Welcome Hudson Cole Mellinger, 8 lbs. 9 oz. at 4:04 this morning – 50 minute total labor and Austin and Melissa brought him into the world all on their own! We’re so proud of you and so happy for you! Well done!
Welcome to the World!
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Something I wrote about Anna a couple years ago
My daughter Anna is 1 year old. She has bright blue eyes, a two-tooth smile, and almost no hair. She likes to totter around chasing the dog. She is wiggly, jabbery, and slobbery. I do not know what her views of adoption, religon, marriage, family, culture or money are. Although I’m sure she is giving them continually for our edification, we have not been able to decipher them. She has communicated clearly that she is adverse to discipline of any kind, and that she loves her blankie, momma and papa, yogurt, dolly, and the dog.
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Fair Days!
Sorry Dad, I don’t have pictures of the beautiful gates on the fence yet! But they are perfect. They fit perfectly, swing easily and keep the dog in!
Dad rode his motorcycle over and joined us at the fair! We watched the pony rides that Anna had been wanting to ride so much… but she decided after awhile that just watching the rides was enough for her. (Actually getting on looked a little scary)
Maggie doing a silly scrunchie face for us all.
Anna and Grandpa watching some of the beautiful draft horses!
Climbing down really fast as the draft horses round the bend…. “I’m getting down so they can’t get me.”
Sleepy head:
So this was pretty adorable. We went to look at the cool “police-man motorcycle”. I leaned to set her on the motorcycle and she clung so tight to me! I wouldn’t have had to hold on at all.
The police officer stepped away from the bike and then Anna allowed me to set her on the motorcycle. Barely. Too cute.
Maggie takes the stroller through it’s paces:
So Anna is pretty well known for being uncomfortable in new situations. She saw her first carnival rides yesterday. I had hoped to let her ride the ponies, but since that wasn’t a go, I thought maybe I’d buy a few ride tickets. I crossed my fingers and bought a few tickets… and success! She was willing to go on the merry go round!
Not to sure yet as she gets buckled in:
Thoroughly won over! That smile made my insides just turn over with happiness. The smile of success and excitement is just thrilling.
All the noise and motion is just too much for this one:
We had enough tickets for one more ride. Could we put her on and then walk away? Would she stay all by herself? Would she cry and run after us?
Oh, the pink sparkles settled the deal.
Maggie has been so cute pointing at things. She pointed at the draft horses, she pointed at random stuff. Tonight she and Papa played “poke each other’s finger” game.
Maggie had enough of poking, and took things into her own hands:
Being cute:
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Update from the Davis House
Sooooooooo, you may be wanting an update on the adoption. For a clearer picture, you need an update on our life. On Maggie’s life. On why she keeps her parents up every night so that they are so sleep deprived during the day that they are really struggling to make progress in researching adoption. She would tell you that it’s not her fault, that it’s our fault for deciding to try and wean her from ONE stinking little nursing a night. That’s right, people, this sweet little munchkin thinks she needs to nurse every 2-3 hours at night and her Mama is FED UP!
Maggie is a determined little baby. Last night, as we were waiting from 11pm when she woke up until 3:00am when I was going to be willing to nurse her…. well, the girl wouldn’t give up. I sat in her room for half an hour at least, sweetly saying “night-night” whenever she sat up. She’d throw herself face down in her crib and either laugh or scream. It was a game or a frustration. “But Mom!” she kept saying. Eventually, I was too tired to sit up and she had settled into the crying answer to my soothings, so I went to bed. Every once in awhile, as the crying waxed and waned and she dozed off for one or two minutes at a time, we’d go in and check on her, lay her down, find her pacifier… all those good parent things. Near the end, she was laying down when we went in there, body limp and warm… but still crying.
She didn’t even nurse properly when I finally fed her at 2:15am (I caved early) but you know what, she finally conked out and slept until 6am. This is the third or fourth day. I think. We are tired. Send sleepy thoughts her way.
We have been researching SO many countries adoption programs and adoption agencies. Some that we qualify for are Korea, Russia, Ethiopia, and some Eastern Europe countries. There may be more. It’s a huge world of adoption out there. We don’t know what we’re doing and we are rather overwhelmed. One thing at a time. Tomorrow we are going to have a fun day (sleep deprived or not!) and are hoping to go blueberry picking AND go to the fair. Anna and Maggie both went to their very first fair yesterday and it was a lot of fun. We’ll go again tomorrow with Papa. I like the fair over here – I spent a whopping $0. I couldn’t keep my eyes off of a beautiful multi-racial family…. I wanted to just steal one of their younger kids and skip the rest of this adoption work. 🙂
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We’re Pregnant!
Well, not really. I bet I got you there. In fact, if you’re my mom I bet your heart does a flip flop every time you read the title of this blog post. People often say I’m a lot like you, mom… and mine does when I read it and I wasn’t even tricked into thinking it was true!
HOWEVER, we are expecting… in a sort of way. Adoption is back on our horizon. We read this blog post about Hailee here (they have updated several times about Hailee since that blog was posted in May) and that along with the journey God has been taking our hearts on for the last several years is calling us to action. We do not know where we are adopting from, we do not know who, we don’t know how old they’ll be, we don’t know what their special needs will be and we mostly are just doing a lot of not knowing.
Some of the things we know (or at least think we know):
We can’t have a long required travel time in the country we are adopting from. (Maggie and Anna can’t be without Mommy and Daddy for weeks)
Anna needs to be the oldest developmentally. If Maggie is older too, that’s even better. (If the adoption takes 12-18 months then Maggie will be about 2 years old) Developmentally…. not age. Hailee is five, but has the needs and development of an infant. Is a small and delayed child very unusual or are many children so small?
We want to adopt somewhere where we feel like us adopting is not only needed, but where we feel there is an urgent need that needs to be met (and where there aren’t many called to fill the need).
We are stepping out in faith to adopt a child with special needs. Many types of special needs are feeling acceptable to us. We honestly don’t know. We are trusting God heavily on this and are confident that this is the direction He is leading us.
Currently, we’ve had Bulgaria suggested to us, because they have fairly short travel times (5 days in country for both parents, then home again, then 5 days in country with just one parent… possibly waived.). Their waiting children are usually 4 years old or older. Sooooo, we’ll see.
Let me share some questions that have come up that we’ve talked about. I won’t write all the answers, but the questions alone are interesting:
Can a child be too young to learn about compassion, about sacrifice, about patience, about generosity? (We decided that these are wonderful thing to learn, but like all things, should be learned at an age-appropriate level.)
Are we willing to make the sacrifices? (Having a young, needy, delayed child, less freedom, less personal time, less sleep) – The answer is yes. Not that sacrifices are fun. But we would have a hard time living with ourselves if we turned away from this need. God is calling us.
What time frame is logical, taking into account Maggie’s age, finances, and home upgrades? – We decided 9 months would be really tight and somewhere around 15 months would be ideal. 🙂
What changes need to be made around the home? – Make the office suitable for Maggie and Anna to have as a bedroom (close in stairway, install a new window?, build a bunk bed, put rails on the stairway and loft)
What are our short term expectations?
What are our long term expectations? (of adoption, of our child, of our other children, of where we’re living, etc.)
Etc!
And now, I need to tell everybody that my Dad and my brother-in-law, who are a construction-working-fiend-team came and built us a fence! Our back yard is now enclosed! And the fence is custom made pretty and perfect! I am really happy about it. I’m having a hard time not using a lot of exclamation marks. I don’t have enough pictures of it yet, but let me share a few.
Can you see the fence? Not really? Great! It’s there, but I wanted it to still be really open visually between our yard and our wonderful neighbors. We have a gate over there too. It’s not installed in the pictures, but it is up in real life.
A little closer, again without the gate up yet:
Pretty:
Dad fixing up the gate. Dad and Austin are for hire. Leave a comment or send me an email if you’re interested. They can do pretty much any construction work except building a house from the ground up. Experience and a desire for perfection and attractiveness (that’s my dad) and a handyman in his own right (that’s my brother) – they can do anything. They’ve even got a small tractor and they know how to use it. 🙂
I’m afraid that’s all the fence pictures I have for now.
The little helper:
Jackson and Maggie:
Early stages:
That’s my almost-walking girl!
Sis Melis’ is due in two weeks!
You should have seen her when she was holding the hose nozzle – she looked just like Super Woman!
Maggie and Papa:
The girls:
And one of my favorite photos in awhile:
Pre-walking videos:
Filed under Everyday Stuff