Long time!

Hey readers I hope you are still checking in. I'm very sorry for not updating in over a month. Its been busy busy! I have been working (yay) at the Ottawa International Animation Festival as the guest services coordinator. Booking hotels and flight for filmmakers and industry execs. Its been great to finally be out of the house doing something I enjoy. Once I am finished with the festival I am going to be joining a small law firm and will be practicing again! The firm is in the west end so we bought another car this weekend (used). Big changes lol. The final piece of big news is that we have started the adoption process again! We will likely be receiving a referral for Van's little brother or sister next year! Our second adoption will be from South Korea. We would have loved to have stayed with Vietnam but the wait would just be so long and we had an opportunity to be part of what could very well be the last year for Korean adoptions. The program has been around for over 50 years and is very organized. We are very excited about learning all about a new culture. I lived in Japan for two years a few years ago and the cultures are similar so I already feel like I have a bit of a connection. It will be so neat to have Van and his brother or sister experience and learn about each others cultures. And hey, who doesn't want to celebrate three New Year's!!! I will write about the second adoption on this blog for now. I may start a second one eventually or start a family blog. Not sure. I have some thinking to do :)

Now back to the star of this blog. Van is enjoying his summer. He is also enjoying being 2 I think. Some days he seems like such a big boy but other days he's still my little baby :) He had his second year doctor's visits and everything looks great although his family doc thinks it would be worth us taking Van to a speech therapist as he does have some delay. So we are going to pay to take him for an appointment in September. Even if it's just to get some ideas on how we can work with him.

Anyway, enough blather. Here are some pics of the summer.

Yearly summer party in Greely for adoptive families:









Max and Vanh's third year birthday party:



Enjoying his big birthday present (not quite able to push the pedals fully yet):



Science and Technology Museum:




Parliament Hill:





A boy and his dog:



A mom and her son:


Summer playdate fun with Max and Vanh:

Birthday party

On Sunday the 17th we hosted a little second birthday party for Van. We wanted to keep it small so as not to overwhelm him. Although I think he was a little perplexed by the people. He was also a little confused by the cake coming in with the happy birthday song. He saw me bringing in the cake and was happy to see Thomas the Tank Engine on top but then quickly got a little freaked out when we all started singing lol. All in all I think he enjoyed himself. Although for our part we were quintessentially parent brain addled about the whole thing. Not only did we forget to take a lot of pics (of the decorations for example, although there are a lot of the cake eating as you will see!) we also forgot to give out the gift bags :-O! Anyway, here are some moments Pat did manage to capture:

Vanh and Max:


Hudson gets some love from Chibi:


Van is wondering what Neila is doing sitting in his chair hehe:



BBQ outside



Cake time:











Finally, about a week ago Pat took out his Tonka truck that he had played with as a child. As you can see below Van was enraptured :)








Van's actual birthday is tomorrow. His Ba (my mom) is arriving tonight and we have a couple of adoption gatherings this weekend so there will be more festivities over the next few days.

Less than a month left of Van's second year

It's hard to believe but Van's second year of life is soon going to be over and he will journey into year three. As my blogging has slowed down considerably over the past few months I will save developmental updates for when he does turn two. In the meantime I think my posts will be mostly pictures and videos. I'm sure that's the preference of readers anyway :)

A few Canada Day pics without Van:



Canada Day at the playground (a better fit for a 2 year old):








The parliament hill fireworks seen from our attic window:


Splash park fun (well, he actually preferred the playground or watching the water go down the drain when the sprinklers turned off lol):




Here's a little montage video of Van...well...running around lol. Note in the middle of the video when Pat asks him if that's his bus he actually says cheerios. That's what was in the container he was trying to pick up along with his bus. Multitasking:

Van 22 months from Patrick Lewis on Vimeo.