Back At RMH

We've arrived and settled in at the Ronald McDonald house again.  I can't believe how different I feel this time.  I know what to expect, I know it's going to be hard but I also know it's totally going to be worth it.  We were greeted by familiar faces here and that makes a world of difference too! 

It's amazing to me to see how much Laila has grown in the last six months.  She wasn't scared of our room and did really well going to bed tonight.  Last time it was a real struggle to get her adjusted and she was still going through a rough time with sleeping any where besides home.  She moved around a lot before joining our family and I think that had a lot to do with her anxiety.  I love seeing her happy and settled and knowing that she is safe and at home as long as she's with her mommy :)

We headed down to the kitchen and saw a few of our friends there and will make some new ones I bet. There are three CLC families staying here this time which is fun! Laila was sitting at the kitchen table babbling away telling everyone "I sit at the table," "I have purple glasses," and yelling at me "I hold you hand."  She's very into hand holding these days which is super cute and fun.  Then we went to Walmart (which is hard to find in Meijer country up here!) and made a stop through the Subway drive through.  Thank you Grandma Mary for your generosity with giving us some gift cards for our stay up here!!

We're excited to go to school tomorrow even though I'm not sure Laila really remembers what she's getting herself into.  She did tell me this morning that she wanted to stay with "Van Syoc" (her preschool teacher back home).  I know when we get there she'll remember it.  She's got an amazing memory.  Now to see if she's excited or if she cries.......

Thanks for sharing in this time with us.  I always look forward to seeing if people follow our journey and it helps me to want to continue to write and share.  It's been helpful to be able to look back at the things she's learned.

Laila back in her "bedroom."  HA!  Like my make shift IV pole for her feeding pump?!?

We did it!!

I didn't realize when we started training that the last day would be the day before we leave for our next four weeks at CLC.  Tonight I actually ran 3.5 miles!  I never in my life thought that would be something I could do.  Jack has worked up to running over 6 miles as of tonight.  Earlier this week he just started running to see how far he would go and has just kept increasing his distance.  He's doing so great!!

I have to say that I'm surprised at the other things in my life that have changed since I started this.  I find myself eating less and healthier.  I feel like I don't want to just go run all this way and then cancel it out with ice cream or I don't want to eat a big greasy burger because one day I did that and it felt like the thing was kicking me in the ribs the whole time I was running.  While I haven't lost a lot of weight yet, I do feel like my clothes are fitting better which is nice :)  The other thing that is so exciting is that Emma and Jackson have started walking and are doing between 1-2 miles.  They are following our example and Emma has even signed up to walk the 5k for Laila too!

Our team has grown and we have raised so much more money for CLC than we had thought we would.  We decided to try to get some corporate sponsors from our town since we're three hours away and they wouldn't have been included in soliciting so far.  Our town and families have responded in such a huge way and have shown so much love for Laila that it just amazes me.  Check out our fundraising page here.

Tomorrow we check back in to the Ronald McDonald house and Laila starts her next session at CLC on Tuesday.  Be looking for blogs with updates of how she adjusts back and what kind of progress she makes.  Pray she doesn't cry the first three weeks of a four week session again ;)

Please also pray for us as we are just beginning our adoption paperwork again to bring our son Ranjit home from India.  This might get a little tricky doing paperwork from another state while Jack is home with the other two kids!

Over the Hump

Could it be?  Am I over that hump that everyone says you get to when you start running and stop absolutely hating it??  I think it's true!! 

I just finished up my sixth week of training for the 5K run for the Conductive Learning Center.  I have never been a runner.  I was a cheerleader in school for several years and it was very hard work at times but nothing like this.  (no laughing!!)  Jack found an app on our iPods that is helping us build up to running and this week really kicked up the running portion quickly.  From my last run to today's it increased by five minutes.  Literally a week ago I was thinking of quitting.  I knew the time was going to increase rapidly this week and I just thought I couldn't do it.  Then I looked at my baby girl. 

Laila and I will be heading up for our second session at the Conductive Learning Center in just two weeks and this is incredibly hard work for her.  Literally everything is hard work for her.  How can I expect her to give everything her all if I'm not willing to do this?  I made a commitment to do this for her and I have wanted to quit so many times but I won't.  These kids deserve this from us as their parents and supporters.

So yes, I'm over the hump.  I'm to the point of looking forward to seeing how far I can run.  I've stopped looking at the little clock going "I've only gone 30 seconds??" and started looking at it and having joy over how five minutes passes quickly when at first 90 seconds almost killed me.  That was my prayer, that I could make it to this point.  Thank you Lord!

Please take a minute if you can and check out our fundraising page.  So far we have seven on our Legs for Laila team and a few more have said they are going sign up to go with us.  We are also gathering corporate sponsors so if you know of a business that would donate please let us know.  We have to have the business names by Wednesday 3/28 for them to be included on the CLC t-shirts.

Who could not love or do everything they can for this little face who's saying "momma, I'm on elbows!!"

Legs for Laila

Laila's school in Michigan was picked as one of the charity partners for the Fifth Third Charity Riverbank Run in Grand Rapids, MI this year. So guess who's running.......

Deciding to do this run made me think back to my blog when we were at CLC last when I had come home and decided to take my sister's exercise class.  You can read about it here.  Anyway, I basically realized that Laila has to work so hard for everything she does and I can't even motivate myself to exercise!  I can say that since then I have been attending my sister's classes on the days I'm not committed to something in one of the kids classrooms and I actually have a lot of fun with it and feel a lot better when I go.

So this girl who has NEVER been a runner, EVER, has decided to run for Laila in this charity event.  Jack and I have both committed to it and have created a donations page in Laila's honor.  We have a few other friends and family members thinking of joining our team and are so excited to be able to do this for Laila and for CLC.  If you are interested in running or walking with us please leave a comment and I'll get you the information.  If you are interested in donating, please click here for the link to our donations page.  You can also see some of the pictures of Laila from CLC on our donations page as well.  Please, please consider donating any small amount you can to help this amazing school.

Daddy even has to run with his head in the ceiling while we're training indoors in the cold weather.  How's that for dedication!

*Just a side note.  We know that a lot of you have already been helping us out by buying t-shirts and giving donations for our adoption.  Please know that we know that everyone can't give to everything.  We had already planned to do this for Laila and want to follow through.  Give if you're led but don't feel you have to.  I wish I was a millionaire just to be able to give to all the worthy causes!

Valentines at Oak Grove

Iwas able to go with Jackson on his field trip to Oak Grove this week.  Every year the kindergarteners go and decorate Valentines cookies with the residents.  I’ll just state again how much I love that my kids love to go to the the nursing home and that they are not afraid to talk to and interact with the residents.

Jackson was able to decorate his cookies with Grandma Hamstra and we were so glad.  They actually didn’t bring her out for it for some reason but we pulled some strings ;) and got them to go get her.  It worked out really well that we did too because having Jackson interacting with her and with some of the other residents made some of the other kids in his class a little more comfortable to dive in and get started too.
 
We know that we are living on borrowed time with Grandma Hamstra and we are so thankful again that we live right down the street and are able to spend this precious time with her.  What a lovely woman she is and we love to see her face light up when we come to visit :)

Science & Industry Feb 2012

We were finally able to make it up to the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago for the first time since we received the membership from Jack’s parents for Christmas.  I can tell you that we WILL be back! 

We took the train up in morning and took our time not realizing that they close at 4pm on Saturdays.  We still had several hours to spend there but there is SO much to see and do that we really only got to see a few things before they closed.  I’m just going to highlight them through the pictures.

All set to go!

 

My Beautiful Three :)

The Omnimax is free with our membership!  We saw Rocky Mountain Express and it was SO cool and very interesting!

  

Space Trainer!  We got so interested in all the space stuff that this weekend we rented Apollo 13 and watched it.  The kids are very interested in space stuff right now and I love that they want to learn.

NASA better start back up because these guys look pretty good in these suits!

This is one of my favorite thing here!  It’s the Live Science Theater.  Last time we were there we watched a hilarious show called “Poop Happens” and the kids learned about the digestive track.  This time it was “Taste Buddies” and it was all about how our bodies process taste.  It is interactive and so funny!

Since we didn’t have to pay to get in, saved Christmas money from GG for the train and packed our own lunch, we spent a little and let Jack and the two older kids go in the flight simulator.  They had fun!

Model of Chicago

This was so funny.  It’s a huge train set and there are little people nad the scenes are very detailed.  Jackson was convinced that when the train would stop at different spots that the little people would actually get on and off.  Since it was always to the inside of the track you couldn’t really see it.  He kept saying over and over “Dad!  Did you see they got off!!”  It was very cute.  We’re almost to the stage with him that nothing really tricks him anymore so it was fun to see him be little :)

One bad thing about the train is that you have to wait for the scheduled one to come and since we didn’t realize the museum closed at 4pm we had an hour to wait for the next train in the cold.  We made the best of it though.  Looking forward to those summer days when we can just take a walk to the lake or something fun like that.

Thank you Grandma Mary and Papa Tom for the great Christmas present that will keep on giving to us all year.  Hopefully next time you can come along!

100 Day

The kindergarteners at DMC celebrate the 100th day of school in a super fun way.  Everyone dresses up like they are 100 years old and they do fun activites all day including the number 100.  This year with Laila in preschool it has given me opportunity for more time to help in the classroom and I just love it.  I love being able to get to know the kids in class and participating in fun activities like this.  It was optional for the parents who were helping to dress up but Jackson ask if I would and I decided that it wasn’t such a bad idea to be able to stay in my PJs ;)

Mommy & Jackson

Old man Jackson

Mrs. Walstra’s Kindergarten class :)