Happy Birthday, Trinity!

Dear Trinity Grace,
I hope that you will forgive me for being over a month late in writing your birthday post. It seems that your mother is incapable of maintaining a blog and going to college at the same time. So even though your birthday was April 3rd, I still want you to know how happy I am that you are 3 years old!
The day before you were born, I went to see my doctor and she said that Mommy’s blood pressure was so high that they had to deliver you right away. You actually weren’t supposed to be born for another 3 weeks! I didn’t have anything ready for you to come home yet; all your clothes and your car seat were still in the attic. Thankfully, Daddy and Grandma Beth came and took care of all of it. We hadn’t even decided on your name yet. Daddy had his favorite name and I had my favorite. About an hour before you were born, I felt like God was whispering to my heart that your Daddy needed to be the one to name you, that it would be important to you later. So you became Trinity Grace, and I am so glad! Now it doesn’t seem like any other name would fit you. You were so very tiny at 5 lbs. 11 oz. and I don’t think you were quite ready to be here, but you were a fighter. You had quite a bit of hair (which was a surprise because your big sister hardly had any hair at all!) with very blond streaks in it. It was like you had already been to the hair salon for highlights.

You’re still my petite little girl, but you are definitely not a baby anymore! I love your silly, sassy, sweet, and stubborn personality (most of the time. I could definitely use a little less of the stubbornness at mealtimes, though). You like to make people laugh, and you think your big sister, Asia is the coolest person in the world.

I know adding your little brother, Moses to our family has not been easy for you, but I am so proud of you for being willing to let him in your life. Even though he is going to be bigger than you very soon (he already wears bigger shoes and weighs the same as you, but you are still taller), you’ll always be his big sister. I know that you and Moses will have a special bond as you get older.

Happy Birthday, sweet Trina Grace!

New Talent

Moses figured this out all on his own, and he was pretty proud of himself. Who knew a pencil has so many uses?

Well, hello everyone! The Limmer family really didn't fall off the face of the earth, I just tend to do things in spurts.:) A lot has happened since I last updated this blog!
Christmas was a fabulous time at our house. We had lots of snow and had the pleasure of getting snowed in at Justin's parents house with some wonderful family members. It made the holiday lovely and relaxing. Moses got his promised drumset, as you can see, and is a very cool drummer. We also got a picture of him with Great Grandma Limmer, who is 93 years old. I am so grateful for her legacy. She still lives on her own, gets down on her knees to scrub her floor and I have to fight her to wash the dishes at family meals. Her years and years of faithful service to Jesus have given our family such an amazing platform, and I know her prayers have impacted our lives tremendously. Because of the snow, we waited until New Year's to celebrate with my family, but it actually made it really nice to spread out the festivities a little. It also happened to be my 30th birthday (gulp!) and I enjoyed spending it with the people who made my birth possible in the first place!

January led us to Nebraska for a conference, which meant we got to stay with the Higgins family! They were in Africa with us picking up their boys Etienne and Ezekiel, and it was so good to be with them again. Aaahh...the refreshment of friends. 7 kids, 4 adults, 1 dog and tons of playing and talking to be had by all.

I started back to college classes a couple of days after we got home. I went back to school when I had Asia, and have been steadily plugging away at my elementary education degree ever since. I sat out this past fall semester, but if I stay on course, I'll graduate in May 2011. It's good to be making progress on that goal again.

We have been bugging Moses' doctor for awhile about the lab results testing him for parasites. Moses had gone through 2 treatments on Flagyl, but I kept saying to the doctor that something still didn't seem right. They finally realized they had misread the lab results and there were 3 more parasites that the Flagyl alone would not treat. So, he's just now finishing a 20-day course of meds that will hopefully be the last. I'd also read some recommendations to do a lactose-free diet after chronic giardia. After looking at our options, I decided to put him on goat's milk, and we saw almost immediate improvement in his stools. He's not 100% yet, but I feel like we're definitely getting there. He also had more bloodwork done at the beginning of the month to retest his lead levels. He originally had a level of 15 (doctor wanted to see it below 10), but this time around it was a 5! He has to have one more test below 10 for the doctor to be satisfied. Moses is also picking up tons of new words and growing like a weed. He says "Hold you" and "up please" when he wants picked up. He used to call both the girls "Asia" but now he calls Trina "eena". He's outgrown all the 18 month clothes we had and his first pair of shoes. He officially wears a bigger size shoe than his big sister. Wow!

I'll work on shortening the time between my blogging spurts, at least by posting pictures. :)

Cluttered Christmas

I really like Christmas.

I am not one to decorate our house from ceiling to floor, inside and out. Heck, I haven't even made one Christmas cookie this year, but I still really like Christmas. The story of God becoming man, choosing and determining to wrap Himself in infant fraility thrills me to my core. Having a nativity set for Christmas seems so important to me. I want to look at it and remember what happened that day, and the implications it has for me in my everyday and ordinary life.

So, every year at Christmas time, I clean everything off of our entertainment center and put up our nativity. We don't have a mantle to display it on, and coffee tables are out of the question for the obvious reason that there are 3 children ages 5 and under living here. I love unwrapping every wiseman, shepherd, camel, and donkey and placing it carefully in position, and it only seems fitting that the simplicity of the nativity shouldn't have to compete with anything else. It should be the focal point, the attention-getter.

But, you know, the top of the entertainment center is such a convenient place to put things. It's close to the front door and high enough that the kids can't reach anything on it. Before you know it, life is crowding out my simple, beautiful nativity scene. This month's water bill, car keys, a movie we rented, a manual for Asia's new birthday bike, and on occasion, Trina's socks encroach on the sacred space meant only for Baby Jesus. In a matter of days, my Christmas scene becomes very...cluttered.

So many things are vying for our attention during the holidays. So many everyday life responsibilities threaten to make us forget the importance of our Emmanuel reaching through time to be with us. We have trouble keeping things in their proper place. The insignificant and temporal often overshadow the eternal and lasting.

Will you excuse me? I think I have some cleaning to do...

Moses the Marine

Last week, some wonderful friends from our church, David and Kisha, heard me mention that I needed to get Moses' hair cut again and kindly offered to do it for me. This is the end result, and I love it! Even though he'd already gotten one haircut, he still had several thin patches on the back of his head from laying down so much in his crib, and the hair on the top of his head was so thick I couldn't get it combed out. David took it down enough so that it will all grow back even. He looks like he just went to boot camp (I thought the camo shirt was a nice touch)! The first day or so, he kept rubbing the back of his head. So different! We also have to really make sure he wears his hat outside. Brrrr!

In other Moses news, he is picking up new words every day and he's starting singing songs. Today when we were in the Dollar Store, he was singing at the top of his lungs, "Na na na na, na na na na, hey hey hey, bye bye!" One of his other favorites is "Today is the Day" by Lincoln Brewster. He is getting a mini-drum set for Christmas (shh, don't tell!) and I can't wait to see what he does with it.

To My Asia Renee...

Dear Asia,
It's hard to believe that you came into our lives 5 years ago yesterday. You were so tiny at 6 lbs. 2 oz., but you were such a fighter! While you were being born, you were having some trouble and the doctor was concerned that you might not be feeling very good when you were born. She told me that I might not get to hold you for awhile because they would need to help you breath, but you screamed so loudly that the doctor laughed and said, "There's nothing wrong with her!" You're still not afraid of making your opinions heard!

You cried when the nurses were cleaning and measuring you, so Daddy went over to the table to see if he could help. As soon as you heard his voice, you stopped crying. When he could pick you up, you reached for his face and felt his beard, like you were saying, "So this is who's been talking to me these past nine months!"

What a wonderful, amazing day December 7, 2004 was! You have changed my life forever, Asia Renee. I am so thankful that God has let me be your Mommy.

Have I told you all the things I love about you?
I love ...
- Your curiousity and sharp mind. I'm pretty sure you can learn anything!

- The way you say words like, hostibal (hospital), bisgetti (spaghetti), chapskips (chapstick), efelant (elephant), renember (remember), and batatoes (potatoes). The other day at dinner we were having something with potatoes in it, and your little sister Trina said, "I don't like tomatoes!" and you said, "Not tomatoes, BAtatoes!" So funny!

- Your love for your sister and brother. You are such a good helper! What I am I going to do when you go to kindergarten next year?

- Your laugh! It is so infectious! Nobody can stay serious when you are laughing!

- Your sense of fashion. I love the outfits that you come up with! Grandma Dixie would say that you come by it naturally, and would point out all the pictures of Mommy wearing skirts and moon boots. In my opinion, the Limmer girls are stylish people.

- Your heart of worship. Don't ever stop making up songs to Jesus. He loves it and so do I.

Daddy and I love you so much, and I know that this year is going to bring so many good things to your life. Happy Birthday, Love!

Readoption

One thing that was kind of foggy to me when we entered this adventure of international adoption was the readoption process. I knew that we needed to readopt Moses in the U.S. once we came home, but I didn't know what the steps were to do that, especially in the state of Wyoming (it's specific from state to state). Some friends of ours in Indiana who adopted two girls from Rwanda were able to do the paperwork themselves, so I was hopeful that we could do something similar. I made a few phone calls to our county government, and after being transferred from office to office, I was told, "Just call an adoption attorney." We called the state government offices, told the same thing. Then we called the Department of Family Services, thinking that they deal with adoption all the time, and they had told us the same thing. We got the hint and called an adoption attorney!

We brought Moses home on an IR-4 visa. This means that we were not present in Rwanda for the court hearing where we were made his permanent guardians, thus necessitating our need for readoption. All his Rwandan documents, including his passport, are all in his Rwandan name. Here in Wyoming, we have to wait for 6 months (since the time we gained custody of him) and go to a court hearing where he is officially adopted as a Limmer. One funny thing the attorney told me is that in Wyoming, it is required to publish a legal notice to the birth parents in the paper (the Casper paper, no less) since we don't have any document where they officially relinquished custody of him. That sounds logical, right? Some very, very pale friends of ours threatened to respond to the ad. Ha ha! I threatened her with her life if she did!

So now we have to wait until March for our court hearing, then we can obtain a Wyoming birth certificate and apply for U.S. citizenship. After that, we'll get his U.S. passport and everything should be squared away. It'll be nice to have almost all of the paperwork done!