weary

Beginning Sunday night, K has not been feeling well. I mean REALLY not feeling well. She has woken up several times during each of the last three nights. “When baby don’t sleep, mama don’t sleep.” She won’t eat anything and will only take a little more than half of her regular bottles. She fusses and cries all day. She wants to be held (by ME, not by G) all day and because she’s not sleeping, she wants to be held all night. I’m weary. I can’t wait until this illness is gone. I’ve had about all I can take.

I took her to the doctor on Monday morning. She has an ear infection. No big surprise. The doctor prescribed Amoxicillin. No big surprise. She’s taken it before. However . . . this time K reacted to the medicine and got hives around her mouth. I immediately called the doctor, and she prescribed something new. So far K is still very grumpy and clingy. I hope the medicine does it’s job SOON. G is getting me a hot fudge sundae tonight. I told him I deserve a treat. He agrees. Get better, baby girl.

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children’s museum?

On our way home from church today, M asked, “Is that a children’s museum?” We had just passed a little house where a palm reader works. “No, honey. That is definitely not a children’s museum.” “Oh, then why does it have hands all over it?” “Good question!” (I was really hoping she would somehow be distracted by the fact that I didn’t really answer her question. No such luck. We have a VERY inquisitive daughter.) She tries again. “Well, what is it then? I’ve been wanting to know for a very long time.” I briefly tried to explain what palm readers do, and she seemed to be satisfied. Just a few minutes later she still must have been thinking about hands. Her next question was, “What if all of our fingers were thumbs? What would that be like?” Another good question. Do you have an answer for that one?

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makin’ a mess

G and I like things to be neat and orderly. Before kids, our little home was clean and tidy most of the time. Now? I have to remind myself often that life with kids is just cluttered and messy. That’s a kind of mess I’m starting to get used to. (And I only have a certain amount of energy each day. Many times there is none left for cleaning at the end of the day.) Now we have a different kind of mess in our home. An “on-purpose” mess. These are rare in our family. If they do happen, they are scheduled and clean up supplies are close at hand after the proper amount of messy fun has been had by all. Our new messes will usually occur each day in the afternoon while M is in school. If you were to stop by, this is what you would likely see.

Feeding K is becoming a bit difficult. She is very particular about the texture of her baby food and is quite unwilling to eat anything that is lumpy. Interestingly enough, she eats Cheerios and baby puffs quite well, but she won’t eat anything with texture and she has no desire to feed herself anything. I mentioned this to the physical therapist a couple of weeks ago, and she gave us some things to try. K is likely developing some fairly common preemie feeding issues. I’ve started reading about it a little, and she does have a few of the common signs. We’ll try this and ask for more help from an Occupational Therapist if we need it. Until then, K will be painting her face, her arms, legs, hair, high chair, and anything else she can reach every day. And I’ll be getting used to cleaning up another mess and a very happy baby. This might actually be fun. At the very least, I can clean my kitchen or work on dinner while she paints.

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conversation at the PO

I had an interesting conversation today, and I can’t get it out of my mind. As part of our dossier, G and I have to be fingerprinted for two different background checks. We went to the State Police yesterday to be fingerprinted, and today I mailed them off to the FBI. When I went to the post office, I was helped by my favorite postal worker (well, we really LOVE our mailman, so maybe it was my second favorite postal worker). Here is a summary of how our conversation went.

Him (after finding out that we were mailing fingerprints for an adoption): Sorry. I didn’t mean to be nosy about what you are mailing.

Me: That’s OK.

Him: So you are adopting?

Me: Yes. My husband and I are adopting from Kenya, so someday you’ll see me in here with my little Kenyan princess.

Him: Wow! That’s really amazing. It’s so nice that you can do that. What a great thing that you have the means and the desire to add to your family that way.

Me: Well, we really don’t have the means, but we’re doing it anyway. We know this is what God wants us to do, so we are stepping out in faith even though we don’t know how we’ll pay for it all. We know God will provide what we need.

Him: He will. He always does. Just curious. How much does it cost to adopt? Knock me off of my seat. I really want to know.

Me: Well, it depends on a lot of things–where you adopt from, how many children you adopt, among other things. It’s going to cost us at least $30,000.

Him: Whoa! I told you to knock me off of my seat, and you did! I just think it is so cool that you are not just talking about it, you’re really doing it. I guess that amount of money is really nothing compared to what you are doing, changing the life of a child. I’ll just bet that you are going to be really blessed through this. All this work will be so worth it.

Me: I know it’s a wild ride. God has to step in and work a lot of things out. We just can’t do it alone.

Him: You know, I’d really love for you to keep me posted on what happens. I’m really interested.

Me: Yeah? Really?

Him: Yes. I’d really like to know.

Me: OK. I’ll keep you updated when I come in next time.

I was just really encouraged by his excitement and interest in our crazy venture. You never know how people are going to respond when they hear about our plans. This adventure has become “normal” for us, but it really is quite crazy what God has called us to do. I hope we can encourage and challenge others to step out and do crazy things, too, because life is too short to do everything “safely”.

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the big bus

M is now riding the bus home a few days a week. Her first ride was a smashing success, and she enjoys the chance to hang out with some classmates as she rides home. The first time she rode, she told us one of the BOYS from her class asked if she would sit with him. Hmmm. There’s something about that I don’t like. I’m curious to see if he asks her to sit with him again because, as excited as she was, I’m sure she chatted his ear completely off.

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monday happiness

Three very happy things happened yesterday.

1. G and his dad built a new rail for our deck. The old one was temporary, and this one is much better.

2. G’s dad spent a long time yesterday morning steam cleaning our carpet. Woo hoo! Now I won’t feel so bad about K crawling around on it all winter.

3. G and I actually got to go out on a date while Grandma and Grandpa watched the girls. That’s exciting enough, and on our date I found a much-needed black belt for only $7.00. What a great day.

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mistaken identity

Our girls have sensitive skin. They are genetically prone to eczema and other skin rashes, and our medicine cabinet holds several different prescription skin creams. I’m usually fairly good at identifying skin rashes and what treatment is necessary. Until this week. K has had a rash for at least a week. I thought it was eczema, her constant nemesis, and so I treated it as such by liberally applying a deep moisturizing cream at least twice a day. The rash kept getting worse. I thought maybe she was having an allergic reaction to the new soy-based formula we are in the process of changing to or maybe it was the dairy-free margarine I’ve been adding to her veggies. We switched back to the old formula and stopped adding the margarine. Didn’t help the rash. In fact, it seemed to get worse. I had just decided to call the doctor when I happened to have a conversation with my neighbor, a retired nurse. She quickly identified the rash to be heat rash. The treatment–keep it as dry and cool as possible, use baby powder or cornstarch. In other words, the exact opposite of what I had been doing! Poor, poor baby! Well, the good news is the rash is on its way out.

K and I had a chance to go to the NICU yesterday. We were visiting a friend who had her baby about a month early. The little cutie is doing great and is actually home now. It was strange to be back there. In fact, the little guy was in the exact spot that K was right before we brought her home. We got to see one of her nurses and one of her doctors who didn’t even recognize her because of how she’s grown. I was so glad to be able to bring her home with me instead of leaving her behind like we did for 101 days around this time last year.

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a busy week

This week has been full of activity, work, and some fun. On Monday we met with our homestudy agency to get our homestudy updated. It took all morning, but it went very smoothly. We are just waiting on a health report for G, and we’ll be all caught up with that part of our dossier. G and I also took some time this week to spread all our paperwork out (it more than covered our dining room table), and we figured out which documents we are each responsible for completing. We are making progress, and so far we are further along than we expected to be at this time. Don’t get me wrong, we are still buried in paperwork, but at least we’ve made a few steps forward.

M and I spent a couple of mornings working on baking some fall sugar cookies for Grandparent’s Day on Friday. I forgot to take a picture, but apparently we did a good job because there wasn’t even one crumb left over. Neither set of Grandparents were able to make it to the special event since they both live out of state, but Aunt Mel took a day off of teaching to be a “special friend” participant. M was SO excited to show her around her classroom and school.

Saturday was a perfect day for another of our favorite fall activities–going to the apple orchard and pumpkin patch. Grandma and Grandpa arrived here on Friday afternoon for the weekend, so we all enjoyed a beautiful afternoon at the orchard.

The wagon ride was a highlight for both of the girls.

And here are our future jack-o-lanterns . . . prepare to be carved into Hello Kitty and Elmo!

On Sunday evenings, we usually have a few friends come over to watch The Amazing Race. Tonight we will all be enjoying these little pumpkin snacks.

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Sunday afternoon

This afternoon was beautiful. I’ve been wanting to cut back our perinnials for the fall, and today was perfect for it. Since G was out of town, I didn’t know how I could watch the girls (mainly K) and still get the pruning done. Then M and I came up with a great idea.

The girls played for almost an hour, and I was able to check something off of my to-do list while enjoying the beautiful afternoon.

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more fall favorites

For the three falls that we have lived here in our small town, M has enjoyed going to an event called Harvest Time at the Farm. She really looks forward to it all year and sometimes asks about it out of the blue in the middle of spring or summer. It’s really not a big deal, but she loves it. She especially loves this little merry-go-round kind of ride they have every year. As she gets older, I’m sure she’ll realize how lame it is, but for now she dreams of riding it all year long. She plans where she will sit, and now she has plans for where K will sit next year when she’s big enough to ride, too.
She also loves to paint pumpkins each year. This year she got to paint one for K also. I love this picture. Such concentration on her sweet face.

This year she tried using an old tool that takes the corn off of the cobb.


But, now that Harvest Time at the Farm is over for this year, I’m sure she’ll soon start dreaming again of riding the merry-go-round. Next time with her sister. Maybe, just maybe, with more than one sister!

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