Nocturnal

Every night while we say J's night time prayers, we pray for Nevaeh. To keep her safe, healthy, to know who we are even though she hasn't met us...etc. We pray that she has a good day, since she is awake when we are sleeping.

Last night J asked an interesting question...

"Why in Nevaeh nocturnal?"!!!!

I got a facelift....

Isn't it perdy! I figure now that we received our referral, and it seems the outlook on everything seems brighter, I needed a new blog design. Thanks to Lena, I got this new look. I love it. Thanks Lena. She even set it all up for me, since I'm so non-computer savey. You guys should go check out her site, she is having a wicked great promotion. She is a fellow adoption blogger, and does this great blog design as well. So do me a favor and check out the site.

Hold the truck....

We are so blessed to have a couple who have said that they will hand deliver a package to Nevaeh when they go over to Ethiopia to pick up their children in the near future.(hopefully next week right Lisa&Jason!) We are forever grateful for you doing this for us. We will pay it forward and take packages for others when we go.

I had a fun time getting the package together. Right away I knew I wanted to make a blankie for Nevaeh, so off to the fabric stash to pick something out. (**note-for future mom's making a blanket to send in the mail, do not use MINKY! It's too bulky. But that was hind sight, and I picked minky with pinkish binding. Also to those fellow quilters you will appreciate this next bit.

Since we are in the process of moving all of my quilting supplies were packed up so here's how I made Nevaeh's simple blankie. Cut out 2 pieces of minky with SCISSORS. We had no rulers, or rollers, so we eyeballed it to try to make it square. (my mom was helping me.) We also had no pins so I just sewed without them. Those of you who have worked with minky know it is VERY slippery. Some seams had 1/2 inch seams.....and some had about 1 inch seams!! I trimmed them with my scissors and made do. The binding was picked out by J, and we sewed it on.(no pins again!) I then proceeded to do hand stitching binding. My close friends will know this IS NOT my favorite part of quilting, but I did it. I was tempted to send it over to my friend M,(you know who you are!!!), but thought, nope, do it my self. Take a look see. No close ups of my blankie, cause it is not square, the binding is funny but MADE WITH LOVE!!!

All the time quilting I was thinking of what we were going to call our baby girl. Lots of names were going thru my head. The night I finished the binding was when we decided on Nevaeh. We love it. Quilting is a relaxing thing for me to do, and it allowed me to focus on her name. The blanket turned out just great in spite of all the little "quilting faux pas"!!

I also bought 2 onesies(that say- mommy and daddy love me) with a pair of pink pants, one sleeper, 1-one piece outfit, 3 socks and a little birdie shirt. Oh and a pair of Robez owl shoes. (most from the 2nd hand store.) I was on the hunt for a little toy and a friend from here gave me one of her daughters(thanks S), but because my blanket was so bulky, I couldn't fit it in :( Also the same pal hooked me up with laminating paper. I just mentioned to her that I wished the school was open so I could laminate some picture of us to send to Nevaeh. Well low and behold, I check my messages the next day, and she had talked to the ladies at the place she works, and even though they didn't have a laminater, one of the ladies offered her own laminating paper for us to use! Wow, I love small town. It worked out great.

The last thing I put in the package is a little note to Nevaeh. Yeah, I know, she's only 4 months old, but work with me here. Maybe the letter will get tucked away and it may come home with her. I can then scrapbook it for her to read at a later time.

Oh yeah, about holding the truck. So I get this all squeezed into a freezer zip lock bag and look at the time. It was just about the time the mail truck leaves. (Okay it was already a few minutes after) I called to the post office and ask if it has left yet.

"Well it's just pulling out. Is it an important package?"
"Well kinda...it's on it's way to friends of ours to send to Ethiopia...."
She cut me off and said "I'll run out and stop him....come down right away. We will get that package out today."

Again, I love living in our small town. Who flags down the mail truck for you!! Love it. All for you Nevaeh. The package made it out, and now en route to Ethiopia.

Cheers,

PS. If you zoom up on the picture of all the items, you can see that the minky has a paisley print on it. Paisley was one of the names we were deciding on. But Nevaeh isn't a Paisley. She is a Nevaeh.

4 months old......

Today Nevaeh is 4 months old! Oh to give her a hug, lay on the floor with her, and rock her to sleep.(actually we didn't do any rocking to sleep past 3 months with J, unless she was teething or sick etc....) but with Nevaeh, we will roll with the punches. Trust me, the first while there will definitely be rocking to sleep if she needs. Anyhow, that's not what I'm posting about so.....

Those of you who have your infants, your 4 month olds', or any age for that matter, don't forget to give your "babies" a squeeze, in fact give them an extra squeeze today, for those of us whose babies are still not in our arms. I can honestly say I took precious moments for granted with J. So give an extra hug tonight.....and say a quick prayer of thanks for your kids....and an extra one for Nevaeh, that she will be healthy and happy today.

Cheers,

At home with the caregivers

I was getting a massage(sigh....relaxing...actually not really cause I'm having shoulder/neck issues..so more therapeutic, but still...sigh) and near the end of it my therapist asked "How many kids do you have?"
"Two" I replied. "Two girls." (How awesome does that sound!!!!! Two girls!) Anyhow.
"Oh that's great" she replied as she was finishing up with the last few stretches. "They must be at home with a caregiver?" She then wipes off the oil and is done with the treatment.
"Yep, they are with a caregiver." Obviously there wasn't enough time to explain that they are with caregivers, just one at home, and one in Ethiopia!!!!

I am so thankful that Nevaeh is being taken care of by our agencies foster home. I know that they will give her the love and care she needs until we can get to her and start giving it to her ourselves. I'm sure she is gaining weight and starting to do the stuff a 4 month old would do. It is so hard knowing that she is going to roll over, and start to sit up by herself, and we won't be there to share it with her, but this is how it rolls when you adopt vs giving birth. You have to wait to share those firsts. (I did have someone say to me....."oh aren't you lucky...you get to skip that first stage of sleepless nights, spit up, and all that baby stuff." ARE YOU KIDDING ME....is what I felt like saying. I would give anything to have Nevaeh here right now and be doing all that "baby stuff" myself. Yes....I do love my sleep, but would give that up over and over again to have Nevaeh in my arms at night soothing her back to sleep, and wouldn't mind being covered in spit up(which by the way I would be very used to....J definitely was a spitter upper!)

But for now, the caregivers in Ethiopia are doing that for me. I am so very thankful for them.
In fact...it is 9:28 am in Addis right now. They are probably getting Nev dressed for the day and giving her a bottle.....

Cheers

Without further ado......

I am so excited. It was a long weekend(literally!), but we finally came to a decision on our daughters name. It was a tough task for us this time around. With J, we had picked out that name before we were even married. No choosing necessary. But this time around, man it was a little more difficult. I love what we picked and it totally suits her.

Nevaeh Chaltu

Not a lot of explanation needed, other than it's heaven spelled backwards. For a nickname it will be Nevi, or Nev. We are big into nicknames!

We had a hard time deciding if we were going to keep Chaltu as her first name. We knew we wanted to keep her name her mother gave her in some form of her name. We decided that we would choose a name that our family picked for her as well.

I wish so badly that I could share pictures with you so you could all see Nevaeh, but until she is legally ours, no such luck. She has big brown eye, big lips(yes, Benj you are right...she does have the Lawson lips!), lots and lots of hair, and she is perfect.

Cheers,