Baby Girl's First Night

Well, all of that nesting really paid off! We got a call to do respite care for an almost 6 month old baby girl. We're supposed to only have her for two weeks. 

She was asleep when she arrived but awoke shortly thereafter, around 7:30pm. She screamed her head off for 2 hours and 15 minutes because she had just gotten shots that day and every time she moved her legs it hurt. The more she cried the more she kicked her legs! I felt so badly for her! We did give her some Acetaminophen to help.

Baby Girl also had a lot of tummy aches from gas, possibly due to her foster mom adding rice cereal to every bottle she took. When I fed her in the middle of the night I didn't add the cereal. 

One funny thing she did was stare at my phone screen (I was texting and the room was dark) and it calmed her down! I thought maybe she had been used to falling asleep staring at a tv screen or something. I was glad she finally calmed down.

Here's how the first night went:

9:05pm 3 oz formula (I tried to get her to drink more to no avail.)

9:45-11:26 sleep

11:40 2 oz formula

11:45-2:05 sleep

2:22 2 oz formula

2:40-2:55 sleep

3:00 2 oz formula

3:05-5:41am sleep

Baby Girl loves Chico, our dog! She "talks" to him and grabs for him. Chico is quite fond and protective of Baby Girl, too. 

I took her to the grocery store this morning and she loved it! She smiled at me the whole time. It has been a very happy morning and she is now working on a two-hour afternoon nap!! I should be napping, too, but I got caught up on the housework. Amazing what messiness a 6 month old can cause ;) but I wouldn't trade a minute of it!

"Nesting"

It's been two months since our first foster children left us. The break has been extremely beneficial and rejuvenating, and I am eager to meet our new ones! During this break I've been trying to get things back on track--spiritually, mentally, emotionally, and physically. Now that I am feeling a lot better, as opposed to being completely exhausted from caring for needy children and ignoring my own needs, I have begun to work on our house...

It certainly won't be featured in the latest home magazine, but with our love seat and recliner against the wall we have so much more space for the (soon-to-be-here) children to play! Letting them play in the living room makes supervision so much easier.

My computer must be in the living room, too, because I work on Sunday School material and other church related stuff, so if it was back in our bedroom I couldn't supervise the children while I worked. Someday we would love to have a huge living area/family room that would give the children more space to play, but for now rearranging and smaller furniture helps.

craft and Lego table

Besides organizing the toys again (relabeling the bins), I took our kids clothing inventory and put it into a much more accessible chest of drawers rather than the bin they were in. Now I can see exactly what we have and wouldn't really even have to look at the inventory sheet when we get children who arrive with only the clothes on their back.

I love the idea of freezer cooking--cooking much more than we're going to eat in a day and freezing the rest or preparing foods ahead of time. Some people go as far as only cooking once a month. I did that once and it was wonderful! Now, I just make a huge pot of soup and put the rest in the freezer, and now that we bought an upright freezer I have so much more room to store meals!

Today, my mom came over and helped me switch the "baby" or younger child's furniture to the room closer to our bedroom. So, we took the oldest of our three twin mattresses and box spring to a thrift store since we don't plan to take three children any time soon. We will have to buy a crib if we get a baby since they don't allow ones with drop-down sides anymore. We have a pack n play that we can use temporarily, though.