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!

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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!

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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:

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We are planning to move in on Saturday! It took a little longer than we first thought to get all the work done, but there was a lot that needed to be done. The house was formerly owned by a smoker, so it needed new carpet and new paint, floor to ceiling. In fact, we had the ceilings scraped and retextured, and they look great. The paint is finished except for a few touch-ups, and the carpet should be installed today and tomorrow. I used to wonder why anyone would pay people to paint the inside of their house, but since the entire thing needed to be done before we moved in, and David has to work, and I’m pregnant and have a toddler to take care of, it would have been impossible for us to do it ourselves in a timely manner. I really like the drywall guys who did the ceiling texturing, as well as the painters, who painted all the walls, ceilings, and trim, so if you need a recommendation for either of those, let me know.

David took some “before” pictures a couple of weeks ago, so I’ll try to get some “after” pictures and get them posted. Honestly, though, moving in has priority over picture-taking, so don’t hold your breath!

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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.

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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!

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… 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.

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You think our Bailey-boy needs a little white basket with pink gingham lining? He seems to have taken a liking to my parents’ Poms’ basket. I told him it was kind of a girly basket, but he doesn’t seem to care. :)

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Around my parents’ property, fortunately for us! We’re staying out at “the Ranch,” as we call it, while we’re in between houses. My parents have a nice place with 5 acres a few miles outside of town, and there are 2 pairs of Canada geese, each with 7 babies, and a lone white goose that accompanies them. They’re usually pretty far out from the house, close to the little lake, but this evening one family came up a little closer to the house to eat some of the scratch grain my dad puts out. Pretty cool, huh?

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We are packing up and preparing to vacate our house in a couple of weeks! It sold a few weeks ago, and so far everything is on track for us to close on time. The inspection on our home revealed nothing major except the need for a new roof, which fortunately was covered by our insurance due to hail damage. It felt so good to have confirmation that we are responsible homeowners and have taken good care of this house through the years. I knew it, but it was nice to really know.

We have found a new house, and I love it! Or, rather, I love the house it will become. It’s an older house that needs a little work before we can move in, but I am so excited about the house it will be. We aren’t the kind of people that want to move every few years, so we really wanted a house that would meet our needs the whole time our kids are growing up, and this one fits the bill. It’s in a great neighborhood, it has lots of space for our kids and all the friends they’ll bring home through the years, it’s on a wonderful lot with a big back yard, and it has a great layout with the floor plan we want. (Conway seems to be obsessed with split floor plans, where the master is on one side of the house with the remaining bedrooms on the other. I’m sorry, but if there’s a fire, or if someone is trying to break into our house in the middle of the night, I want to be able to get to my babies in two seconds flat and get out of there!)

There will be a few weeks between moving out of this house and moving into the new one, so we will be crashing with my parents in the interim and storing our stuff. It’s not the way I had originally envisioned moving, but it will work out ok. They have plenty of space for us and will love having Anna around more. They’re very accommodating!

I’ve been trying to pack, but this is all new to me. I’ve never in my life moved in such a way that we had to pack up the entire contents of our house at once. When my parents moved back when I was in college, it was an in-town move with some overlap between the houses, so we just threw some stuff in boxes, drove stuff to the new house, emptied the boxes and used them again, etc. Everything didn’t have to be actually packed. You could just strap a lamp into the passenger seat of your car, throw some pots and pans in a box and stick it in the floorboard, grab some hanging clothes and pile them in the backseat, and you were all set. Same thing when David and I moved from our first apartment into this house. This time, everything has to be well-packed in boxes. That’s easy enough for the stuff we don’t use every day (I’ve already packed things like books, china, decorations, games and movies), but we’re still living here and using our stuff, so how/when do I pack it? It’s a learning experience for sure—one I’ll have to learn all over again next time because we’re NOT wanting to do this again for at least 20 years!

So, in case you were wondering, there you have it. I’ll post more about the new house once it’s actually ours.

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