On July 19th our beautiful Nora Juliet turned two years old! Her birthday will always feel miraculous and holy because it is the day God fulfilled so many promises He made to me when I was at my most broken place. It was the day that I did the “impossible”….I gave birth to a healthy, full term kell positive baby girl. God used her to bring light back into our darkness, to heal gaping wounds, to restore hope, to empower women all over the world not to give up. Nora will always be our reminder that God is indeed good, and He does love us. She is our reminder that God places our deepest desires in our hearts for a reason and we do ourselves an injustice if we ignore them, especially when He is calling us to step out in trust. I know that He has great plans for Nora’s life. Thank you, God, for giving me this daughter I can keep. We love her so much and have loved watching her develop and grow over the past two years. We praise you, for you have done gloriously.

Isaiah 12:5 Sing praises to the Lord, for He has done gloriously; let this be made known in all the earth.

Now, a little bit about Nora (because I still marvel that we get to know her on earth and see her personality develop!) Nora is the darkest of our kids- dark brown eyes, darker skin tone and darker hair. As her hair grows longer and longer it gets curlier and curlier and she now has ringlet curls all over her head. She is super maternal and bossy and sweet. She will boss her brothers, her cousins, adults and animals, and I’m sure her baby brother will get it when he arrives too. She wants to take care of everybody. She is independent and loves to drink out of a normal cup, eat with utensils (ALWAYS) and help me unload the dishwasher. She speaks in full sentences and has an amazing vocabulary. At age two her brothers knew all of their letters and numbers but she only knows A, O, S and X. She’s much more interested in relationships than things like numbers or letters. Nora talks and sings constantly and makes up songs about things she’s thinking about or doing. Her favorite place to be is anywhere with people, especially friends and extended family. I think her favorite person on earth is “Manga” (how she says Grandmama) and they have a very sweet, special bond. I sometimes think this is because “Manga” was the one who came to Houston with me and lived in the Ronald McDonald House with us for months. Nora heard Manga’s voice in utero as much as she heard mine and so I think a special bond was formed. Often, Nora wants to go to Manga instead of me when she has he chance. Nora is our daily delight, making us laugh every few minutes. Seeing her with her Daddy is still one of my greatest joys because I ached for so long to see Josh with his own daughter in his arms. Her brothers adore her and I enjoy having a daughter so much. Thank you, God, for this gift.

Nora with her Manga

First train ride

First trip to the beach

Nora at 22 months, me at 22 weeks pregnant.

Exploring Hurricane Creek

Giving Daddy pats

Baby boy is still doing well but his anemia continues to worsen gradually. His MCA scan this week (27w 2d) was the highest it’s been, at 1.39. Dr. Trevett really thinks next week will be the week that baby needs his first IUT but I’m not so sure. We tentatively scheduled the IUT for Monday but will rescan this Thursday (tomorrow) to see how baby looks. If he’s getting close to the 1.5 cutoff we will plan to have the IUT on Monday. But if baby’s numbers look about the same we will cancel Monday’s IUT. We still can’t believe we’ve made it this far without a transfusion! Baby looked great on ultrasound and is estimated to weigh 2 lbs 11 oz. Here are a few pictures of him from the past couple of weeks:

And here I am at 27 weeks, 4 days pregnant.

We are still struggling to come up with a name for this miracle boy of ours. Most of the names we like are pretty weird (Liam, Asher, Lucy and Nora were all the most “normal” names on our list at the time.) There are a lot of names that we kind of like, but none that we love. Hopefully we will come up with the perfect name soon. We just started getting things ready at home for our boy since we are feeling more confident that we will actually get to bring him home alive. We live in a small, three bedroom house so it is going to be a tight squeeze but we couldn’t be happier to have to fit our FOUR kids into our cozy little house. I never thought we would be able to have four living children! I will do my best to update the blog after my ultrasound (and four hour drive home) tomorrow. Please pray that baby’s numbers aren’t any higher and he gets another week without a transfusion.