How The Bush Grows

My week started out by being one of those days that I love. It was my office day so we stayed in all day. I got lots of work done plus I didn’t leave the house at all…like not one bit to go to the mailbox or anything. That is so rare around here. We go, go, go and with my job I am typically driving 6 hours a day so sometimes it is nice just to chill at home. What I didn’t do is snap one picture! Which a goal of mine is to take a picture every day this year but oh well…I am obviously not short on pics.

Speaking of not being short on pictures on Friday when I went to pick Zoey up from school her teacher asked “Do you take a lot of pictures of Zoey?” I wanted to be like…”If you only knew…I took over 100 of her in a bandaid” or “We had to move pictures to the desktop because I used all the memory on my laptop with pictures!” But I didn’t want them to know how CRAZY I am so I settled with a yes and she began to tell me that she can tell because every time they get the camera out Zoey knows exactly what is going on and poses for the camera…Yep! That’s my girl!

After my work and Zoey’s school on Friday I worked the foster mom book we will be sending her. We did a shutterfly book of pics and I love it. I can’t wait to send it to her! Once home we had dinner, baths, and played downstairs a bit then put Zoey to bed so Eric’s parents could come over while Eric and I went to see a late night move. We LOVE having family nearby!!! We both ended up loving Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close with Sandra Bullock. I would recommend this movie for sure. The movie was long so we did not get home until 1:30 am. Upon getting home we found that Zoey had woken up around 12:30 and had not fallen back asleep. So after Gary and Susan left we tried getting Zoey back down too but she would not fall asleep. She kept baby signing hungry so we got back up and cooked pancakes, eggs, and let her have a piece of pizza…by 3:00 am we were honestly willing to give her anything to make her go to sleep. But she didn’t want to…not at all! It was just one of those nights! But I am trying to remember that all of this will pass and she will be a grown teenager one day sleeping all the time and I will long for the day when she wanted to stay up all night playing with me so I tried to enjoy it and that we did. We had a GREAT time just messing around with her. She did eventually go to sleep around 4:00 am and I thought for sure she would let us sleep in but NO she was wide awake at 7:00 am! Hello…you are not a newborn Zoey! That is one BIG advantage to adopting…I am supposed to have skipped the newborn stage! Let’s just say I wanted to sleep so I let her play in the bed and watch tv but we were not getting up! So we read books, did puzzles, and played with dolls until 9:30 when she fell back asleep. So back to bed Eric and I went too. We ended up sleeping till 11:30. The last time we slept that late was the first time Zoey slept in the week we got back from Korea and we were all so jet-lagged. Not sure what was up with her but I was glad she finally let this mommy and daddy have some sleep.

After sleeping all morning the Bush family came over to watch the Missouri basketball game. Zoey was all dressed up in her black and gold for the game. We had a great time playing with all the cousins too! School has been great for Zoey in some aspects but this weekend I saw a major drawback to school. She learned violence! Her cousin Mae had a toy she wanted and she was so nasty with her…just pinching and hitting. I have NEVER seen her do something like this! So it was off to her “thinking place” aka timeout with me she went. Not just once but 5 times! I want to nip this problem in the bud fast!

After the game I had my hair appointment at our neighborhood salon. It was the first time for me to get a color and cut since before my baby-shower which was 7 months ago! I kept putting it off and didn’t want to spend the money but when Eric asked if I was planning on being brown on top with blonde tips I decided it was probably time to go…especially since he has NEVER noticed anything about my hair before. So guess what…I got rid of all my highlights and went brown. I am really not sure if I like it or not but we will live with it a while and see.

So what did I take for my reading material…a discipline book on adopted children of course! Ha! She is certainly approaching 2 and trying to assert her independence in SO many ways. This is when the hard part of being a parent kicks in. I want to raise a Godly, well mannered, respectful child but how?!?!?! Especially without hurting our attachment progress. I have read lots of book and have started putting several tips into practice and have been praying on what is right for our family. But one thing I do have going is that both Eric and I are on the same page. We have really tried to never undermine each other and always have each other’s back even if we don’t agree. We discuss later…and not around Zoey. So I know this is part of life but somedays she just wants to make me pull my hair out! I love the fact that she is little miss independent and strong willed but I hate it too!

After my spa appointment Eric and Zoey met me up at there to eat at the clubhouse for dinner and then we went swimming in the indoor pool! You see if you get any spa service which includes a haircut you get access to the pool for the day. Zoey LOVED swimming around and I was happy we were tiring her out good so she would be sure to sleep that night! Which she did…praise the Lord!

Sunday we woke up and Zoey and I headed out to the botanical gardens to get pictures of her in her Hanbok for Lunar New Year! You can see more about Lunar New Year here: You Tube

We were going to meet up with some friends but they were out of town so on the way to the gardens I called my mom and dad and they were just leaving church so ended up meeting us out there. I was sure it was going to rain on us but fortunately we got LOTS of pictures that I just love before the rain started. Zoey looked so beautiful in the hanbok her foster family gave her. She wore it on her birthday too but she was crawling then and with her walking now it gave so much more life to the outfit. I just loved getting to see my asian princess play in the gardens with her super cute look.

Since I knew I would be out of town for work on Monday we decided to celebrate Lunar New Year on Sunday instead. So I cooked a Korean meal (no one ate it…not even Zoey) and also made a dragon cake! I found the instructions online and it was surprisingly super easy! And of course Zoey ate that! I still have tons left over if any of you locals want to come and get you a piece! To celebrate we listened to K-pop on pandora. Which is Korean Pop music if you are not aware. Zoey and I LOVE it and she can get down to it for sure. We made a shaker out of a paper towel ring and let her shake and dance the night away…she was too cute! I know we did not do all the traditions that a family would typically do in Korea but we are trying our best to incorporate the Korean culture as best as we can for her. I believe as she gets older we will be able to do more and more too.

Sunday night all the news stations were warning of inclement weather. We went to bed but before I dozed off I got “tornado ready” which means I packed a back with a change of clothes for all of us and diapers and bottle stuff. Got Zoey’s helmet in the house. Put shoes down in our tornado hole, etc. You may think I am crazy and I very well may be BUT after April 27th and the devastating tornados we had here in Alabama (Which you can read more about here.) I am not taking any chances and the weather men were all saying it was going to be a perfect storm type night so to be ready and ready I was! Unfortunately the weather men were right and the tornado’s came. Fortunately we were spared! It missed our house entirely…but we did have lots of lightening. But my grandparents were not so lucky. The tornado went right down their street. It did a good bit of damage to their house but did not level it completely like it did to several of their neighbors. Their neighborhood will forever be changed and some people ended up loosing their lives that night too. It is just so sad…it really is! Now that Zoey is here and we do not have a basement I am seriously wanting a storm shelter put in…oh if only we could afford it but like I am telling Eric…how can we afford not to! We will see who wins this one!

Monday morning we got up at 3:00 am with the storm sirens going off. I had to get up by 4:00 anyway to get ready for work so I just stayed up watching the news. After I was ready Eric and I both looked at the radar and saw a break in the storms and thought I could make it to south alabama ok so at 5:15 am I hopped in the car and took off for my 9:00 am meeting down south. About an hour into my drive the clouds started looking horrible…like really, really dark and scary and then the weather man broke into the radio and said a tornado had formed in the exact location I was and was about to cross the interstate I was driving on. I called Eric panicking…like panicking BIG TIME! I looked like I was having a seizure from shaking so bad. My entire body was shaking and I could barely push the petal because of the tremors my foot was having and then the hail came and then the crazy lightening. I was the only idiot on the road too! Eric was watching my location on the phone and watching the radar and said he thought it was right behind me so to keep driving as fast as I safely could so that is what I did. Not sure if it was the best decision but I am still alive so I guess it was. I never saw the tornado or anything but I was certainly in the same cloud as that tornado. I am not one to be scared of storms…at all! I honestly thought about being a storm chaser at one point in my life because I like storms so much and if you remember from this post here I was in something similar a while back and it didn’t really phase me. But now things are different…they really are since Zoey is around. All I kept thinking about was the loss that Zoey has already had to go through and that she did not deserve to loss another mother because of a stupid storm. It was a poor decision on my end and I should have NEVER left in that weather. No amount of money is worth Zoey not growing up with me around so I learned my lesson to say the least and am VERY grateful to God for protecting me from my stupid mistake. So Monday ended up being a crazy day especially watching all the footage from the mornings devastation around the state again but everyone in my extended family is ok so I am so thankful!

And just like every day after a big storm on Tuesday we woke up to a beautiful warm day! It was so gorgeous and on days like that I do enjoy my job of driving around all day visiting schools. Unfortunately a lot of schools are still closed due to storm damage but I went up north calling on schools that were not affected by Monday’s tornados. After work I got the honor of babysitting one of my neighbors sweet little boys.  I had a great time hanging out with him while his mommy got a haircut too! It was also a day of recovery for my grandparents. They have said the outpouring of donations of food, water, cleaning supplies, and people to help their neighborhood has been tremendous. You can tell she feels very loved by everyone helping. They will need new windows, garage doors, roof, and the scariest part is the structural damage they are finding so who knows what else they will need to do but at least they are alive.

Well everything was doing good on Wednesday too and I was on the phone with my grandmother while driving around for my work when she said “Curt..are you ok?” “Are you ok?” and then I heard my granddad say he needed to go to the hospital. She quickly said got to go and that was it…I was freaking out and called my mom quickly. After he went up to the hospital to get his chest pains looked at (he did just witness a tornado so a heart attack is not out of the question) they ended up saying he just pulled a muscle real bad doing clean up around the house…another Praise the Lord! What a week it has been for sure!

But some good news for Wednesday was that Zoey’s birth certificate came in the mail. WooHoo! It says mother “Lauren Kristen Baker Bush’ and father “Eric Michael Bush” music to my ears…well words to my eyes or however you say that? You get the point…I am ecstatic for that little piece of paper!

Dana ended up coming over Wednesday night with Nothing but Noodles…you can’t beat a friend who delivers dinner just because! She got to play with Zoey a bit and then we watched a movie after Z went to sleep. Another good way to wrap up this week!

Tags: Adoption, Birth Certificate, Discipline, K-Pop, Lunar New Year, Movies, Tornado