Yes, that's right. I'm crabby.A while back I mentioned that Maddie and I were going to repeat our intermediate obedience class as a refresher. Yesterday was our second week and things are going just great - Maddie is a superstar. Her sit-stay, down-stay, stand-stay, heel, wait, recall and finish are all rock solid. Anything messed up is certainly my fault because Madness sincerely wants to do the right thing.
Next week we are going to learn to teach "go to your rug", so I'll be off to Target today to get Maddie a rug. I think this will be a great thing for her to know around Nora. In fact, I think I'll get a pretty Maddie rug for Nora's room too.
One comment that our instructor made yesterday has really stuck with me. I don't remember her exact words, but the gist was that dog training is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you constantly worry that your dog is going to screw up, he'll probably screw up, but if you have confidence and believe in him, he'll do great. It is so true, I worried a lot with our first dog and he was a wild thing (gorgeous and sweet, but also quite naughty). I could have been a better dog mama to him. My attitude with Maddie is different - I view her as a fundamentally good dog who needs me to teach her. It makes a world of difference.
Update:
We got two rugs for Maddie at Target - a bright green one for Nora's room and a tan one for other places in the house. I'm not sure yet how to teach her to go to her rug and I don't want to do anything that might undermine what we're going to learn next week, but I did decide that associating good things with the rugs was an ok thing to start on now, so I gave Maddie her new bone on the rugs. She seems to have decided that she prefers the green one (that's my girl!).
Ok, I'm on the roller coaster again. After some encouraging comments from our agency 
and a post on the RQ forum today which said that someone had been told by their agency that 1/13 LIDs were included in the April batch, I couldn't help myself.
This is exciting. I think we might have our referral in May! (I hope that doesn't jinx anything)
Thank you SP for the adorable panda bear backpack and Little Einsteins book for Nora. I actually had a dream that we took the backpack to China with us so that Nora could carry some of her own stuff (!).I'm really enjoying my digital scrapbooking class! We did three layouts this week - one using drop shadows, one using a layer template and one using the text mask and eraser tools. After doing the first couple of layouts, I realized that I should be taking this opportunity to work on some projects that I need to accomplish anyway, so my text mask assignment was an attempt at a page for Nora's lifebook. I'm not sure I'm happy with the text color that I used in the journaling, so I might go back and do a little tweaking later. Otherwise, I'm pretty happy with it.
If you can't read the text, it says:
There is a tradition in parts of China where, to welcome a new baby, each family in the village contributes a piece of cloth, along with their good wishes for the baby. The scraps of cloth are then sewn into a quilt which contains the luck, energy and good wishes of all the people who gave a piece of fabric.
While we were waiting to bring you home from China, we decided to collect fabric squares and good wishes from all the friends and family who love you and who were waiting for you to come home. Then mommy learned to sew and made them into a quilt for you. We call this your one hundred good wishes quilt.
I really highly recommend the godigitalscrapbooking classes - it is a very encouraging group!
These milestones are starting to get away from me. I almost forgot that today is our 26 month LID-iversary. Hopefully I'll only have a couple more of these to remember!
This month's picture is in honor of Rob and "the best car ever", which was actually a 1977 Saab 99 (photo right), but I couldn't find one of those with a number 26 on it.
** Photos in this post are from www.cartype.com**
I've started taking a digital scrapbooking (Photoshop Elements) class online at Go Digital Scrapbooking. This is the end of the second week and I think it's going pretty well - I've learned way more about PSE in the past two weeks than I'd picked up in a year of trying to learn on my own with a book.
This is my assignment for this week - the assignment was using selection tools and layers. We were also supposed to create photo borders. The header wouldn't have been my choice, but it is somewhat in keeping with the assignment. I do like the way the bottom portion of the layout with Maddie's boots drying by the fire came out, though. Maybe I'll rework it a little later.
Really, I'm trying to prepare for making Nora's referral announcements, baby book, lifebook and our travel journal. I tried paper scrapbooking a while back and it didn't go very well. Digi-scrapping seems to be much more my thing (and I don't get glue all over the place). Hopefully by the time Nora comes along I'll have gotten the hang of it.
Update 10:29pm - after some more playing, I have what I think is an improved title. What do you think? Credits: Digital papers from Emma's Smile by Danielle Young
A while back I mentioned my desire to make Nora's referral announcements (click on "referral announcements" to see that post). Well, after one card making class and some email conversations with my friend Z's lovely wife J, who is an avid scrapbooker, I came up with some good prototypes. The problem was that I needed a tag or something from which to "hang" the Chinese knots that I bought.
After much Google-ing, I found these rubber stamps (click here for more info about the stamps). They are a bit larger than I'd like, but other than that they are darned near perfect. I couldn't decide between "I Love You", "Dreams Come True" or "Blessings", so I ordered all three.
Next problem (of course) was that I knew nothing about rubber stamping, other than what I learned in card making class. Obviously I needed to 
take a rubber stamping class. Tonight was my free* rubber stamping class and it was FANTASTIC. I tried a ton of products and made all these samples (click on the photo to see a larger version). THEN I went shopping!
I'm feeling pretty good about this. I'm not sure that I want to reveal the card, though, until after Nora's referral. I don't want to spoil the surprise for the people on our mailing list! I'm working on an email announcement too, by the way. If you're curious, here's a little preview of the yuzen paper lined envelopes. There are three different versions because I wasn't able to get enough 
materials to make them all the same. It's actually a good thing, because I now like "plan B" better than "plan A".
* the class was free, but then I bought a whole basket full of stamping supplies!
After a lengthy period of radio silence, today we received a somewhat exciting email from our agency -- it was time to download our pre-placement packet!
The table above is from RQ's latest analysis. I've highlighted the cells including our LID in green. The good case, which never happens anymore, has us in April. Bad case has us in May and the horrid case has us in June. The past several months have been between bad and worse-than-horrid, so it seems that May is a possibility, but June is much more likely. So, I still think June.
Now that our referral is getting closer, we're starting to think more and more about Nora -- who is she, where is she now? This weekend, when we were romping in the snow with Miss Madness, we couldn't help but wonder if Nora is from someplace warm. If that's true, will she like our climate? Will she like water (of course she will - she's our daughter!)? Will she share my birthday (June 30), Rob's birthday (July 14)? We can't wait to learn all about her!
I do want you to also know that there are, indeed, people weirder than us. This weekend there was an outdoor wedding at the same resort. Yesterday. Minus 4. Outdoor wedding. Wow. I don't even know what else to say about that.
Aside from the cold, it really was a lovely weekend. Here's my favorite non-dog photo, taken on the drive back this afternoon. This is Lake Superior. Isn't it gorgeous? With good boots, a hat and a warm pair of gloves, it really wasn't bad out at all. We really need to get those snowshoes we've been talking about so we have a fun family winter activity.
Hope you all had a great weekend!
March referrals are beginning to arrive and it sounds like they cover log in dates through January 4, 2006. Finally we have broken through to OUR MONTH!!!
January 4 would be one day worst than RQ's "horrid" case scenario, but it is what I was expecting to see this month, so I'm sticking with my June prediction for our referral. May would be nice, but let's say June for now and I may amend if April gets through January 12. If April gets through January 11 or less, ours will almost certainly not come until June (or later). Have I lost you yet? Makes perfect sense to me - we PAPs* have our own language.
Congratulations to our friends who are receiving referrals this month - we are so excited for you!!
* PAP = Prospective Adoptive Parents
