Dear Arianna (3 years)

Dear Arianna,

3 years! You have brought so much joy to our home. You have turned into a little girl this year.  You are such a character. You are so happy and love to make others happy too. You love to play on your own and with Deven. You take any situation and turn it into something fun. If you hear music you start dancing and singing, it doesn’t matter where you are.  You love to dress-up. Your favorite thing to do is to wear your snoopy pillow case as a cape (I made the pillow case for your Aunt Sisi when she was a little girl). You love to mix dress ups and be a super hero princess or batman in a tutu.

You love to eat vegetables and fruits, and love to help me cook.  You really have a talent for music. You can sing “I Love to See the Temple” and “Stars were Gleaming” along with many other short kids songs. You match pitch and rhythm.  You love it when I play the piano or flute.

You have learned to write your name and can trace and cut very well. You LOVE to read books and to do “school” with Deven and with the other kids. You catch on quickly to new concepts and even sometimes call me “Sister Petersen” during school to be like the other kids. I am still amazed when I realize that you aren’t  just babbling nonsense, but are telling me a very involved story that I can understand!
You love to play chase with daddy, but are afraid of your heater.  You are now potty trained and are very ready for primary. One of your dad's favorite conversations with you went like this: "Ari did you get a cookie." "uh huh....I think I need another one."
I love who you are and who you are becoming. I hope that you will keep wanting to bring happiness and joy to people’s lives.

Love,

Mom

Here are some pictures from Ari's birthday party. We had a dress-up tea party. Ari's cousin Joe was the waiter and we had a blast!

Update, Sleep Problems, Adventures :)

Arianna Update:
Ari is now 19 months old, and I can't count the changes that I have seen in her in such a short while. She is really turning into a little girl. She loves to watch what I do and try to copy and do things herself, but still will still grab my hand and pull me over to something interesting :)
She loves to "go car." Which is her way of saying 'let's get out of the house.' She knows we need to put shoes and socks on before we leave, or as she says it "shoes and shoes."
After the Gradens left, I realized how much Ari learned from their girls. Ari is a cautious girl, so she doesn't normally get into much unless she sees that it is safe. From seeing older girls navigate the house she has gotten more comfortable in our home. She learned that the kitchen is full of fun toys in every drawer, that the counter is a wonderland full of delightful new adventures, and that toys must be spread to every corner in order to be fully enjoyed.
Ari's speech is amazing. She has a huge vocabulary and can put 3 or 4 words together. She is also understanding requests and obeying surprisingly well. 
She still loves to read and dance!!

Sleep Problems
(I write this in hopes it will help someone else who has a toddler who suddenly stops sleeping through the nights.)
We have had a major struggle lately with her sleep. Ari has always been a very good sleeper, but about a month and a half ago she started waking up multiple times during the night. Then she would get up very early in the morning (5am some mornings). At the beginning we attributed this to teething: she was getting 4 teeth in at once, and she seemed to be waking up in pain. Then her teeth all came in, and she was still waking up periodically at night and then early in the morning. This started affecting her behavior during the day. She was irritable, always had to be entertained, and would burst into tears for no reason. 
We thought it might be a bladder infection, but all the tests came back negative. Then we thought it was some outside disturbance, so we covered her windows. While the Gradens were here, we moved her to our room in the pack and play and it didn't help. We finally thought that she must be wet and uncomfortable, so I bought over night diapers. That night she slept through the night and woke up at a reasonable time...but the next night was back to the same problems. 
This week it escalated. Ari woke up screaming and would not be put back down. We tried everything to get her to go back to sleep in a bed, but nothing worked. (She would calm down when we held her but as soon as she was out of our arms she would scream again.) During these fits she learned how to climb out of her crib and we started to worry about safety. 

After 2 nights of only 4 hours of sleep we had no idea what to do. After fasting, praying, researching, and talking it over with family, we came up with a plan. We thought that she was having nightmares and needed to be comforted when she woke up but needed to go back to sleep in her bed. (We removed the springs the crib mattress was on and put it on the floor so it was lower in the crib) When we put her back to bed she started screaming immediately, but we left the room. We would go in ever minute or two and lay her back down. After 30 minutes of this she caught on and stayed laying down and cried herself to sleep. We have been doing this for a few nights now and each night has gotten better. Last night she only woke up twice and didn't need any "reminding" to lay back down. Hopefully she will be sleeping through the night again soon :)

Some of our adventures lately:
I was cleaning the house and found her pioneer bonnet, Ari had a blast playing with it :)

We helped to clean the church on Saturday and Ari was a big helper. She also helped contribute some fingerprints on the windows :)

Feeding the ducks at the park.

Ari's hair is getting long enough to french braid :)

The Gradens

Our wonderful friends, the Gradens, stayed with us in the middle of July and things have been so busy, this is the first chance that I have had to blog about it. For those of you who don't know, which is probably most of you, Liz and Alan Graden introduced Ben and me to each other. I grew up with Liz in St. Louis and Ben grew up with Alan in Springfield. They seated us next to each other at their wedding dinner...Ben finished my chicken, and lets say the rest is history :) We hadn't seen each other in years and had a wonderful week together. I wasn't the best at remembering to take pictures, sorry, and most of the pictures I did take were with my phone, but enjoy what I do have!

Liz and Alan have 3 little girls ages 6, 3 and 7 months. It was so much fun to watch Ari tag-a-long after the older girls and play with the baby. She is ready to be a sister :) We went to a lot of parks and I was so surprised to see Ari doing most of the "big" kid things. She even went down the tallest slide without even a second thought.

 Of course we had to do an Andy's trip (or two). We had some other friends over also and decided to walk to Andy's we loaded the girls up in strollers and the wagon and had a blast:

 Ari learned some new (and old) tricks while they were here. She was introduced to no spill bubbles and has been in heaven ever since. She can do them all by herself. She sticks the wand in, pulls it out, and blows bubbles :)

We also got the swing out for the littlest one, which some times turned out to be Ari :)
 And she mastered the ice cream cone...

We also spent some time at Bass Pro:

Ben and Alan worked together for 2 summers in a wood shop. During that time they built racks for Bass Pro to display their fishing rods. Ben believes he built this very one...
We had an amazing time and hopefully Liz and Alan took more pictures and will send them to me :) We made some great memories.

Arianna's Birth Family

Many people have asked about how we were going to tell Ari about adoption. I never plan to have a sit down chat to announce to her that she is adopted. We hope that it is something that she will grow up always knowing. 
We show her pictures of her birth parents and explain to her that she came from Lindsey's tummy (we will share more details as she gets older).  Part of her knowing she is adopted is knowing her birth parents and family. That is a relationship that we are still figuring out. But we started what I hope will become a tradition this past weekend up in Kansas City. 

Tyson and his mom met us at our hotel and we had dinner together. It took about 10 minutes for Arianna to warm up to them, but then she had a blast.

We had a great time getting to know each other better. We found out that Ari gets her height from Tyson's side. She has a biological half-sister who is 4 and the height of a 6 year old! So these growth spurts will not be slowing down! 

  

  

We were also able to meet with Lindsey and her family on Saturday. We met in the hotel, let Ari get comfortable, went swimming, then went to the Kansas City Aquarium. Ari pulled Lindsey around the entire aquarium and loved being the center of attention. 

Ari absolutely loved it! As you can tell it was very difficult to get her to look at anything besides the fish :) It was a perfect day.

4th of July

We have had a fun filled week! My mom came down on Tuesday and we have kept busy. I apologize for the quality of the pictures, I forgot to charge my camera so all the pictures are from phones :)

We went to the farm park. It is what the title implies, a farm that is a city park. Ari had a fun time. I think her favorite part was the chickens.

For the 4th we kept with tradition and went over to Ben's family's. I love that Ari is old enough to start playing with her cousins. Here are some really fun videos of them all:

Ari did really well with the fireworks, which surprised me. I expected her to be in tears most of the time, but she only had one melt down and then enjoyed the show.

The next day we went to the zoo. I had never been, but Ari has been learning her animals and I wanted her to see them in real life. She recognized the monkeys, elephants, and bears, and also learned what a giraffe was. We rode the train, but Ari didn't really like that experience...