In short, this girl wears me out.

I find myself longing for the day when she is just a teeny bit older and then I stop myself because I know I am going to blink and she is going to be school-age.

I also find myself wishing I could bottle her up and keep her as a 2.5 year old forever.

She provides everyone who knows her with endless entertainment.

I think the best way to record what my Little Bug is up to at just over 2.5 years old is to do a bullet post, so here we go:

• Little Bug is simply hilarious. She makes us laugh every.single.day. She is such a jokester and has been since she first started talking.

• Little Bug still makes a royal mess when she eats. Seriously. This is something I am totally over and will be so glad when she is past this stage. There is a mess everywhere when she eats – on the table, her hands, her whole face, her booster seat. I have tried everything to help her eat a little neater to no avail. It’s just something I’ve let go, telling myself she won’t (hopefully) still be a messy eater when she hits school-age.
• I still have to watch Little Bug like a hawk because she is just a magnet for trouble. She can (and will) make a mess in 2.5 seconds flat or get into something if am not right there to stop her.

• During the day, when Little Bug is awake and not in her room doing Independent Play, she is right with me doing whatever I do. Which is both good and “bad”. It’s good because I love spending time with my girl and I am tremendously blessed that I get to stay home with her every day. It’s “bad” because sometimes I just wish she would for once just go off and play with something on her own so I could do something without her under foot! I cannot set her up at the table to color or do Play-doh by herself while I go do something for 20 minutes or so. Why? Because she won’t have it. She will not sit and entertain herself. OR…she would do things she is not supposed to do with the crayons/play-doh. Remember the bullet about constant supervision necessary?!

• She LOVES dancing with her Daddy which is the most precious thing ever!
• Little Bug loves to sing. She can’t understand why the Christmas music is off the radio now. She will tell me, “I want to listen to Christmas Music.” while we are driving in the car and I have to tell her that the radio isn’t playing much anymore because Christmas is over.
• When we tell Little Bug we can’t do something she is wanting to do she will say, “But that’s otay, we can still…”. It’s the cutest thing because when she says that she is usually trying to stall bedtime by saying she need to do this and that.

• She loves to be the center of attention when surrounded by family. She was twirling the other day in front of a group of family and she would stop to make sure everyone was watching her and then go back to twirling.
• Saturday mornings Little Bug and her daddy get up and make French toast together!

• Little Bug always asks her Daddy to share a smoothie with her after dinner. They go to this spot in the living room and share their smoothie.

• She still loves to read books. She has gotten to where if you pause while reading she will finish the sentence in many of her books! Her Grandpa Roy is actually the one who started doing this with her. He reads a story book to her and it amazed us what she had memorized from that book. Words that are not normally in a 2-year-olds vocabulary.

• She still has 4 milk times a day. I love it because that is the only time she will sit and cuddle.
• She sleeps 11ish hours at night and takes a 2 hour afternoon nap.
• I would say she is probably around 30lbs now since she was 28lbs at her 2 year check up.
• I love the way she puts her little feet on the chair while she eats.

• There is never a dull moment when Little Bug is around. It is hard to imagine her being anywhere but with us!

• The biggest news with Little Bug is that she is completely daytime potty trained!! She was ready and she trained in less than a day (on January 16)! She has had two accidents, but only two accidents in 11 days is pretty good!

It is sometimes hard to remember a day when this girl wasn’t a part of my life. It is hard to believe she has been my daughter for almost three years.

In case you are on pins and needles wondering if it was love at first sight on that 26th day of January in 2006, it wasn’t!

I was 24 years old, a third year teacher to 4th grade students. In fact, I had just gotten home from teaching all day when I met Dave who was standing in the kitchen talking to my mother.

He was 21 years old! Yes, just 21 years old! In his last year of college.

At first I view him as such…the kid my kid brother roomed with. (At that time, Dave was my brother’s roommate and he had been invited to dinner that night.)

We met, ate a spaghetti dinner and I am not really sure when I started seeing him with different eyes. I am sure I could go back and look at my journals, but it was probably around February or March.

And I was sure that he kept coming to Thursday night dinners because of 1) the food and 2) my Pup. But as it turns out, he was a teeny bit interested in his roommate’s older sister and by June we were dating.

A week after we crossed the line of “just being friends” we knew we were to get married. And so 11 months after that, we did.

I’m grateful God chose Dave to walk this life with me

.

In honor of the day I met Dave – January 26th, 2006 – I thought I would bring these pictures to my blog as a blast from the past!

Six years.

It is crazy that Dave has only been apart of my life for 1/5 of my 30 years! (How do you like that math?!)

It is hard to even remember what life was like before January 26th, 2006!

Here are some pictures from those early years with Dave. Less than a month after our wedding, we went to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil for my cousin’s wedding!

The Botanical Gardens

These palm trees are absolutely gorgeous!

Churrascaria…Heaven on Earth for Dave! Waiters come out with meat after meat and you can eat as much as you want.

The Statue of Christ – from up there you can see the gorgeous city of Rio!

Those of you that don’t know me in real life probably don’t know this, but Dave and I really enjoy traveling.

Obviously it is not something we can do often at all now!

But in the two years before Little Bug came along, we did get to go to some pretty awesome places in this world!

We told Little Bug when she filled up this Potty Chart with stickers from going potty on the big girl potty, we would take her on a date to her favorite frozen yogurt place.

We didn’t expect her to fill this chart up in less than two days of potty-training!

In fact, on Tuesday I just kind of “forgot” about it because I knew if she filled it all in on Tuesday Dave wouldn’t be able to go with us because of work.

So we didn’t “remember” the chart until closer to the weekend and on Saturday Little Bug filled in the last box with a sticker and proudly proclaimed she could go to Mochi.

So Sunday after her nap, we went.

We took her to Panera first for dinner – which has always been a family favorite and somewhere we haven’t been as a family recently.

Here she is being a goofball as we try to get a picture of her before walking in to Panera.

Sitting with her Daddy waiting for our food

Mochi!!

We had a fun date night with our big girl!

And what a wonderful thing to be celebrating!!

This is why

this is still set up in my bedroom

even though my child is almost 3.

Cannot.take.your.eyes.off.her.for.a.second.

I decided to give the girls a bath in my bathroom tonight. Mistake! When it was time to get Sweet Pea out and dressed I didn’t feel comfortable leaving Little Bug in the bathtub like I normally do when we are in Little Bug’s bathroom because my bathroom is so far away from Sweet Pea’s bedroom.

So, I got both girls out and then went to Sweet Pea’s room to dress her and put her in bed.

Meanwhile, Little Bug wandered off and dumped the contents of Sweet Pea’s bathtub onto the bathroom floor. Fortunately, the rug absorbed most of it.

Little Bug comes to find me and sweetly says, “Mommy I dumped Sweet Pea’s tub.”

I said, “Please tell me you didn’t!!” and ran to the bathroom to find, oh yes, she sure enough did.

I just laughed.

My mistake.

I knew I should have put her naked booty in the pack n play while I went to dress Sweet Pea!

Today marks one year since everything started to unravel concerning Tracy’s “pregnancy” last year.

I will never forget the emotions wrapped up in that week as my lawyer and I worked to try and expose Tracy’s deception.

My mind was constantly consumed with these matters for an entire week, but the peace of God was constantly wrapped around my heart as well, giving me the strength I needed to be able to get to the bottom of this, once and for all.

I went back in my blog and read some of my posts from those days last January. On January 31st, I wrote that things were over and then I said, You know what this means, right? God’s just got something more!

And He most certainly did!

Sweet Pea was God’s Something More.

I recently was looking back at pictures when Sweet Pea was in the NICU and it brought back a flood of memories.

When we first laid eyes on her.

There was nothing like being able to see my baby for the first time and know that she was already completely mine, however, at the same time, seeing a sick baby laying there unswaddled with horrible bright lights shining down on her certainly wasn’t how I imagined seeing her for the first time!

I couldn’t even see her face and I wanted to see that tiny little face so bad! I picked up her “sunglasses” and moved them so I could see her face and then I heard our lawyer say, “You better put those back on her eyes or the lights could make her go blind.” Oops!!!

The picture above is another one of my favorites, despite the fact that my baby looks so pathetic. Notice her feet and my hand. It tells a story. A story of how a mother, meeting her baby for the very first time – a baby that did not grow in her womb – will automatically just do whatever it takes to bring comfort to her child.

When I saw Sweet Pea laying there I wanted to scoop her up and hold her close. She lay there unswaddled, twitching. A nurse told me, “She likes for us to hold her feet, it helps her feel more secure.”

She didn’t have to tell me twice. I couldn’t hold her like I wanted to, but I could stand there and hold her feet. So I did.

In that moment I wanted her to know, I am your Mama and I am going to take care of you…always.

Then, Dr. Marvelous finds out I have never held my baby girl and she bends the rules and tells me I need to hold her!

I also love the picture above. Those are Dr. Marvelous’s hands and arms you see standing over Sweet Pea and me. That is symbolic to me because I prayed for someone to stand in my place and take special care of Sweet Pea until we were able to go to the hospital after TPR was signed and be by Sweet Pea’s side.

Dr. Marvelous was that someone God provided.

She is so yellow, tiny and fragile-looking in this picture. You can see how tiny she was compared to Dave’s hand.

She had to be on these lights (for the rH factor) for 4 days.

She even had to eat under the lights!

Hard to believe that was this baby, but Sweet Pea was the baby God had planned all along to join our family!

I didn’t want to proclaim that Little Bug is truly completely potty-trained (daytime only) until I knew for sure, but Little Bug has been completely trained since last Monday morning!!

There have been virtually NO accidents!

One time, she said she needed to go potty, and took off running. But then, she decided she wanted to go to our bathroom instead of her bathroom. As she was trying to move her potty seat and stool to our bathroom she wet a little bit.

There have been NO times where she is playing and just forgets to go to the potty and pees on herself.

That really does surprise me, because I was totally prepared to have to clean up pee off the floor for a good while.

I still credit all this to the fact that I trained Little Bug when she was ready – not when I was ready to have her potty trained. Because, believe me, it would have been nice to have her out of diapers way sooner than at over 2.5 years old!!

Tuesday (day after initial training), she got up and wanted her panties on. I continued that day to say “Are your panties dry?” every so often. We went to my parents’ house on that day which meant a car ride. Instead of letting her drink milk before we got in the car (like I usually do), I had her wait until we got to their house. I was thinking that she may not have accidents in the house, but surely when I put her in the car for a car ride, she will. But, she did not!

Wednesday and Thursday I continued to say “Are your panties dry?” every so often. And she continued to go to the potty every time she needed to go.

Friday I hardly said “Are your panties dry?” and she continued to use the potty every time. Dave’s parents even took her to the neighborhood park for about half an hour and she stayed dry the entire time!

Now, a week later, I don’t even need to say “Are your panties dry?”. If she needs to go, she goes to the potty on her own!

There was a time when she needed help getting on the potty. She didn’t actually really need help but on the training day she somewhat slipped on her little potty seat and then from then on, she wanted assistance in sitting down on the potty. But now she will independently go on her own and she doesn’t even want to use the little potty seat on the big potty anymore!

She did fabulous at church too on Sunday! No accidents.

My girl is potty trained. It is still hard to believe how easy the training process really was.

I really do believe that we as parents make a bigger deal of training than we should!!

Having just trained a child these are my top three tips:

1. Wait until your child is totally ready to do this. Don’t force your child to train! If potty training becomes something you want to do and not something you and your child wants to do, you are only asking for accidents and frustration! Put quite simply: Don’t stress about potty training!

2. The one-day method philosophy is so smart! Instead of training by making your kid go sit on the potty, use the philosophy from that book and instead ask your child if their panties are dry. That way you are putting the focus on the main goal (keeping pants dry/clean) instead of having to constantly take your child to the potty so they won’t have accidents. You are putting the responsibility on the child and they will want to go on their own to keep their pants dry and clean without you having to constantly remind them to “go use the potty”!

3. Don’t even start with the little toddler potty seat. This is totally my opinion, but to me, they are GROSS. Little Bug trained on the big potty and I am so glad because I am not worried at all of her being afraid of going on the potty in public bathrooms when we are out and about. (Although I am afraid of the GERMS that she will come into contact with in using those public potties!! Yuck!!) **Update: She has successfully used the public toilets with no problems. I tried getting her to use this paper to cover the seat but it didn’t really stay on the toilet well so she just sits on the public potty seat now like a big girl. Ewww. I just try not to think about it and wash her hands immediately upon getting up. Oh well.

My Big Girl!

Sweet Pea had another follow up appointment with the GI on January 17th.

At almost 6 months old, Sweet Pea’s tummy issues are coming to an end!!!!

I think back to the newborn baby that writhed in pain after a feed and it is just so sad to think back on that time. Sweet Pea was so pathetic. I am SO relieved all that pain and discomfort are behind her.

This truly was a situation where time was needed to heal.

The GI doctor told us at the first appointment that we would start to see significant improvement around 5-6 months and that has certainly been true.

I think for me, when Sweet Pea extended her feeds from 3 hours to 3.5 hours and then increased her feedings from 4 ounces to 5 ounces, I knew healing was on the horizon for her.

We do not have to go back to the GI for another follow up appointment unless there are any problems that arise.

She has been on 3mLs of Zantac (given three times a day) since the beginning of November and according to her weight her dosage could have increased by now, but since she is showing no signs of needing to increase her dosage, we will keep her dosage the same!

Sweet Pea was 14lbs 8oz on January 17th!

At 7 months (once Sweet Pea has started solids and we see how her stomach handles that), we can start to wean her from zantac by given only 2mLs/day instead of 3mLs/day.

Then if she handles that well, at 8 months we can try only 1mL/day. By 9 months, she could possibly be totally off zantac!

Of course, we will just see how she handles the weaning and go from there.

I am SO happy to see my baby at this place.

Does my heart a world of good!!

Overnight, it seems, Sweet Pea grew up!

She extended her wake time and dropped her 4th nap the week after turning 5 months old! This means she is now up while we are eating dinner and, for the first time, our whole family of four sits around the table for dinner every night!

She sits in her seat talking away while we eat. Adorable! She is SO content and happy. I have never seen a baby as content with life as her. She sits wherever we put her and she watches her family around her. I guess we are pretty entertaining. Or I guess I should say…her big sister is pretty entertaining!

She has become a hoot in the bathtub!

This particular night, she was kicking and splashing like CRAZY!

She would kick so fast and furious and then stop and look at me to make sure I was watching her.

I would say something to her and she would start smiling HUGE and start kicking all over again!

It was awesome to see some personality coming out in this precious little baby!

Then…

I got her out of the tub and she was her usual smiley self. I decided to get some cute naked shot of her (every baby has to have those, right?!).

She started acting like she was going to ROLL OVER!

So I quickly switched the camera to video and I captured her first roll-over from stomach to back!!

(Sorry, not posting. I was a little too excited to post the video for the world to see. )

About a week and a half after turning 5 months old, Sweet Pea dropped another feeding and increased her feeds to 5 ounces!

While the GI and pedi had both recommended that we not give her over 4 ounces per feed until she is 6 months, doing this now just seemed the right and natural next step for her. In other words, I didn’t “force” this on her – she did this on her own, so I went with it, knowing if she had issues with eating 5 ounces per feed I could always take her back to 4 ounces. But, because she was ready, she has done just fine with eating 5 ounces every 3.5 hours.

Now that she eats 5 ounces, we had to move her up to the BIG bottles that hold 8 ounces! The bottle is about as tall as she is!

Both of my girls seem to be growing up so fast lately!

It is SO encouraging to see this progress in Sweet Pea. Her body is healing. She is not completely there as she still has some overstimulation issues, but…these are all good signs to me that she is making progress and soon, all this will be behind her.

Praise the Lord!!

I was contacted by the co-author of the book, Called to Adoption: The Christian’s Guide to Answering the Call. Heather Featherston asked me if I would be interested in reading a copy of the book she co-authored with Mardie Caldwell.

I replied that I would love to receive a copy and soon I held a copy in my hand.

I had it for a while before I started reading it (because of the holidays), but then one night I decided to start reading it.

Before I say anything further, I am not being compensated monetarily for saying anything about this book on my blog. I am taking the time to post about this book on my blog because I feel it is an EXCELLENT resource to anyone who is thinking about starting the adoption process.

I read this book practically in one sitting! It was a VERY easy read but full of so much useful information about the entire adoption process.

I can remember when we decided that we were going to adopt, it was completely overwhelming. It was hard to know what step was first and what to do next!

This book will walk you through the entire process. There is information to help you choose what type of adoption you want to pursue (domestic or international, private or agency adoption), figure out finances and the degree of openness you feel is appropriate with the birth family…and lots more!!

I especially appreciated two valuable pieces of information in this book.

I remember being very apprehensive about the home study process. This book really does put the home study into perspective and teaches you what it really is about.

Many prospective adoptive parents are under the assumption that they have to have the house looking like a model home and completely spotless, but this book dispelled that myth by saying, “They are not looking for a model home, but one where a child will be safe and clean.” (page 42)

Another piece of information I really appreciated about this book was that, “Communication is one of the main keys to adoption success.” (page 41)

In my opinion, that statement is absolutely true. Communication is key is most every thing in life, so it does make sense that it would be key to a successful adoption process.

The agency we adopted both of our girls through is fabulous in the communication department. Now, this doesn’t mean someone has answered the phone every single time I have ever called and has told me exactly what I wanted to know right then, but when there is something big going on the agency always communicated with us to keep us “in the loop”.

The adoption process is nerve-wracking and is filled with lots of unknowns, but having an agency that kept us in the know really gave us a measure of serenity that was very much appreciated throughout the whole adoption process.

If you are interested in purchasing this book, you can click here to order. The book cost $12.95.

Enter the promo code ADOPT2012 and you will receive a special that includes the book, free shipping, a free DVD and CD, and more!!

If you are feeling a call to adopt, this book is an excellent tool to help you take that first step on your journey towards the child God has for you.