Our weekend

We went to our local Toys R Us which was having a big event since they combined w/ Babies R Us. The kids got to meet some characters....like Bob the Tomato,

Wow Wow Wubbzy...whoever that is. and a very loose interpretation of Barbie.

I wasn't real convinced with this one.

The kids drooled over the $600 power wheels.

We have also been celebrating Billy's 31st b-day(tomorrow) ALL weekend. I gave him a hamburger shaped card that said "salad, schmalad. It's your birthday. Eat all the crap you want." AND we have! Burgers, pizza, icecream cake...I can feel my arteries clogging. But it has been fun. Tonight we are going to be on a panel at my friend's church. They are starting up an adoption ministry there and we will be one of 3 couples on a Q & A. Tomorrow Billy has off work. But it won't be too exciting as Mondays are school and ECI. So...there ya have it.

That's our weekend!

Past the "First Trimester"

Ok...according to our ticker on the bottom of this blog, we have surpassed the "first trimester" of waiting for our sweet baby. Of course we have no idea if 9 months will bring about our babylove or if it will be sooner or much later...but it is still fun to see how much time has passed! Now on pregnancy blogs, I have seen Moms-to-be post about what their little baby is up to in the womb. Our baby may have not even been conceived yet, so I thought as each "trimester" goes by and we are still waiting, I will post what we are up to! Currently, we are in the process of writing a new fundraising letter to send out with an update about J and a funding report. We hope to have those in the mail in the next couple weeks, as we still have a long way to go to reach our goal. We lightly decorated the nursery with a boy theme back when we were just requesting a boy with our agency, but now that we are open to either gender...I am trying to figure out, do I return the bedding or hold on a little longer just in case we get a boy? I am leaning towards that because I LOVE the bedding and decor we are going with. But every time I am in there I doubt myself. We are trying to get everything around the house slowly organized, but again it is hard to plan just what to do with the unknowns of adoption. I also would love to have J potty trained before babylove comes home, but his language needs to come a little further along, so I am thinking I will wait until around November which will be 2 months before his 3rd b-day. SO...that is about it, I guess. With J and Vivi still very much wanting to be lap children, it is hard for me to imagine room for another one. I said tonight as they crawled up on me for books and Oscar vied for any remaining room, "my cup runneth over!" We have felt led and still do, though, to wait upon the Lord for a 4th. I will write more about that later. But, I will say the anxiousness and restlessness I felt at the beginning of the summer, has been very much occupied with the 3 I have....making this wait much, much easier than it has been in the past! And I can't help but think that if J gets in to the public school's PPCD program in January, 5 mornings a week...that next Spring would be a much better time for baby to be born than this fall. But only God knows! So that is our offical baby update!

You'll Be In My Heart

Mommy and J 2010

I am in a Mom's Bible study now on Wed. mornings. It is nice to have brunch with other moms and 2 hours of not having kids hanging on me! But I will also really love the speakers. Last week, the Women's Director exhorted us to fight for our kids. "You have got to be their advocate. Noone else in this world will be," she said. She was talking about Satan's attack on Godly families, and I got that...but I am not sure she knew just how literally she was speaking to me. Last night, after Billy put the kids to bed, I said "Someone is crying!" That is not a usual occurance in our house as all three kids go to bed really well now. We determined it must be J because Billy said he kept fussing "mom, mom, mom" as he settled him. I went in to his room and found a tear stained face. "Mom, lay down?" he sobbed and patted his bed. Of course I couldn't turn that down. We had weaned him off of needing us to parent him to sleep weeks ago. But sometimes a little boy just needs his Mama. I whispered to him "Mommy will fight for you to stay here. I promise. You are not going anywhere. You are safe." I layed with him for a few minutes and when I left he fell quickly asleep with no further fussing.

I know according to the world, this child is not "mine"...legally or biologically. But in our hearts, we belong together. He is our family. And we are his. Billy contacted our attorney a week or so ago, and he said after J has been here for 6 months (January 2011), we can legally fight for custody even if CPS is dragging their feet on terminating parental rights. This would not apply to any fostering situation but in kinship it does. And if it comes down to it, we will.

J and I have a theme song. I sang it to him the first night he was here and every time I get a chance to rock him, I sing it. It always settles him right down. It is from the movie Tarzan, and it fits our relationship perfectly. I love this little guy and I pray for the day that he is my son forever.

You'll Be In My Heart

by Phil Collins

Come stop your crying

It will be alright

Just take my hand

Hold it tight

I will protect you from

all around you

I will be here

Don't you cry

For one so small,

You seem so strong

My arms will hold

Keep you safe and warm

This bond between us

Can't be broken

I will be here

Don't you cry

Cause you'll be in my heart

Yes, you'll be in my heart

From this day on,

Now and forever more

You'll be in my heart

No matter what they say

You'll be here in my heart

Always

Pottery Barn on a Budget

We finally saved enough money to get some new furniture.

I have been stalking C.raigslist since J came home for a table with 6 chairs as we officially outgrew our current table and Billy has been sitting on a folding chair for a month.
I came across this beauty this morning. The photos on the web made it look a little Amish to me, and Billy just flat out didn't like it. But I convinced him to atleast go take a look at it and we both fell in love! It was totally in our budget too. The guy said he had gotten lots of emails but I was the first, so he went with it...yeah for me! Proves that stalking the website pays off! We already had this little black hutch in there, and the table matches everything perfectly. It was so white in our kitchen before, but now this table brings some character.

I adore the look of Pottery Barn...who doesn't, right?

But their prices are insane.

So I like to get their catalogs to get ideas of what to do...and hunt for them cheaper, but I am not good at refinishing things, my paint jobs look like a 4th grader did it. So to find something I don't have to work on is a jewel.

I am so happy with the look of this.

Here is the view from the living room.

The kids hopped right up and starting acting like they were eating.

Too cute!

Here are some photos of our first purchase of the weekend.

Our Ikea sectional to match our Ikea coffee table.

This was SO easy to put together and really comfortable.
Our new stuff fits right in with all of the decor I already had out.

I always wanted a red couch but when we first got married, Billy had all kinds of opinions that were opposite of mine when it came to home decor.

After 7 years, he has come around to my way of thinking....

He is a smart, smart man. ;)

View from the playroom.

My sweet baby, Oscar has already claimed the exact same spot on this as he did on our old couch. Hilarious. Doesn't he look stunning on red?

We moved into this house a year ago this month and these new pieces of furniture make it feel like a whole new start! We love our quaint 4 bedroom rental and feel very blessed to be here and with me being home with the kids. The Lord has been very good to always provide regardless of our income.

Now I am just waiting for the weather to cool off so I can decorate for Fall!

Labor Day Weekend

This weekend we had Billy's sister, Elizabeth come for a two nights!

It was her first time to meet J.

She noticed the family resemblance.

And we put her right to work!

She helped us bring home our new couch home.

Our 7 year old sofa and chaise had seen it's final days, but surprisingly someone off C.raigslist gave us 50 bucks for it...stains...tears in the fabric...and all! Here is Aunt Beth covering the new cushions.

Now we have so much more seating!

Then, Beth helped me paint all the signs for Isaac's b-day carnival.

It was a lot of fun and brought back memories of college for me.

Pretty good for two girls who are not artsy!

We had so much fun with Aunt Beth!!

How is our little man?

Check out this big brother reading to his little bro! Aren't they adorable?
J's favorite books are Please Puppy Please and Please Baby Please (sent by Nana!) both by Spike Lee. They are super cute and feature African American children. J is doing super well! He said three spontaneous sentences this week "I want milk" , "I brushed my teef, Mom!", and "I got my backpack". He still only says about 10-15 audible things a day, so that was good stuff to hear! His speech therapist comes on Mondays and works with him for 45 minutes. He will also have a developmental therapist coming out starting next week. Yesterday I had to take him to the Dr. for a physcial to submit to ECI. He had to get two shots and blood drawn in his arm. He was SO tough and brave. Didn't even show any fear having the needle put into his arm and the blood in a tube across his arm. I was shocked! He cried at the shots in his thighs but that is because the vaccine stings going in. He was also given a prescription for Claritin and a nasal spray because we can not kick this runny nose.

Today I had a kinship caseworker come out and assess if we are eligible for a one time payment from CPS for his care. We are!! Yeah. They measure it based on your income if it is less than 300% above the poverty level. We were in that bracket as a family of five, so we should be getting a nice check in October...just in time for Christmas! That was great news. She also said we could become licensed foster parents under a new program called "Fostering Connections" specifically for kinship foster parents and then receive a monthly stipend check from the government. We are weighing whether this is best because we would have to do 30 hours of what is called "Mini Pride" training classes, plus get CPR certified, plus get TB tests, plus do a lot of other stuff. We haven't made up our minds yet if it would be worth it if we are certified by late November and CPS terminates rights in December or January. So we are going to wait a little bit to make our decision.

In other news with J, I had a run-in with his mother at the visitation today. Now that the kids are in school, I can walk him directly in the building. I was walking him to the door and I looked behind us at a gas station and saw her coming. She immediately starting shouting some nickname to him and he looked back and then turned right back around. I tried to get him to wave, but he tucked his head in my leg. Then we walked into the building to sign in and she came up behind us and kept trying to get his attention but he ignored her and begged me to pick him up, burying his head in my chest. I went in one entrance and she went around to another entrance to wait to be let in. I explained to the caseworker on duty who I was and that I had adopted his older brother and he was very attached and may fuss during the visit. She went to let his birthmother in the door and he started to fuss. The caseworker picked him up and he lunged towards me crying. His birthmother was making a face of dissapointment and sadness. I think he cried for awhile, but I scurried into the waiting room. I felt so bad leaving him like that. Afterwards he came running through the lobby shouting "Mom, mom, mom!" until he found me. On the way out of the building we passed her waiting for her ride and I encouraged him to give her a high five, he did and she kissed his hand which was very sweet to see, because both CASA and the caseworker tell me that she does not touch him much during the visits and he does not willingly go to her. I told them to invite her to put him on her lap and read to him, that way she can get some cuddle time in. This is the first time she and I have ever been in the prescence of each other. I felt like saying something to her like "I am your 3rd son's Mom...and your 4th son is doing really well with us....please make this easy on all of us and let us adopt him..." but that wasn't going to happen, obviously. And there just didn't seem to be anything that was right to say, so I said nothing but "hi" and "bye" with lots of smiling. I hope one day we could have some sort of conversation. And I would love, love to get a photo taken of her with the boys. But with CPS cases...you just have to walk a fine line.

For now we will keep on loving him. He is an absolute joy and now that he is settled I have begun to let myself wonder when we will be blessed with our little babylove. J LOVES babies, loves them, so I know he would love the roll as big brother. Billy and I think we have our boy and girl names set for baby number 4...both happen to start with a J! But no chance of you squeezing those out of us...so don't even ask! Ok...I think this blog post is plenty long enough for the 6 of you devoted enough to read this far!! :)