The Many Adventures of Keira!

This is our page to document our family's adoption journey- starting from when we first started planning for our little one, to when we brought her home. We're also going to keep this updated with all of the things that Keira has been up to since she's been home with us here in the U.S!

Monday, December 31, 2007

Hands of Hatred

My friend Tom Biagini got a cameo on this short music film. The music is by Five A.M. and it came out great. He's the one that beats Edward Furlong up at the top of the stairs lol. Click twice on the arrow to watch and check it out!

Here is the info from YouTube on the clip:
Hands Of Hatred is a short narrative film starring Ice-T, Rumer Willis and Edward Furlong that demonstrates the social and political effects of violence and hate. The film features the song "Still In Love With You" by Five A.M. To find out how you can promote peace, please visit the L.O.V.E. (LoveOverViolenceEverywhere) section of www.FIVEAM.com.

Sunday, December 30, 2007

The Lullaby

I don't always get a chance to sing Keira lullabies before she goes to bed. Unfortunately, she is still completely uninterested in reading a book with me before bed, but once in a while...she'll let me cradle her, stroke her hair and face and sing a song for her. Normally, she kind of stares off in the distance when I'm doing this, but over the past few weeks or so, when I do this, she actually stares right into my eyes the whole time. This may not seem like a big deal, but with adoptive families, it's a very big deal. There are always the concerns of attachment and even though you may THINK that your baby has attached with you, there are sometimes some signs that show that they just MAY NOT be as attached as you may think they are....such as not making eye contact with you. Keira makes eye contact with me when I ask her to or when we're playing, but there are times when she doesn't look me in the eye. Things have seemed a little different lately...in a very good way.

Sometimes when she is crying or upset, I'll hold her and hum a certain song for her and she will immediately stop crying and gently pat or rub me on the arm or back copying my movements...which is wonderful...

The other day, she was laying on the couch drinking some juice watching The Grinch. She is VERY ritualistic and always has to go through a specific routine when she lays down to watch a show. 1. She has to have her shoes off 2. She has to have her MeeMee (blankie) 3. She has to have Baby (her Hello Kitty doll) 4. She has to have her sippy of juice or milk. Lately, a new step has been added to this. 5. She wants either Dan or I to lay down with her. She pats the pillow next to her saying "Dooooooowwwwwn". I was the one that day that she wanted to lay next to her. I put my head on the pillow next to her head and watched the Grinch with her. I was so tired and started to fall asleep. I felt something on my face and woke up to a wonderful surprise! Keira was stroking my face and singing me a lullaby. Now granted, I couldn't understand the song since it was in her own baby language, but whatever she was singing was the most beautiful song I have ever heard :). After she finished she smiled at me and went back to watching The Grinch.

I don't think that she realizes it, but she gave me such a wonderful memory that I will always cherish...

Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Merry Christmas!!!

Merry Christmas Everyone!!! It's been a crazy and hectic few days. We've been taking Keira to a few places to see different types of Christmas Lights and Christmas Trees. One very original tree was the one at Legoland. Of course it was made completely by Legos. Here is Keira playing in the Duplo Lego Room. Duplo blocks are the really big ones that are easier for toddlers to put together, so she has a great time with them.Going to get more Legos to play withKeira running around in front of the Lego Christmas tree.
Later that night, we headed up to Irvine for the Holiday Party that we held at Dave and Busters for Dan's employees. It was also Armani, Luis' daughter's 2nd birthday, so they brought her a brownie with a candle on it to blow out. She didn't want anything to do with it, so Keira blew it out.

After a big dinner, we all headed over to the game midway to play some games. Dan and Keira played the Harley game, which is the only way that Keira gets to ride a motorcycle with Daddy.
Here she played a different driving game which she did really well with! I think that she drove the car better than I would have! lol

Today for Christmas, we opened gifts a little late and Auntie Lorraine and Uncle Mike came over for Christmas lunch. Keira got so many great gifts. Here she is playing with the Pucca doll that Auntie Gigi and Max got her.

Hope that everyone had a wonderful Christmas!!!








Friday, December 21, 2007

The "Boo Boo" Method

Amanda (she watches Keira when Dan and I are working) and I were laughing while discussing "The Boo Boo Method" the other day. She has 2 sons Nathen and Landen. Nathen is 2 and a 1/2 and he and Keira are great buddies. One of the things that we discovered is that Nathen and Keira have figured out a great way to distract us and hopefully keep from having to do something that they don't want to do. Whenever they have to go take a nap or have to sit down and eat and just don't feel like it that second, they pull at their pants and exclaim "Boo Boo!" This of course means "Hurry Mommy! I have a poo poo in my diaper!" Considering that we're starting the process of getting them used to the potty, what do we do? We immediately jump up, grab them and rush to the bathroom trying to catch them going number 2 in their diapers. I have to admit, it has worked a few times where I ended up distracted enough to where she probably saved herself a couple of times from having to stand in the corner when she was misbehaving. By the time we finished in the bathroom (of course there WAS no poop, but I figured I'd keep her there in case she was trying to tell me that one was on it's way) I had forgotten that the corner was where we were originally heading!

Anyway, we have them both figured out now. I brought Keira over to Amanda's yesterday to play with the kids and also brought a cake for her birthday (yesterday, December 20th is her real birthday). The kids were all sitting down eating lunch and as soon as they saw the cake, they all started yelling "Cake! Cake! Yay Cake!" They started trying to get up from their seats and Amanda said that they had to finish eating first...what was the response? "Boo Boo!" I guess they were thinking that if they could just get taken to the bathroom, they could make a mad dash for the kitchen and get some cake. Sounds like plotting and planning a prison break...Pretend you're sick, get taken to the infirmary, make your escape. It's pretty funny.

It doesn't work so well anymore, so I'm sure they will both come up with some new method of distraction soon. That is how young mind works... pretty amazing.

One of the things that we were laughing about was imagining trying to use that kind of method as an adult. Can you imagine being in a meeting and getting hit with having to do a presentation? I don't think that you can get out of it by grabbing your pants and exclaiming "Boo Boo!"

UPDATE: Ok, apparently Dan says that I'm very wrong here. We discussed this issue further and he pretty much says that if you were in a meeting with your boss and your peers and your boss asked you to do a presentation that you didn't want to do...grabbing your pants and yelling "BOO BOO!" would DEFINITELY get you at least a couple of minutes to get up and leave the meeting. I think it would probably get you some mandatory leave of absence time as well lol.

Sunday, December 16, 2007

Keira Day!

Yesterday was Keira Day! It was her birthday party for her 2nd birthday and it was a ton of fun! The day started out with her waking up at about 5 in the morning. I took her out in the livingroom where she saw her first birthday gift. It was a new wagon from us. She pointed at it screaming and couldn't wait to get in.

Here is Keira being strapped into the wagon by daddy. After this, they got dressed in warmer clothes and took a stroll around the block in her new wheels.


A little later in the day, we got everything ready and headed to the park to prepare for her birthday party. The Dora the Explorer jumper arrived about 30 minutes later and she went nuts! Some of the other kids playing in the park came by and jumped in it with her. Everyone started to arrive soon after and we had such a great time getting to see some friends that we haven't seen in such a long time. It was nice for everyone to finally get a chance to come out and meet Keira.

Cindy and Vivian
Chloe, Rod, Al and Glenn
Keira's buddy Nathan and Amanda.
Mark, Michelle and Maddie
My godson Isaac getting his face painted


It started out as my balloon hat that Nicky is wearing. I must have a bigger head.



Maddie and Keira playing with their balloon animals




Keira blowing out the candles on her cake. I gave her a handful of candles and just let her put them wherever she wanted to.


After everyone left, Keira and daddy played in the jumper for a bit more. She still wasn't even tired believe it or not!

Once we got home, she opened up her presents. She got so many wonderful presents from everyone. She was having so much fun and was so overwhelmed, she jumped back and forth between all of the toys, clothes and books to try to play with everything. At times she was carrying 3 different toys trying to play with all of them at the same time!

Thank you so much to everyone that was able to share this special day with us!

Thursday, December 13, 2007

San Diego Restaurant Week

Well folks...it's almost that time again! San Diego Restaurant Week!!!

A friend at work turned me on to San Diego Restaurant Week a few years ago and Dan and I have enjoyed it ever since. What is it pray tell?

For any of you that that are not familiar with it, it's a week or so (most of the time they extend the time to 2 weeks) where some of the best restaurants in town offer a special "prix fixe" menu (fixed price) of $30 or $40 per person. This includes your appetizer, main course and dessert with this price and doesn't include drinks, tax or the tip.

Now, if you were planning on visiting TGI Fridays, it doesn't sound like that great of a deal, right? Well, there are places like Bertrands at Mr. A's, Georges, Top of the Cove, The Marine Room...the list goes on and on! Lots of FuFuShiShi places that normally have appetizers that cost $30 alone.

It really is a fantastic way to plan those special date nights out without completely busting your budget, so have fun! The menus can be found at:

http://www.sandiegorestaurantweek.com

Just click on "participating restaurants" and when you click on the restaurant name, you can see the menus...yum yum yum! :D

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Thanksgiving

We've had so much to be thankful for over the past year. It was around this time last year that we saw the face of our little girl for the first time. I didn't want to get my hopes up, but I KNEW deep in my heart that I was looking at our daughter. Not long before Thanksgiving arrived, we finally received word from our adoption agency that we were approved to be Keira's parents. It seems so long ago and here we are...another Thanksgiving has come and gone and it's hard to believe that our funny little monkey has been with us for several months now.

We spent Thanksgiving up in LA with Auntie Kat, Uncle Matt and Grandma (Nana) Curry. This was Dan's mom's first time getting to meet Keira and they got along great. Dan says it's because they are the same height lol.

She's been staying with us for about a week getting to know Keira before heading off to Arizona to spend some time with Fallon and Aria, Keira's cousins. Here are some pictures of us all spending a nice relaxing day at Oceanside Harbor.


I'm normally one of those weirdos that HAVE to have my Christmas tree and lights up HOURS after Thanksgiving is over, but I at least waited a day or two this year! Not for any other reason except for laziness of course. I put it up while Keira was taking a nap and boy was she surprised when she woke up and saw this thing in her living room!

Here are Keira and baby inspecting the weird thing in her house.

Nana and Keira taking a closer look.

Dan and Nana were helping Keira hang an ornament. It was a mermaid dressed in black that Auntie Bee sent a while back.
Just a little something funny that I wanted to include. For Chloe Cuizon's birthday party, Keira won the costume contest. Now, granted, it was by default since she was the only kid left by the time the prizes were awarded, but HEY! We'll take it! lol
The prize was a Halloween Mr. Potato Head! Now, Keira didn't really know what to do with it, so Daddy showed her how you can take the body parts off and put them back in. After that, you can't take it away from her! She loves her "hat" as she calls it and as you can see from the pictures below, They are....well....you just have to see them for yourselves! :)
Daddy showing Keira Mr. Potato Head

You can only see her arm, but here she is proudly displaying her first creation

Masterpiece number 2. It can't be too nice having your nose that close to your butt, but hey, what can ya do?

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

The Classics

Thanksgiving hasn't even passed and the malls are already decorated and playing Christmas music! As a matter of fact, some stores are having Black Friday sales, which is traditionally the day after Thanksgiving shopping, this Saturday! It's crazy!
Keira and I went to the mall today to pick a couple of things up and as we were walking through the mall, Keira stopped dead in her tracks. There was some man dressed in red with a white beard sitting in a big chair in the middle of the mall. He was waving at her and motioning for her to come over. She looked at me at first to make sure it was ok and I told her, "Look Keira! It's Santa!" The look on her face was just priceless...and only something magical that you see in the face of an innocent child. She has no idea who Santa is, but she was just mesmerized by him! She held tightly onto my hand as we came closer to him. I prompted her to say hello and she said it so quietly. The quietest that I have EVER heard her say it. Santa handed her a candy cane and had her give him a high five. Well, from that point, he was her best friend! They chitchat for a bit about what she wanted for Christmas and about the weather---you know...the usual things that an almost 2 year old discusses with Santa and we were on our way. Every once in a while as we continued our walk, she would turn around, point towards him and say "Da da di do DO!"
It really brought back memories of how much I LOVED the classic Christmas cartoons that before DVDs or DVRs, I waited so long to see. I would get so excited when my favorite- 'The Year Without A Santa' would be coming on. I decided to get some of them for Keira so that she would know the Christmas cartoons that I loved so much as a child. Maybe after watching them, it will click who that nice man with the white beard was at the mall! :)
Remember these guys?

The Abominable Snowman used to actually kind of scare me as a kid!

"I Want To Be A Dentist!"

Need I Say More? ;)

Saturday, November 10, 2007

Sick Baby

Keira has been pretty sick the past few days. It started a few days ago with a runny nose that came out of nowhere. She still was in great spirits, but a couple of days ago, she started to get a sore throat--so the coughing really started. For the past couple of mornings, whenever she woke up, she started to throw up. Friday, Dan was trying to get her ready to take to daycare and she threw up all over him 3-4 times. Ahhh...the joys of parenthood :). I came home from work early to take her to the doctor and they couldn't find anything unusual other than a bad cold. The doctor suspects that she threw up from such hard coughing that she was doing. We left with her getting 6 shots! No, it had nothing to do with her cold, but coincidentally, she was ready for her next immunization updates with a flu shot thrown in for good measure. It was a horrible thing to get all of the shots, but what made it all so much better was the Wiggles sticker that she got for being so brave! She made sure to show EVERYONE that she could get to look at her "Weegos!" I decided since I was there as well, I might as well get a flu shot too. I've never had one before and when I let the nurse know that, she asked me if I was allergic to eggs. Huh??? I'm sure it was supposed to make sense somehow...it just didn't make sense to me!

She's been so cranky since then. I'm suspecting that her arms are still in some pain from all of the shots. I only got a flu shot and shoot! My arm hurts! She got 6. Well, on and off, she has been really whiny and cranky. I'm sure that alot of it is also just because she doesn't feel good. Last night, she woke up probably once every 20 minutes or so crying. Normally, once you go in and let her know you are there, she is fine and goes back to sleep. Dan and I were at wits end after waking up so many times through the night when Dan noticed that she hadn't moved from the same spot in her crib at all through the night. The last time she was crying, I picked her up and noticed that the poor thing had spilled water out of her sippy and was laying in a small pool of water that whole time. I just couldn't understand why she didn't move out of the water! I changed her into dry, warm clothes and brought her into our bed to sleep the rest of the night. That didn't work out too well since she was ready to play after that, but it just felt better knowing that she was with us.

This morning, she was still a little cranky and was getting a little antsy having to stay at home. We wanted to make sure that she got enough rest and not too much exposure, so we took her for a quick walk along the pier to get some of her energy out. She was feeling a little better, so I was able to get some pictures of her actually smiling.

Walking along the pier

Here she was catching up with daddy. She's so independant now and likes to do her own thing. She still has to walk between Dan and I no matter what though for safety!






Keira and daddy playing hide and seek around the lamppost. She's a tiny little girl, but I think I can still see her ;)
After we got home, she took a nice long nap then practiced some Tai Chi with daddy.
I miss her happy smiling face, so I hope that she feels better soon!






Monday, November 5, 2007

Halloween Fun!

Keira had such a full Halloween! First, she went to the gym daycare, where all of the children dressed up in costumes playing. After that, I took her to her regular daycare where they were having a Halloween party. She made her first arts and crafts pumpkin! No, not the one pictured above. That is one that she won't be able to do for at LEAST another year or two ;). Amanda made a big sandwich for their lunch that looked like a colorful snake. All of the kids loved it.

For trick or treating, we decided to take Keira to the "Safe Trick or Treating" Halloween event in Encinitas. We accidentally left Keira's Hello Kitty basket at home, so we ran into a lady at the 7-11 that LOVED Keira's costume and very graciously gave Keira her pink shopping bag! There was so much going on. Just about all of the shops along Highway 101 had black and orange balloons in the front of their store showing that they were giving away candy. There were pumpkins carved on display as well as games and a band playing children's music with a big area for the kids to dance. We really had a great time!

Here are some examples of the pumpkins on display. There were about 3-4 displays set up in various areas along the highway.

This was Keira's first time trick or treating and she just loved the concept! Wow! You go up to people, say a little something and they give you lollypops! She would get so excited everytime she got a new lollypop that she would try to eat all of them at the same time as they came along.


It was very hard keeping the candy in her bag! She kept trying to dig each and every one of the candies out to eat.



Whadda ya MEAN, you don't have anymore lollypops????
She was able to walk and run about 5-6 blocks and she was DONE. Good thing we brought the stroller just in case.

Here was the band that was playing at The Lumberyard. They had a silly name. Something like "Peanut Butter Cookies" or something like that and played songs like Old MacDonald---but the kids had a lot of fun dancing to their songs.



Daddy and Keira dancing


Keira playing one of the games they had set up for the kids. It was kind of like the beanbag throw.


She had so much fun that I think she put 5 beanbags into the hole

The festivities didn't just end after Halloween. Chloe Cuizon's birthday was originally scheduled as a Halloween Party the Saturday before Halloween. Unfortunately because of the fires, they had to reschedule. That's ok! It just extended all of the Halloween fun since all of the kids still got to get dressed up!
Here is Chloe, mom and dad (Dawn and Rod) blowing out the candles on her birthday cake.


Keira just LOVED a little bike that Chloe had in the backyard

The group photo. This was one with all of the kids. Chloe was sitting at the end opposite of Keira in this picture and Kellen Tolentino was standing behind her holding a small pumpkin. All of a sudden, he accidentally dropped it on Chloe's head! She had a bit of a delayed reaction, but eventually realized what happened and started to cry. She was so cute how it took her a little while to figure out that something just clonked her on the head!
This picture was pre-pumpkin drop




This picture was post-pumpkin drop.


Keira had a great time playing and running around with daddy. We had a great time! Can't wait for Halloween next year!