4 months

Our little Amelia turned 4 months yesterday. Seriously, where has the time gone?!? In some ways it seems like it was just yesterday that we were in Florida excited about getting her out of the hospital, then anxious to leave and bring her home. Yet, here we are and it is already 4 months later. Yesterday as I was talking to her and she was smiling and kicking and "talking" to me, I realized how much she really has grown. It seems like the tiny newborn stage passes far too quickly. She is such a sweet and happy little baby. She smiles all the time and has the sweetest little grin. And of course, she just gets cuter and cuter every day. As the past 4 months have flown by and I feel like its going so fast that we are surely missing out on something, it makes me think of her birthmother. Just as I woke up Friday thinking it was Amelia's 4 month birthday, I'm sure she thought of that as well. We have been able to watch Amelia grow, cuddle her, cherish her, all because her birthmother was willing to not be able to do those things. And after meeting her, I could see how much she loved Amelia and I'm sure she thinks about her all the time. We have sent her pictures and hopefully she will be in contact with us.
What a precious gift from God we have been given through her!!

Birthday Twins

I didn't take this picture, actually I wasn't even there when this picture was taken. As this picture of these two cousins meeting for the first time was being taken, I (along with my hubby, Isabella, and teens from our church) were river tubing "way down yonder on the Chattahoochee". This is my cousin's little boy Christian and to steal the title from Trish, they are Birthday Twins! They both were born on March 21st - although Amelia is about 15 or so hours older than Christian. And as my child was being born, I was in a car driving down to Florida, but Trish decided to go the old fashioned route and was in the midst of labor. I guess they can't fool too many people about being twins - although right now they do both have the same hairstyle! I love that she caught Amelia in the midst of a curtsy. You can already see a little bit of their personalities coming out in this picture!! Now if we only lived closer so we could share the birthday party expenses........

Two and a half

Today, our first little gift from God is 2 1/2 years old!! I cannot even believe how fast the time has flown. As I look at this picture I wish that some how I could go back for even just a few hours to when Isabella was this small. This was taken at almost 3 weeks and we had just been home from California for a few days. Of course, I love the stage Isabella is in now and I'm excited to continue watching her grow, but still it would be nice to hold her at this size again. Looking at this picture also brings back all of those feelings again - the newness of her, the miracle of holding the answer to our years of praying, and just the amazement that God would actually choose to give us such a precious little blessing. The last one I actually still feel on most days, I'm still amazed that God gave us this beautiful little girl! I realize the idea of the "gift" picture wasn't anything original or new, but I knew right away that I wanted to take a picture of her like this - her middle name actually means "gift from God". And that she is, even on days when she is unbelievably active/hyper, quite stubborn, and sometimes just downright disobedient - she is still the most precious Gift from God!!

A Mommy Moment

I realize this doesn't look like the cutest or most creative picture - but it is going to be one of my favorites. I'm constantly putting Amelia on Isabella's lap or sitting them together, but for this picture, Isabella said she wanted to lay down by baby sister and then she said "Take picture mommy!" Now that Amelia is interacting with her more, its fun to watch them together. As soon as Amelia sees Isabella, a cute little grin will come on her face and Isabella enjoys trying to make her baby sister smile and "talk". I'm excited to see them playing together as they get older and please don't anyone tell me about how they will fight, not want to share, tell on each other --- I'd rather just live in my own little fairy tale as long as I can.

This picture was taken Christmas of 2005 - just before Isabella turned 1. It is of Isabella, Kenny, Kenny's mom, and Kenny's Grandpa --- 4 generations. By the time Isabella came along all of my grandparents had passed away, so I knew I wanted to get a picture of her with her only great grandparent that was still living. So we took a 4 generation picture. Tonight, Kenny got a call from his mom that his Grandpa passed away. He had been sick for a little while and in some ways it was "expected" - but how can you ever truly expect death. Since we live so far away, I didn't know Grandpa Prokop extremely well, we saw him once or twice a year at the most, but he had to have been one of the jolliest people I've ever met. Constantly smiling and laughing and finding enjoyment in the simple things of life. Three of these "simple things" that he would enjoy would be his family, his pets, and watching his sports - I'm sure the rest of the family knows more, but in the time I spent with him, those are things I will remember best. Up until the last couple years when it was harder on him, he would spend most of the year buying Christmas presents for all of his grandkids and great grandkids -- I personally could not tell you how many that is, but in Kenny's family alone - that's 5 kids with spouses and 15 grandkids -- and you could tell he got such a joy out of doing this. My favorite gift was our first year of marriage and we got what I think is called a wedding or anniversary clock - I can't remember, but I remember him explaining it to us. He also always got the couples a blanket - I'm not sure his reasoning, but it was always a very practical gift, and I doubt we will ever run out of blankets in our house. I regret the fact that along with my grandparents my girls will never get to know Grandpa Prokop, that they were not able to experience going to Grandpa's around Christmas and getting a doll, like he would get the young granddaughters. But I am glad that I was able to get to know him just a little and that we do have this happy memory of the four generations to always cherish!

4th of July

Here's a couple pictures of my girls from yesterday. The first one is the look we get when we ask Isabella to smile, some how she associates smile with scrunching her nose. We had a fun 4th - we spent the morning/afternoon with our friends Randy, Andrea and Makenna having a cookout and swimming. Then last night we went up to my brother and sister-in-law's house for a cookout. We were going to go see some fireworks, but after Isabella saw some smaller fireworks, she decided that she didn't like them. Hopefully, this is just a phase - I think she has realized she can be afraid of things. She loved them last year, but she decided they were too loud this year. Although, on the way home, we could see alot of fireworks in the sky and she would say "I love it, fireworks!" We all had lots of fun and Isabella woke up asking to see everyone again today -- wouldn't that be nice to party every day!! :)


Also, here's a picture of my brother, Mike's barn. He has been building it to use as a workshop for making his instruments. I thought it looked rather patriotic yesterday.

Karma

Tonight we decided to start our July 4th holiday out the good ole American way - with baseball! After a stopping to eat pizza for dinner we headed to a baseball game. Isabella just loves going and is constantly asking if she can "go to a ball game". Of course, before she actually made it to sitting down and watching the game, she had to stop by the playground. As my title of this blog may be a little confusing, I have to tell you about something that happened while we were there. To begin with, when we got to the ticket booth (almost half way through the game) the guy told us they were doing some kind of "chinese fireworks" --- why they called it that, I'm not sure --- anyway, so as we are sitting on the grass we notice alot of people with these big balloons and of course Isabella wanted one. Then we saw a guy with a bag full of them over to our left giving them out. So, Kenny as well as the guy next to us went over to get one. Kenny came back empty handed, but guy next to us came back with two -- yeah, you were only supposed to be getting one. Isabella is still asking for a balloon as this guy blows his balloon up and his wife sticks the other in her pocket. I mean, come on folks, its a balloon - yes, it is big and it makes some loud squeaky sound when the air is let out - but its a BALLOON and your in your 30's!! I was a little frustrated thinking it was bad enough to get 2 when you were only allowed one, but then to knowingly hear our little 2 1/2 year old sweetly saying she wanted a balloon - "pweas", well that's plain rude. Next this same guy kept turning around and looking at me and Amelia then he would look over at Kenny and Isabella. Now, I'm used to the "looks" that we as a transracial family get, but his look was different. Can't explain it, you would have had to seen it. No exaggeration, he did this atleast 10 times, at least! Then sometimes he leaned over and whispered something to his wife. (I realize I have no idea what he was saying or thinking, normally I'm not so quick to judge, but normally people aren't so obvious.) Although I really had no desire to say anything rude to him, I really just wanted to say - "yes, she is black, yes we are white - we haven't changed from the last time you looked at us". With some "looks", I realize some people just aren't sure whether to ask if she's adopted because they are afraid they may offend me, or there are some who don't exactly understand why people would adopt transracially, and there are those that Kim, (the lady who did our homestudy/post placement) and I laughed about that are looking at me in judgment thinking my girls have "different fathers" not realizing they have different birthparents in general. :) But it really doesn't bother me what people think, honestly it doesn't, not in this. If it is just a matter of skin color, I can't help what they think, I just have to pray that God will open their eyes. Now when they say things, I have to figure out how to respond correctly -- and when my girls get older and start noticing looks or getting comments, then I'm sure it will affect me more. Anyway, all that to say this couple were extremely rude in several ways. NOW - for where there "Karma" came in - #1:My adorable precious "home body" Amelia -- Amelia loves to be at home in her bed or on the floor with her toys, when we are out and she gets tired, she gets really cranky and even holding her doesn't work - she just has to cry for a few minutes until she finally realizes we aren't going to put her in her bed and she just gives up and sleeps. So she got in one of these moods--- cry, cry, try the passy, nope, cry a little louder, try rocking the car seat, nope, cry a little louder, take her out and hold her, nope...... well, I could see this same couple keep turning around and looking at her and getting frustrated that she was crying. HELLO PEOPLE, we are at a very noisy ball game and you, like us, are sitting in the cheapest of the cheap seats - the grass. This is normally the point that I would take Amelia and go walk her around somewhere that she wouldn't bother people, but as Kenny turned around and asked me if she was ok - I with almost a twinkle in my eye, smiled and said, "She'll be fine." I know this is terrible of me, but yes I was kind of glad that my cranky little baby was bothering them. Not to worry, this soon ended and no, I didn't pinch her to try and get her to cry some more. :) #2: A few minutes later a little boy down from us rolled his little souvenir ball and knocked over their drink. I realize once again that it is probably very wrong for me to be happy about this, but I have to say that in some crazy way I felt justified -- I don't actually believe in "Karma", but if I did, this would be a little bit of that coming back to bite them. Ok - so its a little juvenille and silly, but every now and then in the midst of this you have to have a lighthearted outlook so that you don't start letting things fester and bother you.