one month

Caleb has been home for exactly one month. Seems like he has been part of our family for much longer. He just fits. Doesn't hurt that he is beyond cute (don'tcha think?!!)and has one of the sweetest little voices you've ever heard. Even if we have no idea WHAT he is saying most of time!

He said his first English phrase about a week ago: "every letter makes a sound" from the Leap Frog Learning Letters and Sounds DVD. He sings that phrase over and over (with a Chinese accent!). So STINKIN cute! He still hates naps. This afternoon was the first time ever that he didn't throw a massive crying fit when I laid him down. Thank goodness! A month of daily nap battles has been my limit. Now we need to get him to sleep ALL the way through the night and not just until 3 or 4 or 5 or even 6am. All are way too early for this mama. I bought a CD alarm clock this week for him. We are trying to teach him to stay in his bed until the music starts playing. I think that after only three days he has finally understood! We're hopeful for longer naps and nights.

Summer break is dwindling away and I'm definitely not ready to go back to work (so to speak!). I am almost caught up on laundry from our beach vacation last week and am now faced with having to get school started soon. I usually like to start by August 1st, however, considering that I still haven't ordered all of the curriculum, it isn't looking too promising that we'll make that date this year. Where has the summer gone? Oh ya, it went to China. And South Carolina. And a few weeks got lost somewhere in there too. Maybe a trip to Target to buy some new school supplies will get me excited about it?! I DO love new pencils and journals and Post It Notes and colored folders and new crayons and...

We did have a wonderful vacation at the beach. We all needed some time to bond together as a family and just hang out together.

So our not so perfectly timed vacation ended up being just about perfect. And thanks to the generosity of my parents, it was about as cheap as a vacation as we could do (which was good b/c a night out for ice cream for a family of six costs about $20.00. YIKES!).

And, lest you think that our real life is drama-free or always as cute as the pictures I choose to post here on my blog...

This is what the first day looked like for Caleb. A lot of this

and a little of this...

Before he finally warmed up to the idea of the beach (and all of it's sand and scary crashing waves!).