My baby boy

My baby boy!! My sweet Isaiah is 5 now! I can hardly believe it. It seems like only yesterday he was a screaming little newborn who hated to be held. He would look at me with his little grumpy old man face and wail. Sort of glad he was #4 because he made me feel very inadequate at times. lol If he would have been my first I would have just assumed I was an awful mommy. As it was though, I just trudged on, knowing the attachment parenting process WOULD eventually work. Sure enough, my little fella by 3 mos was acting like a regular newborn. We have still faced challenges. At 1 he would climb out of his crib and climb in with his newborn baby sister!! I would wake up in the morning and find them both curled up like puppies in one crib.(very agile bo, he climbed WITH his lambie into her crib) At 2 he would be in "time out", and crawl out a window and go out to ride his trike. By crawling out a window I mean climbing up to get to it, then unlocking the child safety latches then pushing ot the screen THEN getting out and climbing down the side of the house! At 3 he hit the "terrible twos", wanting to do everything himself, and testing out every boundary known to mom. It was exhausting. Then also he had seizures start up that year. Very rough for all! By age 4, we started the emotions roller-coaster. This whole year has been filled with trying to learn appropriate emotions, facial exressions and empathy. I am so excited to say, HE IS GETTING IT!!!!!!! Woohooo. In fact, he almost made me cry last night when we were shopping for gifts, he picked out gifts for his brothers. WOW!(I will have to get a little something for the girls-- his benevolence didn't make it that far. lol) Anyway, I am so thrilled we have gotten to 5 showing real growth, and maturity, but most of all, I love the little guy more than ever. Here is the biggest news. . . he gives me kisses and hugs all the time and LOVES me too!!! I am so honored to be his mama. It has been a hard road to walk at times, esp when compared to "easier kids", but it has still been one of the best things I have ever done.

Woohoo!

My New bed came!! I will post pics as soon as I can/ I took them but I just am so swamped thatgetting them ON is tricky. My big guys helped me(doing man sized work) and earned a few dollars each. It looks amazing, and more fabulously, I woke up not as sore! Yay! God is so good this deal was just too good to be a regular overstock deal. Wow!

praise God!

One of the things we need to get squared away before home study is the beds. We need to get beds for the new girls but we have also needed a new one for us and for the boys. After MUCH shopping, we decided to get a twin on top-full on bottom bed. The one we liked the most had a futon possibility for the bottom as well. It was 299. The one I found for us was a king sz metal bed at overstock. It was a steal I thought at 259. Then it went down to 229. I put it in the cart and waited a month. Then Saturday I went to check out there. It was marked down to 184!!! With shipping it was 187! Not only that I got it ordered the 27th, it will be delivered the 29th! AWESOME! Then we found out the bed for the boys has been clearanced to 159! AND if we get the floor model they will take 20% off that price! WOW! God is taking care of money situations all right. I am so excited about these beds. I can't wait to get them. I will have to post pictures when I get them set up. pooh, who needs a fairy Godmother. lol It was so nice of Him to encourage me like that.

feeling down

I really don't feel like writing today. I am discouraged. I know, this is probably part of the "process" of adoption. Feeling a bit lost and overwhelmed. I figure it needs to be seen and I need to deal with it-- and since I do that by writing. . . here it is.
The news is, there IS no news. I have a giant stack of homestudy paperwork to fill out, and 10 hrs of a training video with online tests to do, and $$$$ to pull together. A fairy Godmother with a magic wand would be handy about now. We are trucking through our spanish, but still feeling, um, not so bilingual. I have no updates about the girls, no pictures.
My sweet hubby though, who has every right to say this idea is nutso, simply says, "you were created for this Babe! No backing down." Not that I necessarily WANT to back down, but I am getting a little weary. The laundry piles, the messy bedrooms, the unmade beds, and the unfinished schoolwork, leaves a mamma feeling like her day was futile. I have the truth though. I KNOW my kids learned new things, we enjoyed the weird warm weather outside, we danced our tutus off, we baked, we giggled, we did haircuts and polished nails and grew crystals. We learned our first bible verse in Spanish and our first Hymn(Esta Aqui, Esta Aqui, aleluja mi Senor Esta Aqui-- E said is sounded like, I sing off key, I sing off key. . .lolol) We read awesome books and had playtime with our circle of friends. We ministered to loved ones at the hospital and hugged and prayed with strangers. So even though to the world's eyes, we may not have accomplished alot, in God's eyes we made so much progress. I suppose I just need to renew my mind and continue to get HIS perspective on this mountain that stands in the way. The confusion, the money, the worry. . . he is so much bigger than those things. So. I will have a brownie and coffee with the kids. A hot bath, and keep praying for HIS will to be done, HIS kingdom to come, and give my burden over to Him.

Thanks so much for the questions ladies! I have sz 6-12 mos(which I have to say are so sweet! )Then I have sz 2T-3T,(these first sizes are by age and are the Circo brand from Target) then our other sizes are M 10 1/2-4, and L 4 -10( these are SHOES szs and in the Faded Glory Wal mart Brand.)

sweet socks!

I am crocheting pretty lace on plain bobby socks! I am hoping to sell these sweet socks to raise some of the money for bringing Joana and Guadelupe home. I am making them from Targets Circo brand. Right now I have sz 2T-3T and 4T-5T on hand ready to mail. If you are interested-- email me-- hezra_at_home@yahoo.com I will post more pics later of the pastel colored ones with white lace. I can make these super fast! So orders won't take long.(even for ones I DON'T have on hand!) O and I are experimenting with ribbon bows for them as well, or matching hairbow/sock combos. We are selling them for 5.00 a pr with all money going into our adoption account! So please email me if you want some of these for your little darlings!

Our layout!Planned by O. Good job!

Sweet girl so carefully plans and lays out the squares for her new sister's blanket. She is um, meticulous and artistic.(maybe a tad perfectionistic?)

Squares all DONE!!

This is step two: iron and cut the fabrics. With a rotary cutter, mat and template these TONS of squares don't take nearly as long as they could. And they are much straighter!! :-) We decided for our twin sz quilts we want to use flat twin sheets for the backing, so we knew we needed 8 squares across and 12 squares down. 96 squares!!! (don't worry it goes faster than it sounds. We cut 4 squares to 6 squares at a time depending on the thickness of our fabric) We needed at least 12 of each fabric.(8 fabrics)

the first quilt for the new girls!

We started the quilt!(the first one anyway) O helped me choose fabrics. Then I ironed and ct 8 inch squares.(I HATE that part!!) Step three was letting O help me lay them out. SHE chose our layout and we think she did very well. She is amazingly artistic and wanted colors to go together. I was a bit surprised how that turned out so much better than MY idea of constrasting colors. This has a rainbow like effect of colors. After arranging them, we used index cards to write what each row was, then we stacked all the squares from that row and put them in gallon sz ziplock bags. So now we are ready to sew!!

needing peace

I need prayer. Last Saturday, some very dear friends of ours were violently murdered by the girls boyfriend. The young woman was 28 and leaves behind two small children, the other lady was her mother 56 and leaves behind two grown daughters and 6 grandkids. The boyfriend is in jail awaiting trial. The children are safe(they were not home when it happened.) Tonight is family night. I know I need to go, but everything in me wants to stay home and hide and pretend this did not happen. Not only that but I got a rare day lasat Saturday. I spent time at my mom's alone soaking up time with her and , laughing so hard we nearly cried. A really good time. But while I was there, our friends were dying together. It breaks my heart to pieces for the two sisters left behind and all the small kids involved. Please pray for them? And while you are praying, please pray for me? I need peace that only comes from God. I need to keep my mind focused on good, pure and holy thoughts, and not be led to sad, depressing, and scared ones. In the meantime, I am seeing this as a wake up call, to enjoy time with family. Mothers,children, daughters, sons, brothers and sisters, fathers and friends. Soak up that time. I have a new plaque hanging over my kitchen window that s ays, today is the day for making memories. Indeed.

I see I am way behind on blogging. We mailed off our application before Christmas and received our acceptance letter from our agency the day after Christmas. Then we went through the busy-ness of holidays. We really enjoyed having family at our house. It was amazing. I don't know why I did not come to this conclusion sooner. We have a huge table, big house, and LOTS of places for kids to play. The grown ups got to have a lot of good time together, while the kids watched movies and played(the highlight of our night was when the three little girls played dress up. lol BY themselves One very cute fat fairy, one with a dance outfit on backwards and a third with her dance suit inside out AND backwards!) So we may have to host more parties. I didn't worry about my kids making messes or breaking things. :-)
Since Christmas we have been trying to get school in the groove again.(not easy after a 4 week vacation) Also, I have been creative. I have been crocheting up a storm. I made two sweet sweaters/hat/bootie sets for friends who just had twin girls. I will try to get pictures up soon. I am hoping to sell some of those online. Also I am toying with the idea of an online boutique, "Sweet Stuff Shop" for baby's and little girl's cutsie stuff. I have crocheted lace trim onto some little girls bobby socks. They are turning out quite cute. I am going to use any sales for our adoption fund.
We were approved for the two specific girls, Joana (12) and Guadalupe (7) . It is so exciting! We received our packet in the mail from our homestudy local agency this week. We begin the update of our homestudy soon. There is so much to do. And the weird thing about it-- I want to start their quilts! lol I will get the hubby working on my pictures and crafts/or website this weekend. ahhh. . . must sleep. Tomorrow comes early.