Inspired by my friend Jenny who took some adorable pictures of her daughter today, I thought, “Why in the world don’t I get the camera out more often and get my child outside and just start taking pictures?” Well, for one thing, it’s been insanely hot, and another, we’ve been insanely busy… but today worked out well on both accounts. Here’s my cutie:
This morning I decided Anna’s hair is long enough to try some pigtails. She likes it… she says “I have both hairs!” She looks so grown up. She’s also been chattering away pretty much nonstop this morning. Coincidence? Or maybe the pigtails give her some attitude!
This post is a couple of weeks late, but thus is life right now. :) On July 4, we finally got to meet our new niece, Kendall! She doesn’t live very far away, but for one reason or another it just hasn’t worked out for us to go see her. But my brother and his family were able to make it to Conway for a couple of days.
Anna was so sweet around the baby! She was very interested in her and always wanted to know where she was. She kissed her and patted her gently. She brought her toys. And she didn’t have any problem at all with David or me holding her. This is a good sign!
No, that wasn’t a self-commentary on my nearly-6-month-pregnant shape (this time!). Today is Cow Appreciation Day at Chick-fil-A, where if you dress like a cow, you get a free meal! Apparently it’s an annual event, and we just found out about it last year and participated for the first time this year. I think it will be a yearly family tradition.
Anna really got into the spirit of things and ate all SIX—that’s right, SIX—of her chicken nuggets! Gracious!
In just a little over a year, we’ve had to say goodbye to three dogs. First, we lost our precious Sasha to cancer. Then, we were fostering Russ through his heartworm treatment, and we lost him to distemper.
This past Thursday, we said goodbye to the third, but under a much different set of circumstances. Our foster dog Bailey found a new home up in New Jersey, so we went down to Little Rock to see him off on the P.E.T.S. transport that will deliver him and about a hundred other dogs from the South to their new homes in the Northeast, which they do every week. (They currently have an 8-week show on Animal Planet, airing on Saturday nights.)
It was hard to say goodbye and we will miss him greatly, but fostering all the way through to the send-off is rewarding as well. He arrived today, and his new mom wrote how much they adore him and how much sweeter he is than they ever could have imagined. She thanked us for loving him and taking care of him until he could be theirs. They have been counting down the days until he would arrive! Fostering definitely fills a need in the animal rescue world. We are honored to have been a part of Bailey’s story, and we hope to do it again in the future (after we have our own dog(s), according to David—he says he can’t do this again unless he has a dog to come home to!)
Here are few pics from send-off day:
Bailey has been adopted! After 6+ months with us as our foster dog through All About Labs, he is going to join a couple in Hoboken, NJ who want to make him part of their family. He’ll head off on the doggie bus on June 24 and arrive two days later. The woman owns her own business and will take Bailey to work with her. They also live close to a dog park, so he should get the chance to play with some other dogs.
We have mixed feelings about this, of course, but I suppose all foster parents do. We’ve loved him, taken care of him, and integrated him into our family, all the while knowing that we would be sending him off when the time is right. Anna loves him, and I know she’ll be asking about him for a while, but I think she’s young enough that she’ll transition fine to another dog when we foster or adopt again.
So we’ve got another week and a half to love on him, play with him, and get ourselves ready for the big day.
Anna graduated! I’m so proud!
Ok, so it was from “Mother Goose on the Loose” story time at the library. Since she’s 2 now, she’s supposed to move up to “Toddler Time” for the next year. So after story time today, they held a little graduation ceremony complete with certificate and refreshments. (No graduation speaker, thankfully.) I’m sure the kids didn’t have a clue what it was all about, but there were lots of proud parents there!
… girl!
Yep, we are expecting another healthy baby girl! I had my Level II ultrasound yesterday down in Little Rock to check for any abnormalities (not because of any existing concerns, but because of “advanced maternal age”), and everything they saw looked healthy and normal. Although the doctor couldn’t see everything he was looking for in the heart, what he could see of the heart as well as all the other anatomical features looked fine, so David and I were satisfied enough to not schedule a return visit. FINALLY, at the very end, he was able to get a good enough look to say he was 90% certain it was a girl. That’s good enough for us, especially since I know my own doctor will do a couple more ultrasounds before my due date, so I’ll ask her to make sure. :)
We are thrilled to be having another little girl. I know you’re not supposed to have a preference, but we did. I think most people probably do whether they admit it or not, so we just went ahead and admitted it. If it were a boy, I know we would love him like crazy, and once he was here, we would marvel at why we ever wished for anything different. Maybe a boy is in our future; I don’t know. (We are seriously considering adopting in the future, and I have no idea when, from where, what age child, etc.) But for now, we’ll have 2 little girls—how precious is that?
And before any parents of same-sex siblings get on my case, yes, I do realize that another girl doesn’t mean another Anna. Anna is so wonderful and has been a blessing beyond our wildest dreams, and I know that our second daughter may be completely different than the first. But she’ll be a blessing beyond our wildest dreams too, I know it. Anna is very particular about things, plays with her toys the way they were intended to be played with, already knows her letters and numbers at age 2, and doesn’t like to be messy. Will the second child be the crazy, creative artist that leaves David and me scratching our heads wondering how in the world to help her channel her energy?
I hope that, for both of our girls, we can help them find what they’re good at and do it well. David and I share a lot of the same strengths and weaknesses. If one of our girls shows an interest in what we’re weak in, I hope that we are able to recognize it and help her succeed in whatever she’s supposed to do.
Oh my goodness, could this child be any sweeter? I don’t think so! I know I’m a little biased, but she’s just the most precious thing ever. She smiles so much and is happy most of the time. She is smart and picks up on everything. She says “thank you” when we give her something and “bless you” when we sneeze (it comes out more like “ba-bash,” but that’s what she means). She tries to do so much for herself now, and we try to let her. Her verbal skills are developing, and she’s starting to communicate with us more and more that way (although she has understood us for a long time now). She sometimes sings along to her lullaby CD now—it started out as just random syllables sung in a sweet little voice, but lately the syllables are starting to resemble the actual words.
There’s a lot more I could say, but I’ll just leave you with some pictures from this afternoon.
It was a gorgeous day today (a fact that was apparent to the rest of central Arkansas as well), so we thought a great way to celebrate Anna’s birthday was for David to play hooky from work and take us to the zoo. It’s so great that he can take off and make up the hours whenever! Anna loved it so much she cried when we left, but I promised her we would come back. She did a few of her animal sounds, and a lot of the animals made “a mess” and needed “a bath” (see earlier post). She also enjoyed climbing on every single park bench when she was out of her stroller.
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