Adventszeit, schoenste Zeit

Translated that means that the time before Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year.

So Christmas is my second favorite holiday, right after my birthday. Okay, all kidding aside, Christmas is a wonderful time and every year, I am enjoying everything about it, the music, the smells, the anticipation. But most of all, I have come to appreciate it as the celebration of the birth of our Savior.

So tomorrow is the first day of December - do you know what that means? My children do! They get to open the first window on their advent calendar. This is a part that I remember so vividly from when I was a child that I don't want my kids to miss out on it.

This year, we are going with the Playmobil one. It's the forest theme - which I thought was great for boy and girl. I only have one, so they have to share it. Each window has a toy that will be added to the scenery that came with the package.

I am a big fan of Playmobil and so is Coqui. Peanut is still a bit too young for most the pieces, but I hope that she will grow accustomed to it fast. At the end, we will have a nice collection of forest animals and their winter food.


Of course, slowly, we are decorating our house for the occasion. I pulled out all the boxes, but I have not have time to put it all up yet. But this weekend, we will buy the tree and decorate it. And I want to finish everything else, so I can do other things, like shopping and making cookies.
Here are a few pictures from the stuff that is out already. Of course, we are playing LOTS of Christmas music, in English, German and Spanish - a very interesting, cultural mix.
Most of all, I want to show off our stockings, because they are FIVE this year! Yeah.

Eventual, the baby will get it's own hanger, but I need to make a trip to a certain store for that. Can you tell that I have an oldest-one that is obsessed with trains? 

 This is Coqui's room. It's the most decorated so far - he is just way too excited! He also has a candy cane on his window, and those lights that look like candles. It's so bright in there at night that I can read his good-night stories without turning on the room light.

 My German 'Pyramide' that Mema had found for me one year. I totally love it.

Merry Christmas.

Follow-up on Peanut

Do you remember my last post about Peanut's nap habits, or rather the loss of a very good habit?

Well, for the last week, I have purposely NOT letting her take a nap. It was actually quite liberating when I could leave the house any time I wanted... We had a very busy week, every day was something big going on with multiple play dates, and of course Thanksgiving. Now I was very tired from this week.....

At the end of the day, Peanut was very tired, of course, and completely knocked out the moment I layed her down in her bed. The first night, she slept 14 hours straight through the night. All the other nights were pretty much like that, maybe not as many hours.

But today, she actually asked me for a nap because she said she was tired. Already when we left the church, she was yawning. But then we went out to eat and she seemed fine. But when we came home, she asked if I could put her down. So I did. I let her sleep for her usual hour and a half, until way past my cut-off-time - which is around 3 pm. Let's see if I have to pay back for that later.

Maybe she had stopped growing? Because at the same time, she kind of stopped eating. But today, she ate all her lunch and asked for more. Then she asked for a nap.... maybe she is growing again!?! My 95%-child wants to be tallest of her class, I guess....

Blessed Thanksgiving

"How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!"  (1 John 3:1) 
Father, I pray that my life would be a living testimony of the fact that You have lavished Your love on me by making me Your child. Might everything I think, say and do today be shaped by this glorious fact. In Jesus' name. AMEN
 
So Thanksgiving is over and yet, I want to be thankful. Do I need a special day to be reminding to be thankful? No, I don't. I am thankful every single day.

I have so much to be thankful for, so I thought I mentioned it here:
I am thankful for:
- a God that has a never-ending love for me and that just blows me away
- a loving and carrying husband that walks by my side no matter what trials life has for us
- 5 wonderful children - 2 are already with out heavenly Father, 2 are right here with me now, and 1 is on it's way - they are ALL blessings to me!
- my parents who raised me
- the Hubby's family that took me in like their own daughter
- awesome friends that love us and that we enjoy spending time with
like on Thanksgiving Day:

Still, there is more. I am thankful for:
- Heather, the woman who carried our daughter - she gave up so much to help us make our wish come true, we will be forever thankful for what she did, and we love her and her family very much
- my best friend who replaced a big emptiness in my life - she is the person that I will call when I need advise, support or just simply girl-talk, I can not think of my life without her
- that same best friend that is carrying our last baby now - she followed God's calling and we are so thankful for her and her family
- for healthy children
- to be cancer-free and feeling great
- for all the material things we have like a house and cars and other things - they are not that important but make life easier and enjoyable.

The Lord has been good to us, to Him goes all the glory!

"Oh, give thanks to the LORD, for he is good! His faithful love endures forever." (1Chronicles 16:34)

How much sleep is too much?

Well, we arrived at a stage in my little girl's life where I am not sure how much sleep she needs. For the longest time, she has been taking only one nap a day. Most of the days, it was practically perfect - we do school and a little outdoor activity, then have lunch and take a nap. I prefer to stay home in the afternoon, or at least really close to home, because I really don't want to battle traffic. I am fortunate to have a choice, so I try to run all my errands in the morning.

But lately, it seems like when she does take a nap, she takes forever to fall asleep at night. Saturday night, she finally slept AFTER I fell asleep, and that was past 11 o'clock at night. She was not crying, just happily talking and singing away in her bed. When I went in and told her that she needs her beauty-sleep, she said "okay, Mami" and still didn't go to sleep. How frustrating.

So now I find myself in the odd place of having to make a choice between a nap for her and a later bedtime, or no nap and an early bedtime. I am not sure which one I want. I really like my quiet time with Coqui alone, so he still gets a little one-on-one-time with me.

On the other hand, it would be nice to be able to go out of the house and not having to be back for nap time. We have done so a few times already, and she did great for most of the day. Of course, every toddler gets tired and cranky later in the day.

So my nice quiet time between a busy morning and a more relaxed afternoon might be just plain over..... how will I miss thee!

Making a Baby in a different way

We have wonderful news to share...

... but before I do that, I want to remember why I even started this blog. I am a cancer survivor and due to a hysterectomy, I can not bear my own children anymore. But the doctor was able to save my ovaries, so we can still have children - just not the normal way.
So about three years ago, we went through the fertility process of harvesting my eggs, the Hubby's sperm and made lab babies. Sounds fun, right? If you want to know the entire medical side of it, you can read about it here. (If not, you skip and let your imagination go wild.)

The important part is that we needed a carrier, or to be more exact a gestational carrier, that 'borrows' us her 'oven' to 'bake' our baby. I highlighted our, because it is ours biologically. No part in this baby comes from the woman who carries the baby. Just to be clear on that!
So a lovely relative had stepped forward and wanted to carry that baby for us. She was such a blessing when we were in need of a true miracle. It was not an easy process but we made it through together and the result was a beautiful creation of God, the maker of us all, our pretty baby girl. And the many blessings that came along the way for both families.

During those difficult months, I got closer to a lady from our church. That lady is my best friend today and I love that I had her then and could share my worries with her. But I love even more that we are friends today and I can not think of life without her....
The day after we came home with Peanut, Beth came over to our house for a play date for the kids, for us adults to see each other, and to tell me something.... something that I was not prepared for and I didn't even expect....
... okay, are you ready? Drum roll please...

... she told me that she wanted to be our next carrier!!!

Can you believe that? I was so.... flabbergasted, I guess. I didn't know what to say. I mean I said thank you and all that, but I seriously wasn't thinking about that at all, not when you are holding that six-week old baby in my arms. We didn't talk about it for a while, but after about a year, I brought it back up and wanted to know if she was still willing to do this for us. And she was! So time went by, life goes on, schedules and such don't make it easy to really sit down and crunch the numbers.... but we finally said, okay, we gonna do this.

So the process was a bit different than last time. For once, I did not have to go through any medical procedures. Still, we had to go see a psychiatrist, go to the local fertility clinic for financial stuff, and had to have the embryo shipped to Texas; until finally Beth could have her first appointment with the doctor. She was in luck because she didn't have to take any hormone shots!
On the morning of the transfer, the embryo had to survive being thawed and then being implanted into Beth. Then we had to wait another ten more days for a blood test to take place, until we got the results that....

...... we will be a family of five soon.

We are almost eight weeks pregnant. I am looking forward to share this pregnancy with my very best friend, whom I love so much, and who has a special place in my heart, forever.

So yeah.... thank you, my dear friend Beth, for giving us this wonderful gift.
And I thank God for His infinitive blessings He is and will pour out over all of us.

If you want to read what she wrote today, here is a link to her blog.