someone, please come and take away my cookie sheets!

One stay at home mom who really enjoys baking + one active 4 year old + hibernating all winter = a freezer full of cookies! No joke. Right now I have four different kinds of cookies in my freezer. There are many other projects around here that I could and should be working on, but baking is much more fun. Melia and I are quite a team in the kitchen, and all of us love sweets. Obviously this is not so great for the waistline. While many are focusing on losing holiday weight, I’m thinking about what recipe to try next and wondering how soon I can justify baking again. I think pancakes and muffins are on my list of things to bake next, but I’m sure there will be more cookies in my freezer before long. Anyone having a bake sale soon? Hmmmm. . . maybe that’s an idea for an adoption fund raiser.

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four things

I was tagged by Kristen. How fun!!

4 jobs I’ve had:
1. daycare helper (3 summers)
2. waitress (one year)
3. elementary teacher (7 years)
4. mommy (four ½ years and counting)

4 movies watched over and over:
I don’t really like to watch movies over and over, but there are a few that I’ve watched more than once . . .
1. You’ve Got Mail
2. Sweet Home Alabama
3. The Wedding Planner
4. Anne of Green Gables

4 places I’ve lived:
1. Cross Lanes, WV
2. Hurricane, WV
3. Cedarville, OH
4. Ann Arbor, MI

4 shows I watch:
1. Good Eats (and a few others on Food Network)
2. Monk and Psych (can’t separate those two)
3. The Amazing Race
4. Jon and Kate plus 8

4 places I’ve been:
1. Cancun, Mexico
2. South Africa
3. Kenya
4. London

4 people who e-mail me regularly:
1. Colleen
2. Mel
3. a few online newsletters (not sure why I keep them)
4. other family members

4 favorite things to eat:
1. cheddar cheese combos
2. pizza
3. brownies and ice cream
4. Mexican!

4 places I’d rather be:
1. out SOMEWHERE (I’m hibernating this winter to keep our preemie healthy)
2. Greece with my hubby
3. in a big comfy chair with a great book and two hours BY MYSELF
4. Hawaii with hubby and kids, and maybe even a few friends

4 things I look forward to this year:
1. going to St. Joseph on Lake Michigan
2. family reunion in PA and seeing more family in WV on the same road trip
3. proceeding with our adoption
4. watching Kailyn continue to grow and seeing Melia start Kindergarten (actually dreading the Kindergarten thing a bit)

OK, here’s the sad thing. I don’t actually have many blog friends yet to tag. With two young children, I haven’t found the time to seek out new blogs. I’d love to check out your blog, though. Just leave a comment, if you’d like, and I’ll come visit you out there in blog world.

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retraction

In the last post I mentioned that I didn’t think Melia would ever stop sucking her thumb. I stand corrected. I think she has completely stopped. All in just a couple of days. She just decided to stop, and she did. The reason? A frank conversation with Daddy about braces. The look on her face was priceless as he explained what happens when someone needs to get braces. I don’t even remember how the conversation came up, but I’m glad it did. It’s been five days since I’ve seen her suck her thumb. We told her we would take her to Build-A-Bear (she’s been wanting to go there for over a year) if she really quits. She’s excited about that, but her biggest motivation is avoiding braces. Keep up the good work, Melia!

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love that thumb!

Today Kailyn discovered her thumb. I think it was quite by accident, and I don’t think she could find it again without help, but she sure enjoyed it. I had to take a picture. Melia still loves her thumb. I’m not sure if she’ll EVER decide to stop sucking it, so I was not too surprised that Kailyn enjoyed hers as well.

What happened at 5:30 AM today? Not sure why, but all of us woke up around 5:30AM. It was Graig’s turn to get up with Kaily, but I was wide awake and had no hope of going back to sleep anytime in the near future so I got up with Kaily (who was also wide awake and not crying). I went downstairs, warmed up a bottle, and planned what I would do with all my extra time before everyone else got up. Only a few minutes later, Graig and Melia decided to get up, too. That has never happened before, and I hope it doesn’t happen again for awhile. It was a productive morning, but I was wiped out by 10 AM.

Well, I’m afraid to post this in case it doesn’t happen again, but Kaily has started sleeping through the night! It has been about three nights in a row that she has slept seven hours straight. Melia didn’t sleep through the night until she was 10 months old, so I’m afraid to get my hopes up. At least we’ve had a few nights to enjoy.

One more thing, I realized yesterday that we have a 4 1/2 year old and a 4 1/2 month old. It will never happen again that the girls have the same numbers to tell how old they are. Enjoy the pictures.

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good news,sad news and even sadder news

Let’s start with the good news. I figured out how to put pictures on the blog! So easy, so now I’ll try to post some pics fairly regularly.

Now the sad news. . . Last night I went to the basement to get some more frozen breastmilk out of the freezer. (sorry, in advance, if this gets to be too much information.) It had been a long weekend. Graig was gone at a church retreat, and it was my first time alone with both the girls for an extended period of time. I get to the freezer and realize that it is already slightly open. My heart sank. You see, this full size freezer holds all the milk I pumped for Kaily. It was almost completely full when she came home. I had hoped to be able to breastfeed her when the doctor said that she was big enough to try, but things didn’t work out that way. I consoled myself with the fact that she had at least two or three months of milk in the freezer before she would need to start taking formula. I’m not against formula. In fact, I love the convenience of it, but I do feel pretty strongly that breastmilk is best, especially for Kaily who has two strikes against her–her prematurity and our family history of food allergies. Back to last night, the freezer is open. That can’t be good. I noticed some “meat juice” had dripped on the floor. That can’t be good either. Sure enough, about 60-70 percent of the milk we had left had thawed. I almost cried. I came back upstairs and tried to process what happened. A quick search online told me that thawed milk is only good for 24 hours. I was heartsick to realize that I had likely lost over a month of milk for Kaily. If any of you moms out there have ever had to pump for an extended period of time, you understand what a labor of love it is and what a HUGE loss it was to find most of the milk had thawed. At first I did nothing. I knew I had to act fast so I would know what milk I had to throw out and what was still good, but Kaily had chosen that time to realize she was hungry. I fed her and thought through how this tragedy had come to pass.

That morning I had decided to surprise Melia with pancakes for breakfast. They are one of her favorites, but I only make them about once a month since I have to make them from scratch because of her milk allergies. The recipe is really good and quite easy, but it takes more time than Melia is usually willing to wait. Anyway, I decided to use some of the blueberries that we had picked and frozen last summer. They were buried in the freezer. I adjusted things to get to them and then very carefully shut the freezer door. I felt a little resistance when I closed the door, so I rearranged a couple of things and closed the door again. It must have popped open again when I left the room.

After getting Kaily settled, I went about the task of figuring out what I could save. I felt quite sorry for myself as I removed bottle and bottle. I completely filled our laundry utility sink with milk that had to be thrown out. I carried it upstairs and went about the task of emptying at least 200 bottles. (I’m going to count them later, so I’ll let you know how many there actually were.) I was SO frustrated with myself. Those were REALLY expensive pancakes that I made! As I dumped, I tried to think of how things could be worse. Our basement could have flooded instead of just the little bit of water that came in with the heavy rains last week. We could have just been diagnosed with a fatal disease like my one friend’s mom. We could have an empty refrigerator or not be able to heat our home. Comparing my situation to things that are much worse usually helps my attitude, but thinking about the hours and hours that I spent pumping milk really had me in a funk. I was up until midnight dealing with the mess. I dreamed about it and woke up thinking about it. I was feeling quite sorry for myself this morning until I heard the saddest news.

The saddest news is that a close family friend had her home catch on fire yesterday. She has likely lost most of what she had. And that is on top of the fact that she recently lost her job. That puts it all in perspective. My funk completely disappeared when I heard her truly heartbreaking news. Our loss is NOTHING compared to hers.

Some good news about the whole milk thing is that there is probably still about a month’s worth that stayed frozen from being packed so tightly together in the freezer. I have MUCH to be thankful for.

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good news

Kaily had two appointments this week. Her pediatrician says that she is growing well and that she has no concerns at this time. Her biggest issue continues to be reflux which is very common in babies, especially preemies. She is taking medication, but it wasn’t working very well. Our first solution is to stop adding calories to her milk. We had been adding formula to her milk to help her “bulk up”, but now she’s just on straight breastmilk with nothing added. So far this seems to have made a big difference in decreasing the reflux.

A physical therapist came to our house on Wednesday to evaluate where Kaily is developmentally. She also had good news. Kaily is where she should be or a little bit ahead of schedule if she had been born in November instead of August. Preemies often have developmental delays, but so far Kailyn is growing as she should. We are very encouraged by this news. God has been so good to us and our little girl. The only things the PT would like us to work on is more tummy time and continuing to work on having Kaily look to the left. She definately can and does look to the left, but she still prefers the right. Most preemies do.

Kaily is getting more and more interactive. The PT called her a very social baby. She looks straight into your eyes, smiles often, coos more and more, and she has started to try to bat at the toys on her playgym. We are really enjoying her a lot. More pictures to come soon.

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hooray for birthdays!

We had previously decided that we didn’t NEED internet access at home. The library is three minutes away, and there are a couple of coffee shops with WI-FI even closer. I (Sara) would head out a few times a week to get caught up on email, and Graig had internet access through work. This saved us a monthly internet bill, and our system worked. Well, along comes Kaily and then the winter of isolation. After only three weeks of Kaily being home, I realized that our system wouldn’t work as well as before. I didn’t want my few times of getting out of our house each week to be just to read email. Since my birthday was coming up, I floated the idea of possibly getting internet at home. My sweet husband did hours of research to find the best deal, and we decided to go for it. Whoo, hoo! I’ve joined the land of the of the “connected”, and we have all enjoyed my new gift, dare I say one of the best gifts I’ve ever received? Now Melia actually has a chance of knowing a little about computers and the internet before she starts school next year. She is enjoying the Webkinz site (so am I) as well as PBSkids. She’s actually picked up the skills quite quickly. Anyway, all that to say that I will likely be taking over the family blog posts. They will not be quite as funny, but they will probably be more often. Now if I can just figure out how to post pictures . . . .

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We are hibernating…

Well, life at home for Kaily is going pretty well. She loves the idea of being able to move from room to room. In the NICU she had two choices. The first was to hang out in her “box” bed and the second was to hang out with someone in a chair next to that same bed. She now has the run of the house, as long as someone is willing to carry her along.

Kaily continues to do really well. She is growing at a nice steady rate. We have found ourselves saying, “She looks kind of pudgy.” We never thought we would be saying that about our 2lb 2oz baby girl.

She still has the occasional difficult episode of breathing, but they have all been associated with reflux, and we are able to help her resolve them. These episodes have become less frequent which is really nice.

Kaily is getting cuter and cuter, in our prejudiced opinion. She is very alert and observant. She has started to smile and coo which is very fun for all of us. She tolerates the love and attention of big sister really well, even when she is kissed and hugged and surrounded with every toy. She has an appointment with a physical therapist this week, and we are anxious to see if she is progressing as she should.

She doesn’t get to leave the house unless it is to go to the doctor, which means the whole family doesn’t get to leave together until spring. This “hibernating” is starting to feel like a bit of challenge, but it is for only a few months. The goal of this hibernating is to protect her from severe RSV, a lung virus that preemies like Kaily are especially susceptible to. Melia isn’t totally down with this house arrest, but preschool starts again soon and that gives her a chance to get out and see the world. Melia is pretty excited for school to start again, and mom and dad are pretty excited, too.

Overall, life at home is good…we remember and pray for the kids Kaily left behind in the NICU and look forward to helping her catch up to the other kids born in August of 2007!

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News from Kenya and adoption…

Our family is still not complete. There is an empty spot in our home that only our daughter in Kenya can fill. We can’t wait to bring her home.

Our overall adoption plan is to continue in the Kenyan adoption process as soon as possible. We are going to try to help Kaily get through the winter virus-free and evaluate in the spring/summer where she is at in terms of being able to live in Kenya. When we feel she is at a place we could help her continue to be healthy and have a chance to continue to catch up to kids born around the same time, then we will finish our dossier and then proceed with the Kenyan side of adoption. Our dream would be able to continue that Kenyan side sometime in the fall of 2008. This is what we pray for.

There is some news on adoption in Kenya…The first family to attempt adoption under the new laws, the Nelsons, were able to bring their sweet baby girl home in November of 2007. We are so excited for them and that the process actually worked. This gives us great hope.

Right now, however, things aren’t going so well with Kenyan adoption. After the Nelsons completed their adoption, a Kenyan judge felt things were moving too quickly (it took the Nelsons 10 months of living in Kenya). He has slowed things way down for the four other families in Kenya right now in process. Who would think that 10 months would be considered too quick? Life is much slower in Kenya, and you have to think like a Kenyan in this process in order to not go insane. While this is a bit discouraging, it is not really unexpected to have things like this come up.

The other thing effecting adoption in Kenya is the current unrest there after a Presidential election that occurred on December 27th. Elections in Kenya are always a time of craziness, but this one has been very chaotic. There is unrest in most of the country and violence has been prevalent. It breaks our hearts to see people we know and love forced from their homes, without food, and fearing for their lives. The reports we are hearing that it is the worst is has ever been in recent history, but things seem to be calming down some. Things are still volatile, and we pray for peace.

Pray with us that there would be peace in Kenya, that adoption there would be back on track soon, and that we would be able to bring home our little girl soon!

If you are interested in learning more about the crisis in Kenya, check these links out:
One of the better newspapers Kenya http://www.nationmedia.com/dailynation/nmgindex.asp
The BBC Africa
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/default.stm
A blog of a friend of ours living in Kitale (this is the town that Sara’s parents live in)
http://dlipparelli.blogspot.com/

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