Bits and Pieces

1. No news on Bo. It will still probably be awhile before we hear anything. We have started to discuss Bo with Maizie. She is learning the terminology, such as "baby brother", but I do not think she is old enough to anticipate the changes. We let her pick things out for him in an effort to make it more concrete. For example if we are buying her a book, she picks one out for baby brother. We have been getting a lot of fabric for Bo's quilt. Of course I am going to extend the deadline so if you have not sent it, please do. We still need a lot of squares to make our 100.

2. Maizie elevated toilet flushing from a hobby to a job. She calls it her job and she takes it very seriously. Unfortunately she has decided she no longer wants anyone to flush because we are saving it for later. Jeff and I do a lot of secret toilet flushing behind her back. Not sure what we are saving it for or when later is.

3. Maizie currently hates tags. We are cutting off all the tags off of her clothing and stuffed animals.

4. I do a lot of shopping for Maizie's shirts in the boy department. They do not offer Thomas the Tank shirts for girls. Cookie Monster and Mickey are also hard to find in girl clothes and so I just started buying from the boy departments.

5. When Maizie is concentrating very hard she sticks her tongue out. It is very cute. It is also something Jeff does.

6. Maizie loves collecting sticks right now and playing ring around the rosy. Maizie is deeply into Halloween. She alternates between wanting to be Elmo or Cookie Monster for Halloween. I want her to be a pumpkin but we made the mistake of asking her opinion so now we are kind of stuck with it if we do not want to disappoint her.

7. Maizie loves doorbells. If you come to our house, please ring the doorbell multiple times. It will make her happy.

8. Cute story, the other night the clouds were out and kept drifting in front of the moon. Maizie played a very cute came of peek a boo with the moon. Whenever Maizie can't find the moon, she smiles really big and declares it a "tricky moon". I think her Aunt Beth started with the "tricky moon". We have told Maizie that during the day the moon goes to China to say hi to baby brother, her first family and the caregivers at the orphanage. So if you ask her where the moon is at during the day, Maizie will tell you that it is in China.

9. As of tonight Maizie carried to bed with her: 3 blankets, boop, bunny boop, the new puppy boop, kitty cat pillow, Goofy doll, 2 George dolls (big and little), a monkey and a small bumble bee. Maizie loves her stuffed toys.

10. Maizie has always been a little difficult to put to bed. It started shortly after she started to become comfortable with us. She needs some time to goof off before falling asleep. She is very inventive on how to keep engaging us in order to stay awake. When she was little it consisted of flinging Boop off the bed repeatedly. She went through a period in which we had to build elaborate pillow tents around her in order to block out any speck of light. Currently she wants to be covered in blankets to fall asleep. Once she lays down she says she wants to "Close eyes", which means put a blanket over her head. Do not worry I remove the blanket the second she falls asleep. For a long time she did not want a blanket over her toes, but now she HAS to have a blanket over her toes. So every time she shifts as she is trying to fall asleep we have to reclose eyes and recover toes. It is all very elaborative and designed to keep us in our place but it also seems to be what she needs so it is what we do. I am more than a little interested to see how that works when Bo comes home. I imagine her antics will just keep him up.