if you’re looking into international adoption, please read this! URGENT!!! http://www.mommylife.net/archives/2006/06/urgent_adoptive.html

when i put up a suggestion option, amy suggested grace or gracie and jenn suggested belle or bella. i was like hmmmmmm and came up with bella grace. i decided on the name and jerry said it fit her. he also really liked oreo tho.

she went to the vet today. {a very sweet, generous blog reader of mine paid for it!!!! the person said that bella HAD to be seen just to be on the safe side. i am SOOOOO thankful to this person, as we would never have been able to afford this!! thank you AGAIN!!!}

she has bruised tissue and it could have damaged the growing tissue but there’s no way to know right now. none of her bones are broken. the vet gave her an anti-inflamatory pain med and some fluids to help protect her liver (from the med). said to watch her and make sure she starts acting more normal in the next few days. since being home she already ate all her food so that’s good news!!

jeremiah says ‘beyya’ for bella. LOL!

thanks for praying for her and thanks for the suggestions everyone!! and generous reader, you KNOW how much we appreciate you!!!!

she is a beautiful sweet little thing and we already love her!!

i will be changing the layout again when time permits. i hear it’s not looking right for some people (and some people are deeply disturbed by it LOL!) and i don’t want that. it was a tricky layout i shouldn’t have altered. :/

there are changes going on over here too. we gave kc to my brother. nothing big happened - we had been wanting to give him to him for a few years now. but josh finally has his own home, with a fence, so now is the time. kc has always loved uncle josh so it’s no biggie. we didn’t feel kc was getting the attention he deserved and needed and he also has had a few too many close calls with the kids and nipping, plus we were growing tired of the neighbors getting annoyed with us over his barking. small dogs bark, i guess, and it’s something we’re supposed to deal with.

today ushered another new change: we have a new member of the family! we haven’t named her yet (you can help with that maybe!) but she is an ADORABLE little black and white kitten. my mom brought her over today, to help with the mice and to be a new little friend.
jeremiah was trying to chase her around and he climbed under a chair to follow her…when he got up, the chair flipped over and landed on her paw.
she was limping and really nursing her paw.
so she is now sleeping (has been trying to sleep since it happened earlier) and i noticed her paw is swollen!!!!
what should i do?
we cannot afford to take her to the vet to get it checked out. we were wondering where the money would come from for just shots, worms, etc etc, and now this.
is there a kitty pain-killer? anything i can do besides keeping the boys away from her and letting her be alone?
any advice would be great!

the trip to see jerry’s family was great. everyone adored the boys. jeremiah was his usual takes a long time to warm up self, and never really got exceptionally close to anyone. he really really loved his uncle bill and his aunt gin tho. josiah was his usual friend to all self - he went from lap to lap of whoever wanted to hold him. they all just loved them. i’m afraid i didn’t get many pics taken. i kept thinking, oh i’ll have plenty of time to take some more pics…um yeah, never happened. i got a few, but nothing incredibly memorable. but i’m so glad we went!!

please pray for me. i am a hormonal mess. some days it’s better than others, but i feel like i’m constantly on a pms train, and i never know when i’ll be getting on or off!!! i have yet to start my cycle again (still nursing strong) and don’t know when i will. it’s very upsetting to feel this way. SIGH.

well here she is: help me name her!!!

I was tagged by MandyGrace.

1. Grab the book nearest to you, turn to page 18, and find line 4.

A. “and tender” {whole quote: In every work the beginning is the most important part, especially in dealing with anything young and tender. (from the book The Baby Blessing)}

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2. Stretch your left arm out as far as you can. What can you touch?

A. the wall

3. What is the last thing you watched on TV?

A. beginning of treasure hunters

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4. Without looking, guess what time it is.

A. 920pm.

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5. Now look at the clock. What is the actual time?

A. 921pm

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6. With the exception of the computer, what can you hear?

A. Fan.

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7. When did you last step outside? What were you doing?

A. about 2pm, went out to get bags out of the van.

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8. Before you started this survey, what did you look at?

A. kristy’s survey (and new beautiful blog layout!)

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9. What are you wearing?

A. pink striped shirt, jeans

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10. Did you dream last night?

A. i think so but i have no idea now what it was!

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11. When did you last laugh?

A. tonight at jeremiah and josiah - they are always so funny

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12. What is on the walls of the room you are in?

A. they are bare except for plugs, lightswitches, fire alarms. there are other thing sitting up against them, but that wasn’t the question.

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13. Seen anything weird lately?

A. not that i can think of

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14. What do you think of this quiz?

A. kinda boring lol

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15. What is the last film or video you saw?

A. don’t remember - probably blue’s big music show (blue’s clues)

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16. If you became a multi-millionaire overnight, what would you buy?

A. pay off loans. newer van, truck for jerry, lots of savings bonds, boys college money saved up, build our own house in the country, with lots of land but still close enough to town to not be out of the way.

17. Tell me something about you that I don’t know.

A. well what do you know?? ummm how about i want to get pregnant with a girl soon?

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18. If you could change one thing about the world, regardless of guilt or politics, what would you do?

A. abortion would not exist.

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19. Do you like to dance?

A. just silly dancing with my babies or slow dancing with my hubby. mmmmm.

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20. Comment to George Bush:

A. i think you have done a prettly good job considering all that’s happened during your time in office. (used some of kristy’s answer)

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21. Imagine your first child is a girl, what do you call her?

how strange that this question is here…of course i HAVE a first child already, but my answer is jalia annemarie.

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22. Imagine your first child is a boy, what do you call him?

A. hmmm let me think…how about jeremiah thomas? yeah, that has a nice ring to it!

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23. Would you ever consider living abroad?

A. if that’s where the Lord led. (kristy’s answer)

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24. What do you want God to say to you when you reach the pearly gate?

A. Well done good and faithful servant. (Same as kristy)

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25. 4 people who must also do this quiz on THEIR blog (lemme know when you’ve done it!):

julie, rob, amanda f, bobbie

————–

happy father’s day everyone! will try to post how yesterday went tomorrow! it went well tho! unfortunately i didn’t get enough good pics.

love you all!

we are going to meet jerry’s mom today - seeing jerry’s side of the family. they are in indiana for one of the nephew’s high school graduation. it’s about 2 1/2 hours away so please pray for us on the trip. also please pray the visit goes well. this will be everyone’s very first time to meet either of the boys! gramma g has NEVER met her grandsons.

have a great weekend! we’ll be back tonight.

oh josiah i can’t believe you are ten months old. in just two short months you will be a year old. the thought just blows me away!
i can’t believe how big you are. you are walking 95% of the time. you really only crawl when you’re on a foreign ground. you even penguin-run sometimes when jeremiah is chasing you.

you can climb up the stairs on your own (crawl-climb) and clap, wave, and are trying to learn baby signs. you do a nursing dance when you want to nurse, and you also try to do our baby sign for nursing. (i do the sign for yellow, since we call nursing yummies and a shaking y is cute. you just shake your little hand at me. )

you had your dr’s appointment on your 10mo birthday. you hadn’t been since you were 7 or 8 months, so this counted as your 9mo checkup. you weighed 22lbs and were 29.5 inches. somehow i thought you’d be bigger than this, even tho it’s 60th and 75th %. i was surprised the dr wasn’t overly impressed with your walking. we are very impressed! she said you checked out perfectly healthy and fine.

you are working on your seventh tooth. it has already cut through but it’s still really bothering you right now. you keep biting mama when you nurse, and you also bite anything that’s in your way, including any part of mama!

you are SO ticklish and love being tickled. you love to laugh. you love to smile. you love to babble. you say mama and dada and papa and baba and nana.

your papa and i have talked about what an amazing little personality you have. you are so much fun. you are sweet, snuggly and wonderful, you are ornery, busy and adventurous. you have a way about you that makes everyone fall in love with you.

you recently started doing a shy look. you tilt your head down and look up with only your eyes. you only do this for more attention, because you enjoy going to people. you are so friendly!

you sleep all through the night. you go to bed at about 8 and wake up at about 6 to nurse, then we sleep for another hour or so. i LOVE this! however, your naps are another story! you are so tired but often refuse to nap until you’re beyond tired. i cannot bring myself to let you completely cry it out because you are completely pitiful. i just can’t do it! i do let you cry for five minutes at a time sometimes, just to see if you’ll calm down. if you don’t calm down, you escalate, so i get you. i know it’s partly because i nurse you to sleep. i love nursing you but i don’t know if you’ll stop on your own like jeremiah did…

you love and adore your big brother. sometimes this is good, but often it is bad. jeremiah doesn’t seem to enjoy his little shadow. but he LOVES you. sometimes his hugs are a little too strong, but he’s been trying to get gentler lately. i have no idea when he’ll grow out of his roughness.

josiah benjamin, i love you so much. i am so thankful that i am your mama. i am so blessed to have you as a son. i thank the Lord each day for blessing me with you.

happy 10 months, baby boy!

love,

your mama

jeremiah is so much fun! he is quite a handful tho. and sometimes he is so rotten! sometimes when he’s tired, he has no control over his behaviour. i mean, he is HORRIBLE. sometimes he doesn’t have that excuse. he is so mean to josiah sometimes i just don’t know what to do with him. he pushes him, kicks him, hits him, yesterday he bit him. he also has this horrible thing where he hugs josiah into his face, almost smothering him, and sometimes he will push him away hard immediately after a smother-hug. it just breaks my heart when he hurts his brother.
we went to a little festival here in town on sunday. just mom, jeremiah and i went. jeremiah LOVED the rides. he and i rode the carousel and the bus and he rode the clown ride by himself. the new top left pic is of him in the bus. he was tired before we even went because he and josiah had spent the day before at my parents’ house. he didn’t nap there. well, sunday he had a late nap starting at 4pm and never woke up until 7a yesterday morning! wow! he had been so tired. i noticed as soon as he woke up he was his old self. he was sweet and kind and just like the jeremiah i know and love.
he has been calling me “easter mama”. i have no idea where this comes from, except for the fact that when he gives someone something, he says “happy easter”.

i was watching the duggars special “on the road with 16 children”. they had a huge rv pulling a trailor. jeremiah said, “mama, look, choo-choo train!”. LOL i tried to tell him what it was but it was no use.

flickr vs gallery

i have been asked why i’m using flickr instead of my gallery lately. it’s just sheer laziness. with flickr i don’t mind uploading without changing the picture names. but on the gallery, i want to make sure the pics have the date name (i have to go through and change this manually before i upload them). i will eventually get the pics up in the gallery, but for now, flickr users can see new pics @ flickr. (http://www.flickr.com/photos/blessedmama) oh and you have to be added as my friend to see them…to do so, add me as your friend and i’ll add you to mine.

new layout

i am still working out the kinks in this new layout, so if you see problems you can either let me know or ignore them.

roll call

will everyone please do me a favor. leave me a comment if you are still reading. you don’t have to comment continually, i just want to know if you’re still reading ever (not even regularly, just if you’re still checking up on us like once a month or so.) i am going to go through members who don’t comment and delete them. if you are deleted unneccesarily please feel free to rejoin, i just want to clear out members who don’t ever read anymore. AND please update your user’s area to reflect your correct url. a bunch of them aren’t right, and i like to click on your comments to go read your blogs.
please say a prayer for my friend julie and her baby! she just found out she’s pregnant and i really want this baby to stay safe! congrats again julie!

ok i think that’s it for now…i’m sure i’ve forgotten something. :/

God bless and have a great day in the Lord!

don’t tell jerry, but this is the card i’m making him for father’s day:

i AM taking orders! just email me or comment about it!

one card (folded card either blank inside or with text inside) is 3.50. two cards that are identical EXCEPT for words (ie: happy father’s day, daddy, happy father’s day to the best grampa) are 5.75 for the set and three cards that are identical EXCEPT for words (ie: happy father’s day papa, happy father’s day grandpa, happy father’s day poppy) are 8 for the set.

also if you want a t-shirt, you can get a t-shirt with a matching card (text can be different) for just 17.95!!!!

all of those prices are not including shipping. i would have to charge actual shipping and some for handling.

note that i am winging all these prices right now - i don’t have any of these choices on the site - you have to order in multiples on the site and i don’t even offer folded cards on the site right now.

anyway yes as usual trying to make money somehow. (tho i don’t know why i bother - most of y’all are digitally gifted too!)

yep i’m toying with a new layout. it’s kind of interesting, don’tcha think?

i have pics of baby reagan up at flickr!!! http://www.flickr.com/photos/blessedmama - she is so tiny, beautiful and precious! comment here or there to congratulate me on having a gorgeous niece! LOL.

ETA: don’t forget you have to be on my friends list to view. to be on my friends list, you need to add me to your friends list, then i’ll add you to mine.

i’m back! i’m back!!!! i’m back!!!!!

i still have NO idea what happened, but my blog has been down for about a week!! if you came by and thought i’d closed the blog or something, i apologize! i’m back!

once we can afford to purchase a new hosting plan (we are on a free plan right now) we will be moving the blog to a new secure location. i will ALSO be unpassword-protecting the blog then! i will still have pw protected posts but the blog will be accessible to the outside world.

lots has happened since i’ve been gone. the biggest news happened today: i am an aunt!!!! my sister in law and brother had reagan elizabeth today!!! she’s 5lbs 9oz and 18 3/4 inches. she is SO tiny and SO beautiful and SO precious. we got to visit her today. i’m so thankful she made it into the world with no difficulties. i will see if it’s ok to post her pics before i do. but CONGRATULATIONS JAY AND NATALIE and WELCOME TO THE WORLD LITTLE REAGAN!!!!!!

another fun thing that’s happened, is josiah is really walking now. below are two videos from the other day.

and check out flickr for new pics - there’s a lemon collage that’s cute. i will have to upload a TON of pics to the gallery soon, now that i have it back.
it’s great to be back!!!

who missed me?