Mark 9:37

"Whoever receives one of these little children in My name receives Me; and whoever receives Me, receives not Me but Him who sent Me."

Amen.

Shrugging Along

So I picked up a copy of Atlas Shrugged at my library this week. Holy Cow! This is a huge book! (And the cover bothers my husband. He saw it and said, "What's this book with a naked man on the cover?" I'm so tired these days, I hadn't even noticed that there was a naked man on the cover...lol) But if Granny says it is a worthwhile read, I will give it a go. My one problem is that my main times to read are while nursing and while eating breakfast. This book is so thick that it is hard to hold while nursing and doesn't lay flat to lay on the table to read it while eating. Oh, and the print is so small that I feel like I need to get some reading glasses!

I also got another book at my favorite book store tonight. Andrew has resisted all my tried and true methods for sleep training, and he is still not taking any nap during the day that is longer than 20 minutes! For the last three weeks, he has averaged five hours of crying a day, and only put himself to sleep for a nap in his crib twice. Both times it was after over an hour of crying. (Which explains why I've had so little posted here lately...) I think it is time to consider a new method. I'll let you know how it goes!

The Time Has Come

I didn't realize it would be quite that fat. I've read bigger books before, but not with five kids all running around and trying to school and stuff like that. But, I finished P&P this morning and now the fun begins.

Look at my sweet baby girl with her grandpa. Isn't she cute. Everybody all at once, ready? "AAAHHHHHHHHH!!" Thank you.

Anna

Whoa! I look like I just had a baby there! Yikes. Here, here's a better photo.

My grandma; I love it when youth meets wisdom.

Thank you all so much for your prayers and congratulations! I wish I could hug your necks.

We're adjusting quite well. All the girls love Anna, even Lily who says, "BABY!!!" every time she sees Anna. It's cute.

She's Here, She's Here!

Johanna reporting for Joanna, here:

Anna Lyn was born this morning at 10:33 am, right on her due date! She is 7 lb. 7.5 oz., and 19 1/2 inches long. She nursed well, met all her sisters, and has lots and lots of dark black hair!

Joanna is well, but tired. She got to the hospital at 6:30 this morning, was in a room around 8:00. The doctor broke her water, which was enough to start labor. It only took a touch of pitocin, and no c-section in sight!

Congratulations, Joanna!

Here's the Skinny...Mini

I went in for my pre-op/regular OB appt today.

I saw Dr. Roush (look under south Tampa doctors), who will be the doc. with the knife on Thursday. She came in and said something about how disappointing this was and then asked about my contractions, which have been not regular but ouch they hurt and lots of them.

So she decided to check my cervix.

Apparently my uterus has been a wee bit busier than I thought it was. I am dilated to 4cm, baby is at -2 station and I'm 80% effaced.

Now's when everyone should give three cheers for Dr. Roush, whom I love.

Her exact words were, "It would be a shame for you to have another C/S." She has taken responsibility for my delivery, is on call tomorrow and I am scheduled to be at the hospital at 7AM for an induction (just a little of Pitocin should do it, she said). She said we'd have a baby by noon.

I've been on the verge of tears or in tears ever since. What an answer to prayer. I just can't get over the way God works. It's downright amazing!!! Again and again I am humbled.

The Final Push

Just think everyone out there: one more week or less and you'll finally be able to stop hearing these two Jos talk about being pregnant. You'd think that's all we ever did.

Anyway, my visit with the doc today revealed 2cm dilated and has produced many, many strong contractions. Hopefully soon Anna will be here. They will schedule a C/S for Thursday next if I don't go into labor naturally before then. The contractions I've been having have moved lower on my uterus and are quite painful. They come about every 5 to 10 minutes. That's pretty good. We'll see if they keep it up. Usually my water breaks and then labor stalls. I don't mean it gets slower, I mean it comes to a dead halt. They give me a wee bit of Pitocin and in 45 minutes baby is here. It's amazing.

Okay, wait...contraction.

Whew, that was a REALLY good one. I hope it was productive.

Anyway, I think I am prepared to post some pictures now. We had our first day back to school today and I am so excited about our shelves and how totally useful our neat little school room is. It's a complete answer to prayer. I'll just never get over how blessed I am. You'd think I'd be a more dutiful daughter.

Now, surely you all remember this post that showed off all the glorious vomit colors of this house we bought. We decided that before we moved all of my parents' stuff in we should have the house painted. We managed to find a guy in need of work enough to take the job for $2250. This was for all the rooms in the house except the laundry room and bathrooms and no closets or doors, but all the trim. We were so happy with his work and the fact that he came later after the job was done to put a third coat on the yellow and pink and do a lot of touch up work that we paid him an extra $500. The other two bids we had on the job were for $4900 and $8000.

Here's some pictures of the colors we picked.

This is the sewing room. It's pretty far down on the priority list as far as getting it in working order so it's not put back together yet. But both Mom and I really dig the happy yellow.

The girls' pink room. Not too bad a pink, I think.

This will be Anna's room and also the guest room.

You can see the two colors of tan we picked out for everywhere else in the house. All the main living areas anyway. The kitchen and two master bedrooms are the blue you see below. Hmm, I have a pretty darned high-speed camera; maybe I should take some better shots of this color.

And then there's the blue. Here's Lily showing it off. This is the upstairs master (mine). Del was remodeling and painting the closet at the time so there was a lot of chaos in the room. Hmm, once again...high-speed camera...need better pictures.

Then we finished putting the school room together basically. There's still a few things that need to be addressed but for the most part, it's done and I really like it!!!

So that's my news. Please pray for Anna to be born sometime before next Thursday. I'd appreciate it.

38 Weeks Looming

I go to the OB tomorrow. Mom left for a couple of engagements in St. Augustine. Now I'm huffing and puffing around the house without her encouragement. It's harder that way. The stairs look like a mountain. I am getting to the stage where all the signs are pointing to "The End" and this makes me happy. I think I will put my money on the 11th of January. That would put me in at two days early and exactly two weeks out. I was 3 days early with Rachel and 2 days early with Lily. Ella doesn't count because she was my first (4 days late) and Sarah doesn't count because she came emergency C/S three weeks early. I says she's 7 pounds 4 ounces. There's no way she's any smaller than that because my belly is about to burst. Ella was 6,12; Sarah was 5,14 (three weeks early, keep in mind), Rachel was our biggest at 7,9 and Lily was 7,2. What do y'all think?

We got all the bookshelves up for school. I can't wait until we're done unpacking ALL OF MOM'S THOUSAND BOXES of school stuff (ex-teachers, sheesh) so I can post a picture of the finished product. We'll have resources galore at our fingertips. It's interesting to see the things she keeps. I'm not a keeper; I toss stuff out because I hate clutter, even though it's still everywhere. Mom's a keeper; she has gobs of stuff from the 80's. I find people fascinating that way. We all have things that are important to us and the perusal of one's personal property is an interesting story to read.

I took three naps today and still feel totally exhausted. Maybe there was too much napping. I wasn't motivated to do very much.

Granny put up this interesting article. I ignored it for a few days because I don't want to think that hard but I sure was glad when I finally took the time to read it. Very interesting stuff.

I know I never posted the pictures of the house I said I would. That is because I'm tired and feeling very apathetic about almost everything. I'll try harder to put up pictures in the near future.

Some Pictures of Andrew...Finally!

His eyes are dark grey! I wonder if they will stay this way or turn blue like the rest of us?

I cannot believe it has taken me so long to finally get pictures up here! You'd think I am suddenly very busy or something! :)

Well, Joanna put up the basic facts for me while I was still in the hospital, so you already know all of that. We were scheduled to come home Thursday morning, but Andrew became jaundiced. His numbers weren't really too high, but the doctor was concerned because they went up too quickly, so Andrew had to spend the day Thursday on lights in the nursery at the hospital. After a day of lights, his numbers had gone back down enough to let us go home. That was good, because if they hadn't, I would have still had to be discharged, but Andrew would have had to stay. I know lots of women have to go home without their babies when they are born early or other various reasons, but the thought of doing that was not a nice one. Plus, the boys were sooo looking forward to Andrew coming home. They were really sad that he had to stay the full day, so we had them come up and bring games and toys and a movie and we went out and got them burgers to eat with me in my hospital room. We just made a party of it!


The boys were fascinated with their baby brother from the start! Isn't the way Ethan is hugging him so cute?

The transition home has been okay. Andrew has a really weak suck, so we have run into some troubles with nursing. I had a lactation consultant come out to the house today and got some help, so I am really hopeful that he will get the hang of it soon. Much of it is just his age and lack of strength. It is amazing how much stronger a baby is who has a higher birth weight! I keep trying to remember that he is actually average sized!

Andrew's first Buckeye game as one of the "men" of our family!

My Bible Study group is having a baby shower for me tomorrow. It will be kind of fun to have one more shower! I mean who doesn't enjoy opening baby stuff?? After that, I plan to lay low all week and just bask in the glow of my new baby.

This is probably the only time anyone will see a picture of me without make-up...don't get used to it!

Weight, Height, Time and a Name

Johanna had her baby today. Andrew was born this morning at 8:46. He measured 20 inches and weighed 7 pounds and 10 ounces. Everyone is shocked at how small he is. No one was even remotely close with the weight but Lawanda was only one day off of the date. Good guess! She said she'd get some pictures up when she got home and settled. Andrew is nursing nicely and Johanna sounds good but tired. Sigh, it's always so nice to not be pregnant anymore. Oh, she didn't have an epidural either. She was praying to not have one. She's brave like that.

In other not-o-exciting news, Del and I have finally settled on a name for our 5th daughter. Please pray for our next theoretical baby to be a boy, because I'm not sure we could muster ANOTHER girl name. We love having all these girls, but at this point we've just about used all the girl names we really care for. So, she's Anna Lyn. Anna is a good name and means gracious or merciful. Lyn is after my godmother Lyn, who happens to be Johanna's mom.

All the girls' middle names are easy because we just pick someone we really respect or love or is family and toss that name in there. So far we have Renee, after me; Elaine, after my mom; Anne, after my mom's best friend Marcia Ann (you know you have to spell Ann with an "e"); and Lily Irene, after my grandma.

Names are so interesting. I really like to hear how people named their kids. Surely you have heard the ones about Lemonjello and Oranjello. People are kooky. How did you name your kids? After anyone?

I Know We Are So Boring

Barring any huge surprises, it's a....


GIRL!!!

Five little girls in 9 years. Bring on the pink.

The Other Half

This morning I finished the other bootie that I showed the other day. Now I actually have a pair. I don't think I'll scrap the first one after all, even though it isn't perfect. It is my first time to knit in the round and it will be a great memory of the first. I'll also have something to compare to as I *hopefully* get better!

Here is a picture in process of knitting in the round, followed by the finished pair:

Glitches

Any time you do something important, there are bound to be glitches along the way. Especially if that important something involves multiple government agencies from two different governments! I am experiencing that in the adoption process right now! Last week we took inventory of where we were with that and what still had to be done. We were missing three key pieces of information: our police clearance report (criminal record report) from the state of Texas, the agency licenses for our dossier, and our home study report. Of these, the home study report is the most urgent because it is all that is holding us back from sending in our paperwork to immigration. The other two we don't need until our immigration paperwork comes back, but the agency licenses are troubling because we mailed in a large check for them June 2! On Thursday, I called the company for the agency licenses and left a message and e-mailed our social worker about both the agency licenses and the report. Then Saturday the criminal record reports came back in the mail!!! The good news is that the report accurately shows that we have no criminal history. The bad news is that on the official notarized reports, my birth date is typed wrong and Jerry's social security number is typed wrong! For both of them, they are off by one number. Oh, the frustration! I called the Texas Department of Public Safety today to find out what to do about it and tomorrow I have to fax the incorrect report along with the original request to them and they will send out corrected copies. Thank goodness! I was a bit concerned that I would have to mail everything back and get back in the three week que to get it back!

I also got a response from my social worker. She was on vacation last week and is typing our report this week. I guess I was on vacation the week before that, so I really cannot complain! She also said it is unlike the licensing agency to be so long in getting out the licenses so she was going to contact them. This afternoon, when I called the licensing agency they had just gotten off the phone with the social worker! Score one for doing what you say you will do! The lady that sends out the licenses told me that her mother had a heart attack four weeks ago and she is just getting back in the office. Well, I guess you cannot control heart attacks either. Her mother is doing much better and she will send out the licenses this afternoon! Whew!

So tomorrow I will fax the information back to the Department of Public Safety and send my birth certificate via Express Mail to the Illinois Secretary of State for certification and Jerry's to the Ohio Secretary of State for the same reason. Once those come back, they go to the Chinese Consulate (mine to the one in Chicago and Jerry's to the one in New York) and then they are done until they go to China!

In non-glitch news, I knit my first sock. It is actually called a sockabootie because it is like a cross between a sock and a bootie. It is the first thing I have ever knit in the round (with the stitches divided onto 4 knitting needles). I will have to take a picture of how that looks when I knit the second one, because I forgot to do that. But the first one is done!

Isn't it just so cute? There are a couple things about it that I don't like and hope to improve upon with the second one. If the second one is much, much better, I might even trash this one and do it again. It will depend on how perfectionistic I am feeling when I finish number two, because you know this is just project three out of about 12 I want to do for the baby! For the other two, see my other blog. (I am dividing knitting posts so that people don't get sick of reading the same thing over and over and over...)

More Excitement Than I Can Contain!

There have been so many little things (and big things) going on this week that I have not even had time to post about each one as it has happened. Early this week, I got a packet from our home study agency with all of the things we have to put together to have the social worker come out to see our home and family and begin the process of approving us for an international adoption. We were floored by just how much information they need. So we have been spending every night writing our autobiographies, answering a bunch of questions, and providing information on our house, yard, expectations, health, and other things like that. On the same day that we received that packet, Jerry received his official acceptance from Taylor University's MBA program. He is now finalizing just which classes he will take and turning in his paper work to secure his spot on the two week European trip in September.

Yesterday, my sister-in-law was able to do an excellent sonogram on a very cool, very new ultrasound machine. Although the baby wasn't cooperating enough to get some cool 4D shots of the face, we were able to get a few great regular photos and some video's of lots and lots of movement. Anyway, say hello to my brand new baby

Boy!

That's right, another boy makes three. I am way outnumbered in this house now. I mean way outnumbered. Fortunately for me, there's more on the adoption front.

Today I got a call that our application to adopt had been accepted by the adoption agency and received an e-mail with a packet of papers that had to be signed, notarized, and mailed back with the first agency fee. I printed them out, read them, and took them to Jerry's work where there just happens to be a notary public and we signed them. They are already in the mail back to the agency just hours after we got them! When they arrive, we'll receive our dossier instructions to begin putting together the dossier in earnest! I am so excited, because what all this means is that now the adoption agency is committed to seeing us through this process! Of course there is still the big IF - they are committed to seeing us through the process if we can just get the papers done and registered in China before this beautiful baby boy pictured above makes his appearance into this world. So now comes the fun part. Lots and lots of paperwork! We sure would covet your prayers that this all goes smoothly. We really feel like taking this step to apply for the adoption was the right thing to do. I have to trust that if God paved the way for us to start, and gave us peace about starting, He will see it through. I'll keep you all posted on what happens next!