Graesser Family Journal

Life has been hectic around here the past few weeks. We went to Wisconsin to visit Aunt Mel, Uncle Dave and Cousin Katelyn (and soon-to-be here Cousin Josiah!). Peter decided snow and cold was overrated and preferred to stay inside and play. That was okay though because he entertained Katelyn with his ever-expanding vocabulary.

After that we had two days at home and then headed down to Houston to see Aunt Anne-Marie, Uncle Andrew, Cousins Hannah, Ellie & Benjamin, Uncle Jason, Aunt Brandy and Grandpa Graesser. We had a great family Christmas together and were even joined by Mel, Dave and Katelyn again via the webcam - how fun!

Back in town again we got to spend Christmas with Grandma & Grandpa Johnson. Peter has taken to calling both of them “Paca” for some reason and really enjoyed their visit.

Peter got too many toys, clothes, candy and everything else for Christmas, but he sure isn’t complaining! He seems to enjoy his Elmo and Little People blocks the most, but also loves all the cars and books. You can see all of our photos from December here.

We’ve finished everything for our foster care license and are now just waiting for the paperwork to go through. We may have a kiddo in our home by the end of January - how exciting!

For Mike’s birthday (today!) he wanted us to get family portraits done. Peter did wonderfully and we got some really cute ones. You can see them all here.

As always if you want copies of any photos please let me know and I can send you the larger files. The professional portraits are only for viewing though, but I can buy prints in you’d like!

So cute!

Happy Birthday Mike!

I can’t move my arms! I don’t like snow!

If you’re reading this from our blog you’ll notice we have a new design up finally! Peter now only vaguely resembles that little baby that graced the website until today - so I thought it was time for a change! If you’re reading this on facebook or through an rss reader you can go to http://www.flying-dreams.com/journal to see what I’m talking about.

Life is pretty much the same as usual right now. We’re working diligently to get our license to become foster parents and have our appointment to get fingerprinted on Tuesday. Then we just have inspections and our home study and we’re good to go!

Peter keeps picking up new words but for some reason seems to be dropping the ones he used to know (most noticably “bird-ee"). I’m sure he’ll use them again soon. His favorite word at the moment is “Awh-right!” which he says anytime he likes something or instead of saying “yes". He’s also figured out “no” but hasn’t used it to disobey…yet. He uses it to answer questions and sometimes uses it AS a question. He’ll go up to something he’s not sure if he can touch or not and look as us and ask “No?” It’s too cute!

Peter and just SOME of his toys.

Peter’s been having lots of fun this month. We went to the State Fair a few weeks ago and he had so much fun at the petting zoo, auto show and eating his corn dog.

He also moved to his big boy bed this month and has been sleeping in it just fine for three weeks. The only “problem” we had was that he woke up the first morning on the floor. In fact he was still happily sleeping next to the bed with his blankets when I found him that morning - hah!

We just got back a little bit ago from trick-or-treating with Peter friends from church (and of course my friends - their moms!). He was a jedi and loved his light saber that made noise (and was $1!). I made his costume myself from scrap fabric - you can’t beat free!

You may notice that I haven’t updated the photo album with any of these pictures yet. I’ve been adding photos to Facebook since my parents (hi Mom & Dad!) finally got an account. It’s so much easier to put them up there and it’s nice because I’ll be able to choose who can see photos and who can’t once we get foster kiddos. We don’t want the kiddos faces to be available on the internet so we’ll only be sharing family photos that include them with certain people. Photos of just us and Peter (and any kiddos we get to adopt!) will remain public.

But for now you can still view ANY photos posted on Facebook by me without needing a Facebook account. Halloween & Pumpkin Photos are here and State Fair photos are here. So leave me a comment here or otherwise let me know what you think about using Facebook only for our photos (with the foster kiddos photos password protected). If it’s too hard for everyone then I’ll edit the “public” photos and add them to our album as well.

But either way, you still get a few cute pictures below!

Peter loved his costume!

Peter at the State Fair!

Yum! Corndogs!

It’s been so long since I’ve written a post I had to go back and read the last one to remind myself what all has happened! We’ve been keeping busy working on our paperwork to become foster parents and dealing with the same flu everyone else has. But we’re all better now and it’s looking like we’ll be ready for playmates for Peter in a few months!

Peter’s been learning new things everyday and talks more and more. His favorite word is “boo!” which he runs around the house saying all day long.

He loves to copy all the things we do, whether it’s what we say, cooking, cleaning, typing, brushing our hair, watering plants or my favorite - blowing in the fireplace to stoke the fire. He blows into the fireplace every time he passes by it now - fire or not! He also loves to talk on his play phone like he sees us do and say “ah” when he finishes drinking his water.

His last doctor’s appointment was two weeks ago and he weighed in at 27 lbs and was 33 inches tall. This puts him in the 81% and 85% respectively.

We’ve been working on Peter’s “big boy room” and hope to have it ready for him within a few weeks so he can move before we need his crib for another kiddo. We put shelves along the top of the room and set a train set along it. Whenever Peter goes into the room now he says “Tee Tee!” and points to the shelves so we’ll turn the train on for him. So cute!

A bunch more videos and photos are up at the album, so be sure to check them out. We’ll have even more after Halloween I’m sure - and you’ll be able to see his adorable jedi costume that I’m making then

Peter wrestling with Eeyore on the ground

Peter’s vocabulary has expanded so much in the past week it’s amazing! He now says belly button (bel-ie budd), bird (bur-dee), bear (beah), ball (bahl), cat (dat), dog (dawg), horse (hursh), shoe (shu), bath (baf, dance (dansh), boom (oom) and several more that I can’t think of right now. He also seems to know godzilla (zeela) and can tell the difference between him and the King Kong poster we have in our game room - hah! What a silly boy!

He loves to dance and will spin around when certain songs come on and even “sing” along to some of them.

Peter’s officially down to one nap a day usually around 1 in the afternoon. For some reason he’s gotten tired earlier this week and fell asleep in his highchair WHILE STILL CHEWING! We got it on video and have it up on the website. So funny!

We spent the week renovating Peter’s bathroom to remove the carpet and lay down tile in preparation for eventual potty training. Peter loved helping Daddy and even picked up more than half of the tile spacers and put them in the bag by himself! Of course, we got it on video

This morning I asked Peter to say “I love you.” Apparently that’s too complex for him so he just gave me a big hug and kiss instead - how sweet! I wonder if he really knows what the word love means? I like to think so!

Peter loves to point - this captures his personality perfectly. Check out other photos at the photo album.