attitude changes everything

I cant believe its been 1 week since my last post. I've been in a blogging block and just can't think of anything worthy of posting about. I think its because we have been busy enjoying our last few weeks of summer with Josh before he is back to work full time. (Josh is a 6th grade teacher). Today was his first official day back with students! While he is at school playing "getting to know you games" Malachi and I are at home trying to get back into a routine. I'll give you a quick little update on Him as this is day one of my back to blogging.

Therapies: These are going great. We just started weekly DT. Malachi is such a had worker and all his therapist comment on his "get to it" attitude. He doen't get eaisly discouraged, yet another thing I LOVE about him. He is moving forward in PT, getting close to crawling the right way and still perfecting his pulling up process. Ot on the other hand is a struggle for him. He is a people person who LOVES interaction with other people. He could care less about toys. Putting things into containers, pushing buttons, he just doesnt care. About the only thing he lilkes to do is turn pages. He could read books for HOURS and often cries when I close books. He has just started clapping and waving, both of which we have been working on FOREVER!!

Growing: Malachi is now officially wering size 12 month cloting!! He is long, but his arms are short so we still have to roll the sleeves. He looks like such a big boy, I can't believe at a little over a year ago he was born weighing only 3lbs. How far he has come now weighing 20lbs!!

Speech: Malachi is a chatter box! I dont think we will be able to keep him quiet. Cant wait till I can understand what he is saying!

Baby girl: Still no news. More waiting.

Thats about it. We are getting things together for our buddy walk in October and Malachi is going to be in a fashion show in November. Oh and I just found out his adoption will be finalized in feb or march!! Woo Hoo!

Time to get going. DT is going to be here bright and early!!

Still in suspense??

A few weeks ago I posted about "exciting things" that may be coming to our house. I left you all in wonder and suspense...I hope. I am happy to report that now is as good of time as any to share the "exciting things" with you.

About 2 weeks ago I got a random text message from a friend asking if we were willing to adopt again in the future, potentially. My heart raced and I answered "or course!" My hubby and I have talked about wanting to adopt another child in the future if the opportunity ever came along. We had a ton of questions but seeing this information was being passes down by a friend of a friend of a friend, we couldn't find out all our answers. But we told our friend to pass along that we were very interested. She did that for us and on sat. afternoon we had our first conversation with the family that has "baby girl" (I know, a girl!! Excitement is not even the word!). I can't get into all the details with you, as it is not my story to tell, but I can tell you we got to meet baby girl last night! She is BEAUTIFUL!! She is 7 (almost 8) months old and just as happy as can be. The family she is living with is older (like mid 40's) and would love to adopt her, but just dont know if they would be doing baby girl a dis-service because they are older. They decided to look elsewhere to see if they could find another loving family who would be willing to adopt. That would be us. Last night we met the family (foster family that is) and baby girl. We spent about 2 hours there talking and asking questions. At the end of our visit we decided to take the week and pray about it. Pray for God to show us all his will for this sweet baby and for answers to be shown to us all. Over the next week can you pray for all involved. Pray that we keep the baby's best interest at heart and that we all are willing to listen to God? Even if that means she does not come to live with us.

So there it is. Another adoption? Malachi not being the only child and having 2 kids only 6 months apart? Its a lot to think about, but I am trusting God and his master plan for our lives!!!

Be in suspense no longer!

Phew...

We have been MIA for about a week!! Summer is comming to an end and that means Josh is busy getting ready to go back to work. This week we spend majority of our free time organizing and setting up his classroom. Malachi came with us and enjoyed playing on the floor with his toys and daddies books. Hopfully one more full day and he will be ready to go!

Malachi is doing great. He had an echo this week and everything came back GREAT! His heart and valve is still leaking a little, but nothing they will need to fix. He also has started pulling up on things. Not all the way to standing, but to his knees! He is so determinded and so fun to watch.

I dont have a ton of time to post, so I will keep it short. Have an amazing weekend!

Buddy Walk

The time has come again...Josh and I registered our team for the 2009 Chicagoland Buddy Walk. We are currently looking for people to joing us in our walk to raise money for Down syndrome awareness and research! If you are interested in walking with team Malachi's Marching Mohawks please go to the below website and register! Or if you cannot walk but are interested in donating to our team also follow the link. Our goal this year is $1,000 will you help us reach it? We hope to see you there with us in October, its sure to be a day of fun and inspiration!

Malachi's Marching Mohawks

Isaiah 41:10

Got a little update today on our "opportunity." It wasn't good news and it wasn't bad news. The news was that we will need to wait longer to hear more. Ugh. I HATE waiting, it sucks! But we have no choice, so we will try to wait and be patient and trust that God is working and the in His perfect timing we will be given an answer, either way.

Isaiah 41:40 says:

So do not fear, for I am with you;do not be dismayed, for I am your God.I will strengthen you and help you;
I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.

"We know, Heavenly Father, that you are in control in all situations. We thank You for being our light when the road gets dark. Please teach us to trust You more and more each day! Give us a peace unexplainable. We pray that You work in the hearts of all parties involved and that You are glorified in each and every step. You are doing mighty work in our lives and we pray that we can be your hands and feet here on earth. Continue to use me and to mold me into your perfect image. Amen"

Moving on. Malachi is doing amazing things these days and is growing way to fast! He is FINALLY starting to show and interest in holding his own bottle! I also found him standing in his crib the other day. Yikes. He hasn't done it again, but I think it will be a matter of time before we see another picture like this...

We had some NASTY storms roll through late sunday afternoon. This picture was taken on our deck. I have NEVER seen anything like it before.

Just another one showing the storm rolling in.

I have so much I want to say but I can't and it sucks! I want to blog all about what is going on and ask you for more spcific prayers, but I can't. In God's amazing and perfect timing I will tell you all and trust me, it will be worth the wait. Please continue to pray for our family.

I wanted to sit down and write a in-depth post, unfortunatly, my mind is thinking about other things at the momment. I just can not concentrait enough to write a worth while post. So I will leave you with the lyrics to one of my most favorite songs.

ONLY YOU,By David Crowder Band

Take my heart, I Lay it down
At the feet of you whose crowned
Take my life, I'm letting go
I lift it upto You who's throned

And I will worship You, Lord
Only You, Lord
And I will bow down before You
Only You Lord

Take my fret, take my fear
All I have, I'm leaving here
Be all my hopes, be all my dreams
Be all my delights, be my everything

And It's just you and me here now
Only you and me here now

You should see the view
When it's only You

Where do I start? Let me say a few things before we get into the real purpose of this post. First I want to thank you all for your willingness to pray for my family. I know I left you all a abrupt post the other night about some exciting opportunities that we have started to pursue. Unfortunatly, we still cannot share exactly what is going on (mainly because we still don't know a lot about it)but we

So, I know I left you all wondering what my last post was about, unfortunatly for you, I still can't tell you. Trust me its for your own good. However, I am comming to you requesting more prayer. I know, its a lot to ask! hehe, but my faithful readers, I know you all will put you hands together and kneel to our amazing, gracious Father who give and takes away, Right?

New opportunities

Wow, thats really all I can say. Wow. There are some exciting things that were brought to our attention tonight and as much as I would love to share it all with you, i can't. (And trust me I REALLY REALLY want to). But I do want you to do something for us, please pray! Pray for the future, for God to open doors, that we make the best decisions possible and that we are willing with open hearts and minds to follow where God leads us! And I PROMISE that as we get more information and more questions answered I will fill you in!! For now, just pray!!!!

we will miss you!

As many of you know, Josh and I are in the process of adopting Malachi form the Illinois foster care system. We brought him home when he was 4 months old and we knew from day one that mom and dad had no chance of getting him back. This creates a interesting situation for us. We know that he will be with us forever and that we are his parents, but legally we have no rights. So every time we go to a new Doctor I have to call and have his case worker get consent from the state. If we want to cut his hair, we need consent. We can not sign anything related to his care because we are not legal guardians. Ugh, its a pain, a big pain! We go back to court in october and the state officially takes parental rights and we take the first step towards adoption. He wont officially be adopted for about a year from october. As frustrating as it is Josh and I think about the amazing things that come with adopting a child from the foster care system. We never once have gotten a medical bill sent to our house for him. His 4 months in the hospital right after birth, his week in for UTI, his cardio cath, heart surgery or his millions of doc appointments, we have not had to pay a single penny! And we will never have to! And for those of you who have kids with special needs knows that a HUGE blessing this is! We also don't have any cost affiliated with his actual adoption. Those of you have adopted know that they are costly ranging from $20,000 on up! His therapies? Paid for. We also get a monthly stipened check, altough its not a lot, it allows me to stay home with him. Trust me when I say we are BEYOND thankful that he is provided with all of these things with no cost to us! When we first learned about Malachi and Josh and I began to pray about the adoption possibilities, the financial aspect was huge for us. We were young, Josh was getting his Masters degree and we knew having a child with special needs was going to be a huge financial responsibility. We were not sure if we could provide the finances he needed. We did know that we have more than enough love to give him. Well God answered our prayers and provided ways for Malachi to be taken care of. We are still in awe of this and thankful every day that we have a Father who provides our every needs and that when we worry He will take it all and carry it for us! Amazing!! We are also thankful for Malachi's case worker who worked endlessly to get him EVERYTHING he needs. I can call her with any question or task and she gets it done! We love her and have a wonderful friendship. Well I found out last night that she will be leaving us! She took another position within the agency that is more along the lines of her major. We will miss her greatly and all the hard work she did to get Malachi home with us where he belongs! How do you thank someone like that? There are no words or earthly things we could give her. I do still want to give her something to show our appreciation, got any ideas?

giggles

Being a mom to a child with special needs is a lot of work. I will be the first one to say that it's not always easy and there are days I struggle. There are so many unknowns raising a child with Down syndrome and I often finding myself thinking about the future and wondering if Malachi will be living at home, if he will be working, will he be in college or driving? Its so easy for me to go down the path of wonder and unknown and when I got down that path I get nervous, scared and question why Malachi had to be born with Down syndrome and that his life would be so much easier without it. Once I start down that path, its very difficult to find my way out. My feet get stuck in the weeds and my hair gets stuck on the branches. Its not a pretty path, yet I go down it often. I am human and I struggle with thinking of the future or i compare him to typically developing kids and get sad that he is so far behind. I have moments of wishing he was crawling or walking and wishing he could communicate verbally with me. I even find myself looking at other children with Down syndrome and wishing he would be doing what they are doing. I don't think I am the only one who struggles with these things, I think if we all look at our own life and situations you will find similarities to mine. God called Josh and I to be Malachi's parents and He never said it was going to be easy but those difficult times make us stronger as we lean on Christ to take our fears. And then I have a day like today. Malachi was in an amazing mood (well most of the day) and I got to see lots of smiles and hear lots of giggles!!! I watched him play with play dough and roll around on the floor with his toys and I couldn't help but remember back 6 months ago when he wasn't doing any of this. Malachi may have Down syndrome and his future may be unknown but he is the joy of my life and a true inspiration to us all. I will try my best to stay off that path of the unknown and focus on the millions of opportunities Malachi will have. I can't wait to see him succeed and flourish no matter what setting he is in!!

Bath time

Malchi has finally graduated out of the baby bathtub and into the the big boy tub. Now that he is sitting up better on his own and able to corect himseft if he starts to tip we decided (about 2 weeks ago) that it was time to start playing in the tub. He LOVES it and cries bloody murder when its time to get out. He splashes like a mad man and gets water everywhere! He doesnt mind water in the face either. I took a few pictures the other night.

More pics.