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!

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!

Thursday, November 1, 2007

The Gift

Lately Keira has become very aware of her diaper. Ever since we started letting her practice sitting on her Dora potty, she has not liked having her diaper on much. She's gotten better at tugging at her diaper and saying "boo boo". Sometimes one is in there, and sometimes she's just peed. Either way, it's an After The Fact warning and we aren't able to get her to tell us before it happens so that we can get her to a potty on time.

According to the books that I've read, she doesn't seem to have the muscle control yet to keep herself from peeing in her diaper during naps or through the night although she HAS woken up with a dry diaper a few times after a nap. It's still not consistent.

A couple of times now Dan has gone into her room to get her up from her nap and she has had a little gift for him. There she is, standing in her crib. As Dan approaches, she hands him her diaper with a big smile on her face. Thank goodness so far, it hasn't been anything TOO messy :).