Some fun shots from this past week!

Baby girl is getting so fun and full of herself!

 Grandma came over Friday night and we went out to dinner!  She is so busy now, and active that she will not sit in her carrier while we eat anymore, so we have to occupy her the whole time.

 But everybody just gravitates to her and her infectious smile, even strangers are talking to her wherever we go!

 She can sit up really well now, but she still has not even begun to crawl yet, that is until this morning she actually pulled her legs up under her and got on her knees!!!  So it wont be long.....  She loves to stand like this all the time, and I was reading the baby book about what to expect over the first year and they say some babies can skip crawling all together. I had no idea!!!

 Maybe thats what she will do, who knows~ but she has certainly mastered sitting in a very short time!!  This picture that I captured below has got to be one of my new all time favorites of her!!!  Man is she one beautiful baby girl!!!

So cute story ahead...... My step dad went to 7-11 one day and he found a day old kitten screaming and screaming, he waited for over an hour but the mother NEVER came.  We assume she abandoned the baby.  It was pouring down rain and he wasnt leaving the baby out there to die, so he scooped her up and went to Wal Mart and got bottles and kitten formula and much to my mother's shagrin brought her home!!!

Well that was 3 weeks ago, and the baby kitty is doing well, everybody in the family is taking turns feeding her, but she got a bit constipated and so I had to take her to the vet earlier that day. 

So after dinner, we came home and put Chloe in her PJs and decided to show her the baby kitty.....

 Here is my mom holding Chloe and showing her the baby.  She loved the baby!!!  And she wanted to get her hands on that baby kitty as you can see from the pictures.  But it was a really sweet moment!!!

 Then on Saturday, Daddy happened to put on his beloved Clemson Tigers t-shirt, so I thought I would put Chloe in her matching "Clemson Cutie" skirted onesie!!!!  Man they looked so cute together!!!  Daddy is sooooo ready for football season to start- shoot- Mommy is too!!!  We are a football loving family and anything that has to do with Clemson or Alabama- we are so there!!!

 This pic below is one of my faves of the 2 loves of my life!!! I am going to have it printed and put in the frame I gave him for Father's Day!

 And below are just some shots I took a couple days ago of my girl in Daddy's favorite aqua color!!

 She is making some of the funniest expressions lately!!! 

 And this is one of them.  I was happy I actually caught it!!  She looks like she is saying "Oooo I'm gonna get you momma!"  LOL

I hope everyone has a really great weekend coming up and an amazing 4th of July!!!  Sean's Aunt Joan and Uncle Bob are coming down to spend it with us!!!  I am so happy!!!  They are like my in-laws because Sean's parents are both deceased (I never got to meet them, although I would have loved to).  So they stood in for his parents at our wedding and they love us so much!!!  I can not wait for them to meet Chloe and take them around our area!!!  There will fo' sure be pictures!!!

Peace and Love Ya'll!!!

37 weeks old!!!!

Well another week down, and Baby girl is growing fast!!!  She is just too precious for words.... I know I say that every week, but man I love her so much!!!

 She has begun to pull her legs up under her now, so I believe she may start crawling any day!!  I actually caught her sleeping in that position for a nap the other day- she had her butt clear up in the air!!!!  I wanted to get a picture but I would have woken her up and Mommy did not want a cranky baby with no nap on her hands!!!

 She still weighs 17 lbs, and in size 2 diapers, and mostly still in her6 mo clothes, some 9 mos just for length!!  Speaking of clothes, I set up a facebook page to sell her clothes that she has grown out of.  It is not attached to my personal page at all, so if any of you have a baby girl or are pregnant with one, I have a ton of beautiful Newborn, 3 month, 3-6 month and 6 month clothes on their right now, and am adding more each week.  If you are interested in having a look, please email me at heathermarsden117 at gma.il dot com (or comment on this post) and I will send you a link on how to view them.  If you wish to buy anything, comment under the picture with your PayPal email address and I will send you an invoice and ship it to your address on PayPal.  It works great!!!

 We had some fun this weekend, and took some fun pictures that I will post in the next day or so in another post, but we have learned to cherish these weekends with our girl- there just is not enough time!!!

Hope everyone has a fabulous week, and try to stay cool - this heat is awful!!!!  I need my spring and so looking forward to fall and celebrating the holidays with my girl!!!

One year ago today........

The beauty of this blog is that it marks things down for me that I may have otherwise forgotten the EXACT date of. This being one of those moments that I am so glad I am able to look back on today and be so incredibly thankful for how far we have come !!

You see one year ago today we received the call from our nephew saying that he wanted us to adopt his unborn daughter. We were floored!!!! We were humbled, excited, scared, and a million other things!!! Could this be our baby???? Could this really be it? We asked each other a million times could this really work ????

The next 4 and 1/2 months were the most hectic and nerve wracking roller coaster ride I have ever been on, and one I do not ever care to take again. It was all painfully documented here how we never knew from one moment to the next what was going to happen, and I had my heart ripped out of me more than once in this process. But we kept on trusting the Lord, that He had brought this young lady and this baby into our lives for a reason.

But it did all work out and ultimately led to our amazing perfect miracle baby asleep in her crib in the next room! We have indeed come sooooo far, I almost forgot the emotionally fragile state I was in last June. I was at my rock bottom, I was beginning yet one last feeble attempt I get my eggs to try to do a surrogacy that we had NO Idea how we were going to pay for it, and it was all just swirling in my head!

But when this call came and we began to talk to Chloe's birth mom L, the more PERFECT this whole situation sounded. We began to get an incredible wave of peace flood over us She was our family, she could stay in her genetic family and be raised by two people who wanted her more than anything!!

And finally on October 16th at 6:42pm our miracle was born and placed in my arms..... She was finally here!!! And she was MY baby.... The one we had prayed for for soooooo many many years. And that began a whole new amazing life for us that we are so grateful for!!!!

Thank you all again for the love and prayers you offered to Sweetness and I as our hearts ached and longed for this happy ending.

Through this entire infertility journey I have always remembered my favorite quote from Dr. Jerry Falwell, one of my heroes, "When you are in the valley and you are crying out to God to deliver you from the circumstances and you feel left in your "storm"; if you cannot see God's hand at work, you can ALWAYS trust His heart."

How very true it is that He sees each tear we cry and He only wants what's best for us. And honestly, He knew that this was the child we were meant to have. We just had to wait on His perfect timing to receive the gift.

And dare I say this out loud or to anyone else except my Sweetness, we have begun to boldly pray that He would bless us with another gift. Whether it be through adoption again or the miracle of opening my womb, we are trusting that He knows best and He will expand our family according to His will and purpose. But if He chooses not to give us another child, we will be perfectly and insanely happy with the most beautiful baby girl on the planet, how could we ask for more???

8 MONTHS OLD!!!

Where has the time gone????  My sweet baby girl that was as tiny as a peanut has grown up into the beautiful, full of energy little girl right before our very eyes!!!  As she past over the 8 month mark a couple days ago, I just thought back in marvel at how much our life has changed in one short year.  I will do a big post on that in 3 days, because we celebrate something special on June 24th- you probably can't guess what it is......but I will tell you very soon!  :)

 Our lives are pretty close to perfect, just the way we dreamed for all those years we begged the Lord  for a child. She is so full of laughter, giggles and FUN!!!, she keeps us hoping all the time!  

Currently, she is 17 pounds and still in Size 2 diapers, basically long and skinny!!! 

I hope you all have an awesome week thus far, and stay COOL because the first day of summer is here in Va Beach!!!  It came in with a BANG today!!!  It is over 100 degrees today!  But thanking the Lord for the invention if AC!!!!    Have a great rest of the week and we will certainly be back with pics from this weekend to share!!!!

36 weeks old and Father's Day!!!!

What an awesome weekend we had!!!!  Baby girl turned 36 weeks old Sunday and of course that coincided with Sweetness' First Father's Day!!!  I gave him a personalized frame that says "First Father's Day- 2012" and some of those decals that show your family members that you put on the back of your car.

 She is of course always just so happy and loves the camera now- I think I have taken enough pictures and trained her right!!!

 I love this one- her expression and then her hand's gesture like she is saying "You know I'm cute!!!"   LOL

 She looks like she is pouting, but I just caught her with a serious look!!

 Here she is telling me to get on with showing the pictures of her and her Daddy on Father's Day!!!

 "Yeah!!!!  It's Father's Day and I love my Daddy!!!"

 I just could not pick which one I liked best of my two loves!!

 This is a Daddy's Girl FOR SURE- and I love it!!! 

Since I never had a Dad growing up, and my real father leaves everything to be desired, I am so happy that my daughter does not have to grow up like I did, wanting the love of a man (a daddy) to validate her.  It caused me so many emotional issues, some of which I am still working out- largely thanks to the love of my husband, and the Lord.  But Chloe will never know this pain and burden of feeling like everybody has a Daddy but her.

My Sweetness is the most amazing man.  The best husband anyone could ever ask for, and he dots on this baby girl so much she prefers him over me when she is crying and upset.

Chloe and me are so blessed to have him in our lives, and we cherish his love every single day!!

Happy Father's Day my sweet- you are the one my soul was born to love...

My little girl is becoming a little lady

I snapped these pics this week and she is turning into such a little lady!!!  I bought these little clips in her hair in all sorts of different colors because she is getting her hair in now, so its almost too much for the cute little headbands I have, but not enough to hold the big bows just yet- so these little alligator clips look so cute on her- but she also looks too grown up!!

I thought in the picture above that she looks like a little ballerina!!! LOL

Just a happy little girl!!!

Still waving bye bye!

I loooove this smile I caught in the above picture!!!

Because she is teething like a champ, she always has something in her mouth!!!  She still only has the two little front bottom teeth, but she is working on a whole bunch more for sure!!!

And this was one morning she had just woken up, but we were playing on the floor, and she just looked so sweet, I snapped some more of her sitting up so cute!!!

This is the smile I dreamed of when I was going through all those infertility treatments, and the Lord has been so kind and blessed me with the angel baby of my dreams!!! We are so grateful!!!

35 weeks old already!!!!!

It's Monday, so you know what that means.... yep Baby girl is another whole week older.  The weeks just won't stop coming!!!  But man she is at such a cute age right now.  She is getting SO LONG all her clothes are getting too short too quick!!!!

When we went to the neurologist last week, they measured her length, and she was in the 99th percentile for height!!!  What???  She was such a tiny little munchin for the first 2 months, but she has definitely caught up quick!!  Her head was perfect and her weight was a pound under where she should be, so basically she is what every woman wants to be, tall and skinny!!! LOL  Let's see if she stays that way!

We had a fun weekend this past weekend.  Sweetness' birthday was Saturday and we went to the Aquarium and then out to dinner with the whole family and because it was time for her to go night night, we all headed back to our place for cake and ice cream.

This upcoming weekend is the Va Beach Boardwalk Arts and Crafts Show.  We love that weekend when all these vendors from all over the country come and display their unique art in these tents on the boardwalk and it takes hours just to walk through them all.  Should be a fun day for sure!!!

But other than that- we just work all week and the days go by so quickly, and then the weekends are spent trying to love up on this little girl as much as possible.  She is sooo fun right now.  She will sit up and play with me on the floor, and boy does she absolutely love her bath time.  She never wants to get out!!!

She loves to stay in there and splash and splash!!!  I will have to take some pics of her in there next time I think about it!

And I always wanted to catch a shot like the one below because I think she has the most beautiful eye lashes and this picture is just perfect!!!  I might get this one blown up it looks so pretty with her headband of felt flowers our friend made for us!

Other than that, everything is same ole same ole, and that's how we like it.  Boring and drama free....  I hope this week is a wonderful week for all of you who read our blog, and I will be getting ready to celebrate Sweetness' First Father's Day!!!  Yeah!!!  Chloe loves her Daddy.... more on that next week  Stay tuned!