics (the arena is 2 minutes from where we live now).

Decisions, decisions.

You never know when the questions will come

Reading Avery her twentieth story of the night, a classic sesame street books (for some reason she is loving her sesame street collection). Avery notices that one of the characters looks exactly like her mom (I think it was Betty Lou and her mother so they both had pink faces, blond hair, etc). She asked me "hmm, is she adopted"? I responded with a "I'm not sure, they really don't talk about the parent's and kids on sesame street". " I don't think so though, because they do have very similar features (they look identical, it's a cartoon of puppets and one is just bigger with longer hair).
"Oh, so she grew in her mommy's tummy".
I was about to ask Avery if she wanted to talk about it, but she insisted on reading more of the story.
2 minutes later I noticed how she appeared to be thinking about something.
I asked her if she wished she looked more like me, and she said yes. I guess I wasn't expecting that.
We often talk about how we look alike and how we look different (love that sesame street book, We are different, We are the same).

Avery said "I wish I grew in your tummy". After we talked about it for two seconds, she wanted to read stories again.
I brought it up again as I was turning out the lights and we did chat about adoption, birth mothers, etc.
Kids always want to talk about serious subjects when you least expect it! I think I handled it well, but we will be talking about this a lot more.

The best $40.00 I have ever spent

Off to the beach for a few days. It may be one of the last times we make it up this season. Wow, did that time go quickly!

Finally

Ha, computer, I have you figured out. I finally can post some updated pictures. Now the next thing is trying to find all my old pictures that were saved on the back up hard drive, but that is a project for another day.

The girls and I have been very busy this summer. For some reason, I felt this crazy need to pack in as much as possible the summer before Avery heads to big girl school. Let's see, we have been to the Toronto Zoo (spring, but it still counts), the beach many, many times, African Lion`s Safari, Avery`s been to Canada`s Wonderland with her Aunt, a ribfest and more.

The Safari was such a big hit. I haven`t been there in probably 20 years or so. I used to live 5 minutes away from the African Lion`s Safari when I was growing up so for me, it wasn`t that big of a deal. I think I was the only kid in my neighbourhood not to work there over the summer (okay, not really a neighbourhood since it was in the middle of nowheresville, but still).

The place has improved though, they put in an amazing splash pad for the kids. I think the girls like that part more than the animals.
We took the bus through the park and I highly recommend that mode of transportation (even if the buses look exactly the same as the ones I went on when I was a kid). After witnessing a few monkeys trying to eat pieces of a car, I was glad we were on the Safari bus.
The girls thought the monkey`s were hilarious. Especially when the bus stopped suddenly and 8 monkeys fell off the roof.

As an aside, whenever I travel to places I once frequented as a child, I think I will see people I once knew. Yet, that rarely happens. It`s funny how I lived in that area for 20 years, but I rarely think of it. I don`t drive by the old house, the pond we used to skate on, the lilac bushes I made forts in. Once my parent`s moved, it just wasn`t our place anymore.
Yet, my husband drives by his old house every so often (it`s easier though, seeing as we do live in the same town he grew up in).
I just feel a house is just a house. It`s the family who lives in it that makes it a home.

It's been 2 weeks since we set up the new computer and so far I have only been able to download 10 pictures. I have a million pictures on my camera but the computer doesn't like me.
I managed to get the camera hooked up and thought I was in the clear, ha. Suddenly a warning sign flashed and no matter how hard I tried, no more pictures could/would be added.
I'm actually going to have to break down and ask my husband how to do it, arghhhh.

So in the meantime, here are a few fairly recent beach shots. Oh how I wish I was at the beach right now. Avery insisted on the close up shots. There is even a picture of her water shoe (on her foot) somewhere in my camera, she thought it was the funniest picture ever.

Hello out there

I will admit (not for the first time) that I am a lurker. There I said it. I love to read blogs, but can count on one hand the number of blogs that I have actually commented on. I seem to be drawn to snarky blogs, parents who also have children born in China, and the odd food related recipe blog (pioneer women cooks, looove her blog).
Perhaps if I left the odd comment, other people may comment here as well. Maybe I should get rid of the little application that tells me where people are from who visit this blog? It just makes me so curious about who you are. So please tell me about yourself, say hello.
Here I'll start:
My name is Dayna, I am 29 (cough, cough 36), mom of two angelic, just perfect children (I did not notice white in my hair until I became a mom, just saying), wife to a soccer loving star trek fanatic (hmm, that's kind of an odd combination) and a tad on the sarcastic side. I am also an adoptee.
I have recently taken up running, and I actually like it. Just thought I'd throw that little tidbit in there, I had to see that in print. The last time I ran was probably grade 12 phys ed class, say around 1992ish.


Anyone????