Happy 17 month Birthday Matteo....

Happy birthday my little one.  As I approach the one year anniversary of my travel to Vietnam, and our G&R....I have been looking back at last year's blog and the photos and Matteo Bao has changed so much....at times I still feel it is all a dream, a wonderful one, but still a dream...on the one hand, as others have said...I can't remember what life was like without him, and on the other hand, I know how long I've waited for this miracle....anyhow the one thing that hasn't changed, or then again it has in the sense that Matteo has bonded even more strongly with me, but also with his little giraffe stuffed toy. It was the first toy I bought over 5 years ago when I made the decision to pursue adoption.  I brought the toy with me to Vietnam and Matteo has had it with him in his crib. It also travelled with us to Italy. In the last while he has started to bring it with him when I carry him out of his crib. Most of the time he is happy to leave him at home and put him in his downstairs crib, but on some occasions, like today, he refused to let go of him so we bundled him in the carriage and covered him so he wouldn't be cold.  As you can see in the second photo below...Matteo's arm snuggled the giraffe when he fell asleep   during our walk on a beautiful fall day.  Anyhow time seems to be flying by and while I LOVE my little boy, I don't love that he is growing up so so fast...and that time seems to be going too fast...so I try to enjoy the small things, like the special relationship between a boy and his little stuffed giraffe....hopefully when Teo is able to say more words, he can decide what to name his giraffe.  Happy 17 months my boy!!! xoxoxo

My beautiful little pumpkin....

One year ago today....

...the journey of a lifetime was just about to begin....re-living it here.

Thanksgiving...

...is always bittersweet!!...Memories always resurface of the death of my mother, now six years ago, just before Thanksgiving.  While there are many blessings in my life, it is always a hard time too.  Last year as I was dreading it again, I remember getting lots of other photos of Matteo from the orphanage which helped me get through those emotional days by receiving other great emotions.  This year we had a different kind of blessing with the amazing weather.  We had a lovely meal at my sister's...eating turkey on the patio was a bit surreal but also pretty great.  Yesterday morning with Isa and Luca we took a walk to Dow's lake and tried to breathe in the beautiful day trying to imprint it in our memories.  The park was very peaceful and it was a lovely morning, though Matteo was not so happy on the way home.  Intanto, here are a few soothing photos to remind me of another better Thanksgiving weekend.

Têt Trung Thu - Autumn Moon Festival

Finally getting around to updating this post...We were invited to an Autumn Moon Children's lantern parade and enjoyed it very much....instead of duplicating some of the photos, you can instead see most of them here. I've only included a few below from S&Ws party.  These other photos are of the small family Moon festival tea and mooncake party we had at our home. I would like to make it an annual tradition and will continue to add to it.....We had two kinds of mooncake, actually three if we count the pig shaped mooncakes. And we had tea and watermelon. Next year will serve even more "round" fruit and maybe make some lanterns too.