Judah and Baby A's room/ Judah is now in a big boy bed!

I posted this on our Adoption Blog but I just had to share here as well.

Judah and Baby A's room! I still get so excited when I walk in this room and see two cribs. I can't wait to bring Baby A home!

Baby A's crib and his adoption creed, it says 

"Not flesh of my flesh 

nor bone of my bone

 but still MIRACULOUSLY my own.

Never forget for a single minute,

 you didn't grow under my heart but in it."

Judah's crib.

Those pictures were taken last week but a lot has changed since then. Judah has decided he doesn't need to stay in his crib or pac n play for that matter and will climb out whenever he wants. We talked about getting a crib tent so he couldn't climb out but instead we turned his crib into a toddler bed. The first night I sat beside his bed and played with his hair for a very long time then when it was time for me to leave the room he flipped out and would not stop crying so back in the pac in play he went. Then the second night the exact same thing happened so I gave up and I was going to put him in the pac n play to sleep for the third night (I still needed to turn the bed back into a crib) but when we walked in his room he dove into his big boy bed. He slept in his bed all night. Then the next day he took a nap in there and went to bed for the night with no problems. This is the fifth night and he is still doing great. I think we can now officially say Judah no longer sleeps in a crib. It is sad for me because I wanted him to stay a baby forever but also exciting because he is getting bigger. 

Here he is his very first night of staying in his bed.

And the next night.

I love Judah so much and I can't believe he is almost 18 months old. He is asleep but I am now missing him after writing this so I am going to go hold him while he sleeps. They are only little once so I don't feel bad about it :)

Have a great night!

Flash Back Friday

I became Marisa and Natalie's nanny when I was five months pregnant with Kenya. I watched them until Kenya was over a year old and I LOVED every bit of it. I opened an in home daycare in 2008 and we lived too far for me to keep watching them. We remained friends with their parents and I have watched them from time to time. They came and spent Easter weekend with us and we had a blast! Here are a few picture of the girls from the past few years.

Kenya 6 months, Natalie 4 years old.


Marisa 6 years old Kenya six months old.


Marisa 5 years old, Natalie 3 years old and Kenya 2 weeks old.

Kenya 4 years old, Natalie 7 years old and Marisa 9 years old.

Natalie 4 years old Marisa 6 years old.

Kenya 3 months old, Marisa 5 years old and Natalie 3 years old.

Kenya 4 years old, Natalie 7 years old and Marisa 9 years old.

I love you girls!!!!

Fun Weekend

Jason's parents, brother and brother's girlfriend came in town this past weekend to celebrate a super close family friends college graduation and we had such a great time!

Hilary's graduation dinner was at Texas De Brazil it was sooooo yummy! If you have never been there before and like to eat meat you would love this place. You have a card with a green side and a red side on it when you want to eat eat you flip it over to the green side and they come by with these HUGE swords (they weren't really swords but that's what we called them) of meat and you get to pick and choose what you want. Kenya started having fun with it after awhile and she would decide when she wanted more meat.

Then they would come and she would get super shy it was so funny.

We were waiting for the car outside and Miss. Kenya was being a ham.

This picture makes her look like she has hobbit feet ha

My Mom watched Judah for us because he is at a stage in his life where he can not sit through a long dinner at a restaurant. 

Kenya and her Daddy. 

Kenya, Uncle Toe Toe and Tiff Tiff ;)

This is the first time we got to met Tiff Tiff we all loved her and Kenya asked if Tiffany could stay the night for 2 weeks :)

I love my son but at this point in his life he is a HAND FULL so I was really enjoying the break and not quite wanting to go home yet so we took a detour and went and played at IT'Z. 

We had never been there before and from the second we walked in until we left it was non stop fun for all. I have really been enjoying Kenya at the age she is it amazes me how much she is learning and how much she can do now. We had so much fun spending time with her and watching her run around and play video games, have a dance party, play laser tag (she was scared of it so she didn't play long) and ride go karts.

For some reason Kenya bonded with this employee and only wanted to dance if she was there.

Uncle Toe Toe :)

My daughter is a mess she posed like this by herself.

lovely 

Kenya playing games

We had a blast riding go Karts. Jason's Dad Papa T is the closest to me then Jason is beside him and Uncle Toe Toe is by Jason. I didn't stand a chance at winning against these guys.

Uncle Toe Toe is in the lead and Jason is a close second.

We didn't even realize we were racing against Wita because she was behind us the whole time.

Kenya wanted to ride with Tiffany (sorry I don't have a close picture but it was so cute watching her just talk and talk to Tiffany oh and hold on for dear life.)

They had mini bowling which Kenya loved. The look of her face cracks me up in this picture.

My husband with his own little "School of Rock"... these kids thought he was great. Well all of them but the girl in pink.

We were so busy last weekend but it was so much fun.

We are still not on a schedule round these parts but I am hoping to start the new schedule tomorrow. Judah has an ear infection and had a really hard day today so we will see how tomorrow goes. I just have to say I LOVE baby sign language  Judah woke up from his nap yesterday with a temp of 103. I picked him up gave him medicine and as he was pulling on his ear I said does it hurt and he started signing hurt. I was pretty sure at that point he had an ear infection. I took him to the doctor today and sure enough it is infected. I was so glad he was able to tell me what was wrong. When I put him drops in his ear he freaks out and signs hurt, hurt, hurt it is so sad but so cute all at the same time.

We are moving right along with the adoption stuff. It is so hard at this point because a lot of it is a waiting game. I am still hoping to finish up our dossier this week but we can't move forward until we get our USCIS approval better known as the golden ticket! We may not know for months when we will get to travel for the first time but let's be praying if it is God's will this part of it will go SUPER quick. We are doing some fundraising on Baby A's adoption blog to help cover the costs of the adoption and to be more precise the dossier preparation fees. We have a Thirty- One gifts fundraiser going on right now and 20 percent of all sales using this link  http://www.mythirtyone.com/shop/catalog.aspx will go toward Baby A's adoption. If you haven't checked out Thirty- One gifts before now is the time they have totes, wallets, organizers all kinds of cute stuff! You can order now through the 29th!


I was hoping to start blogging on a regular basis but I just can't seem to find the time to keep up with it. I wrote this blog a few days ago and I am just now finishing it up... my bad. I hope you all have a great Friday and enjoy your weekend! 

Happy Mother's Day!

I try not to get on the computer on the weekends so here is my Mother's Day post a day late.

A few days before Mother's Day we had the kids make pictures for their grandmother's.
 Don't tell Wita cause she hasn't gotten hers yet ;)

This is Judah having a blast being dirty.

We were watching a friends kids the day we did the paintings and here is their youngest son Silas enjoying painting.

This one cracks me up!

Mariah, Kenya and Silas working hard.

Maycee writing her name in all the cards :)

Kenya and Judah decided to have a little chill time after they were done.

I think Kenya wants Judah to be a baby again. Notice her Tangled hair?!?!

Me and two of my kids on Mother's Day.

After church we went over to my Mom's house. She wasn't feeling well so I didn't get a picture of her but here is a picture of my Uncle Jack playing the guitar. 

This is my older sister Brandi with my nephews Blake and Dilan they just moved back to Texas and I could not be more excited. I walked into my Mom's house and my nephew Dilan yelled "HAPPY TEXAS DAY AUNT NESSA!!! oh and Happy Mother's Day." Dilan is one of the sweetest kids I have ever been around he would walk around the house then come back to me and say "hey Aunt Nessa... I love you." I was great! 

Now if only Patrice would move here I would be one happy girl. Oh and in case you haven't heard Patrice won Mom of the year so thank you to everyone who voted!

We mailed off our USCIS paperwork today and I am SOOOOOO EXCITED about that. I will post a more detailed post about in on our adoption blog so click here if you want more details if not just know this was a super exciting step in bringing our boy home!

Oh and don't forget about the Thirty- One Gifts fundraiser that is going on for Baby A it will only last for 5 more days. Click here for details!

I hope you all had a great Mother's Day!

Flash Back Friday/ She is growing up

Kenya at 17 months.

Kenya at 4 years old.

Wordless Wednesday 1/17/10

http://www.michellemonkphoto.com/

A little of this and that/ Patrice won mother of the year!

Patrice won Mother of the year!!!! 

http://triadmomsonmain.com/_blog/My_Blog/post/Announcing_Our_2011_TMoM_Mother_of_the_Year_Winner!/

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I am super excited that my friend Patrice has been nominated as one of the ten finalists for Mother of the Year at Triad Moms on Main. I went and stayed with her family for 8 days recently and learned all things EB. I wrote a super long post about why I think she should win HERE. If you have 2 seconds please click HERE and vote for her. I would love it if she could win this! 

In other news we should get our home study back any day and mail it off along with our USCIS paperwork. Once we mail them off I will start working on our dossier. We can't wait to bring our sweet boy home but we know we still have a ways to go. You can read the updates on our adoption blog.

I am super super excited that Mandy at The Lucky Seven offered to redo my blogs for me as a gift. I love what she has done to our family blog and I can't wait to show y'all the new design for our adoption blog once it is finished. Mandy thank you so much for all of your hard work I LOVE both of the blogs!


It is my new goal (okay it has been my goal for awhile) to get us back on some sort of schedule. I was a VERY scheduled person with Kenya and over the years that has faded a ton... okay there is NO schedule anymore. I would really like to get back on one though because I know it will make every ones lives easier when we leave the kids twice to go to Eastern Europe to meet (the first trip) and adopt (the second trip) Baby A. I also know it will be easier for us all if we are on a schedule once Baby A comes home. So that's what I am planning on doing starting tomorrow. I will let you know how it goes. 

And here is proof that it is almost impossible to get a good picture of Judah since he is always on the go.

 Kenya was such a good sport and tried so hard to get Judah to stand by her.

Have a GREAT day!