Archive for category Life’s A Sweet Fruit

Adoption Changes Lives. Period.

Posted by KK on Thursday, 9 August, 2012

Wow. Just WOW. What a way to start my day!

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Mother’s Day {2012}

Posted by KK on Sunday, 13 May, 2012

Mommy,

We were born and we were lying there and we heard things and we felt things.

Then you showed up and we heard You! and we felt You!

Our ears began to fill with words like LOVE, BEAUTIFUL, HANDSOME , STRONG, and most of all PRECIOUS!

You have wiped every tear, and you have heard every laugh.

When we go to our beds in our comfortable and safe room, we easily drift off to sleep because we know you are near.

Every day our bellies are filled with nourishment from your hand that comes from your heart.

We hear words like unloved, neglected, malnourished, and unwanted but we don’t know what those words mean.

We are watching you closely mommy because we want to be just like you!

Thank you for loving us with all your heart and strength mommy!!!!

Happy Mothers Day! We love you so much!!

Blu Belle and Everest

{written by daddy}

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Mothering my Belle.

Posted by KK on Friday, 4 May, 2012

It’s no secret that I love being a mother. From a very young age it’s all I ever wanted to do. I didn’t dream of wedding dresses or my wedding day. I wanted to be married, of course, but I wanted babies and lots of them and right away. I wouldn’t be surprised if I asked Jason on our wedding night when we could start trying for a baby and was nearly devastated when it didn’t happen for us immediately. (It took us about 2 1/2 years to get pregnant, not trying aggressively but also not preventing it) I know this is what I was created for. I rarely ever get bogged down by the monotony in my life. I do laugh at it quite often, though.

WAHHHH!!!

and maybe a

MAMAAA!!!!

Wake up to babies crying for a bottle. Make bottles while simultaneously making coffee. Get babies out of bed. Pour a cup of coffee. Check emails while babies quietly drink bottles. Wake up the rest of my crew if not already trickling out of bed. Give out morning hugs and kisses to all (the only time I ever get them from my biggest boy anymore but I love that he still desires a morning hug). Supervise breakfast being made and eaten (big kids make their own). Make breakfast for the littles and feed them all. Supervise the doing of chores while I do some of my own changing diapers as needed. Start some laundry. Clean the kitchen. Put babies down for a morning nap. Get JJ playing something fun while getting the big kids started on school. Couple hours of school. Babies wake up. Make lunch. Eat lunch. Clean the kitchen. Babies and JJ down for afternoon nap. Switch over laundry. More school. Play outside. Prepare and cook dinner. Greet daddy home from work. Eat dinner. Administer baths to the littles while the big boys shower. More laundry. All three littles to bed. Big boys devotions with daddy. Mama falls asleep on the couch after cleaning the kitchen. Daddy falls asleep on the other couch or in bed with a big boy he was praying with. I stumble into bed sometime during the night. Wake up to babies crying for a bottle….repeat.

And that’s just a glimpse of a normal day without any errands or therapy or doctor appointments. I wouldn’t have it any other way, though. It’s what I was made for and I love doing it. I don’t find it hard or at all monotonous.

As of late I have been noticing something my sweet and one-and-only baby girl has been doing. My Blu Belle has been noticing her stuffed animals and dolls (only 2 of those so far) for the first time. She grabs them, squeezes them sort of aggressively, takes their arms and slings them from one side to the other back and forth and then smashes her face onto theirs. It is all very messy and loud and unorganized so it took her repeating all this for several days for me to realize what she was doing. (I’ve not mothered many little girls….is that obvious?) I’ve heard of baby girls barely walking who begin to show their nurturing side and I remember my best friend’s baby girl, Violet, taking baby wipes and wiping every surface she could get to when she was barely sitting up and crawling (her mommy and I are fans of constantly wiping things).

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{Blu Belle’s first doll}

So yesterday I had the privilege of keeping a tiny little angel who is living with my dear friend and fellow foster mama while she went to pick up her newest little addition. Baby “A” is nine months old but only about 12 or so pounds. Her story is very sad but she is working hard to become all God has created her to be and her lovely foster mama is helping her do so as well. As soon as my friend handed me “A” my Belle began to freak out climbing up my leg and fussing at me. I thought at first that it might be a bit of jealousy but it wasn’t. She wanted that baby. As soon as I sat down in the floor with her my Belle just as close as she could and began to touch the baby’s lips and cheeks and nose. She was unsure of her at first (I don’t believe she’s ever seen another baby at least not that small) and after a few minutes of that she began to try and do all of the same things to her as she does to her dolls and animals. She wanted to mash her face onto baby A’s face and was making the funniest sounds real close to her face. I’ve never seen her like that before. Then it dawned on me. She is really being a mommy to her babies. I guess I just hadn’t realized that my sweet Belle was already at this age. She is nurturing just like she was created to do. It is pretty amazing to watch after only watching little boys play in their poop and eat dirt for the last 12 years. (ok, that was harsh….they throw things, too…LOL)

So as I was telling Jason about all this last night after he got home from work he was just amazed, loved hearing the stories and wished he’d seen the things she’d been doing. After talking about it for a while he picked her up and said “She’s breaking the cycle already.”

Queue the tears welling up in my eyes.

I hadn’t once thought of that. We often think out loud and chat about what their life may have been like had they not come to us (if they would have even survived) but I hadn’t once really thought about the cycle that was being broken right before our eyes. Our twins’ birth mother is 23 years old and has given birth to 8 children, none of which she has in her custody. She was likely a product of molestation or rape as she began her child bearing at the age of 13 and she is currently pregnant again. She is a serial mother. She gets pregnant, claims to enjoy being pregnant all the while not showing regard for the life inside her and continues to abuse drugs, gives birth and then suddenly when there is a life she created in her hands she freezes and cannot seem to mother that child(ren) even for a second. If any of her children even left the hospital with her they were taken into custody very quickly and have never gone back to her with a couple of them now living with Jesus. The last four, including our twins, didn’t leave the hospital with her and she never even saw our twins again after she abandoned them in the NICU. It is something I cannot fathom and it is very common. Mothers walking into hospitals high as a kite to give birth to a child and walking out empty handed never looking back. There were at least a half dozen in the NICU with our twins who had been abandoned and waiting for their foster parents to come get them. It is a vicious cycle that I have sadly been a witness to a lot in the last few years but one that is at least being broken forever in my home. I am not by any means a perfect mother and I am certain that one day in the near future I will sneak up on her playing with her babies and yelling at them or spanking their butts no doubt. But I am present and I love her to pieces and would lay down my life for her or any of her brothers. It’s what I was made for.

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{“JJ” says, Dis da mommy.}

And don’t even get me started on the magnitude of the cycle being broken by her (and all our babes) having a very present father. I’ll have to save that one for next week. It is no doubt as important if not more.

Adoption changes lives. Forever.

Pimpin’ my ride…

Posted by KK on Tuesday, 1 May, 2012

Perspective.

Posted by KK on Thursday, 19 April, 2012

People look at me like I am a saint. I know because that’s what they tell me. Every time I leave the house I am asked about my crew…”Are all these children yours?” to which I answer yes and go on to share a fraction of our story in hopes it raises awareness of the plight of orphans in the world, a fact that albeit very real to me is commonly unknown to most others. My husband and I foster children who are in unsafe situations and need a safe place to call home for a short while or in some cases forever. We’ve adopted a couple, Lord willing another in the near future, but we are not saints. I am no saint. I am so very human. I get mad at my kids when they make messes. I get really frustrated when my house is unorganized and messy. I yell at my children far too often. I treat my husband like a doormat and rarely ever put him before our children like I know I should. My priorities are out of order. I slack in homeschooling my children quite frequently to do something I’d rather do which is always less important. I care what others think about me and what I look like instead of what Jesus thinks of me. I could really go on. And on.

At the end of the day I am nothing on a grand scale and it often bothers me when people put me on a pedestal because I know deep down how truly human I am when others think I am superhuman and I know that what I do is very, very miniscule. I immediately think of my cyber-friends Adeye and Kim and I truly believe they are superhuman because it appears to me that they are living their lives in complete abandon to their creator although they would argue the same thing as I am now, that they are  human and selfish and lack the discipline that God desires for them as His disciples despite what others see in them.

And then there are days when I stumble upon a video like the one below…

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And I am reminded.

As I began watching that video, I began crying so uncontrollably that I couldn’t even see out of my eyes. I was reminded once again the perspective that I want to walk around with all day every day at the forefront of my thoughts. I want to abandon this self absorbed life I am living now and GO and pick these children up and hold them. Give them water. Give them a morsel of food that they’ll see as a feast. Wash their frail bodies and just hold them until they stop crying and don’t hurt anymore. Yesterday I wanted to kill someone because I couldn’t find my chacos and was late for an appointment when I have at least two dozen other pair of shoes, including another pair of chacos, that I could have put on instead. Today I don’t even want to wear shoes because they don’t have shoes and they don’t even care. Yesterday I walked around my house and felt like I was suffocating because I often feel so cramped in a 2400 square foot home where 8 people live and I wanted to beg and plead with my husband to agree to sell this house and buy a bigger one so we’d be more comfortable. Today I realize that this house is half full of useless junk that no one needs and if we got rid of it we could fit a few more beds in the bedrooms and give life to more children. The past few weeks I have been worried sick about my almost 15 month old son who still wears a size 2 diaper and barely weighs 18 pounds and have put him through some pretty invasive testing only to find out he is perfectly healthy. Today I realize that he actually weighs more than Adeye’s fourteen-year-old daughter that she and her husband have just committed to adopt from Eastern Europe who has been rotting away in an orphanage for fourteen years confined to a crib and only given a bottle with enough nourishment to keep her alive. I could go on. And on.

Perspective. It’s good for the soul.

“… whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be My disciple.” Luke 14:33

Our mighty little mountain man…Everest.

Posted by KK on Thursday, 12 April, 2012

It’s no secret that our little Ev is small. You can just look at him and see it. He was actually the heavier twin at birth (by 2 ounces) and faithfully kept up with Blu for several months as they grew but around 9 months of age her weight kept climbing but his began to bottom out. At his 12 month checkup his growth curve, which had always been considerably below where it needed to be as a result of their prematurity, had dipped a bit. Soon after his 12 month checkup he began to exhibit signs of pickiness (or so I thought) and I didn’t pay too much attention to it. Too many times I have rushed my kiddos to the doctor over something that was a temporary behavioral issue believing it was something much bigger. As the weeks flew by he continued to all but refuse food without a full on struggle at meals (me holding his little hands down so he wouldn’t pull his food back out of his mouth) so just to be on the safe side I took him to the pediatrician to rule out a sore throat or an ear infection. He checked out perfectly healthy with the exception of his weight. It had been 2 months since his 12 month checkup and he had dropped more weight (or rather his curved had dipped even lower because he had not gained an ounce but had aged more). Our pediatrician was not happy and ordered us to begin giving him high calorie protein shakes twice a day as well as take him to a GI specialist in Chattanooga to have him seen just to make sure there isn’t a problem we are not seeing. I had already been force-feeding Ev his 3 bottles & 3 meals per day so hearing that I was going to have to add an additional 2 bottles a day I knew it was going to be challenging and it is. I immediately bought vanilla and chocolate shake mixes and, athough this sounds super yummy to most, Ev hated it. He’s never had anything that sweet before and he struggles with things that are cold and these shakes are ‘served best cold’ although I do set them out and allow them to at least warm up to room temperature. But not only does he not like them, he already refuses his regular meals and bottles so there’s no way he is interested in more. If this continues, it will be hard to rely on these shakes to provide the additional calories he needs.


So yesterday we took Ev to see Dr. Laman with TC Thompsons Children’s Hospital. After a thorough checkup he was able to come to two conclusions: 1. Our Everest has Eosinophillic Esophagitis which is where an allergy to a specific food or a group of foods has a reaction and causes his esophagus to close up making it hard for him to swallow his food (which explains why he attempts to “fish hook” every bite from his mouth and throat or (although after that first suggestion I really didn’t hear much of anything else that doctor said) 2. Our Everest is a picky eater (which I don’t think he is having made every bit of his food by hand knowing how much he loves the different tastes) and will need high calorie protein shakes and/or ultimately an NG tube if he refuses them and continues to drop weight. WHAT???


So it looks like we are headed back to Chattanooga either Monday evening or very early Tuesday morning to report to TC Thompsons CH for outpatient testing where they are going to put my tiny little & fragile baby boy under anesthetic in order to place a tube into his esophagus as well as run several more tests and biopsies while he is under. To say that I am worried is an understatement. I am sick with worry. My pediatrician called me last night to ease my worry and he, as did the GI specialist, explained it will be extremely easy to treat this “EE” if Everest does in fact have it and much easier than if he does not and it turns out that he is simply a very picky eater. Once they begin treatment in babies with this allergy they begin to eat like mad and get fat and happy very quickly, so they say. I want fat and happy for my Ev. He is so small and we knew he would need a little extra stamina to be all that God has planned for him to be which is why we gave our mighty little man such a big name. I can’t imagine what it will look like on Tuesday when I see his lifeless little body under anesthesia and every time I imagine it and/or think of the risks associated with the anesthesia and procedures taking place I want to vomit. Everest has already overcome prematurity, perinatal drug addiction and a heart defect…he is determined to live up to his name.  “Lord, wrap our baby boy in your arms & breathe strength into him! Amen.”

Please join us in praying for Everest maybe toss in a few for this sappy little mama who can’t seem to stop weeping. Thank you!


He is Risen Indeed!

Posted by KK on Sunday, 8 April, 2012

Happy Easter from the Bailey Crew!

For Easter this year we chose to support Feeding The Orphans and donate what is truly a minuscule amount toward the feeding of the millions of orphans in this world. We did this last year for the first time and we loved it! I’ve never been one to spend money on fancy outfits for Easter (our church’s attire is typically blue jeans + t-shirt + flip flops the rest of the year) but I would find myself at midnight the night before Easter Sunday dusting off the old forgotten iron and throwing things together to try and make us look a little ‘prettier’…but for what? For the second year that peer pressure has been removed and we have been able to focus on the true meaning of Easter with our kiddos and this mama has felt blessed! At the same time, knowing that our small donation helped our friends’ amazing organization was even better.

Holy Moly!

Posted by KK on Friday, 23 March, 2012

Our Blu Belle is beginning to find her footing! Not bad for a 13 month old born 8 weeks premature! I am hoping her skills will rub off on little brother, too.

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DIY Crib Rail Covers

Posted by KK on Sunday, 12 February, 2012

Before I brag about this cool little project I have to give credit to this gal who I stole the idea from…

http://momrhapsody.wordpress.com/2010/10/10/diy-crib-rail-cover/

If you are a mom whose baby is morphing into a woodchuck and you’d rather your convertible crib that *should* last many years not be ruined by your woodchuck here is an excellent idea I found on someone’s blog! (Note: I didn’t want to buy 2 expensive fabric crib rail covers nor did I want to put some chemical ridden adhesive silicone cover on it that I may or may not be able to remove one day). I spent $5 on 1 yard of this fleece fabric (was 50% off at JoAnn’s) and it was enough for both the twins’ cribs and I spent less than 30 minutes making both of them. Yay! I even caught a pic of my little male woodchuck in action! (My female woodchuck isn’t pulling up just yet but I know it’s only a matter of days before she begins ‘chuckin’ away)..

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And simply because this little female woodchuck is THE most gorgeous little gal on the planet I shall include one of her, too…

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Posted by KK on Saturday, 4 February, 2012

Happy Birthday to our darling twins, Blu Belle and Everest! I can’t believe they are 1 year old already!

It has been a year of appointments…165 to be exact! I’ve been feeling sad about how fast this day was approaching and decided to look back through my date book to try and figure out how this happened. Between the numerous early pediatrician weight checks and ongoing well checkups, visits with DCS case managers, home health nurses, hospital social workers, appointments with their ENT, neurologist, neuro surgeon, craniofacial specialist, physiatry, cardiologist, multiple Children’s Hospital lab tests, opthomologist, health department, Synegis Clinic, and meetings with Tennessee Early Intervention Services and Birth-to-Three developmental classes with 71 out of the 165 being a combination of physical, occupational and speech therapy (that is 71 hours of therapy!)….it is no wonder I feel like the entire last year has been an absolute blur.

But I have no regrets! Our twins are doing fabulous and are HEALTHY and so very happy! Although we haven’t even known them for a full year, I feel like I have loved them all my life. So thankful to God for choosing me to be their mama!