Two

My baby girl turned two on Friday.

Sometimes I am still surprised I have her.

 

 

 

I was 38, had 5 children, my oldest was 15 and was happily doing my foster care work. We had a baby or toddler running around the house all the time. I had my baby fix. I was taking precautions (If you know what I mean). It was medically necessary. My mom parts were damaged from so many c-sections and the doctors had advised me not to have more children.

But God had other ideas.

I would be lying if I said I knew right away. In fact, I had been to the doctor because I didn't feel right. Looking back, I bet He was up there chuckling the way we do when we know a great secret. You would think a woman with 5 children would know the signs....

I finally discovered I was expecting Ellie when I was about 12 or 13 weeks. My excitement clouded with doubts if my body could handle it. But, long, long story short, it did, and here she is turning 2.

So often people say "where has the time gone?" I know where the time has gone. I have loved every minute of raising her. My little unexpected miracle.

Although to be honest, we may have loved her a little too much, she didn't walk until she was 19 months old. It took 3 months of therapy and 2 sets of xrays to determine that the only thing stopping her was 5 older siblings and two older parents.

I never saw myself as an older mom. I had Hannah when I was 23 and Nathan when I was 24. Now will be 50 with a 10 year old. 60 when she is in college.

God better have some big plans for all that.

The days of our lives

So I am sitting in my kitchen thinking about the events of yesterday...

In one day I caught one boy hiding in the bathroom playing his DS against all our rules, found out one boy went out in his BRAND NEW shoes to play in the wet field, refused to allow one boy to go to church after he "ran out of time" to clean his room, and discovered one toddler girl eating someone else's gum while strapped in her highchair at church. Never did find out whose gum that was.

Shocking I know.

But mixed in the day were also sweet moments like the one above. Nathan was reading to Ellie, and Ellie insisted that he read this book. Turns out this book is a blank time line. So he was making up some stories to go along with the blank pages. May not look like much, but it warmed my heart to see this 6'1" boy/man reading to his baby sister. It almost made up for the not cleaning his room. Almost..

Blogging....here goes

I do not know how to blog.

Okay now you know before you read on that I don't know what I am doing. My daughter Hannah is a wonderful blogger and I love reading her posts, but I don't know how to blog.

She keeps asking me to blog, she even set up my cute background and asks me every couple of days if I have started. I tell her, I don't know how to blog.

And I have suffered from the mom guilt of knowing your child wants you to do something, and not doing it.

I have lots of excuses, I am busy, I am tired, I have nothing to say....

But here I am, checking out this blogging world.

I have put it off a long time, but this morning I think the whole universe was in on the guilt trip. Hannah's alarm went off at 4:30 this morning. The big problem with that is that Hannah is not here! So I stumbled up to her room, and blindly mashed buttons until it stopped. I went back downstairs, dozed back off...................................beep, beep, beep...............................Yep Hannah's alarm again. I must have hit the snooze. This time I went back upstairs, turned on the light, and shut off the alarm for what I hoped was the last time.

Back downstairs, I dozed again, only to be awaken at 5:00 by the small whimper of Isaiah. I waited, holding my breath. Isaiah is a baby that loves to sleep. I don't think he has woken up before 9 in a couple of months. He fussed again. I waited. This went on for several minutes before I realized he wasn't going to go back to sleep without some intervention. So I made a bottle, went up and fed him, wrapped him warmly and put him back to sleep.

This was when I knew, I must start today.....

For now let me introduce myself.

My name is Melissa and I am the proud mom of 7 kids today. I have 6 permanent kids, all biologically mine and one sweet foster baby. Hannah is the oldest and the reason for this blog, she is 17. If she were here, and it wasn't six in the morning, I would set up a fancy link to her blog, but I guess that will be another day. Nathan is 16, Samuel is 12, Joshua is 10, Andrew is 8 and Ellie will be 2 on Friday. One foster baby is Isaiah and he is 4 months old.

I am married to a wonderfully patient man, who allows me to follow my passions for helping children named Stephen.

Our family has been a foster family for almost 5 years.

I plan to tell you the truth. I can share little snip-its on Facebook, but I will tell you the whole truth. And honestly sometimes the truth ain't pretty.