Pending trip to NC

I figured I better post real quick. Tomorrow early in the morning we are leaving for NC for 12 days. Wow. Do you realize how difficult it is to pack for two babies and both of us for 12 days? I am so tired and ready for bed, but still have more to do.

Not much happening here. Our plan to fatten up S. with homemade cookies failed - he had a rash all week, we think it might have been from the cocoa. And P. had some eye gook that is still unexplained.

Both of them were very demanding this afternoon ... wanting to be held most of the time. It made it difficult to pack. Plus Thomas had to leave to take the dogs out to the kennel.

I guess the big news is that S. said a few more words - ball, snack, and wow.

Happy Father's Day

Happy Father's Day to a wonderful man. This household is truly blessed to have Thomas as its head and leader. He exceeds my expectations nearly everyday, and gives so much of himself to all of us. He is more interested in seeing myself and the children happy, than he is about meeting is own desires. Regardless of how busy he may be with work and school, every day he makes each of us a priority in his life. I can not thank him enough for all he does.

This weekend we spent time relaxing and enjoying our lives. Both of the photos above are from this weekend. We went to the park for a foster care event on Saturday morning. And this afternoon we shared some time eating hamburgers after church. We also made some of Thomas' favorite cookies recently - no bake chocolate cookies. Our hope was to 1) have good food in the house and 2) fatten S. up. So due to food allergies, the cookies were made with soy milk and vegan butter. The first batch didn't quite turn out right, but the second batch was perfect.

Loving Life

This week has been such a joy and blessing in so many ways. Things are going really well. The children are growing and are such a delight to have. Both of them are extremely happy children, laughing and smiling ALL THE TIME, and we are truly blessed to share our lives with them. They are learning new things each day. This week I've had some time to sit around and read, quilt, and work on other projects. And Thomas and I have been spending quality time together each night.

These last few days have been wonderful. S. has been especially funny, interesting, and more obedient (yeah!). I switched how I was managing his behaviors about 2 weeks ago, plus I'm home more, and I think those two things combined are really helping the situation. On top of that he has been in speech therapy twice a week for more than a month now, and his teachers are also reinforcing sign language at school. He is trying to repeat us more each day, he is talking more (up to 9 words), and he is signing more. He still has a long way to go verbally, but there has been marked improvement in just the last few days. It's so interesting how well he can communicate without speaking. Oh, and he is growing. I swear it looks like the child sprouted legs overnight.

I feel like things are really starting to work perfectly ... and we got the phone call that his grandmother has been officially approved and she can come get him. OK. We knew this was coming, and we know it will be good for him to be with family. And she is more than capable of raising him. But we are going to miss him dearly. A larger part of us just wants her to show up tomorrow and have this done with because it is too dreadful to drag out. However, he has a hernia on his stomach and the caseworker will not let him leave until we have a surgeon evaluate it and fix it if need be. That on top with pending vacation plans, equals probably one more month with our beloved S. It will be sometime in July that he leaves and it is going to be hard.

I have to share a story with you. I just about fell off the sofa laughing at S. this week. He brought me a book, not just any book, but Thomas' political science journal, for me to read to him. (I'm sure Thomas is glad to know we seem to be raising a child prodigy) Well, he opened it up and there was a full-page black and white photo of a man wearing a hat and smoking a cigar. My first thought - "good heavens there are still ads with people smoking in them ... its a good thing he doesn't see this on a normal basis." So I TRY to emphasize the hat. Look, I say, he has a hat on his head. Well, S. was more interested in the cigar. He was pointing at it with this real confused look on his face and I could tell he wanted to know what it was. So I said, that is a cigar. And he pointed again, and looked at it strangely. And then .... he looked and me and signed "dirty." Oh yes, that is dirty, I said. I can't tell you how happy I was to see him tell me the cigar was dirty. I can only imagine that he probably thought it looked like the guy had poop in his mouth or something of the sort. Oh, I fell out laughing. I still can't stop.

Other good things happened this week. We took the children to the beach for the first time! Yeah. One of my coworkers has a beach house at St. Teresa, its a little over an hour away. The picture up above was taken on the golf cart riding to the beach. S. loved the ocean. He crawled around on his hands and knees, walked, fell in it, and did not want Thomas to hold him in the water. P. sat some in the sand and played as much as she can, and then sat with me in the chair and watched. Here are some photos.








I also had the chance to sew quite a bit this week. One night, I made this cute little bag for P. Basically, we needed a smaller bag to use for daycare because our regular diaper bag was too big for the few things we take for her each day.



I'm sure I had a lot more I wanted to say, but I can't remember right now. So there is always tomorrow. Be sure to check back.

Pool Bash

Things used to be pretty simple. But, hey, things change. This is what life used to be like around our house. Mercy was Thomas' main girl. Now he has his hands full with a new girl and boy, luckily Mercy seems to be Ok with it.


Last week, I spoke too soon about us all being healthy. S. was sick with a fever for on Sunday and Monday this past week. And was up a lot at night coughing. So, on Memorial Day we sat around, did some housework and stayed home. For some reason, both Thomas and I decided to make something ... I made a blackberry pie, and he made homemade butter. (he has no idea that I took this photo, I wanted to be sure everyone knew he was obsessed about making some homemade butter for weeks =)




S. is better now, but P. has a cold. She looks absolutely pitiful at certain points. But, today was a lot of fun for all of us. Well, Thomas probably did the most work of any of us, between school and yard work. But we also watched our friend's daughter play softball, and then they came over for a swim. S. LOVED having so many friends to play in the pool with. We all swam for an hour or more ... it was nonstop excitement. Our friend's have a 12 year old daughter, a foster daughter, and then another friend was also with them. P.watched from the sidelines and then slept through most it. Mercy and Forge also had a blast chasing the ball.




Notice in the photo below, S. sleeps with his head under the covers. This is an every day, the moment he is laid down in the bed thing ... the covers have to go over the head. Yes, he is actually asleep in this photo. Also, he thinks he is ready to drive.





Here are a few photos of P. from this week. She is sitting up now by herself (complete unassisted) for several minutes at a time. She is such a good baby. Everyone asks if she is always this good ... and she is.









And just in case you were wondering how fat her cheeks are ...

More Videos

We both wanted to load up some videos of P. laughing.

This one is a month old - she was 5 months old.


Then there is this one from earlier this week. I was trying to get S. to eat his lima beans. It worked. He gobbled them all up.

6 MONTH UPDATE

We have had both of the little ones just over 6 months now. K was six months old on the 18th and S. will be 20 months old in just a couple days.

Both are still battling a runny nose --- this has been a everyday, all the time problem -- probably because they are in day care. But otherwise they are in good health. I would like to put more weight on S. It seems rather strange that he hasn't gained more weight than he has. He is so thin, and so strong, he has the "cut and ripped" look that a baby shouldn't have. K, on the other hand, has the rolls of healthy baby fat.

Most of you probably already know, we are planning on renaming K once she is adopted. So, based on that fact, I am going to start referring to her as P on the blog. Hope you can keep up. =)

P is growing fast. I end up talking so much about how S is doing developmentally, and never really mention P. Probably because she is always right where she needs to be. She can reach and pick up a toy, transfer a toy from one hand to another, hold her bottle a little bit, sit up for a little bit on her own, and stand holding onto something. She also is saying vowel/consonant combinations, such as " a-da-da" She has stayed right on track and a little ahead. She also loves being tickled, playing peek-aboo, and reading books. So far, she likes sweet potatoes and peas. We are also continuing to try broccoli, green beans, and carrots. But she doesn't really like these. Usually she starts screaming at the top of her lungs if I try to feed her a food she doesn't like and it is very hard to calm her down with other food. At this point usually only a bottle will help. It can make meal time very loud and crazy. Because usually S is also up to something also.

Update: I forgot to mention when I originally posted this link. P. went to the doctor for her 6 month checkup this week. She is 16 lbs and 26.5 inches long - about the 50% for weight and the 75% for height.

Today we went to the park and got some great photos ... while thomas stayed home to work. It was P's first time on the swing. And a few other photos from around the house.

Watch This

I spent hours tyring to edit some videos and post them over several days... but I was not successful. So, what you have instead are some basic videos with no editing. That I finally uploaded on youtube because I it was the easiest way to do it and nothing else seemed to work.

This is something I have been meaning to do for months and just haven't had time. These are short clips of video taken on our regular camera so the quality is just OK.

This video is of P eating peas (for what is really the very first time ever eating). The only thing she had eaten before was rice and oatmeal cereal. Thomas tried unsuccessfully when I was on the cruise to give her baby food without thinking I would want to be here for it. Now she eats her peas without too much of a fuss, and other non-green vegetables. She is not the least bit interested in brocolli or green beans.