An Online Journal of Our Adoption Journey

Our First Halloween & Thanksgiving

December 1, 2003
The past couple of months with Autumn has shown us just how quickly kids can grow and develop.  She is walking, and taking stairs, sometimes one-foot-per-step, and climbing up on chairs and couches.  

Autumn's vocabulary now includes malk (milk), 'nake (snake), up, down, Elmo (the TV), rock, 'net (Annette), Bobby, Daddy, Mom, Mama (her word for please), bug, doll, waffle, egg, Kix, yucky, blech, and of course, Doggy!  And those are just a few.  She makes animal sounds on demand for dogs, cats, ducks, cow, pigs, sheep, and horses.  

The world of people are divided into three groups, at least according to Autumn: daddies, mommies, and babies.  In the grocery store she'll point to some guy and say "Daddy".  Then we'll pass a 14-year old girl and she'll point and say, "Baby!"

She's a big kid for a 22-month old.  I think she'll be fairly tall for an Asian child.  They say if you double a child's height at age two that'll be how tall they will be as an adult.  She's close to 34 inches already, meaning she'll hit 5'8" or more, if that prediction is accurate.

Autumn had a blast on Halloween.  She wore a fairy princess outfit, and Ailene took her around to several homes while I handed out candy.  She quickly got the concept of taking the goodies and putting it into her bucket.  She liked the idea so much she kept taking candy over and over, each time dropping it into the bucket and grabbing more.  Of course, we haven't let her have most of the candy she scored, that's what parents are for, right?  To eat all the goodies for you?

She has been doing well in daycare, and is now in a transition room from the 1-year olds to the 2-year olds.  She has a boyfriend already, too!  A boy named Bobby.  It's the only name she says from daycare.

Marlowe, our dog, is the most patient pet I know.  Autumn loves him dearly, but she also thinks it's okay to pull his bed out from under him, and to drop sippy cups on him, and to chase him around the house with her Zippy car.  We keep telling her to be nice, and she is, for the most part.  She'll pet the dog, and lay her head on his shoulder, and loves to get doggy kisses.  She just wants Marlowe to play with her, just like everyone else does.  What an empress.  

For Thanksgiving we drove to Flagstaff and enjoyed a large family feast together.  Autumn enjoyed all the attention her two grandmothers doted on her, not to mention her uncles, aunts, great aunts, grandfather and great grandfather, and several cousins who all catered to her every whim.  

On the way back we stopped at a nice petroglyph site in the desert near Gila Bend, Arizona.  Autumn kept pointing out all the rocks.  "Rock," she would tell us.