Merry Christmas From the Skaggs

Merry Christmas my dear friends and family.

What a beautiful Christmas we had. We hope the same for you. It's really such a miraculous day to celebrate. Can you imagine the King of the universe, stepping down from His throne to join humanity in all the everyday struggles of life. No other faith believes that their god actually became man. But Jesus became man not just to have sympathy for his people but to have empathy for his people. He knows first hand the pains and joys that you experience, and He cares so deeply. He longs to be known and loved, but he has given us free will to choose to do so (remember Bruce Almighty...? that made so much sense the way they explained the power of love when you combine it with free will). "We love because he first loved us." 1John 4:19

**When I added the song element to this page I had wanted this song to play, but until now it has been unavailable. Take a listen to it if you have a minute and a few tissues.

Some people make birthday cakes on Christmas in celebration of Jesus' birthday...so I thought maybe we would do that to remind us of the reason for the day. My new Christmas tradition is what I will call my Snow Cake. Kinda looks like a snowball. But unintentionally it turned into something quite symbolic. It's a white cake with a raspberry filling and a butter cream frosting with coconut.
"Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow." Isaiah 1: 18

Pretty cool huh? It was amazing tasting too. If anyone wants the recipe just let me know.

Hot Chocolate and a Christmas Party

Just when I get a bit frustrated about my life...I read about life around Gretchen's home town. She refrenced this old entry recently. Just think if this is how you had to make hot chocolate???? Kinda makes me want to try it. Anyone have cinnamon tree branches?


Also the PICU (where I work) had it's annual Christmas party. I didn't bring my gigantic antiquated camera...but Gina did (have her nice camera I mean) !Gina, I hope you don't mind me borrowing your blog for the pics?! It was lots of fun to get dressed up, have a babysitter, and go out for the night (although it did feel a bit like we had a curfew...cause the 16 year olds can't be out driving past 11p - so we had to hurry home).

Happy Wrapping, Cookie Making, Christmas Music Listening, Christmas Story Watching -

Christmas Eve Eve.

18 Months already come and gone!

My little lad - Isaiah - turned 18 months before I even knew it. I can't believe it's already been a couple weeks since that date. I wanted to give a little run down on what he's been up to lately (besides ER trips).

I don't know if I could ever fully express my joy and excitement over the privilege of being his mommy. Isaiah is everyday unfolding into such a fun and interesting little boy, always curious. He LOVES to talk, and LOVES to be challenged, and LOVES to be quizzed about words, people's names, animals, sounds, colors, shapes, types of trucks or types of sports equipment. You may think you're done asking him what this or that is, only for him to say 'more, more.'

He's a talker....(mommy and daddy apparently have this particular problem too...way back to childhood). I am sure that his list of words is getting close to 200 now,... I stopped counting at 100 over 2 months ago. He LOVES books. His favorite book is "Oh, the Places You'll Go" by Dr. Seuss, and he would have me read it a hundred times (mommy stops at 3...and at this point has the book memorized). When I ask him what book he wants me to read he simply says 'go, go.'

He's not much of an eater. Not that he is particularly picky, but he just doesn't eat that much. Which is fine. He is currently about 35% for weight...but we're not concerned, he is particularly active and he definitely lets me know when he is hungry. He even makes particular food requests, i.e. toast, crackers, cheese, milk, banana, berries (cranberries) etc....depending on his desire at the moment I suppose. He does love his eggs for breakfast (which mommy loves cause it's cheep, easy and great protein), and grilled cheese for lunch...but dinner is pretty hit or miss.

If Isaiah only had 2 toys right now, it would be a truck and a ball. Although the truck would see more playing time. He is a truck man, that is for sure. He spends about 80% of his day organizing, pushing and re-arranging his trucks (and after Christmas, pushing them around the track). It's basically the Skaggs Truck Stop in our living room. But he also loves to wrestle, 'snuggle' (another form of wrestling and tackling), running, jumping, and playing any sort of basketball. And if we're outside.....it's DIRT!!!! or rocks....those are pretty cool too. And he has discovered that he can keep his rock treasures in his pockets.

My favorite time of day with Isaiah, hands down, would have to be nap time/bed time. It's the only time of day that he actually stops moving and will sit and really snuggle with me (the real kind of snuggle, not the wrestling boy version). We read books before nap and bed time while sitting on the small couch in his room. He always looks forward to this, so it makes bed time very easy. Then when we finish books, I continue holding him, I pray with him and then sing him to sleep. He is the best audience, and sometimes if I finish singing, he'll tell me more. I love this part of my day. Yes, it takes longer than just putting him in his crib, and sometimes it takes him quite a bit longer to fall asleep than other days, but I wouldn't give up the last 1 1/2 years of reading, praying, singing and holding for anything. It has been the most amazing time. When he was 3 months old I tried for 1 week to do the 'cry it out' method of putting him to bed. Then I quit....and it's one of the best decisions of my life. Every night I cherish, knowing that he won't always be this size again. And the fear that he wouldn't be able to put himself to sleep has been totally de-bunked for us. Isaiah will some nights just point to his crib when he is ready to lay down, or he will tell us, 'nigh-nigh.' And we lay him down, and never hear a peep.

Well, that's Isaiah at 18 months in a nut shell. No longer my little monkey, or peanut....but now he's my little warrior. I love him so much and am thrilled day to day to see what new things he discovers.

HouseKeeping

Hi! Is it really possible that Christmas is in ONE WEEK!

1. Check out some new blogs on the block: ANDERSON & GOUGH
2. Just finished Memory Keepers Daughter....not worth the work is my official stance on that one. It was grueling trying to make it to the end. And it closed with an attempt at a relationship with the estranged twins...not very believable and tough to swallow since the male character wasn't even very developed throughout.
3. New book on my list, anyone read it? "Love and Respect" I try to alternate fiction with practical living...(although I tend to sneak in 2 fiction before a practical).
4. No word about a baby yet. I know it's only been 5 days...but I may continue to include this one in all my blogs. Praying for him everynight.
5. Isaiah's eye is looking much better this week. On friday we got his stiches out, which was brutal, but he did great. He has gained the new nickname from mommy....WARRIOR.

WOOOO HOOOO

As of Friday afternoon, we are an official card carrying, FOSTER FAMILY!!!! We're praying everyday for baby, for baby's family and for a smooth transition when it happens....and we are hoping it happens soon...we are very excited! God already has a little man in mind for our family, and it couldn't be more thrilling to think about. I've been close to tears many times this past weekend in thinking about the amazing journey we are about to embark on. Many posts to come.

Family Pics

A couple weeks ago our good friend Sandy took some amazing pics of us up at Serrano Park. We had such a blast trying out different stuff, and she is so incredibly talented that she made it easy for us. She even brought out this really cool jeep for Isaiah to ride in. We are so blessed by her friendship, and generous spirit. Check out her website for our pics and to see some of her other work. She just launched a new photography website with her prices and pics too.
http://www.sandyrunnerblog.com/?p=90 (our family pics)
also,
http://www.sandyrunner.com/
Look for one of those pics on our upcoming christmas cards!!!

Happy Belated National Adoption Week!!!

So much to say! First Isaiah had a fight with a drawer on Sunday night...the drawer won, and we earned a trip to the ER...and 3 stitches later... I have a feeling he is going to be that kind of boy.

Sunday night:

Monday morning:

Monday night:

Tuesday morning:

When I'm holding other people's children down while they scream bloody murder, so that we can do a procedure is quite a different story than holding your own child down. He was in quite a bit of pain, but we opted to not give him drugs because...(in mom's experience), the trauma from un-peds-experienced ER nurses putting in an IV would be just as bad if not worse than just stitching up the wound with some lidocaine. Mommy was a very cranky nurse 'patient' with the triage nurse who was insisting on getting a tempurature and heart rate before taking him back...3 times it took her to get an accurate temp reading, all the while Isaiah's hematoma was getting bigger and bigger with all his screaming. I was more than a little upset with the nurse...she thought i was kidding when i told her to make something up...NO I was not...put down 34.5 for all I care. And then she said she needed a heart rate...oh, yes, after he's been screaming...that's worthless. Sometimes being a nurse can make occasions like this doubly frustrating.

BUT my little warrior did great, and the next morning it was if nothing at all had happened, and he was in a great mood. Daddy says, it might give him a pretty cool scar...(but mommy's hoping not).

IN OTHER NEWS: Happy Belated National Adoption Week (last week of November)

When I started this blog, I called it 'Little Lads' for a reason, we had just started the foster/adoption process, and we were soon going to be the parents of more than one lad. Well, 9 months down the road, and I am happy to say that we officially turned in our last piece of paper work on monday! Hip Hip Hooray!
Friday we will have our last home inspection and we should be recieving our certification at that time. I knew the process would be long, but I really didn't know it would be this long, and this final piece seems to be taking forever. But I am finally allowing myself to get excited. From here, we are telling people that we could have another child in a couple weeks or in a couple months, we are just not sure yet (although my secret wish is that it's before christmas). This last part has been the most frustrating for me. It required so much paper work and bits of information that we had to collect from all corners of our world. But everyone says once we are holding that child all these little frustrations won't matter. I have been meeting all kinds of people now who are experienced in this process and they have all been very encouraging.

Let me leave you with a bit of information to chew on, I will be writing more on this in the future, but for now, maybe you and your family could be thinking about this over the holidays. During any particular year there are approximately 800,000 children in the foster system here in the US....almost a million children that's situations were deemed bad enough to be removed from the home (and let me tell you, from my experience with the system...it's got to be pretty darn bad, and pretty well documented...no proof...no removal). And amoung those...during any year there are 130,000 children that are waiting for adoption into permanent homes. This is here...today...in our own country. Just in Calif...we have 80,000 children, 10% of the nations children in need of homes.

It gets me close to tears when I think about it, think about the need. To say that this is a passion of mine is an understatement. I have been talking to God about this from the time I was a child and I learned that there were children out there that were not wanted by their parents. I have little bit of a clearer picture about my role in all of this, but I don't think I've yet scratched the surface. My journals for years have been in request to God about what he wants me to do with this passion of mine.

For now, for me, the first step, in order to be an advocate of change, is to be the change I want to see. Like I said, I'll say more in later posts, (I already have hours of speeches for speaking tours outlined in my head...you never know).

Just a few Slideshows to catch you up

OKAY!!! I'm back...December of all months, to be back on line. From Halloween straight into a wedding, and parties, and then to Thanksgiving, and lots of birthdays, Yosemite, I have a lot of catching up to do. I am dying to share all these pictures with you. I absolutely loath uploading pictures on the computer or online...it's the impatience in me. Anyway, with so many great pictures that I have been wanting to share, I wanted to do some slideshows...but I absolutely refused to upload them to a third place. I use Shutterfly for printing/editing/creating, so I have been working on a way to share my albums in Shutterfly as a slideshow also. I have a link on my sidebar to all of our shared albums, but I am going to make specific links to subjects under the following pics. Okay, without further adue, lets try this.

HALLOWEEN http://cmd.shutterfly.com/commands/pictures/slideshow?site=skaggspicturestory&page=skaggspicturestory&album=871

JEANETTE'S SHOWER/BACHELORETTE PARTY (although this was the only surviving bachelorette picture...the others went missing....:)

http://cmd.shutterfly.com/commands/pictures/slideshow?site=skaggspicturestory&page=skaggspicturestory&album=887

JEANETTE'S WEDDING

http://cmd.shutterfly.com/commands/pictures/slideshow?site=skaggspicturestory&page=skaggspicturestory&album=904

ISAIAH'S FIRST TRIP TO THE ZOO
http://cmd.shutterfly.com/commands/pictures/slideshow?site=skaggspicturestory&page=skaggspicturestory&album=954

More to come...