Feliz Dia de San Valentin!

On February 14, 2012, Jake and I had just begun writing each other but had never met.

On February 14, 2013, we were newlyweds. We also got some pretty amazing news that day, that Sophia was on the way!

This year on February 14, we celebrated our first Valentine's Day as busy new parents. It was just a littleee different than last year. Instead of receiving Jake's surprise bouquet of roses at my office, I was pulling clothes out of the washer to hang up to dry while beginning lunch preparations. And since it was also Friday, which means CIC Youth Group night (Jake is the pastor), we had our big date the night before. (Thanks, Kaley!)

I wanted to make some special Valentine's Day treats for the Youth Group's Valentine Party. I'm not even signed up on pinterest, but quickly found a pinterest page full of pictures of AMAZING looking cookies, the secret of which seemed to be royal icing. Of course, I only attempted the simplest designs, or simplifying them as I went along.

 Anyone can make dots! My writing could use some work, though.

Somehow, I found time for two trips with the kids in tow to a new bakery store nearby, and still with very limited time and tools, had a fun time learning a bit of working with royal icing!  

It wasn't very hard at all. I ran out of cookies before trying everything I wanted to! How surprising, seeing how I'm the only one of my family who has never even attempted to decorate a cookie cake at my parents' cookie stores.  

Some of the first cookies...

 

Joel was the only kid who asked to decorate this time. He's definitely the most patient - and artistic - of the bunch!

 

 

Michael posing with the cookie that was his idea (the "XOXO" part).

 

 

One of Joel's cookies is here! The kids liked eating the broken cookies and mess ups.

The boys also proudly made their own lunch with minimal supervision while I continued decorating, taking advantage of Sophia's unusually long nap.

 

 

I also tried out making brownie "mini cupcakes" with buttercream frosting. Worked pretty well and was good and rich, perfect for Valentine's!!



After cutting some of the brownies into heart shapes (for my sweetheart!), I  made truffles with the leftover brownies.

 

Preparing the cookies and brownie cupcakes for the party...

 

 

 

Love turquoise and pink together!!

 

 

As for some other moments during the rest of our first Valentine's Day as a family...

 



I tried to catch Sophia's few happy morning moments for some pictures with the brothers, but as you can see, we didn't quite make it in time! In the best ones, she just looks serious, none of her classic Sophia smiles today...

Eating yummy leftover vegetable stir-fry before some afternoon treats

 

Our kitchen table looks like a flower garden!! The beautiful roses are thanks to Jake. :)

Licking the icing beaters and bowl while sister looks on 

To add just a touch of real life-ness to this very sweet post: I was proud of the boys during lunch. One began insulting another and calling him names. I quickly became frustrated trying to calm him down and get him to acknowledge his errors, while watching the other feeling bad about the lies. After a few minutes of going nowhere, and watching the son-in-question head straight for one of his emotional blow-ups, I let the matter drop and we finished lunch in silence. After chores, I called him back and asked him to write down three things he likes about his brother. The break had given him time to calm down. He immediately complied and then showed me, his dad (now back from work), and his wounded brother the list. Wow! SO much better than some previous discipline/training sessions with this one. Love seeing fellowship and harmony restored. :)   

The best picture of baby all day! I just LOVE her eyes......

Fresh, very PINK, watermelon juice for snack.

 

 

The next post will be a Sophia update! Hopefully soon... It's hard to find much computer time these days. I'm lucky to have a whole hour at any point during the day with all the kids entertained, no housework, no school, no food prep going on, and no super urgent work issues. And that's generally after 11pm, when Jake and I finally have a chance for some quiet talk time together. Ah, life with a family! :)

 

 

More than our family has changed...

Everyone seems to have a previous Valentine's Day picture with their sweetheart up on FB tonight. I double-checked to see if I had one from last year. Nope, but I was shocked by a picture of our living room.

As I looked at the very same room tonight, I couldn't help but snap a picture.

February 14, 2013

February 14, 2014

Oh my!!! :)

Pool Fun

Thanks to lots of help from a Facebook query several weeks ago, I discovered that there was a small pool place a mere 2 blocks from our house!! We've only been able to go once so far, but that was a fun afternoon!

The boys enjoying the hot tub

Even the rain didn't dampen their enthusiasm!

Baby Sophia showed off her new bathing suit from Nana Thompson!

 

The cutest bathing beauty in town! :)

 

 

As it was too rainy and cold to let her actually touch water...

 

...this is what we did once home! 

 

A nice hot bath, ahhh....

 

...And plenty of attendants to provide entertainment! 

Letting Sophia "swim" [enjoy a nice long bath] has now become a favorite activity of the four! Just last night, Joel asked expectantly, "Does our baby need a bath?!"

Special bath hairdo for our little bather

The boys wanted to reproduce the "hydro massage" they experienced at the spa (first picture) even at home.

Look, Mommy, hydro massage for our Baby Boo Boo!!

 

 

Since those are straws, Jake and I strongly suggested that they avoid sucking. ;-)

 

New Family, New Names

If the new names of our three boys have been confusing everyone, they confuse me, too. :) Jake has gotten on to me more than once for not fully converting. When they first arrived, I quickly noticed that when a kid is running off helter skelter and I called his new name, he didn't respond until switching to the old. Pragmatism took over!

Now that I'm trying again, half the time I'm too absorbed in the urgency of the situation to remember to use the new name. In a discipline moment or back at Casa de Amor, I don't feel it's a good time, either.

Sometimes we use both names together.
 
The boys occasionally use their new names amongst themselves, mainly during chore times throughout the day, since those are the names on their list! 

Jake usually uses their new names.
 
One of these days, I'm going to fully convert, which will probably help the boys go 100%.
 
When asked their name in public, they always give their new name with a big grin.

Slowly but surely.....!


First, a bit of history...

Luis Jesus arrived to Hogar de Amor II with me, on my 25th birthday, Child #25 in the houses at that moment. I had to leave a church rehearsal a little early to be able to pick him up from Cochabamba's Archbishop building downtown, from the office of a psychologist friend there. My first impression was what a sweet, easy-to-love little boy he was. I was excited to meet him and he was excited to meet his new friends. His birth dad was with him that day, but by the next year had disappeared permanently.
  

Luis Jesus' first birthday with Hogar/Casa de Amor on July 16, 2007

Arrival to Hogar de Amor: May 24, 2007 (age 3 years and 10 months) 

Joined our family December 24, 2013

Length of time in HDA II, III (Alseths), then back to II: 6 years and 7 months 

I still clearly remember the moment when I looked out our very first baby home (the building my family and I had built way out in Anocaraire during our Hospital of Hope days) and saw Rosa stepping up onto the porch with little Angel in her arms. He craved love and attention and was often very sad. His seeming depression, coupled with his malnutrition, led one of our original caregivers (no longer with us) to comment she was afraid he wasn't going to make it. But he eventually began to thrive!

A rare happy picture from Angel Isai's first days with us

 

Arrival to Hogar de Amor I: March 28, 2005 (age 19 months)

Back with relatives: September 11, 2006

Back to Hogar de Amor I: December 17, 2006

Joined our family December 24, 2013

Length of time living in HDA I, II, relatives, and prospective adoptive families before adoption: 8 years and 9 months

 

I also vividly remember where I was when I got the news of Marcus. I was actually in Texas for a couple of weeks visiting two of my sisters (the rest of my family was still living in Bolivia). Rosa had called me long distance just to ask if we had room for a little boy, and to say that the Alseths were willing to take him. From my grandparents car in front of my aunt's new house, I answered yes. Then I couldn't wait to get back to Bolivia and meet our newest!!

A timid Marcus David days after arrival to HDA III and the Alseth Family

 

Arrival to Hogar de Amor III: July 10, 2008 (age: 4 years and almost a month)

Joined our family December 24, 2013

Length of time in HDA III, II, and one prospective adoptive family before his adoption: almost 5 1/2 years

One of my favs from way back when!
(Jesus and Angel, best buds. Who knew they'd get to be brothers forever?!)

New Names!

Joel Jesus Beaty

Joel: "The Lord is God"

Jesus: "The Lord is Salvation"

 

Michael Angel Beaty

Michael: "Who is Like God"

Angel: "Messenger of God"

 

Samuel Marcus Beaty

Samuel: "God Heard" 

Marcus: "A Defense" (his birth mother chose the name Marcus after a missionary pastor from the US that she respects)

 

 

I love the pattern Jake chose (can you detect it?). We actually decided on their names months before we decided on Sophia's names.

 

Yesterday, January 29, we had our third and final court hearing, yippee!! Next week the judge's final sentencing will be issued, shortly thereafter birth certificates with our names as parents (and the boys' new names), and then we'll be able to continue with getting their Bolivian documents. 

 

The new Beaty Family is quickly becoming official! :)

 

 

(Baby Sophia was with Grandma Thompson)

 

Baby Sophia, Three Months!

As time has ticked on, I've wondered how I should write this three month post. Am I supposed to write about how she is now while currently three months old, or what I remember up until January 13 when she turned 3 months?! I think I've struck on a combination...   

 Posing for pictures in the outfit Jake's students bought us many months before Sophia was born 

 Our wild-eyed baby, playing with toys

Around 2 ½ months, Sophia became much more social! I love how she follows us around the room with her eyes/head and breaks into a big grin to see our faces. By “ours” I include her three big brothers. She realizes they are part of her adoring family!

A week before she turned 3 months, my parents and sister Emma (now 15) arrived! It was pretty neat to get to introduce them to our new family and see them hold Sophia almost non-stop. (Which she really got used to, of course. It was the third day after they left before she realized she could indeed nap alone!)

Mom showed us how much Sophia loved being read books, an activity I've kept up with her every day since. She LOVES that interaction and will generally listen as long as we’ll read! 

After getting caught one afternoon in a torrential downpour that lowered the temperature, the Baby Home tias loaned us this cute "snow suit" 

I thought Nana Thompson would enforce a strict regimen of “tummy time” while here, something we learned the importance of with my special needs sister Sarah, but she knew that Sophia hates it so there was none. :) I still aim for some every day, but it’s hard to find an awake, happy time when she also hasn't eaten within the past hour.  

  

 Tummy time!!

The first days of January, I felt forced to give her three small formula bottles of 1-3 ounces three different very rough evenings. Looking back at the weight chart, that must have been a growth spurt, but at the time I was seriously worried that my milk supply wasn't keeping up at all. It felt like admitting defeat even though I was still nursing every 3 hours on average. That got us over the hump, but then she began getting VERY upset at night when she was tired and cranky and just NOT in the mood for the work of nursing. We’d stick plastic in her mouth and she’d suck like crazy, wanting an easy feed. It was so frustrating to deal with that every. single. night. Till past midnight. So I stopped topping off with formula or even my pumped milk in a bottle, upped taking all the galactagogues available to me (carrot juice, chia seeds, alfalfa, papaya, oatmeal, etc.), and began fenugreek when my mom brought some down. We’re doing very well now, something I no longer take for granted!

Wearing a gift from a friend in Tennessee 

The very day my family arrived, January 6, we turned a corner with nighttime sleeping. My Mom said it was because she was now 12 weeks, I thought it was due to getting enough food. Whatever the reason, she began going to bed between 10 and 11:30, waking anywhere between 5 and 7am to eat, then GOING BACK TO SLEEP!! I had started to decide that the “sleeping through the night” that she’d done since one month and one day old wasn't actually that great. She would sleep from anywhere between midnight and 1:30am till 5 or 6 or occasionally 7am…but be awake 2-3 hours on either end of that, often wanting to eat every hour. Mainly, there was no schedule. Ahh!! That was getting hard.      

 Another picture made for friends in Texas, thanking them for the silver rattle and sweet pillow

Also while my family was here, mom started flipping through a book she found on my shelves and encouraged me to look at it. I read “Secrets of the Baby Whisperer” (by Tracy Hogg, a British woman) years ago and remember being able to easily match up the current babies of Casa de Amor with her descriptions of five types of babies (Angel, Textbook, Touchy, Spirited, Grumpy). Taking the “Know-Your-Baby” quiz for Sophia, lots of things came together to discover she’s a “spirited baby” with all but one characteristic of a “grumpy baby”. There we go!

Spirited baby: born knowing what she does and doesn't like, very vocal, often screams, wild in the bathtub—flailing about and splashing (a fun aspect!), and the two enlightening explanations for two concerns/confusions I’d had: “Often needs swaddling to get to sleep, because flailing arms and legs keep her up and overstimulated.” (She has slept exactly one night and very few naps without being well swaddled, something I had expected her to grow out of by two months, as my Casa babies have. It is an ESSENTIAL with her!) 

And secondly, “If she starts crying and the cycle is not interrupted, it’s like the point of no return, and her crying leads to more crying until she’s reached a fever pitch of rage.” EXACTLY!!!! We quickly realized she “crying it out” and calming herself down does not happen with her, no matter how much other mothers swear it is possible and even necessary. That’s just not the way she’s wired!

The grumpy type description details frequent meltdowns and impatient, upset feeding times. (No kidding! She wants immediate gratification when nursing, not tolerating a slow let-down). The world must come to a stop when she needs attention. (The author also mentions that grumpy types run off babysitters. So glad that Kaley is still with us!!)

  

With mommy on a rainy cool day

With daddy

 Love those eyes!!

I've often asked myself how I got such a demanding, high maintenance baby who so resists a schedule, when God knew we were adopting three children at the same time. But now I just as often wonder if He did that so that she would not be overlooked in a busy household. As I wrote a friend recently, the boys are REALLY easy compared to her, something I definitely wasn't expecting. I was used to babies. That is, till I met my own! Jake has told me more than once that God specially chose Sophia for me as a challenge, to stay dependent on Him and humble.

Loving our new outfit from Tia Kaley!

Monkey time

It is rewarding to parent our “spirited baby”. We love how talkative she is during content times, and when she’s happy, she’s HAPPY!!  

 All dressed up for the day my family arrived

Yeahhh, so... That's probably enough pictures for just one post!! Till next time, friends and family! :)