Just because she is so stinking cute

I'm honored!

So I know it's been a while since I was tagged, but nevertheless, I am honored to have received a Blog Award! My friend, Jackie, over at Life in the Fish Bowl, tagged me with the "Fabulous Sugar Doll Blogger Award." Jackie is not only an awesome homeschooling, blogging, remodeling, recipes and money-saving tips sharer, God loving, organizing, Jr. Pro football Super-Bowling team mom to two exceptionally cute and smart Lego robot-building boys, but Jackie and her King Fish also brought their third precious son home from Russia nearly a year ago too. She is one of my most faithful blog readers and always leaves comments that brighten my day. Thank you, Jackie!

Now I am to list 10 random things about myself:

1) One the things that I was most thankful for this Thanksgiving is that I finally have enough pink and purple in my laundry to wash a load every few days. Silly, I know, but I waited a long time for those girly colors so I am enjoying every minute of it.

2) When I was in the 4th grade, I showed my first heifer in the livestock show at the TN State Fair. Her name was "Deborah". She was in heat the day of the show. I didn't know what that meant at the time. She went crazy in the ring and dragged me in circles, but I never let go. Deborah placed dead last in her class, but I won the showmanship award. I think the judges felt sorry for me.

3) I have worked for my current employer for over 17 years. I started working for my company the same week I started law school in 1992.

4) I don't like to talk on the phone very much, but could talk to my friends for hours face-to-face. This tends to drive my boys and husband a little crazy when they are trying to get me to leave somewhere like church.

5) I have had my Blackberry/cell phone for a almost year now and still don't know how to use all its features. I can actually answer the phone and retrieve voice-mails, but that took nearly 6 months. Who has time to read a manual that is thicker than "War and Peace"?

6) I read all the Twilight books and enjoyed them.

7) In the 8th grade, I broke my leg pole vaulting in some friends' front yard. Being the typical smart teenager (NOT), we weren't using the mat...it was in the back yard.

8) In college, I was in the Tri-Delt sorority. Delta, Delta, Delta, 3 times better!!!

9) Christmas is my all-time favorite time of the year. I start decorating in November. Christmas Pageants, Recitals, cute clothes, and the music are all wonderful, but what I enjoy most is our Advent Calender family tradition. I love read the Christmas story in Mathew and Luke to my children every night in December and listening to them read their Bibles to me now. It just makes my heart flutter!

10) I have reached an age where I can't remember how old I am anymore. When someone asks my age (friends, not total strangers), I have to start doing the math in my head... let's see, I was 30 when I got married... 31 when my oldest son was born... this is 2009.... that would make me...

There you have it. 10 random facts about me. I am supposed to pass this award on, but I'm just not good at that sort of thing so, sadly, my blog will be a dead end. But if you are looking for some blogs to read, please check out my side bar. There are sooooo many good ones listed you'll be reading all night!

Christmas on the Square

The Saturday before Thanksgiving, Garrett performed at our small town's Christmas on the Square. He sang a blue-grass version of "Away in a Manger". Lexi and Nana went with us to enjoy the festivities that beautiful November day. The rest of the boys decided to hang out at home.

Lexi may like to dress up like Santa's helper, but she is not the Jolly Old Elf's biggest fan.

I just LOVE the photo below.

Lexi was watching the little cloggers so intently, I had to hold her back from running out there to join them with her own version of dancing (which includes a lot of jumping around and rolling on the ground. LOL!)

People ask me all the time if I curl her hair. Nope, these curly locks are all natural.

I sure hope they stick around for a long time!

One Year!

Wow, it's amazing how quickly our first year with Lexi has past! It seemed like time dragged on forever when we were waiting for her. She is such a sweet girl and all our lives have been greatly enriched by her presence. She adores her brothers who, of course, love her soooo much in return. She is everything I ever dreamed a daughter could be... and so much more!

Life with five active kids is insanely busy and as a result, my blog time has suffered. However, I am working on videos of Trips One and Two. There are details that I never want to forget. My goal to have them ready before Christmas. (Hey, I hear you laughing... but isn't setting goals the first step to actually accomplishing them?) There is so much I that need to update, but for now a few photos of Lexi on her ONE YEAR FAMILY DAY will have to suffice!

She really wanted to wear Liam's old T-Santasaurus sweat shirt, so I had to do some serious scrambling to figure out a way to girly it up!

I hate that this photo is so washed-out/over-exposed, because it shows off the awesome smile that Lexi blesses us with everyday.

Maybe Santa will bring me a new camera this Christmas!

You can see just how much she has grown over the past year by looking at the photos on the Right Side Bar. It's hard to remember how tiny she was last year. Lexi is in the 50% range for both height and weight. She is right on target developmentally and even has advanced gross motor skills. Her speech has exploded this month and even family and friends can understand her now. She still uses the sign language we taught her last year, but now she will say the word at the same time. And, drum roll please.... she is almost potty trained. Her preschool teacher has even asked us to send her to school in panties. Oh, my heart be still! I just love this girl!

More to come soon......

11 Months

Fall colors are at their peak in our yard and Lexi has been with us for eleven months now. I can't believe that our one year Family Day anniversary is coming soon! She has grown so much in so many ways. She's a little ball of fire with the sweetest disposition! The other day, Liam asked me if I wanted Lexi to grow up. I told him that as much as I love Lexi as she is now, I am excited to see her become a big girl. To that Liam said, "But, I don't want her to ever grow up because she is the cutest baby I know." I thought that was just too sweet, especially from Liam who was the 'baby" of the family before Lexi.

Liam is full of interesting observations though. He was hanging out by my computer with me recently while I was scanning through a few of my favorite blogs and clicking on all the photos. After a few minutes, Liam said that he is beginning to think Russian children are the most beautiful in the whole world. I certainly can't argue with that!

Lexi's 2 year check-up is this week. I've had to reschedule it a few times due to illness. Not hers, thankfully, but everyone else in our house. We were fighting the H1N1 Flu (all except Lexi and Martin) one at a time. That was no fun, but (knock on wood) we are all well now. Anyway, I can't wait to see how much taller she is now and where she falls on the growth charts.

Ready for school this morning. Her new backpack is almost as big as she is.

I love the reflection in the glass doors of our trees and the beautiful blue sky we've been blessed with today.

She couldn't resist a quick little bike ride before loading up!

Time to invest in some cute bows... Lexi's hair has a mind of its own!

Breaking News!

Lexi will now (albeit reluctantly) wear a bow in her hair without yanking it out within the first 5 seconds! She set a new record on Sunday by wearing a small purple bow for 5 hours straight! Whoohoooo!!!

And check out the shoes! Yep, that's right. See ya next summer Pink Crocks!

Thanks to everyone for sending me suggestions about how to handle Lexi's obsession with her pink Crocks. When it seemed like nothing would ever work, I decided to videotape her reaction to putting on a different pair of shoes (so I could hopefully laugh at it someday). Well wouldn't you know that with the camera rolling as soon as I offered her these cute brown shoes with the little pink flower, she stuck her foot in the air as if there had never been a problem. The little stinker! We did have one relapse while on vacation last week, but it was short lived. So the shoe crisis is over.... for now.

Lexi's 2nd Birthday; 1st Party

I really wanted to throw a huge birthday bash for our sweet girl this year. This was her first birthday since being home with us and visions of girly themed party favors danced through my head... ballerinas, princesses, castles, Hello Kitties, tea parties, pink, pink and more pink. But in my heart of hearts, with everything I have read about attachment and Adoption Parenting within the first year home, I was concerned about overwhelming our birthday girl.

So we went the quiet family party route with scrumptious cupcakes and a pretty party dress! As it turned out, Lexi loved all the attention, was a pro at opening presents, blowing out candles, and diving into her pink cupcake face first. So look out next September, there will be a pinkalicious party going on at the Abraham house!!!

She is LOVING the pink cupcake!

The Birthday Girl - Two Years Old!

Born to ride!

She loves her Tinkerbell purse from Auntie Bunner and Uncle Michael

She also got a puzzle that makes animals sounds and a talking tea pot from Nana.

This is the ice-cream stacking toy that helped teach Lexi her colors.

Nolan enjoyed it too!

Nana joined Lexi for a little birthday party at school.

It was so cute seeing all her classmates in those silly birthday hats.

This was Lexi on her first birthday.

We sure were missing her and, at that point, we had no idea when we would get to see her again. We made cupcakes and sang happy birthday to her photo here in TN. The ceramic angel in this photo is a keepsake from my grandmother's house. It winds up to play the Happy Birthday song - and has been a tradition for as long as I can remember.

Since I couldn't post a photo of Lexi's cute little face online (because our adoption was not final yet), I also included a Russian chocolate bar in her birthday photo. The little girl on wrapper looked so much like Lexi's photos from Trip One. I'll have to post the comparison photos so you can see what I'm talking about. Oh, and the chocolate was delish!

I doubt they had any sort of celebration at the orphanage, but a caregiver was kind enough to dress her up take these photos with the disposable camera we left. For that, I am very grateful.

This year Lexi's birthday was a joyous occasion and each year is only going to get better! We love you Baby Girl!

10 Months

Has it really been a month since my last post? Wowzer, I have some catching up to do! One consequence of the kids going to school is that I have to drag myself out of bed at 5:45 am each morning... which means that I must actually go to bed at a decent hour... which has really cut into my late night blogging time.

Lexi's 10th month with us is going to be an exciting one. She became a Terrific Two on September 18th! She loves to watch her brothers play soccer and runs up and down the field sidelines cheering, "Go, Go, Go!" She has figured that running ON the field will quickly result in being buckled into her stroller. She also loves watching Titans and Vols football on TV. I hope to get to take her to a Titans game live this season. We have a big surprise planned in a couple of weeks too!

She enjoys her little "school" and I should do a entire post on that alone. A few other updates include:

Personality: Sparkling, bubbly, almost always happy, affectionate, observant, high energy

Speech: Still not talking as much as I think she should, but she does have too many words to count. She doesn't use sign language anymore because she says all the words she used to sign. This makes me wish I had taught her more signs. She gets frustrated when we can't understand what she wants us to do. Her brothers have done an amazing job at getting her to say new words and pronounce them correctly. Some words have evolved too, like "puppies" are now "dogs" and "kitty cats" are just "cats" unless they are baby kitties. Sometimes she surprises me like when she called out "apples" in the produce section of the grocery store or when she called the deer in our front yard "cows". She may need some speech therapy in the near future. She certainly wants to talk and sometimes just makes up silly words.

Eating: She had become very picky over the summer, but then her school has been able to get her to eat just about anything for lunch or snack, which thankfully has spilled over to home. She could eat her weight in cheese, yogurt, grits or oatmeal. She also started to like cereal with milk. She'll eat most green vegetables and potatoes, but still doesn't like meat in any form or fashion. If I want to get her to eat some meat like chicken, turkey, or beef, I have to finely chop it up and mix it into mashed potatoes. I think it may be the texture because she doesn't seem to have a problem with the actual taste. Or it could be that she is "two". How does a mom know these things? She ate an entire bowl of New England Clam Chowder last night. Go figure!

Sleeping: This has never been an issue for Lexi. She goes right to bed at 8:00 pm every night and sleeps until 6:30 or 7:00 am. She would sleep in until 8:00 if we were quieter about getting the boys ready for school. Every night before bed, she MUST have hugs and kisses from everyone in the house, which we are more than happy to give. She still sleeps in our room, next to my side of the bed. She has started climbing out of bed in the mornings all by herself. Her room is so far from our room that I am going to just move her toddler bed to our room and pack up of the little crib she has been sleeping in since she came home last December. At school, she sleeps on a cot and stays put during nap time, so I am hoping that will hold true at home too.

Motor Skills: Lexi can jump with both feet off the ground, stand on one leg like a pelican, run like the wind, she tries to peddle a trike, she can do forward rolls, swim across the spa tub, climb the rock wall on the play set, hang upside down on monkey bars, and so much more. And she is still the most flexible child I've ever met. I really see gymnastics in her future.

Shoes: This is our biggest challenge bar none. She will only, and I mean ONLY, wear those %@!$ (sorry) pink Mary Jane Crocks. It is getting harder and harder to squeeze her foot in them and it's getting colder outside, and they do not match any of her Fall wardrobe. But to even suggest another pair of shoes results in a full-blown, screaming, crying, rolling on the floor, throw the other pair of shoes across the room, temper tantrum. I only have found one pair of shoes that she will even allow to grace her shoe drawer. But she doesn't want to actually wear them. The one time I managed to wrangle them on her, she walked around the house picking her feet up like a cat wearing socks, crying her eyes out too. Any suggestions out there? Please? Pretty Please?

Misc.: Lexi loves band aides and bugs loves her. Because she is so active and enjoys being outside so much, there is no shortage of bug bites or boo boos to keep up with her bandaide obsession. The current favorite is Hello Kitty, but any type will do, including race cars, soccer balls, Sponge Bob, or just plain old boring brown ones.

She knows all her colors and can say the word for each color pretty clearly. She adores babies and is showing more interest in playing with her dolls. She can count to five, but sometimes skips number four. She can tell you that she is "2" and tries to hold up two fingers. She must have her purse every time she leaves the house. Her favorite finger games are "Where is Thumbkin?" and "Itsy Bitsy Spider". She likes Elmo and Mickey Mouse.

As usual, there is so much more that I could say about our sweet girl, but alas, my blogging time has come to an end. In just two more months, we will celebrate our one year Family Day! After the one year mark, I will be closing this blog and creating a new family blog. Although I have always included the entire family in this blog, it's purpose was to record memories about our journey to Russia for our daughter. For any readers who are just starting the process or are right in the middle of the seemingly never-ending waiting, I just want to remind you that once your child is home, time will go so quickly and all the paperwork and waiting will become a distant memory. Did that even happen? Hasn't Lexi just always been with us from day one? Seriously!

Adoption was just one chapter of our family's life book. The new blog will pick up with the next chapter right where this blog leaves off. I sincerely hope to be able to keep it updated more regularly. I need to figure out how to make it look all cool and trendy and I should probably have a contest for a new name. Hmmm, I'll give that some thought and maybe put up a poll or something.

If any of the "Littlest Tsarina" readers would like to leave a special message for Lexi or the rest of us, I'd really appreciate it. You have until December 10th and then I am going to send this blog to the printer. The new blog will roll out by the New Year!

Happy Fall Ya'll