Merry Christmas

December has been a busy month, as it is for most people. This year I had a helper with my baking though.
Ok, so he wasn't really much of a help, but he sure thought he was. :) He loves to "help" me bake, and lately he has been waking up from his afternoon nap telling me that he wants to make cookies!




















He was in his first Christmas play with his preschool class this year. He started out sitting in the little chair he was supposed to sit in, but before long my exuberant extrovert took front and center stage.















I had so much fun watching him, and yet even as I laughed at his antics on stage, I held back tears. For so many years I watched little kids in Christmas programs at church and wished I had my own little one on stage. This year I did. :)

Ava started walking a few weeks ago and is having fun with her new independence. She has been quite tempted by the Christmas tree, and seems to think it's funny when we tell her "no no." But she is easily distracted by other interesting toys, and so far does not come close to Jonas' strong will. Hopefully (for my sanity) she will keep her rather easy-going and compliant personality!


Putting up the Christmas decorations has reminded me a lot of being pregnant. I was close to my due date last Christmas and I was full of anticipation for Ava's birth. For a split second I wanted to be pregnant again this year and experience those feelings again (a split second, I tell you!). As I was thinking about that I realized that thousands of years ago, another baby's birth was greatly anticipated, the birth of our Savior. So I will close this post with a quote from Jonas' Bible, The Jesus Storybook Bible, by Sally Lloyd-Jones.

"Everything was ready. The moment God had been waiting for was here at last! God was coming to help his people, just as he promised in the beginning. But how would he come? What would he be like? What would he do? Mountains would have bowed down. Seas would have roared. Trees would have clapped their hands. But the earth held its breath. As silent as snow falling, he came in. And when no one was looking, in the darkness, he came. And there, in the stable, amongst the chickens and the donkeys and the cows, in the quiet of the night, God gave the world his wonderful gift. The baby that would change the world was born. His baby Son. Mary and Joseph wrapped him up to keep him warm. They made a soft bed of straw and used the animals' feeding trough as his cradle. And they gazed in wonder at God's Great Gift, wrapped in swaddling clothes, and lying in a manger. Mary and Joseph named him Jesus, 'Emmanuel'- which means 'God has come to live with us' Because, of course, he had."

Merry Christmas! May you be blessed as you celebrate the birth of Jesus, and may you truly experience Emmanuel, God With Us.

Fall

I just realized it has been awhile since I've blogged. It seems like I've been pretty busy lately, and I haven't really had anything interesting to write about. But I know some of you read this blog for updates on our family, so I'll do my best to fill you in on what we've been up to!

The kids are doing great. Jonas is getting to be so big. He talks non-stop (mostly real words, but sometimes he makes up jibberish when he runs out of things to say), he still runs constantly with endless energy, and he LOVES going to preschool. He still likes pointing out the letters of the alphabet and can read both upper and lower case letters. He likes books about Curious George and lately he has been obsessed with pirates. He also really enjoys painting, coloring, and doing crafts. Recently at preschool each child was supposed to paint a leaf with their name on it to put on a tree in the room. His teachers noticed that Jonas was really into the project and they let him paint to his heart's content. He ended up painting ALL of the other leaves that don't have names on them on the tree below. To give you an idea of how many that is, there are only 7 other kids in his preschool class.

It is such a joy to watch him grow. In a couple of days we will celebrate the 2 year anniversary of "gotcha day", the day we met him. Time flies when you're having fun. :)

Ava is a baby on the move! She loves crawling around, playing and exploring. She seems pretty close to walking too! She learned how to pull to stand and cruise furniture a couple of months ago. Now she likes walking behind her push toys, and can walk holding onto only one of our hands. Jonas was so much older when he started to do these things, so 9 months old seems much too young to me!
I think the last time I wrote about her sleep habits, she was close to sleeping through the night in her own room. That is not the case anymore! At some point she stopped being able to settle herself to sleep, and then a couple months later started waking almost every hour all night long. I'm not a cry-it-out mom. I don't think it is bad or neglectful to train a child to sleep by a little crying, but I just can't do it. I know it's only supposed to take a couple of days of crying, but I hear the crying and everything in me tells me that I need to respond and console my kids. So that's what I do. I started bring Ava in to sleep in our bed, but I have to admit I was stressing a lot about it. She used to sleep well, so I felt like I must have done something wrong as a mother. We co-slept with Jonas, but for some reason I thought it would be different with Ava. I know other moms who rock or nurse their babies to sleep, and those babies still sleep all night. So I felt like I must have really messed up somewhere along the line. So finally, a very wise woman (my mom) said to me, "Lisa, I think you need to take the stress out of bedtime. If Ava wants to sleep with you, let her." She actually leaned over and whispered that to me in church, and it was weird because I had just been thinking about Ava's sleep. I was thinking about the verse "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." As I thought about it I wondered if letting Ava sleep in my bed was actually a way to deny myself and serve God by serving my kids. Don't make me explain my theology here, it's just what I was thinking. So, ever since then I actually like having Ava snuggle next to me all night and I feel well rested every morning when I wake up. My sweet husband (who happens to be a wonderful father) said to me the other day, "You know, I really like that our kids sleep with us." So, there you have it. It works really well for our family!

In other news, I am almost finished with training for a new job as a WIC Breastfeeding Peer Counselor. It is only going to be a couple of hours a week, so I am doing it in addition to my other job right now. The nice thing about it is that the hours are very flexible, and I can do a lot of it from home by phone. Plus, I love the idea of being able to help other moms with questions and concerns about breastfeeding. I'll have to see how the job goes, but I am already thinking that if I ever go back to school I think I would like to become a Certified Lactation Consultant! But school is the last thing on my mind right now. I probably wouldn't be ready to go back until my kids are in school, and by then... who knows what I'll feel like doing! :)

A Picture Outing

I took the kids to get their pictures taken at Target today. The pictures are cute, but I have a feeling that years from now I will look at them and smile, remembering what it was really like to get them taken.

A few months ago my parents bought the kids matching outfits and my mom mentioned that she thought it would be cute to have their picture taken together. I decided about a week ago that I needed to get that picture taken soon, before the summer was over and they grew out of the clothes. Ray is preaching tomorrow and was going to be working on his sermon this morning. So I decided that today would be a good day to take the kids somewhere to get their picture taken. It would get us out of the house and allow Ray some quiet time to work. I looked online to find a nearby portrait studio with the best prices. Target's site had a big coupon for a free 8x10 with the purchase of a $7.99 portrait package (1 8x10, 2 5x7's, 4 3x5's, and wallets). Perfect! I love a good bargain and I figured I couldn't beat a $7.99 portrait package. I couldn't do it that cheaply if I took the picture myself and printed enlargements. I don't have a printer so I couldn't print the coupon, but I decided I didn't need the free 8x10. So I called Target and they had openings for appointments today. I was hoping for an 11am appointment because it would interfere the least with the kids naps. Just my luck, they had an 11:20am appointment open. 11am would have been better, but 11:20am was close enough. When I asked for the 11:20am appointment the girl asked me if I would be able to make it on time. I wondered if she knew what it was like to get out the door with 2 small kids, but I was determined I would be actually be 5 minutes early.

So, Ava wakes up from her nap, I get the kids dressed and we're out the door. The only problem was that Ava wasn't interested in eating before we left, but I figured she would be OK at least until the pictures were done. Then, if I had to, I could feed her in the car. I had an ounce of expressed milk in the fridge that I decided to take along, just in case she wanted to eat a little in the middle of the photo shoot. It would be enough to hold her over, I thought. So, we get into the store so far so good. The outfits are still clean, and Jonas doesn't object when I strap him into the shopping cart so he can't run ahead of me. I get to the portrait studio area and wait a bit while they are helping other customers. Jonas starts getting antsy, and I realize that Ava is getting hungry. Not good. I take out the bottle I brought and offer it to her. It was the first time I had given her a bottle since I was trying to teach her how to take one before I went back to work. I was surprised at how quickly and easily she drank from it now. Much too quickly. She drained it fast and I didn't have any more. Finally the photographer tells me that they are running about 20 minutes behind. Not good at all. I contemplate canceling, but I got the kids dressed and out the door. We could stick it out. I decide to take the kids to the restroom to feed Ava. She hates eating under a blanket, so I usually end up feeding her while standing in a bathroom stall when we are out in public. When we get into Target's restroom, I find that the handicap stall is actually large enough to push the shopping cart into it and close the door. But my luck ends there because it's too loud and Ava is too distracted to eat. I'm sure much of the distraction came from Jonas who thought that sitting in a shopping cart in the bathroom was great fun. He kept excitedly shouting "go to the potty!" and screaming for the fun of hearing his voice echo. So, back to the portrait studio area we go. It seems the ounce I gave Ava is holding her over for now.

Finally we get to go in to get the pictures taken! See cute pictures above. I think the photographer felt bad because we didn't get a lot of great shots. Jonas was too excited to sit still for long, and by the end of it Ava was trying to eat the mini-couch she was sitting on. I thought we got some great ones, considering.

But now we have to order the pictures and Ava is starting to cry from hunger. I tell the girl that I want the $7.99 portrait package. Apparently the coupon (that I didn't print) for the free 8x10 with $7.99 package is the only way to get the $7.99 package. If I had read a little more closely I might have understood that I could only get the portrait package for $7.99 with the coupon. I think it was a little misleading though. Why didn't the coupon just say it was for a $7.99 portrait package, and list 2 8x10's as part of the package? And anyway, I have a 2 year old and an almost 7 month old who has just started to crawl. I don't have a lot of time to read things closely.

So the girl is going through her sales pitch trying to sell me pictures for over $100, Ava is crying, and Jonas (thankfully) is sitting quietly in the cart eating a peanut butter sandwich I had packed for him. Ava is so hungry she decides it's worth it to be covered up and gives up and eats under a blanket. I breath a sigh of relief and finally focus on looking at the pictures. I tell the girl I want to keep it pretty basic, and I end up ordering 1 8x10, 2 5x7's and a 4x10. The total comes to over $60. Yikes. So much for my bargain. But I walk out of the store feeling pretty good about things. Yes, it was more expensive, but I have thought of ways to cut back on some other spending to make up for it. Ava and Jonas have eaten and are in good moods. They will fall asleep on the ride home and Jonas will be tired enough to go back to sleep for his full nap when we get home. But my relief was a bit premature. After I put the cart away I tell Jonas that I will take his little bowl of crackers that he is carefully carrying with both hands so that I can hold his hand until we get to the car. I tell him he can have it back in the car. But seeing me put it in my bag sent him into a meltdown and he threw himself onto the pavement in a temper tantrum. Finally, we make it to the car and head home. It was so stressful, but I am already finding the humor in it. Just a day in the life of this mommy.

We Love Summer!

Summer has always been my favorite season of the year. Growing up and living in Western NY, I have always cherished the few months of the year that I can walk outside without a jacket and just enjoy some sunshine. I have great childhood memories of long summer days spent swimming, bike riding, playing at the playground, having picnics in our front yard, camping, staring at the clouds in the sky, and playing with friends. As a mom, I love spending time with the kids outside, watching Jonas delight in the same things I enjoyed as a kid. Jonas would spend his entire day outside if given the option. He is such an active little boy, and we all go a little stir-crazy if he can't get out and burn off some energy!



Coming soon... Ava turns 6 months old in a week and I'll be starting her on solid foods. She's growing up too quickly! She has learned that she can get where she wants to go by rolling around, and I wonder if she is going to start crawling soon. She got up on her hands and knees and pushed backwards several times today. She can't wait to get moving and follow her big brother around. I can hope they decide to move in the same general direction, can't I? :)
Also, we are approaching the 2 year anniversary of the day we got Jonas' referral. I can't believe it's been 2 years already! God has blessed us so much!!

Memorial Day

A year ago on Memorial Day we found out we were pregnant with our little girl! I wish I could say I was as elated at the news as I always imagined I would be when we were trying to get pregnant. But I was mostly just scared! Jonas hadn't even started to walk yet, we were still working through some attachment issues with him, and he was still waking several times a night. Sure, he was 14 months old, but he had only been with us for a few months, and I felt like I was cheating him to add another baby to the family so soon after he came home. And I was EXHAUSTED! Jonas had just started to crawl, was getting into everything, and was (and always has been) more than a little strong-willed. I realize now that I was tired because I was pregnant, and not because I was an incapable mother. But I didn't make that connection at the time. I also worried about how others would react to the news of our pregnancy. I can't explain it well, but I felt like people would think that the child I carried in my womb was somehow more MY child than Jonas was. I don't know why I worried about what people would think because it really doesn't matter. Jonas couldn't be any more my son than he already is, and other people's ignorance about adoption can't change that. I guess I was just feeling over-protective of him. So I was scared about how a new baby would fit into our lives, but underneath those feelings I was also scared that I might miscarry and never meet this new son or daughter growing inside of me. You see, even though I was scared, I always WANTED Ava. I started "mothering" her right away, suddenly thinking very hard about everything I ate and everything I did to make sure I took care of her from the very beginning. It was something I never got to do for Jonas. When I was "expecting" Jonas I couldn't take care of him, but I often prayed for the health of his birth mother. I enjoyed being able to take care of Ava from the very beginning.

This Memorial Day, it was nice to celebrate Ava's life without any of the fear I had last year! Jonas has grown up so much in a year. He is well adjusted, attached to us, and he loves his little sister! He sleeps through the night consistently now (in his own room), and even falls asleep on his own. Ava is healthy, beautiful, happy, and social. I love being greeted by her huge smiles when I pick her up out of her crib in the mornings. I've adjusted to taking care of two children, and our family somehow feels more complete now than it was before. We are Mom, Dad, Brother, and Sister. I'm so glad that God has planned our family he way that he has. I don't believe that He is finished with our family yet. We want to adopt again, and I'd kinda like to experience pregnancy and childbirth again. Ray and I have talked about what that might look like and when we'd like to see it happen, but I won't pretend anymore that I know what God's plans are for our family. We'll just keep seeking Him and go along for the ride!

Life Lessons From a Two Year Old

1) When all else fails, real empathy is being willing to sit down with someone in their pain. A few weeks ago the nursery director at our church told us a little story about Jonas. Jonas got to the nursery late that day, and before he got there a little boy had started to cry. The adults in the room tried to console him, distract him, engage him in an activity, etc, but he could not be comforted. He just sat himself in the corner and cried. The other children in the room tried to stay away from him, and the adults finally just left him alone. The nursery director said that as soon as Jonas arrived in the nursery he noticed the little boy crying in the corner. She said he walked right over to him and started talking to him. When the little boy ignored him he laid down next to him and started patting his back. He stayed with him there, laying next to him and rubbing his back, until the little boy stopped crying and got up to play with Jonas. I can't tell you how much it touched my heart to hear about my son's compassion and empathy toward this little boy. I like to think that I am compassionate and empathetic, but sometimes I am like those other kids and adults in the nursery. I'm not sure how to offer comfort, and I convince myself that the person probably doesn't want me around anyway. But Jonas reminded me of the difference between pity and compassion, and between sympathy and empathy.

2) Stop and enjoy the beauty of the journey. Taking a walk with Jonas can be annoying if you want to go somewhere quickly. If I let Jonas get out of his stroller to walk, it will take us FOREVER to get where we are going. He likes to stop and look at everything. I can let myself get impatient, or I can try to see the world through his eyes. When I do that, every stick and dandelion is a treasure, and where we are going isn't as important as how we get there.

3) Tell the people you care about how much you love them. Jonas has recently learned how to say "I love you". The other day, he was sitting next to me and I had Ava on my lap. Out of nowhere he threw his arms around Ava in a hug and yelled, "Baby, I love you!!".


I love watching my little boy grow up!

Family Photos

We had family photos taken this weekend by our friend Megan. Meg is a senior at Roberts Wesleyan college. She is an extremely talented photographer, and we were blessed to have her take our pictures before she graduates this coming weekend. She spent about an hour with us in our backyard and the playground next door and gave us 192 pictures! The thing I like most about Meg's photographs is that they are really natural. We just interacted with each other, and somehow she captured some really sweet moments.

Here are just a few of my favorites.

Meg also used our family as the subject of a series of mini-documentaries for her film classes. The focus of the documentaries was our adoption of Jonas. She did one while we were waiting for Jonas to come home, one just after he came home, and the most recent one shortly after Ava was born. Here is a link to the most recent one.

http://www.vimeo.com/11201543

Meg has a passion for social justice, a heart like Jesus, and a love for the poor, the oppressed, widows, orphans, and aliens. I look forward to seeing where God leads Meg and the stories he has for her to tell. I believe He will use her in some big ways!

Ava's Infant Dedication

"I prayed for this child, and the Lord has granted me what I asked of him. So now I give him to the Lord. For his whole life he will be given over to the Lord"

I Samuel 1:27-28

In response to God's love and the gift of Ava's life, we dedicated her to the Lord in church on Sunday. Ray performed Jonas' dedication, and that was very special to us. But this time we decided it would be nice if Ray took off his pastor hat for a few moments to just be one of the dads. There were four infants dedicated during the service, all born within four weeks of each other. Two of the couples had experienced secondary infertility and one of the couples lost their first baby when she was only a few days old. Then there was us... blessed by both adoption and pregnancy. It was a very special dedication service.

Ava wore the dress that I wore when my parents baptized me as an infant. I'm glad they kept it. Maybe someday I will have a grand-daughter who can wear it. :)

To my children,
Jonas, you are my long awaited first child. Ava, you are my beautiful surprise. Both of you are gifts from God and I love you both so much. You are God's creations- unique, special, and greatly loved. He has great plans for your lives! My greatest prayer for you as your mother is that you will come to understand the love of Christ and who God has made you to be in Him. I pray that you will discover the unique blend of talents, abilities, and heart's passions that he has placed in you and that you will grow up to be people of compassion, mercy, and love.

Hi-Ho, Hi-Ho, Back to Work I Go!

I just finished my first week back at work and we all survived! Actually, I think we did better than survive. Everything went really smoothly. Thank you to all of you who prayed for Ava to accept the bottle! She finally started taking one again about a week before I had to go back to work. I was actually about to give up and I called La Leche League for advise on how to feed with a cup, spoon, or medicine dropper. The woman I spoke with encouraged me to keep trying the bottle, especially since Ava had taken one already. She also said it would do no harm for me to try to give her one because our nursing relationship was well established by that point. Talking with her was great because it gave me hope and more determination, and later that same day Ava finally took the bottle! Then for a few days she would only drink a bottle if I was the one giving it to her, as if she decided that food could only come from me. But the night before I had to go to work she drank an entire bottle for Ray. That gave us both a lot of peace of mind when I went to work the next day! So far it has worked well to feed Ava before I leave for work and as soon as I get home. On my 4 and 4 1/2 hour shifts she takes one bottle. On my 7 1/2 shift she took a bottle in the afternoon, I went home to feed her on my dinner break, and she took another bottle in the evening. So far so good!

Halfway through my 4 hour shift on my first night back I texted Ray to see how things were going at home. His text back to me still cracks me up. He wrote, "Good. It took 45 minutes but Ava drank over 3 ounces. Jonas got artistic with pudding, can open the cupboard door under the sink (with the child locks), and got time out for not stopping putting milk on the window when I told him 3 times to stop. I think he didn't think I'd put him in time out while feeding Ava & he cried a lot but he got over it." It made me laugh because as chaotic as it seemed it was reassuring to me because everything sounded pretty normal. They were doing just fine without me! :)

Here are some recent pictures:

We went to the Zoo on Good Friday. Here Jonas is looking at the rhinos, which he prefers to call "hippos".

The weather was really warm Easter weekend. Ava got to wear this super cute summer dress on Saturday!

This was Easter morning. We were leaving for church a little late, and this is the best shot I could get of both the kids together!