Cora LIVE!

We used to do this to Jane and she would start blinking and bracing herself when she would hear me draw in a breath. I told Rob the other day that I wasn't sure Cora was as sharp as Jane because she didn't do that. :) Right after I said that she started doing it. It's official, her brain works!

Her new favorite trick. Jane never did this. I love that she's her own little person!

I have a video on youtube that was taken about a week before this one and is the exact same scenario... except Cora never smiles. Hilarious.

Cora: 5 Months

I guess I should get this up before she turns 6 months. :) We've had alot going on lately. Cora Sue is cute, cute, cute though. Seriously the happiest baby I've ever known.

A Queen!

We're watching The Price is Right this morning and Jane kept saying, "A queen!" I had no idea what she was talking about and kept asking, "what do you mean, a queen?" Finally she said, "A queen, his head!" Who knew spiky hair= a crown?!

Jane: 2 Years, 7 Months

Jane is hi-larious. Really. She is becoming quite the character and keeps us laughing all the time.

Jane and her friend, Liza Jane.

Some of her newest words/phrases are...

hody-mody (holy- moly)- The first time we heard her say this was when we were driving around looking at Christmas lights. We could not stop laughing and she wouldn't stop saying it.

Woah Pete!- I have no idea where she got this phrase but I'm going to guess my mother. She always uses it appropriately too.

Tonight she said, "Hi Chunky Kooks." This is straight from my mouth. I just sometimes forget she's listening. :)

She LOVES wiff-waff, otherwise known as lip gloss.

She has also been known to say "shoot" and "what the heck?" but we really try to discourage her from these. I can't imagine where she's heard them.

Jane loves to interact with Cora now. Lots of times she'll turn the lights off in Cora's room while I'm changing her diaper or put something over her face and say, "What'd my sister do?" She's mocking me or sometimes wanting me to say it to Cora... to ask Cora, "What'd your sister do?" So funny to me how she's figuring out the world around her, how conversations go and who says what.

One of my favorite words she says is "bagaringa" otherwise known as ballerina. After Rob corrected her it turned into "balleringa."

I've been talking with Jane alot lately, especially when she makes foolish choices, about her not being able to be good on her own. We pray that Jesus would help her to obey God and that one day she'll understand that He was good for her. Now in random conversations we get bits and pieces of "Obey God. Obey Daddy. Obey Mommy."

Helping me make a snowman cookie.

She also still mentions at least once daily "Jesus boi-day coming."

We also get random comments about "Jesus on the cross. In the sky."

One of my new favorites is that she puts her little hands together to pray. We definitely haven't taught her this and I'm not sure if she's learned it from church or Miss Pattycake or both. Either way it is SO cute.

She asks to feed Cora every. single. day.

And she LOVES "fwakley shoes" or sparkly shoes. Her cousin Cadence has some fun sparkly shoes that light up. On our way back from FL we stopped at a McDonalds to eat and let Jane play in the play area. We found her sitting in front of the shoe cubby trying to put on someone's sparkly shoes. After we asked her to put them back she started hitting them on the ground trying to make them light up. We've found her some sparkly shoes but the first few days she wore them she kept hitting them on the ground or stomping trying to make them light up. :)

Baby T

We have a new baby in our home, our first real foster baby. I picked him up from the hospital just yesterday when he was 3 days old.

It's strange having a little person in my home who didn't come from me but it's even more strange when I think about the fact that we're the only home he's ever known. I ran by Target on my way to the hospital to pick up diapers and I'm walking through the baby stuff thinking I should at least buy something for him. Who would celebrate his homecoming if we didn't?? I paced up and down the aisles with tears in my eyes thinking this might be a big day for us if he ends up staying in our home forever, but it's a big day for him regardless and no one's there with flowers and balloons and cameras.

I won't go into all the details but we aren't sure how long he'll be in our home. We do know that he won't go back to his birth mom. I keep thinking about where he might end up, either in our home or in someone else's and all I can do is pray that he will know he is deeply loved by his Creator.

I recently read and watched The Help and I find myself looking at him and wanting to chant, "You is kind, you is smart, you is important." I want this baby to be loved. I want him to feel loved.

I've learned something today and it's how Rob and I love differently. Rob loves quickly and easily. The first time he held Baby T yesterday afternoon he had tears in his eyes. He was smitten.

Me, I love slowly but deeply. It might take me a bit but once I choose to love there's no turning back. I've been feeling it today, this love like I just might burst, like the first time Jane babbled to me and the first time Cora laughed. It scares me a little but I can rest in the fact that God is Sovereign over how he grows our family and that He is Sovereign over little T's life. I've decided that if I'm risking feeling my heart being ripped in two for Baby T to feel and be loved fully, then that's a risk I'm going to have to take.

I've been overwhelmed today by God's goodness. I have seen His Body, our church, working just the way He intended it and it's honestly one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. There are always meals being prepared in our church for families with new babies. Not many have fostered or adopted but to be on this end of it and to see our church family embrace this ministry and love this little boy just as much as we do and as God does, is breathtaking. I don't have to worry for one second about him not feeling loved or as loved as a baby who was birthed in our church. I didn't have to say a word. These friends were prompted by the Spirit and listened and obeyed and we get to sit back and watch Him work.

Pray for us as we love on this little boy. Pray for him, for the transition to us, to a possible one somewhere else and for his health. We don't yet know if there's anything wrong but there doesn't appear to be anything as of now, praise the Lord! Most importantly, please pray that T will one day personally know Jesus as His Savior and will make him Lord of his life.

Grace

This week we had our first foster baby. She left last night but was a little 3 week old baby girl. She was placed with a family when she was 2 days old but that family had a trip planned to Disney this week so she came to stay with us. I'm not gonna lie it was a hard week. It was alot harder than it should have been because we were just coming off of a stomach bug. Jane had this weird random bug for 5 days! Then Cora got it for about 5 days and just as she was getting better, baby N came. Cora wasn't sleeping through the night since she wasn't feeling well and was off schedule and baby N definitely wasn't sleeping through the night. Rob works every single night now so I'm home in the evenings by myself and on the weekends he doesn't get home until 1 or 2am so I feel bad asking for help in the night.

My week with a 3 month old and 3 week old

The other night Rob and I were having a pretty deep, intense conversation in the middle of the night (because that's what you do when you're up with babies and emotions are running high :). I was voicing to him that I'm so disappointed in our December this year. I had great plans for this month. I've been preparing for Advent for literally months now. I came into December having an Advent activity for every day planned, a Christmas book wrapped for Jane to open every day, and even a birthday party for Jesus planned to celebrate with Jane's friends. Party day came and went last Saturday and I had to cancel because Cora was throwing up everywhere. Advent activities have gone out the window due to stomach bugs, ear infection, foster baby and me not having a car at night since we only have 1 and Rob works every night. I've just been so disappointed.

One activity that we did do is give Jane a "shepherd's pouch." I got this idea from John Piper's wife's book, "Treasuring God in our Traditions." We gave Jane a "pouch" that she puts money in every time we find her helping/obeying when she's asked or for being kind to her sister or friend without being asked. We explained to her when we gave it to her that we give gifts to people for their birthdays and because Jesus isn't here for us to give him a gift that the Bible says when we do things for other people we're doing them for Jesus. So... we talked to her about people who don't have food or clothes and about kids who don't have mommies or daddies. We told her we would use the money in her pouch to help someone who is in need.

Her "shepherd's pouch"

After my pity party in the night the other night I got up to change baby's diaper and had a verse ringing in my head, "Whatever you do for the least of these, you do unto me." Matthew 25:40 It hit me like a ton of bricks. This inconvenience, this baby that was getting in the way of my December plans, was the very way we as a family were giving a gift to Jesus this Christmas. Talk about conviction!

I did go back to sleep feeling convicted but mostly feeling grateful that the Lord would be so gracious to me to show me my sin, give me a new perspective and remind me that His ways are greater than mine.

"Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved..."

Cora: 4 Months

Profile of a 4 Month Old Cora- 15lbs 15oz (90%) , 26 1/4in. tall (97%), head- 50%

Schedule: Cora is on an amazing schedule. She still does eat/play/sleep all day long and that starts whenever she wakes, anytime in between 5 and 8. If she wakes before 7am we feed her and put her right back down and she'll sleep until it's time for her to eat again at either 8 or 9. She just started not being satisfied with 6oz so we give her 7oz in her first and last bottles of the day and 6oz for the 3 bottles in between.

We didn't start Jane on solids until she was 6 months and I really liked that. I don't want to feed Cora much more formula though (Jane never had a bottle that was more than 6oz!) so I might end up starting her on solids a little earlier.

Health: Cora has had a hard few weeks. She had her first ear infection a couple of weeks ago which really threw us off because Jane has never had one. She also got a stomach bug the following week from Jane. She went several days without eating much at all but has definitely been making up for it since she's been better. She still spits up alot but we aren't giving her Prevacid much at all. She doesn't spit up as much as she used to and she definitely isn't as fussy as she used to be. The pedi told us that the meds are to control the acid, not the amount of spitting up. She told us that the spitting up should stop around 1 year.

Sleep: We still swaddle Cora and put her in the rock-n-play sleeper but are thinking we'll try and wean her from both soon. She's started really fighting us on the swaddle and most days we come in and one or both arms are out of it. I did put her in a sleep sack one day and she did fine but we've kept doing what we know works because this week we've had a foster baby and didn't need any more change. ;)

I've been feeling a little guilty about how big Cora is and really it's only because I have Jane to compare her to and Jane was much smaller than anyone ever thought she would be. I feel like if Cora would have been born a normal size that I wouldn't be so concerned with how much she's eating and gaining but because she was born big I feel I made her that way. I have to keep reminding myself that I ate better with her than I did with Jane and I gained 15-20lbs less with her than I did with Jane. In other words, it wasn't anything I did and I'm trying to just be grateful that she was born healthy and that I had a healthy placenta. I have a close friend who reminds me of that when I bring this up because she didn't have a healthy placenta and had a 4.5 lb baby that was born full-term.

How 4 month old Cora is like her...

mama- laughs all the time

daddy- loves quickly and easily

Treasuring 4 month old Cora bits & details

-Cora LOVES Jane! It makes my heart skip a beat every time she looks at Jane and

starts smiling and she does it every single time she sees her.

- She's doesn't laugh a ton, especially not belly laughs that keep going and going but

she has this great squeal when she's trying to laugh like she's working herself up to it. :)