The Year In Pictures ~ 2009

It was hard to do, but I picked one favorite picture from each month of 2009. What a wonderful year it has been. Here's to many more memories in the New Year!

Happy New Year Everyone!

Christmas Morning

Merry Christmas 2009! We had a wonderful morning celebrating just the 3 of us. Michael & I enjoyed the pleasure of sleeping in ~ not sure how many more Christmas' we'll be able to say that, so we took advantage of it while we could. We put together Maggie's big present the night before and thankfully it only took about an hour (unlike our 6+ hour adventure the year before!) Here is a picture on Christmas morning...Pre-Maggie!

Post Maggie!Maggie's new best friend

Maggie walked into the living room, stopped dead in her tracks and said "HORSEY!!!!"

She immediately gave sweet pats to her new friend

She's a natural!
Lots of fun opening presents this yearRipping into the presents

Excitement!

Stocking time!
What is this?
Hmmm....look what this thing can do?!
She L.O.V.E.S. her slinky!
She honestly hasn't spent much time off her horse!
Look at her ride!
Having so much - I just love that sweet smile of her's!
I'd love to tell you that she was praying...but :) It's more like "what shall I play with next?!?!"

We are so thankful for our 2nd Christmas with our greatest gift, Maggie Joy! She continues to be the light of our lives and we can't begin to thank our Heavenly Father for the precious gift of our daughter, chosen just for us!

Christmas Eve with the Crews Crew

This year we celebrated the Crews Christmas at Ashley's house on Christmas Eve. Here are just a few snapshots of our time together.

All the kids: Bobby (11), Cierra (13) (back row), Gabriela (7), Maya (5), Isabela (5) (middle row), Samantha (turns 4 in April) and Maggie (turns 3 in January) in front. We made sure to get a group photo when everyone arrived, while everyone still looked good (aka...girls' hair still in place!)

Oh sweet Maggie Joy :)

Cierra ~ growing up to be such a lovely young lady! Yes, we have a teenager in the family again!

Cierra & Lesley ~ C is now taller than her mom!

Isabela with Nana!

Momma & Maggie

Mamaw & Grandad (my dad's parents)

Mimi & Mom


Maya with her new hat and boots...gotta love the color coordination with the outfit!

Of course, Isabela matched

Twins!

Samantha showing off her new Princess jewelry

Gabriela - growing up so fast!

Oh Maya! What are we going to do with you?!

I love how they play so well together. Samantha sharing her new puzzle with Maggie

Last, but not least, celebrating my siblings' birthdays. Lesley turned the big 30 on the 20th and Ashley & John celebrated their 34th birthdays on Christmas Day. So thankful for each one of them and that we were able to celebrate their special days together.

Another wonderful Christmas shared with family. We are blessed indeed!

Potty Training Day 4

Oh, you mean there is supposed to be a day 4 of potty training? Oh...um...apparently not in our house.

Potty Training Day 3

Remember in my previous post how I was a bit apprehensive about getting too excited about how well Maggie did on days 1 & 2.....I should've gone with that feeling and stuck to it.

Maggie woke up in a bit of a crabby mood, but she was still excited about putting on her big girl panties. However, she refused to put anything else on. No shirt, no pants, no socks...nothing. Ok....fine. It's only 65 degrees in the house. Go ahead. Be cold. I'm not going to fight you. Well, honestly, I did fight with her about it but eventually gave up.

Every 15 minutes, I set the timer but Maggie always ended up needing to go potty before the timer was up. How can someone go to the bathroom so much? I mean, seriously - every single time she sits on the potty she goes. Well, then she had an accident. Ok. No problem. Change panties. Move on. 5 minutes later, another accident...and another...and another....and another. I think you can see the pattern of the first hour of the day. Good grief - are you kidding me? She would always say it after she went. Momma was getting a bit frustrated but I was careful to not express it to her.

She was going so often and not getting to the potty on time, that I decided to bring the potty chair into the living room, where we were spending the morning. Apparently, she didn't like that at all. I don't know if she was embarrassed, which didn't seem to be the case, or what - but she wasn't about to go to the potty in the living room. She then declared that "Momma better put the potty back in the bathroom" as she screamed...and then demanded to have a diaper put back on. After 6 changes of panties and a few tantrums (hers, not mine) - I relented. It was close to nap time anyway. So, she took her nap and I moved the potty chair back to it's original place. I was hopeful that she might want to put on her panties after nap....wasted hope, my friends, wasted hope. She wasn't going to have anything to do with those things today. So, I decided to just let her wear the diaper, and we'll see how things go tomorrow.

Positive note - she did use the potty in between diaper changes right before bed and we talked about waking up and putting on the panties. She seemed excited about it - so we shall see...we shall see.

Days 1 & 2 were great...day 3 NOT so much. There's always tomorrow, right?!

Potty Training Days 1 &2

I've been wanting to get Maggie potty trained for quite a while but I just didn't feel she was quite ready...and I know from talking to my sister and many friends, that if they're not ready, don't push. So we just decided to wait and see what happened.

When she started MDO, I was so excited to hear that they would be working on potty training, since some of the kids in her class were already potty trained. I was really liking the idea of someone else doing the dirty work for me :) However, she didn't attend MDO for all of November & December, so that didn't work...

We had already had the little potty chair out and for quite a while now, I've had her sit on the potty every night, as she waited for her bath to be ready. She eventually learned to go. Then once she started school, we would go to the potty after every diaper change (since I'm assuming that's how they did it at school). Every time she would sit on the potty, she would go.

Since I'm home on medical leave and I basically am just resting throughout the day and not going anywhere, I figured this might be a good time to give it a try.

So, yesterday, we decided to just try it and see what happens. I've heard a lot of different suggestions from different people, what worked and what didn't for them. My sister had given me a bunch of pullups that she never used, so I decided to put one on Maggie yesterday afternoon, after she woke up from her nap. She was pretty excited to see a different kind of diaper but was a bit confused when I put it on her (since she had to step into it). I told her we were going to start going pee pee on the potty today and she said "ok momma". I got the timer out and set it for 20 minutes. So, every 20 minutes, when the timer went off, I would say, Maggie, let's go potty. She would stop whatever she was doing and run to the potty. And everytime she got on the potty, she would go. And we repeated this all day until it was time for bed.

We started all over again this morning but this time, I put a pair of panties on her. She was sooo excited. It was so funny. She didn't know what to do. She pulled her pants up and kept touching her rear, like she was missing something - ha! It's called padding :) Anyway, I decided to for-go the pull-up since it seems too much like a diaper. I figured if she had the panties on and had an accident, she would feel it more. We went all day long, every 20 minutes, to the potty. Around 6pm tonight, she started telling us that she needed to go potty...and sure enough, every time, she went. But then she started saying she had to go potty about every 7 minutes. Oh good grief. Seriously?! I mean, who can pee so much? BUT, I can't tell her no...that would defeat the purpose. So, we visited the potty MANY MANY times today.

She had one accident today and the interesting thing was, that she had it in the kitchen, got the wipeys out, cleaned it up and then said, "Momma, gotta go potty." I took her to the bathroom and of course, she was already wet. She sat on the potty with her head hung low. I said, "uh oh, your panties are wet. It's ok. It was just an accident." She looked up slowly and said - "an accident, momma? oh good. just an accident momma." Now, isn't it interesting how she seemed to think that she had done something wrong. Poor thing.

Overall, I realize it's only the end of day 2, but I am feeling really good about her progress. I honestly wasn't expecting such great results, so quickly. I can only hope that we continue on this path and have as good a day tomorrow.

Does any of you have any suggestions for potty training? What worked and what didn't work for you? How long did it take? I'm curious.....

Updates all around

I'm sorry that I've been so MIA lately but I just don't know where the time has gone...other than recuperating on the couch or in bed for the past 6+ weeks. As most of you know, I was hospitalized at the beginning of November with staph pneumonia in both lungs. I was in the hospital for 14 days. Let me tell you how long that really is. Each minute feels like an hour and the nights were the worst! It was extremely hard because I was away from Maggie that entire time. Michael wasn't allowed to bring her up to see me, due to the hospital's decision to not allow anyone under the age of 10 in as visitors due to the Swine Flu going around. So, I was missing my baby and she was definitely missing her momma. But we survived!

I have been home trying my best to follow the doctors orders - to rest, be still, not get out and don't overdo it. Ok Moms - you know how difficult that is - especially with a toddler! But I think I've done pretty well, and that's because of the wonderful help of my hubby, family and friends. Thank you all so much for all you've done to help us during this challenging time! I can't begin to thank you enough. I am able to drive now and I do get out of the house every now and then, but honestly, I can't do much. I just don't have much energy. The littlest thing wears me out and I'm still prone to get easily winded. So I will venture out to one place, do my thing and then head home for a nap. I've really limited myself to being around a lot of people as well, per doctor's orders. My immune system has been so suppressed from the illness and all the heavy duty antibiotics, that I just can't risk it. It hasn't been easy but it's been necessary.

I did see my pulmonologist yesterday and he said that my chest x-rays looked good. He was actually surprised to see how well they looked. He didn't expect my lungs to look as good as they did. So that's a good thing! The infections are either gone or much reduced. I am scheduled to see him again in 3 months with more x-rays, just to ensure that everything has healed up properly. I still see my internist every 2 weeks, as he is the one who will release me back to work. As of right now, he won't discuss me going back until after the holidays. My CT scan did show 2 things that I will need to follow up with him about - kidney stones and a hiatal hernia. I had kidney stones back in April and I just assumed that I passed them. So, either I didn't pass them or I have new ones. Either way, I'm not suffering from any pain but it is good to know that they are there, in case symptoms do arise. As for the hernia, he said it could've been there for a while, or it could have been caused by this latest episode. Not sure what is to be done, if anything, with that, so I guess we will see. Hopefully it's nothing to be concerned about. I've had enough to deal with lately!

While I was in the hospital, we received notification that our adoption court date had been set for December 9th. We couldn't have been more thrilled. We have been waiting since April to get our court date. Seriously, we had absolutely nothing to do but just to wait. Well, or so we thought. During the past 7 months, we have been told by our agency that everything was done, we were just waiting on Maggie's full legal file (we have still not received) and for approval/denial of continuation of her medical benefits (due to her sleep apnea). That was it. Nothing else for us to do. In the email regarding the adoption, which was received 3 weeks before the adoption was to be final, our agency proceeds to tell us that we are not in compliance and need to take 3 classes that have expired, as well as get our house re-inspected by the fire marshall. WHAT?! Are you serious? I thought maybe my pain meds have kicked in and I wasn't reading the email right. Nope - it wasn't the pain meds. They told us that we would have to have these completed for us to proceed with the adoption and that we basically had 4 days to get it done. Ok, first of all, I'm in the hospital and I would remain there another 10 days. Wasn't going to happen. Secondly, they didn't even offer the classes during those 4 days anyway. But most importantly, why are you just now telling us?! We asked repeatedly if there was anything we needed to do, where they missing anything, etc....Always the answer was no. You're good. Nothing for you to do. OH REALLY!?

I was furious. Completely irate. I just couldn't believe that this was happening. So I sent a very nice email explaining I was in the hospital, it wasn't going to be possible and we had to contact our attorney to have our adoption postponed. I've never been more upset. I am so angry with our agency. IF we had known, we could have easily taken care of all of this over the past 7 months. It could've been done in a week's time, HAD WE KNOWN. This was completely unacceptable to us. Oh, and our agency doesn't have any training classes during the month of December.

In all reality, we would've been hard pressed to get to the adoption proceedings on the 9th. It would not have been in the best interest of my health to be in public around so many people. However, it didn't feel like that at the time.

So, we are in the process of getting our classes scheduled and getting the fire marshall to come out again for another inspection. We are hopeful that we can get everything done in January and be in court to finalize the adoption in February! We would so appreciate your continued prayers. While there is nothing out there that needs to be done to tell us that Maggie is ours, it sure will be nice to have everything finalized and to just be done with all the agencies, visits, weekly reports, etc. Those of you who deal with the foster care system are yelling a big AMEN!

Next on my list of things to do: get Maggie potty trained. She's going potty anytime you ask her - so that's good! We'll just see how she does with initiating it. Should be interesting. I'm sure I'll have plenty of stories to share.

Well my friends, I'm beat....just spending this amount of time at the computer has wiped me out. Until something else exciting happens....

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and a fantastic 2010!

Love you all ~

Visiting Santa

Maggie had NO problems visiting Santa last year, so my hopes were high for this year's visit. Too high I suppose. Maggie has been talking about seeing Santa for about a week, couldn't wait to see him, said she was going to smile SO big and give Santa a big hug. Uh hmmmmmm....right. Here's some proof that she was really excited (before seeing him!) She was perfectly fine UNTIL it was her time to sit on Santa's lap...and this is pretty much how it went.

(Waiting for Santa)

Hi Santa, meet mad Maggie. No, really, she's normally very sweet and smiles alot. She's really does have a pretty smile. She really is a cute kid. She loves to give hugs and kisses and said she really wanted to give them to you. So, when she says "no want to. no want to." I'm pretty sure she does. This was evident as she was placed in her stroller upon leaving and she began to scream "me want to kiss Santa. Me no smile for Santa. Me smile now for Santa, Momma. Smile NOW!" Oh the joys of parenthood. Maybe next year will be more successful.

So, here is how she looked like most of the time ~ the photographer was really great and tried his best...Maggie just wasn't going to cooperate ~


And here was the best shot of the day:


There's always next year! Merry Christmas everybody!

December already?

I just can't believe that it's December already. I honestly missed the whole month of November. I have no pictures to share, as I didn't take my camera out once. I just haven't had any energy, during this recovery process.

However, I did have to make the time to change my background on the blog to something "Christmas"y....I mean, c'mon....you didn't think I would miss that, would you?

On the homefront, Michael & Maggie are doing well. Maggie is growing like a weed and talking up a storm. We sure are blessed to be celebrating our 2nd Christmas season with our sweet little girl.

It's rumored it may snow here today....we'll see....we'll see!

I hope to blog a little more this weekend/next week as I rebuild my strength.