"Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils." - Louis Hector Berlioz

Cute Seth stories:

Seth's new favorite thing to do is walk around the house yelling (very loudly), (insert cute baby voice here) "TAYLOR! TAYLOR!" It is adorable. Half the time she is at school when he does it, but when she is at home and out of his site, he immediately goes on the prowl, (insert cute baby voice here) "TAYLOR! TAYLOR!"

For the next story I need to give a little background. Our house has a bathroom on our main floor and the laundry/storage room can only be reached by walking through this bathroom. The dog food and water is in that laundry/storage room. While it is daylight and Seth is awake, we keep that bathroom closed most the time because Seth loves to play in the dog food and water. What kid doesn't? At night, it has never been an issue because he refuses to venture very far into the dark without someone beside him. Now the story:

Last night I was in the kitchen taking care of dinner. Seth had his clean jammies on and had just got out of the bath. Taylor was talking on the phone (not that unusual, surprisingly) suddenly I realize that I had not heard Seth in a while. So I look where I last saw him (quietly playing with toys in the next room) and he is not there. I start looking around and find my way back into the laundry/storage room where it is pitch black. There sat Seth, soaked head to toe, beside an empty dog water dish. Apparently I did not do a good enough job washing him and he thought it deserved a do-over. Also, he is no longer afraid of the dark. I guess his curiosity conquered that fear.

Today I am going to the hair salon for the first time since August. I have decided I need a trim and bangs. Last weekend I went out with my good friends Amy, April, and Deena to celebrate Deena's birthday. Deena had her hair cut earlier that week and got bangs. She looked so YOUNG! Not that she normally looks old, but they really looked great. I had been toying with the idea of bangs for a while (admittedly to cover up forehead wrinkles) and once I saw how great Deena's looked, that sealed it. I am totally copying her :) If it looks good, I will post a picture. If not, I will hide for the next year while they grow out.

Oh yeah, and I am so excited about this (proving I may not be a science nerd, but I am a computer nerd): I just ordered a new laptop from Dell. It won't ship until the 29th, and I cannot wait to get my hands on it!! It is for school and will be really nice to have around the house. Right now our computer is in the kitchen (because we have a teenager in the house) and if I want to do school work while Seth plays, I have to be in another room. This way I can be right in the room with him. My adult side did win out over my computer nerd side on one thing, however. I choose not to pay the extra $25.00 to make it hot pink. Black is cool too, right?

Side note: for those of you who often wonder what products I use in Seth's hair, I have recently switched to Shea butter and like it so much better. It is really making his hair much healthier and there is no buildup. Plus it is natural, so I don't feel like I am putting a bunch of product in his hair. Last night I put some in and did finger coils after his bath. We were doing it while watching Teletubbies, so I only had as long as the show, meaning I only did half his head. It is kind of a fun bonding experience though. At least for me it is :) I am not sure how well you can see them, but here is a picture:

He looks like a boy who just had to sit through a half an hour of his mom playing with his hair, doesn't he? :-)

"If it were not for Thomas Edison, we would all be watching television in the dark." - Michael Landon

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I am a bad blogger. My number of readers has dropped significantly because I am a bad blogger, a has-been. The other day I was talking to my friend April and she told me that the reason I don't have anything to blog about is because this blog has focused around parenting and I feel compelled to only write about that. Here's the sad part: no I don't. I really just don't have anything else interesting to say. :)

I can tell you countless cute stories about Seth...
I can tell you stories about Taylor (she's 15, and would die of embarrassment)...
I can tell you about how my house is always in disarray...
I can tell you about what I have been doing lately (but if you read the last three lines, that pretty much covers it)...
I could tell you about school. Okay, I will do that.

I started my two online classes this Monday. I am taking Biology 101 and Communication 101. Both are required pre-requisite courses that have nothing to do with my degree. Between you, me, and this computer screen, I think that 8 years in the business world should give me an automatic credit for the Communications class, but my college does not see it that way.

The Biology class will probably be more work, but it will also be a little more interesting for me. The instructor is someone I went to school with (she is actually younger than me, which is kind of strange), but I know that she is highly intelligent and I respect her a great deal. That will make the class worthwhile.

Next Tuesday I start my Developmental Psychology class, and I am a little sad that there will be one night a week that I will not be putting Seth to bed, but I am sure we will all adjust to it in no time. One thing I have noticed is that I have all that new-parent guilt all over again. I thought that only happened with your first child, but apparently it reappears if you wait 15 years between them. Maybe I am just neurotic. Maybe? Who am I fooling?

So, there it is in a nutshell. The only other thing I have been working on is my weightless, which I have started chronicling in another blog (you can find that in my profile if you are interested.)

Maybe next time I post I will be able to tell you something about cells :) Just kidding. You think I want fewer readers?

Examine what is said, not who speaks. - Arabian Proverb

Wow, my updates are getting farther apart, aren't they? I honestly do not have a whole lot of new stuff going on. Seth does all kinds of adorable things, but how can I relay every single on of them here? :)

I start school back up this coming Monday. I am taking three classes this semester, which is really difficult for me. I am still tempted to just register for one more and make it full-time. Two of my classes are online, so they will be a lot more work, but worth the extra effort since I will be able to be home with my family. The third one starts next Thursday. It is an evening class, so I won't be leaving the house until 5:30pm, Taylor will put Seth to bed at 7:30pm and I will be home around 9:30pm. Honestly, I was excited at first, but now I am a little nervous. I am sure it will turn out fine, but last time I did school while raising a baby I was 15 years old. Of course, I also did not have a loving and supportive husband and daughter at that time either.

My evening class is a developmental Psychology course, so fully expect to use Seth as guinea pig :) Just kidding...sort of!

He is such a smart and fun little guy. We are all having a great time with him.

I am not sure if I have mentioned this on here before, but James is in the process of adopting Taylor. All our paperwork has been submitted, etc, but now the court has to come do their own inspection/homestudy. Which kind of stinks because the reason we waited until after Seth's adoption was os we could use that homestudy and save time and/pr money. Either way, we are looking forward to the day (soon, hopefully) that we be able to announce that there has been another adoption in our family.

Here are some of the latest pictures.

Hello. My name is Seth Kidus. Some of my favorite pastimes include:

Cuddling in soft blankies...


Putting things in my mouth (even when my mommy doesn't care for me to do that)...
Screaming when I am happy...
And hangin' with my sister (who seems to sleep a lot!)...


Well, Seth is waking up from his nap, so I gotta go.

Wrinkled was not one of the things I wanted to be when I grew up.

When the weather outside is frightful... I blog. Here is a taste of what it looks like outside my window right now:


Yuck!

We had a really nice Christmas. Seth was such a trooper. He was on the go from the minute his feet hit the ground that morning. We visit three places on Christmas day: James' mom, my mom, and James' dad. Needless to say, by nighttime we were all exhausted. Nobody was more tired than Seth, but he couldn't have been in a better mood. He LOVED Christmas, but I think that he loved the socializing the best.

Here he is in the chaos of Christmas morning with his cousin, Lincoln:


And here is one of the only times you will see Taylor's nose in a book (she is the black sheep in the family when it comes reading and does not like it):


She had a really nice Christmas, too. She was given a merit scholarship to a well-known fine arts camp this fall (she plays the flute), but she needed to come up with a fair amount to make the difference on tuition (it is quite pricey), so many people gave her a gift to go towards that goal. Thanks to that, she is getting close to the balance already!

Seth is walking all over the place now:

Don't you love the pink slippers? I used to babysit a friend's daughter and I bought her these to use while she was at my house (the floors get cold). I found them the other day and they fit Seth perfectly. I have to say, his dad is not thrilled :)

I hope everyone has a great New Years. We are planning on a nice, quiet, night in (translation: sleep and home improvement projects, not necessarily in that order.)

Please pray for two families that are leaving December 31st to pick up their children from Ethiopia: The Bryant family and The Kikstra family. Godspeed and God bless!

She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins. - Matthew 1:21

Touchstone Archives: The Brotherhood of Sons

Touchstone Archives: The Brotherhood of Sons: "Days go by when I never think about the adoption, and when I do think of the boys as “adopted,” it is always as a past-tense verb, not an adjective."

This is one of the best articles I have ever read about adoption. Not only that, but this quote I pasted above sums up my feelings about Seth and his adoption into our family. Feelings I have never been able to put into words until now. I encourage you to go read this article (which I found on The Hausam's blog). I encourage you all to go read this awesome article. I will give you fair warning though: have tissues on hand.

A day for firm decisions! Or is it?

My guys, showing some school spirit!

And now some gratuitous cute kid pics...

“Cleaning the house while your kids are still growing is like shoveling the drive before it has stopped snowing”. - Phyllis Diller

This was a story recently on the local news that was really neat... A guy had been searching for his biological mother for four years and found nothing. When he was finally able to get the correct spelling of her last name, he discovered that he had been working with her all along. How cool is that? You can check out the story here: Son finds birth mom as co-worker

Right now, I am trying to make cookies for some of the people James works with, but I am running into every problem known to man... To be perfectly honest, I prefer cooking a meal to baking. Maybe I should whip up a Chicken Cordon Bleu for them instead :)

We finally got our tree up and decorated. Thank goodness for snow storms. Since the weather got icky on Sunday, everything was canceled and we finally had a free moment to decorate the tree together. Seth was about as impressed with the decorating as you would expect a 13 month old to be. He lit up when we turned on all the lights though - almost as much as the tree itself :) He also has been a perfect gentleman with the ornaments and has not grabbed even one. This may have more to do with the poky-ness of the tree and less to do with his exceptionally good manners. LOL

I am almost done with Christmas shopping. Taylor and I have a few more gifts to pick up on Thursday and then we will be done. Can you believe Christmas is only a week away? Where has this season gone.

My original intention to get as many pictures of Seth on Santa's lap as possible has not worked out. Apparently you have to leave the house in order to get pictures of Santa (I don't do that a whole lot these days). I guess I could just wait until Christmas Eve and catch him when he comes in. I don't think you are supposed to do that, though...

Always borrow money from a pessimist. He won't expect it back.

We have officially started decorating for Christmas. Usually we have our tree and all the decorations up Thanksgiving weekend, but it didn't happen this year. First, there was the whole "nativity set" issue: I have a nativity set I adore and Seth is tall enough to reach all our flat surfaces. So, before a single decoration went up, I had to find a table tall enough to protect the nativity. We found one, on clearance. ;-)

We put up a few more decorations, but the tree is going to have to wait until this weekend. Working around everyone's schedule can be a pain, but what can you do? It seems odd waiting this long to put a tree up!

Seth has been his usual comedic self. He is growing so fast. When we first brought him home, he was not strong enough to get up the first step. I took this picture today:

He was fast, too! Part of it might be how much he loves to eat...

What can I say, he likes his Mama's cooking.

"All those who believe in psychokinesis raise my hand." - Steven Wright

I have decided to make it my goal to see how many pictures of Seth with Santa I can get this year. So, without further ado, here is number one:


I think he kind of liked Santa. He wasn't scared at all and grabbed right on to his beard :)

While I am posting pictures, I would like to show you Taylor's new hair color. It is kind of a reddish, pinkish, orange-ish, strawberry-blondish shade. It actually looks pretty good on her. I am holding out for the blue, though. I think that would look COOL! (Oh, maybe I am living vicariously through my daughter. Am I too old for blue?) :-) It is hard to see in this picture, but it is quite a bold shade.

Some of Seth's favorite books right now (in other words, these are the books we read over and over and over):

This is my favorite because at the end it says, "Oh David, I love you." and Seth always gives me a hug and kiss when I read that... But I always have to wonder if he thinks his name is David when he does that! LOL

And at bedtime we read a book we can both enjoy...