Updates

Life is going on, busy and chaotic as usual. We're working on new adoption paperwork, which is a huge pain in the neck. Trying to coordinate between our new agency, our old agency, and our homestudy agency is not easy. Our profile is being showed around though, so at some point we may actually have a baby.

Ethan is doing very well in school, and recently ran for class president. He didn't win, but that's mostly due to the fact that there were 4 boys and only 2 girls in the running. What 6th grade girl would vote for a boy? But Ethan did a great job with his speech, misquoting Patrick Henry ("give me lunch or give me death") and JFK ("ask not what your school can do for you . . .). He started out, "In this time of political turmoil, vote for a candidate who cares more about having fun than about the issues." He got a lot of laughs and his teacher loved it. I'm really proud of him, he did it all on his own and it was a good experience for him.

Noah is doing well in school. Every day he gets a paper with smiley faces or thumbs down stamps for each of his classes. Thumbs down is for disruptive behavior, not listening, etc. Monday he got all smiles! Now the goal is a whole week of smiles. He does love school, and he's working hard.

I'm putting together our Down syndrome Halloween party. The kids love it, we do a pinata and it's always a big hit. I love seeing the costumes. I'm really looking forward to it. We also have the National Association for Down Syndrome conference in Chicago in November. They always have great workshops. Needless to say, I'll be attending the potty-training one. Still working on that.

Scott is busy with work and planning lots of trips for us. That's his stress reliever. I just curl up with a good book. I've been getting through an awful lot of pages lately . . .