Rough Day!

Last night, I posted that I was up with a baby who didn't feel well. The night continued to get worse....Nick took over about 6am so I could finally get a little sleep. Poor, sweet baby cried and cried and cried - completely out of character for her! So, Daddy decided to go for a drive until the pediatrician opened at 8:00. Audrina continued crying until they saw the doctor. We discovered that she has an ear infection, bronchial infection, strep and low blood oxygen levels. Holy cow!! After 2 breathing treatments in the office, the doc still wasn't happy with her oxygen levels, so off to Children's Hospital we went for the day! A chest x-ray confirmed a slight case of pneumonia as well. No wonder she was up all night crying! Other than being antsy while waiting at the hospital - mommy and daddy were antsy too! - she was quite the little trooper, even did a fantastic job laying still for her x-ray! Thankfully, we were able to come home after a few hours and she's already starting to feel much better!

We finally settled down the restlessness by strapping her in the carseat and turning some Disney on the TV!







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We're still here!

As with round one of the blog when Essie was born, life happens and I neglect to keep up with postings!! As I type this, I'm up with a beautiful little one who isn't feeling well. :( In the last month, she's gotten 4 new teeth for 6 total! So, we've had quite a few rough nights.

Short post tonight but I wanted to put up a recent picture. She still has her amazingly beautiful blue eyes!!!



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The sweetest sounds

I guess I'm back to being bad about updating this thing. However, my lack of updates means that Audrina is sleeping through the night. Hooray!!!!!

A couple weeks ago, I shot this video. It's one of my favorite moments with both girls!!

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Growing girl!

We had Drina's 4 month check up yesterday. She is 16 lbs 3 oz and 26" long. 97th percentile on height and 95th on weight. Her perfect little head? Well, apparently mist babies have giant heads because she seems perfectly proportioned and her head circumference is only in the 17th percentile!

While there, the doctor discovered she has an ear infection. She hasn't been quite herself lately, but not so much that I would have suspected se didn't feel well. I just thought she was overly tires because she hasn't been taking the best naps.

Tomorrow, we are having Drina dedicated at church. I tried to explain this to Essie and that she gets to go up front with us when it happens. She replied, "Oh no Mommy. Don't dead-cake my sister. If something happens to her, I will cry!" Oh, Essie. Always finding a way to make me laugh!!!


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Big day for Drina!

This morning, Audrina rolled from her back to her belly for the first time!!!! She's been working on it for over a week now, but her little arm kept preventing her from getting that last little bit. Of course, the roll was followed quite quickly by crying as she seriously dislikes being on her tummy! :)

In big sister news, I finally have proof that she does hear me when I'm talking, even if she doesn't actually listen. While playing, I overheard her putting Pooh and Tigger in a time out because they didn't pick up their toys..... Silly girl!

Here's my silly girl after dressing herself the other day. No, I did not let her leave the house with her socks all pulled on top of her pants like that!!




And, here's the little one. I took this Monday night as Nick and I were finishing our 'rearrange the basement' project. Apparently, she was bored from watching us!





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Could she be any more beautiful?

Even when she felt horrible, if you looked at Audrina, she would just smile! When I took this picture, she was on the up-swing, but still not feeling to well. We had gone outside for some fresh air ~ and to burn some energy out of big sister! :)


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Diva or tomboy?

Even by the minute, we never know which side of Essie's personality is going to come out! But, boy is there a lot of personality packed in that 3 year old little girl!! :-)

Over the weekend, Ess picked out a new hat at the store. So, Sunday's church outfit had to be completely planned around the hat!! Here's our little diva:




And, here's the tomboy. Having way too much fun with worms after a day of rain! (Yes, she dressed herself!!)





We could not be more proud of how Essie handled her overnight transition from only child to big sister. While most kids get 9 months to prepare, we had a 5 minute conversation as we rushed out the door to head to the hospital! Even during our 13 month wait, we had no way or preparing her, except to ask if she'd like a brother or sister one day. Situations from the agency were all over the place - from families choosing to place early in a pregnancy to 5 and 3 year old siblings. We wanted to be open to whatever God has in store for our family!

Really, the only issue we had was potty regression. And, that happens when kids do have 9 months to prepare for a baby! As Audrina grows and becomes mobile, I'm sure we will deal with some typical sibling issues - she took my toy, she's touching my blanket. In the meantime, we will enjoy how much Ess loves her little sister!!


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To go or not to go?

So, I've never been the type of mom who freaks out and runs to the doctor about every little ailment or strange sound coming out of my child. Although I'm definitely the type to Google it! :) I firmly believe in natural remedies and homeopathic treatments, so that's the route I attempt first.

I mentioned Drina had a cold a few days ago. My healing regimen for her included Vick's on the bottom of her feet, warm mist humidifier in her room (which actually runs all winter - we keep one in each bedroom), a plug in vapor unit overnight, and Hyland's Sniffles 'n Sneezes remedy (1 tablet dissolved in 1 tsp or water, given by medicine dropper every 4 hours).

I did call the doctor's office in the midst of it to see what I should look for in case I did need to take her in. They said to bring her in if she developed a cough. Of course, she woke up with a cough Friday morning. There is nothing worse than getting to Saturday night over the weekend, having a child who doesn't feel well, and having to fret over the fact that you didn't call the doctor on Friday.... And, being so little, there is the risk of RSV, so I took her in. Her lungs are clear and all is well.

Both the nurse and doctor commented on what a wonderful and beautiful baby Audrina is! Of course, every mom believes their child is the cutest ever, so it's always fun to have other random people gush over her!

Our little princess weighs 15 pounds! The nurse didn't measure her length, but she is a tall baby because she doesn't look chunky. (And, I've already had to put away a lot of her 3 month clothes because they are too short!!)

Throughout this past week, we have received further proof that Drina is just the most perfect baby. Even not feeling well, she's still so smiley! When I come at her with the bottle of saline solution to spray up her nose, she smiles at me. When I'm using the syringe to suck out snot, she smiles at me. When I can't get it so I just stick my own finger in her nose (and what mom hasn't resorted to that one!?!?), she smiles at me. She even smiled at the nurse today while she was taking a rectal temperature! Seriously! I cannot get enough of how laid back and happy our little girl is!!!!!


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Ahh, sisters!

I can't tell you how unbelievably excited I am to have two girls!! I so desperately wanted a sister growing up. I was 8 when my brother was born. This was back in the day before Ultra Sounds could confirm the sex of the baby. My first comment upon hearing I had a brother was, "but I wanted a sister!" Then, I tried to convince my parents to wait 8 more years and try again. They would have none of that!




I had one heck of a time trying to take this picture!! Ess is at an age where all I get are big goofy smiles featuring a large underbite. In the middle of my attempts, Ess just started screaming. I looked down to see that Drina had a wad of her hair tightly wrapped in her little fist. One glance at her face told me that Drina was thoroughly enjoying herself!! And, I believe this was payback for a couple of weeks ago when Ess wanted to help me vacuum. I thought it was really cute of her until I looked over to see her holding the suction hose dangerously close to the baby's foot.

And so it begins.....

Sweet, sweet baby

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We pretty much have the sweetest baby ever. Even the past couple if days, she hasn't felt good (95% sure she has a cold, but slight possibility she is starting the teething process early), if we look at her, she just smiles. Even with her tired, red eyes, she gives the biggest, cutest grins!

The adoption process is going well. We received the results of the state's Putative Father Registry, and it was clear. We expected it to be, but it's still nice to get the confirmation. We have had 3 social worker visits so far with our next one coming in 2 weeks. Sometime in the next month we will meet with our adoption attorney. That's when things will really start rolling. Assuming no hiccups, we will go to court in July to make Audrina ours forever!!

Here's our smiley baby!!!



And, now that I've figured out how easy this is from my phone, I really have no excuse for not doing it more often! :)

Would you like some pictures?

So, we all know how horrible I am at updating this thing! I really do have the best of intentions... but I also have 2 little ones who seem to be conspiring to ensure Mommy gets nothing accomplished during daylight hours! :) Oh, where to begin....

We realize that we are beyond blessed! Another perfectly healthy child....and another beautiful, beautiful little girl. Essie has adjusted so well to a new (surprise) baby in the house. She LOVES her little sister, and she's such a wonderful helper!

Audrina (we've started calling her Drina from time-to-time) is seven weeks old now! She loves to smile! Oh, how she loves to smile! She is such a happy baby!! And, sleeping? Like a champ!!! She goes to bed between 8-9pm and doesn't get up for a bottle until right around 5:00! Then, it's back to bed until around 8:00. Daytime....well, that's another story! I think it's because she loves spending time with mommy so much that she would just rather snuggle all day. :) She is perfectly content to sleep if I'm holding her, but put her down, and she's up within 20 minutes! Most afternoons, she gets a nap in her carseat because that's where she will sleep the best!

No new updates on the adoption process. It's a waiting game now, with no news being good news. We have our next visit with the social worker on Thursday afternoon.

Both girls have well-child visits with the doctor on Friday, so I'll try to post again this weekend!

In the meantime, how about some pictures? These are from Audrina's newborn photo shoot with Sharon Elaine Photography.

Our family...


Sisters


Such a beautiful baby!


Quite the little ham already!! :)

Speed Bumps are better than Road Blocks

After the smoothness and ease of everything leading up to Essie's birth and homecoming, we figured we would be in for a doozie the second time around! Um...we were right!

People often come to us for adoption advice/support and we send them here to read about our journey. This post is for anyone who read about the first experience and thought "boy, that seems easy!" Essie's was on the extreme easy side of things. Ruby is pretty close to the opposite extreme. The reality is that anything can happen in an adoption. Most families have a middle of the road experience, with a couple of speed bumps.

Of course, people, personalities and situation details add another dynamic to every story. To protect and respect the privacy of Miss M, I'm going to leave that out of our story.

Here are some of the bumps we've dealt with over the last 3 days....

Ruby was born in an emergency room of a hospital with no Maternity and was transported after birth to the hospital we are in currently. Hospitals are in different counties. Not normally a problem, but....since the first hospital has no maternity, they were unprepared to issue a birth certificate. Without a birth certificate, a child doesn't legally exist....as of this typing, we still have no birth certificate. What does this mean? We can't add her to insurance (because she doesn't "legally" exist right now). Also, our agency can't prepare the proper paperwork for Miss M (birthmom) to sign. Until those papers are signed, she isn't legally ours...

Adoptive situations always involve social workers. In the case of a newborn, you deal with workers both from the agency and the hospital. In Ohio, a Birthparent cannot sign paperwork to surrender rights until at least 72 hours after the birth or being informed of rights by the agency, whichever comes last. Being in a small hospital, and coming off a holiday weekend, there was no social worker on duty as everything occurred Saturday (and they don't have an on-call policy). Babies are normally kept at least 48 hours to be sure all is good. So, no social worker over the weekend isn't a problem since she wasn't 48 hours until Monday. Except that Miss M was released on Sunday. With no social worker, no one knew there were papers she had to sign that would allow someone other than her to leave the hospital with the baby. Hence the reason I'm still here....

In this case, the hospital social worker we are dealing with has limited experience. She is doing a fabulous job, but things are taking longer since she has to constantly refer to policies to make sure she's doing things properly. There is another social worker here with over 20 years experience in adoptive situations. However, because of a potential conflict of interest, she cannot be consulted.


So, yeah, speed bumps. Inconvenient. Frustrating. But, in the end, we still get to take home a baby!

Ruby

**Disclaimer** What I am posting now is not public knowledge yet. So, if we are facebook friends, please do not mention anything until I post in a couple of days. Thank you!

Our New Year started off with a bang. A big one! An unexpected one! About 6:30 last night, our social worker called. A baby girl had been born in the morning, an adoption plan was being made, and she's ours!!!! *Commence freaking out!!!!*

Things were thrown together very quickly, my parents were happy to take Essie for us, and we hit the road. As I type, we are sitting in a hospital room about an hour away from home, watching our new baby girl as she sleeps in her bed.

For personal reasons, Birthmom (Miss M) has decided to not have contact with the baby while in the hospital. So, until we arrived last night, the nurses had a ball loving on her! Not fans of calling her "baby girl", they decided to call her Ruby! :-) We have since given her a name, but I'm going to hold off on that until we can post pictures to go with it.

We are hopeful about being able to come home with Ruby tomorrow morning/early afternoon. However, the legal surrender won't happen until Tuesday evening.

That's all for now. I need a little nap! :-)

Silly Essie

Today we had Essie's 2 1/2 year check up. She is growing well...in the 90th percentile for her height, 97th for her weight. The nurses are always impressed with her vocal abilities. The doctor is always pleased with her progress as well and comments on how healthy she is.

Of course, as she grows, her little personality comes out more and more. I thought I'd share a few silly Essie stories from the recent days.....

* A few weeks ago, we went to my cousins wedding reception. She found the food table as soon as we arrived and had a couple of snacks. We walked outside and were surrounded by people when someone asked her a question. She began to reply with a mouth full of food and I reminded her to "Empty your mouth before you talk." She proceeded to spit her food out, answer the question, then put the food back in and continue chewing!

* We've been working on potty training and it's going very well since we started giving her 3 M&Ms for everytime she uses the potty! The other morning, Daddy had an early meeting so Essie had to go with me to Zumba. As we finished setting up, I had to go to the bathroom. While in there, I asked if she needed to potty. She looked at me and asked, "did you bring M&Ms?" I said no and she replied, "No, I don't have to potty." Little stinker!

* Mommy is always on Daddy to turn on the fan and use spray when he's finished in the bathroom (yeah, probably TMI, but I have to set up the story! :)) He's been doing very well with the fan, but most days forgets to spray. This morning, he gets Essie up and she runs into our bathroom to potty. She stops just shy of the toilet and screams "YUCK!" Then, she turns around and runs out, looks right at Nick and says, "It smells like you pooped!" Mommy nearly cried from laughter over that one!!!!

* The other day, while we were all getting dressed, she asked Daddy where his Big Girl Panties are!

I'm sure there are so many more stories...though some are not appropriate for public posting! :-)

No adoption updates to post.....hopefully soon!!!

Thankful

That is the theme tonight!

I feel so blessed to have had the wonderful experience we did with Essie's adoption. We've been 'waiting' since December for baby #2. I've said before we may have to wait up to 2 years for another one. In the meantime, we've received 6 or 7 emails from our agency regarding different situations. Each email is to see if we would like to be considered, and we've said yes to all of them. We firmly believe that we will end up with whatever child(ren) God intends for us.

A few weeks back, there was a situation with an 8-month old baby girl. We were one of only two families being considered for her. The birthparents decided against adoption. More recently, we were one of three families being considered for a brother/sister sibling group. Another family was chosen. About two weeks ago, we were a top choice for a 6 month old baby girl; birthmom decided against adoption. And, today, we met with a birth family for a baby due in November. They met with us and one other family. The other family was chosen because they don't currently have any children.

We have a small, faithful group of friends praying for us each time a situation comes up. We covet those prayers and really do feel peaceful. But, boy oh boy is this a roller coaster ride. Again, I'm so thankful for NOT experiencing this with Essie! I have a new appreciation for what so many other families go through waiting for their first child!

So, tonight, I'm sad, but still at peace. Until the time is right for addition(s) to our family, we get to enjoy giving all of our attention to the most beautiful two year old ever!!

Essie's 2nd birthday

Essie associates birthday's with cake! Every time we talked about her birthday coming up, she would ask to eat some cake. So, Mommy was very proud of her for patiently waiting until her party to actually eat the cake!! One of the girls daddy works with made and decorated the cake for us. She did a GREAT job! After we sang to Essie, I let her take a lick of icing before we cut it. She loved the icing, but wasn't so happy with me when I took it away so it could be served!!




She loved opening presnts this year....though she wasn't too fond of the clothes :) She'd just look at them, toss them aside and move to the next gift..haha!

Uh-oh Mama!

Essie came running into the kitchen the other day yelling, "Mama, I made a mess. Go clean it!" I followed her into the family room to see what the mess was all about....She found daddy's foot powder, pulled the lid off and spilled the entire container on the floor.....

Road Trip!

The day after Christmas, we headed East for a couple of days in PA. Essie did a great job on the ride there. Coming home was another story.....she woke at 1:30 AM our second night there throwing up. After cleaning things up and getting settled back in bed 3 times, we dedided to pack up and leave - at 3:00AM!!! Since mommy doesn't do well with that kind of sick, I drove and Nick tended to Essie! Did I mention we hit a white out while driving along the highest point on Route 80???

It took Essie a couple of days to feel better, but we think it was a reaction to milk. She is intolerant, but can normally have some dairy products and be okay.

We are so thankful we made the trip, though, as our beloved Aunt Essie passed away a few weeks later. We are sad that our little Essie will not get to personally know the wonderful woman after whom we chose to name her, but thankful we were able to see her one last time....

Essie and Daddy with Uncle Warren and Aunt Essie

Essie's (2nd) cousins, Caleb and Noah

Playing with Uncle Warren

Ess with her headphones watching one of her MANY movies as we rode along....

Essie and Daddy with Uncle Frank and Aunt Ev

Essie with her (2nd) cousins Angela and Kaitlin

Christmas....a little late

So begins my quest to catch up on events from the last 2 1/2 months! Essie had a blast with Christmas this year! Of course, this is also the age where she gets attached to one present and couldn't care less about the others!!!

The first pictures are actually from Nana's 60th birthday party a couple weeks before Christmas. We were thankful Santa came to the party, because that meant we didn't have to stand in line at the mall and pay for a picture...haha!! :-)



Santa gave Essie a candy cane so, of course, she loved him right away!

Santa or no Santa?

So we still haven't decided how to handle the whole Santa thing with Christmas. I suppose we have another year to decide as Essie recognizes him this year, but doesn't know about the presents and so forth. So, the debate will continue.

I will try to post some Christmas pictures tonight or tomorrow. We are leaving Saturday for a quick trip to visit the PA family. If you think of us, please say a pray for safe, happy travelers.

Have a Merry Christmas!!!!