Hope Guides Us...

What a year it has been here at the Henry house. To sum this year up in one word it would be hope. All we had at 12 midnight a year ago was just that. Hope that we would hear something, anything that said we could finally bring our baby home. We knew we were going to miss every single first, and we were just resolved to bring her home. Thank God that we didn't have to wait too long into 2007 to finally get that call. Then we hoped we would get to her and everything would go well. And again to get the three of us home safely. We then settled into life and hoped that we could finally slow down.

Hope played a large part in the events following that fateful 3am trip to the bathroom on Feb 19th. As I found myself praying, practically begging for this child inside of me to survive despite the odds that were being laid out for us. Just as I had prayed and practically begged for Lily to come home to us.

It is all the we had to hold onto at times and we did. We never lost sight. We lived day and night this past year hoping that Lily wouldn't hate us because we had gotten pregnant, that I wouldn't loose Charlotte, and a multitude of other things. The one thing that always remained constant was hope.

Now going forward into 2008 we continue to hope, but no longer for ourselves. We now hope for our girls, that they will be healthy and happy and will continue to grow. Chris and I look forward to the future and all that it holds. BRING ON 2008!!

My baby is a Big Girl!!

Well tonight is the night... we took the side off of Lily's crib and placed a bed guard. Lots of nervous excitement in this house tonight... and that is just from Chris and I!!! Lily handled it like a champ... so far. We have found with her that she deals best with matter of fact change. Meaning she likes the just do it and don't go back approach. We can handle that! So we went along with our normal night routine and just went for it. If she does well with this then we will be moving her into her brand new real big girl bed by the end of the month. We want do transition this a little slower b/c once she is out of the crib we are going to be putting Charley in it. We want to try to minimize the amount of jealously. We will post tomorrow to let everyone know how it went!! Keep your fingers crossed!

BIG GIRL!!!!

Making the climb

Checking it out

Charley looking stylish!

We have grown again!!

We have added a playroom!! Gotcha! Heehee please do not even think about that. It would be a medical miracle to say the least ( thank you OB!!). Anyway, yes Chris and I have been hard at work the past two days cleaning out our upstairs and have transformed it into the girl's new playroom. We decided that we would have to do this after trying to put everything away from Christmas and finding that we didn't have any room on the main floor for any of it. For being such small girls their toys are REALLY big!! So now they have a place for all of it, and MOST of it is there. We left several smaller things on the main floor and all the craft things are still down as well. See the next blog for pics of the new room and Lil's new do!! Ohh and Chris got a great shot of Charley's eyes.

Some Pics....

Lily in the new playroom!

Charley's big blue eyes!!

Lily's new do!!

What a Difference a Year Makes.... MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

This is the post from our blog last Christmas day, I can't believe how much has changed for us in a year!!

Merry Christmas everyone. We hope that everyone is having a wonderful day. We are doing well and wanted to thank everyone for your kind words and well wishes today. It truly mean a lot to us and has made this day easier for us.
Our agency is closed for the holiday season. However, if we do receive our Pink information, we will be notified immediately despite the shutdown. Otherwise our next update will be on Lily's birthday, January 2.
Megan has made the most beautiful video for one of my Christmas presents about Lily and our journey to bring her home. So please copy and paste this link and take a look. It is truly amazing. :)
Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from our family to yours.
Love,
Chris, Megan, Lily, Willie, Gus, and Dusty



I hope that everyone had a great day yesterday. We sure did!! It was better then I could have ever dreamed!! There was one small hiccup on Christmas Eve but that was quickly handled. Let's just say that there will be a donation made to the Salvation Army, because someone can't can't take a hint. Anyway I have already given that more attention then it deserved... moving right along.



We took the girls to Christmas Eve service. Lily was sooooo sleepy that she fell asleep on the way to church! Now most of you already know that we live less then 5 minutes from our Church, so that says a lot! She did great through service. We took both girls up for Communion and to get Charlotte blessed. Lily as always was a little shy when it came to taking the host. But after she took it and chewed it she looked right at Chris and said "mmmmm yummy!" Priceless! So we made it through the rest of service and got the girls to the car. Oh as for Charlotte yeah... she slept again! We turn the car on and were discussing how good the girls were (now we hadn't even pulled away from the curb yet) looked in the back at Lily and she was totally knocked out!! We got her home and put her to bed. She didn't get to put her cookies out for Santa or anything. So we made sure that was all done for her. :-)



Then "Santa" went to work. We brought everything down from up stairs and Chris brought in the kitchen. He was very proud of himself once it was all put together. It does look just like the box and there were no remaining pieces!! WAY TO GO DADDY!! We got all of the rest of the presents arranged and pretty much stood there in disbelief that these presents were for our children. It was pretty amazing.



The girls gave us the best gift ever.. they slept until 7:15!!! Well Charley got up at 5 to eat but went right back down again. Santa had left an big stuffed Elmo in Lily's room waiting for her. So we got woken up to cheers of Emlo Emlo!! We brought her into our bedroom and opened the gift Santa left in their stockings. Then Daddy left to finish last minute set up. We didn't say anything but I took Lily around the kitchen to get into the living room so that Chris could get a good shot of her on the video. She walked right up to the presents and started handing them out! She then found her new Blue's Clues Chair and Dora slippers and the festivities began. As of last night we still had 3 presents that weren't opened. Mostly that has to do with her finding the kitchen. Chris and I were fed a 5 course meal for breakfast, lunch and dinner! She LOVES it.



I must say that through the day I keep waiting to wake up from a dream. Lily had so much fun, Charley...well she does what she does best at this point. Eat, sleep and poop! She is REALLY good at the last thing!! LOL My favorite part of the day happened when Lily ran over to me in the rocking chair and hugged me and said "awww Mommy." Now this happens daily, but yesterday it just felt different. I realized in that moment that I have everything I could have ever asked for. For once in my life I can think of not one thing that I want or desire. I have a wonderful husband and the two most beautiful daughters in the whole world. My cup completely runneth over.

Megan

PS I will post some pictures tomorrow from our holiday and Lily will be showing off her new do!

Lily got wacked...

by the Karma stick tonight. LOL For those of you that don't know when we went to pick up Lily last year the hotel that we stayed in had a baby room (really more like a 'thank God we don't have to stay cooped up in our room' room). Over our many, many visits to the baby room Chris and I became friendly with a few couples and our kids would play together. Cameron was one of the little boys Lily would play with. One afternoon Lily decided it would be a great idea to plant her foot in the middle of this childs chest and kick him to the floor. I about died! Funny thing is that I can still see this like it happened yesterday. Anywho so tonight Chris and I took the girls to the mall and we let Lily play in the big play area. Let me just say that Megan almost took out not one but two brats oops I mean little girls!

My little the social butterfly was running and playing like a normal kid and some other kid (thank god relatively same sized or I would have been taszered for sure... LOL) ran up out of nowhere and pushed her right in her chest on to the ground! Now Chris and I both watch her like a hawk. Normally Chris will follow at a good distance and I keep her in bounds and boot her back into play when she gets to close to running lose. I also play the role of Wa Wa Waterboy! It is a true team effort. I saw the little punk coming towards her and Lily was in mid wave then WHAM she is on the ground. Now I have to admit what happened next made my whole day... before Lily started to cry she wagged her finger at this girl and was yelling " NO NO NO!!!" Both Daddy's went to their respective daughters and the offending father apologized. So the world was right and Lily was back in the crazyness playing. Then it happened again (luckily it was a different girl). This one used the whole "let me touch your shirt" and then slapped at my girl repeatedly and pushed her. There is my girl again "NO NO NO!!!!"this time though she was slapping at her back (a true girl fight!!) This time there was no other Daddy to remove the other girl so Chris walked over and told the girl to knock it off! WAY TO GO DADDY!!! However, in this altercation a Boo boo resulted. (Dramatic music...) I really don't think that she had gotten hurt. I think that it scared her more then anything. From then on anytime a kid got to close she would tell them "NO NO NO!!!" Chris stayed near enough from then on and when he heard her say that he told her "No honey they are nice." Then she would change completely and wave and say "hi!"

Now here is why her yelling at these girls made my day. We always read to her and more often explain the story to her instead of just reading the words to her. We make it so that she can understand it. She is starting to understand when someone is mean and when they are nice.So now when she see's the evil Queen from Snow White she says " mean no no" and looks at me for approval. I used the same thing for Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, when the Bumble comes out to eat the reindeer Lily got scared. I told her we tell him "No No." So now every time she see something like that she yells "NO NO!" and wags her finger. Then looks at me to approve. Well tonight she did it all by herself. She knew that the girl was mean and told her so!!

Ohh by the way if you were wondering what baby Charley was doing during all this.... yeah she was asleep in my chest!!! She had her sister's back in spirit!

Ahhh my girls!! :-)

Love to all!

Quick funny

I forgot to add this last night.
Everyday when Chris comes home from work I go through our day and Lily helps. So yesterday we were going over our trip to the doctors andthe following conversation happened...

Me: Lily tell daddy where we went today

Lily: Blank expression

Me: Did we go to the doctors?

Lily: Excitied says Doctor

Me: Did Charley get lots of Boo boos?

Lily: Excitied says Boobies!

Chris and I both said no not boobies, boo boo's. But she again said boobies. So now in Lily's mind Charley went to the doctors and got boobies!! LOL
Just wanted to share... Chris and I got a good laugh out of it!!

Charlotte's Check-up

Charley had her 2 month check-up today. She is a beautiful 11 lbs 11 oz and 22.25 inches.! She gained 2 lbs and 2 inches. She is in the 70th percentile for weight and 95th for height! Go figure that one with her stubby parents! Poor baby got a total of 4 shots and 1 oral immunizations. She is pretty sleepy tonight and we are giving her Tylenol just in case. Normally I can get through the shots pretty well. The worst time with Lily was when I had to help hold her hands and she looked me right in my eyes and was screaming Momma Momma. Today that was slightly surpassed by Charley's screams. I have never in my life heard something like that. She was already mad b/c she was hungry. I had timed her appointment right after she eat and long before she was due again. The doctor ran late and it was time again before we even got to see her. We made it through! Lily was a trooper, we were in the exam room for close to an hour. Thank God we could watch the airplanes land. I let Lily play with the percussion hammer. My little doctor in training. I sear tomorrow she is going to have bruises on her lower legs. I finally convinced her that she could make sure her shoes were healthy too, so she banged on them for a while. In the end Charley was given a clean bill of health We go back on 1/21 I was able to work it out that when we go back then we can have Lily's 2 year check-up and Charley's 4 month. Ha that will be a fun visit as they both get shots that time!

Other then that excitement we are gearing up for Christmas! T-2 weeks!! Tomorrow Lily and I are going to decorate the front door with Santa's and Snowman. Or as Lily says....(quite loudly most of the time LOL) Nanta and No-nan! Lily is super excited about Santa. I ask her if Santa is going to come to her house and she points to the door then waves and says Hi! Super cute!! Charley is going to rest, well really I am going to take her lead and see how she is feeling. She was due for her bath tonight (she gets one every other night) but Chris and I thought we would just give her the night off. She LOVES bath time, but hates getting out. She gets cold and that isn't any fun. We thought she had quite enough today and tonight.

I have been working with Lily and telling her all about her upcoming birthday. She gets excited when I tell her about her birthday. She can say Appy and then a garbled birthday. She will say she is going to be two. I showed her how to hold up two fingers. She tries but usually she looks at her hand like she knows there is a way to do it but just can't figure it out!! I can't believe she is going to be two! Then six days after her birthday we will celebrate our first annual family day. That was the day that she was placed with us forever and truly the start of our family. So these next few weeks are gonna be busy ones!

Couple happy notes.... My friend Reba and her husband will be leaving Thursday for Guatemala to finish their adoption of their son!! YEAH!!

Also we went to go visit Chris's Grandma over the first weekend of December. She lives in north, way north, can throw a rock into New York northern PA. The girls did great! We had to cut our trip short b/c of the bad weather and not only does she live way north she also lives way high on a mountain! So we left ahead of the ice on Sunday. The girls (grandma included :-) had a great time. It was nice to visit. She had never gotten to meet Lily yet b/c we got prego with Charley right behind Lily's homecoming. I wasn't allowed to travel that far b/c of being so high risk. Lily calls her Me maw. When we got home Chris and I wanted to do something nice for her with all the great pics we got with all 3 of them. So we used an online company to make a medium sized poster for her that collages all the pics together. It turned out sooo nice. She called tonight to say that she got it and loves it!! She lost Grandpa 3 years ago and they had been married for over 60 years. She just misses that man so much. I know that she would have loved to share her Great- Grandbabies with him.

Can't wait to see everyone as the holiday draws near!! Until then we love ya!!