do you ever laugh at your kids when they are full of it?

Julia started twirling around and around while in the living room now. So much so that she gets dizzy and falls on her butt and then laughs. This Cracks me up. I wish I could catch it on video, but she does it when I am furthest (or farthest if you are grammar police) from my camera and she always stops when I do reach it and try to start the recording. Ha. I'll beat her to the punch eventually. I am not really laughing AT HER, but laughing in joy that she is learning things so quickly and having fun doing it.

We had to ask my sister and her family to watch their words. "Oh Sh*t" is a phrase we have thought we heard Julia saying in the last few days. Well, yes, she did say it clear as a bell the other night when DH was putting her in the car. Yikes. We really have to watch what we say now.

7 Teeth are in and the 4 molars are really making her drool gobs again.

I added her to my 2009 vision and dental benefits. Not much more per month so I thought it was worth it just in case. Blindness runs in her birthmothers family so we are being cautious.

I really want to go to the Zoo Wild Lights soon. We couldn't go last weekend due to the exposure to mono and strep. Thankfully no signs here of either icky sickness.

I am working on another letter to send to Julia's birthmother for her 15 month update (27th). Amazing how fast things are flying by since we have last talked and seen her birthmother. This brings on a new subject I want to talk about how contact can change in an open adoption.

We have come to realize that we can't control the amount of contact with have with Julia's birthmother. We accept that if we try to make contact with her, it might be months before we hear from her again. That is just how it works. Last we talked with her was right before J's birthday party. Even longer since we have seen her. We want her to see her, but if she is not ready or wants more time between contact, we just have to accept it to be on her time line. Yes, I get scared that we might not ever see her and J's birth siblings again, but I will never stop sending her letters. I'll send them to her home unless they come back as undeliverable. Then I will just send them to our agency and ask them to hold onto them until we talk to her or when she calls them. I want her to know we are here for her, but we don't want her to feel as though we are barging in on her life or trying to judge her. I will convey this in my next letter to her. I want her to feel that she can call us any day or night and we are glad to set up times to come see them and take them to the park or zoo. I know it might be uncomfortable for her, but she says it is great to see all of us when we do get together. I miss them.

I'm so glad we adults don't remember as we were little infants-toddlers

Oh the pain these children go through with breaking in teeth through the gums. Oh I am so glad we don't remember this time of pain as we were going through as infants and toddlers! YOUCH. It must really hurt her. Fever, Runny nose, Chewing on anything she can get her hands on and winching in pain as she bites into a frozen gogurt to help sooth the pain with the sweet cold feeling of being frozen. Little sweetheart, I promise that the teeth are worth it in the end. And to just think this is the first stage of the process. Tooth #4 is breaking through. She will have her two middle bottom teeth (already in ) along with two FANG teeth up top when this next one breaks through.. No, Not her two front top teeth, those are nowhere to be found. She is going to look a tad funny for a while waiting for those two front top teeth to break through.

She was so snuggle filled tonight. I love that!



I LOVE THE FALL TIME! YEAH.

Oh, swimming lessons again this Saturday. FUN FUN FUN. She is a water bug for sure.

two for tea .. tea for two... or at least teeth

Ok, before you roll your eyes at just another mother posting her daughters first teeth, but I waited for a long long many years since my first ectopic pgcy in July 1999 to boast about this.


I know, I can't manage to take a good picture of my daughters two bottom teeth, but here they are so far. She has 3 teeth so far and is insisting on grinding them together. Oh that hurts my ears like fingers down a chalk board.

some of the rewards of becoming a parent. Milestones

A few weeks ago we finally have J's birth certificate (thanks to DH for his hard work). We finalized in April so it took a while longer than expected.

He got the birth certificate, after we paid our final bill to the adoption lawyer, and he immediately went to the SSA office and applied for J's new social security card.

We got her ss card in the mail this past week so we went to the bank on Saturday and opened J's first bank savings account. YEAH. Fun. I took the cash out of her piggy bank and we used that to open her account.

We bought J her first tooth brush and tooth paste. I took about 10 minutes tonight to show her how I brush my teeth and she immediately took her brush and rubbed it on her TWO NEW teeth on the bottom gum. LOL (yes, she did get two teeth a few months back on the bottom that were coming out all wonky wrong, but they went back in and are now back out through the gum like normal. YEAH).

I saw J take a full step yesterday. We went to a party at our friends house and were playing in a washers tournament. While Daddy was pitching his washers I turned around to watch J. She took one foot and put it in front of the other while standing and then lifted her other foot and moved it out another step. Previously she was only taking 1 foot forward and then plopping down to the ground. This time she did both feet and just stood there. FUN.

I must watch her in the cart at the store now. Tonight we went to the local retail store to pick up some sundries. I had pushed the cart (with J strapped in) to the right side of the isle while I was looking at some dental floss. I turned back around to find her grabbing for some hand lotion on the shelf right next to her. I forgot she could reach out so far. I know one day she will be that kid reaching for the candy in the check out lane, right? I'll be saying "No, J, you can't have that kit-kat bar!" (then I will hear her throw a fit, right?)

I could swear I heard her say "Hannah" tonight. Hannah is our blond lab mix dog. It was more like "HanHan" coming from J, but she had also pointed her finger right at Hannah so that made me believe she is trying to say her name.

these milestones, my friends, are what we have all been waiting for since the day we were ttc!

gogurt is her new love

I bought some gogurt on sale two weeks ago (with coupon!) and fed one of them to J that night. She liked it, but was frustrated I had to help her with it. Too messy for a 9.5 month old to feed to herself. I put it in the freezer and decided that I would try and feed them to her like that. She loved them even more! Last night and tonight I have fed her one whole stick of frozen gogurt. She will let me feed them to her too without fuss. This is so fun because she sits on the kitchen floor and gets upset I can't feed it to her fast enough. I guess she does not want to hold the stick because it is so cold on her little hands, but she sure loves it on her gums.

Speaking of her gums. Those teeth are going crazy on her. She now has 3 teeth all the way through the gums. Her two bottom teeth that were coming out all wrong a few weeks back went back in and are now broke through the gums coming up the correct way. Ahhhhh. Glad that those two did not come out pointing to the bottom front lip like they were trying to. Then she has one more up top that is through the gum also. It is her second tooth over, not her front like I thought would come in first. Crazy.
I am just glad she is so little that she won't remember the pain it causes when those teeth break through the gums. OUCH, poor little girl. I know all you moms out there understand this feeling where you are helpless in fighting the pain except for orajel or teething tablets or the typical oral pain meds your doc allows you to use on them.
I felt helpless the other night after a round of teething tablets, tylenol and later dimatap for her cold as she was still crying. She did not want to drink her milk from the bottle because it hurt her to suck and then it hurt her to have her binkie in her mouth too. I gave her the frozen teething ring and that seemed to help a big for about 10 minutes and then the crying started in again. Ouuwwwieeeeee. I wish mommy could make it all better with the snap of a finger.

The other night we got into the swim pool and she had a blast in there. I can't find a swim lesson schedule online for the local YMCA .. I must not be looking in the right section of their web page to find that schedule so I could book a class for her. Anyone take swim lessons at the new YMCA on Sublette?

oh my poor baby girl. I love her so no matter how cranky she is!

tonight we confirmed that she has resurfaced one of her bottom two front teeth again. Yes again. This post back in May about her teeth coming in forward makes me wonder now long this has been in progress to pop back up through the gums and not forward like they had been. DH and I actually saw her two bottom teeth coming out forward through her lower gum out towards her lower lip. Straight out. Well, in a few weeks after I posted that, those teeth had regressed into the gums again and must have worked their way to a normal appearance up through the gums like normal kids experience, still painfully so. So tonight confirms that one of those two teeth have popped through the gums growing up towards the upper gum like they should be. So officially right now she has 2 teeth IN her mouth popped through. One upper second spot tooth on her right side and one lower gum first tooth on the left side. SWEET. No wonder the poor girl has been a snot nosed whining sweetheart of a dream daughter! No, I don't complain about this process like most, I am so enjoying the growth spurts she is going through and these bring her much closer to us because she becomes more clingy to us while this happens. Tonight she got a 6 oz bottle, sucked that down dry so DH gave her another 4 oz and she drank 3 of that so the little piggy growing girl had 9 oz before bed! Yeah. Normally she does 4 6oz bottle through the day. But this shows she is growing so much now and needs that little extra in her tummy to get through the night.

As I type this out, she sleeps in her crib behind a shut door to make it very dark in there. She sleeps on her front of her knees/legs with butt hiked way up in the air and her head turned to one side while most of her torso weight bares down on her shoulders with hands wrapped tight smashed between the crib mattress and her chest wall. She insists on holding her blanket. Such a sweetheart when she sleeps. She is a little restless tonight due to the couch she has, but is getting a good fair amount of sleep.

gotta work on finding a replacement blanket for her green one she has. I'll post a picture of it later this weekend.


IT IS YARD SALE TIME... Email me through this blog and I'll tell you what the address is if you are interested. Infant, baby - teen-adult clothes, some furniture, some electronics, some jewelry (my sister is bringing that) and some home made crafts from my mom for baby items and misc things.


I'll post later this weekend with how the yard sale goes. Please pray for NO RAIN saturday from 7-12.

I see teeth in them there gums...

yes, Julia has two teeth popping through on her lower gum. My question is.... is it ok to have them popping forward toward her bottom lip instead of growing up through the top line of her bottom gum line? Does that make sense? Well, if you pull her lip down, the two front teeth are growing out forward towards me instead of growing up through her gum line towards her upper jaw. Can you envision this? I'll try and take a picture tomorrow night to show you. DH thought it was strange too to have them coming out forward instead of straight up. Hummmmm. I'll ask her doc's office the next time I see them. Nothing we can do, I assume. Just let them grow in and then we will see if they cause problems when her permanent teeth start to grow in. Fun.

I'll be honest and say she is not too fussy. Ok, there, I've gone and done it and jinxed myself. I bet she will be a total fuss bucket from here on out. Ha. Oh and she has blisters on her top gum where her two front teeth will hopefully come in. I guess this is why she has been tugging at her ears lately.

I am using the hylands teething tablets and they seem to help sooth her. She got fussy right before bed tonight so they seemed to help calm her down and stop the ear tugging.

I LOVE THESE milestones!

another milestone is that she is starting to crawl. She gets up on all 4 limbs and does a hand over hand once and then lands on her belly and pulls herself along to try and reach for a toy. So she is getting in a crawl or two before she plops down. Ok, Honest, I will baby proof the outlets and cords tomorrow night. I need to tie up the computer cords and wires. I need to move the floor fan to another location so she can't get to the cord and buttons. I need to move the cd rack downstairs so she can't pull it over. She has started pulling up on the furniture and in her crib so the rail has been raised all the way up as her mattress has already been lowered.

Her newest attempt at a word is Dawg.... She sees the doggies come into the room and she screams DAWG (more of a silent g, but it is what I think is the word DOG. So that makes mama, dada, baba and dog.

Oh, tonight at dinner she started shaking her head NO at me when I tried to give her a spoonful of turkey and rice dinner from the jar. DH saw that NO head shake and started laughing. I said "Ut Oh, we are in trouble now". There is no stopping her.

Julia got to experience her first trip to the deep country of Missouri. My Aunt and Uncle bought something like 400 acres of land down in Iron County MO. Not too far from the Tom Sauk resevoir that broke a few years back. We played in the new house the built and out on the drive and then I went fishing and caught the biggest croppy out of their little pond. We had such a great time. Daddy and Julia watched us as several of us in the family (nephews and my brother) were all fishing cathing perch, croppy and even a small mouth bass out of the pond. My uncle was surprised there were so many fish in that there pond. Fun.

I let the bunnies go in the woods at my uncles place. I'll post pictures of how big they got. Only two survived, but at least I was able to save two instead of none. The bunnies will love it in the woods.

I had no fun Sunday night, Monday and today. I was home sick with bad tummy issues. I called the doc today to see if there was anything I could do besides immodium and they said nope unless I had a fever, which I did not. Ick. Not the fun way to lose 5 lbs. This PCOS ridden body of my won't let me lose 5 lbs normally so I am taking all I can get. Just not the fun way to lose them there lbs. ha


Ok, off to bed. I promise, more pictures tomorrow.

I know there are milestones I am forgetting for Ms. Julia so I'll post them later when I remember them. Bah

Sleep well. I sure am going to with the window fans in action tonight. A great night to sleep under the warm blankets while the fans are blowing cool air around. ahhhhh, sweet spring weather. (I know in a few weeks time I'll be complaining about having to turn on the air conditioner so I'll bask in the cool chill of the night from the window fans for now).