November recap before it's Christmas!

Happy Holidays! I can't believe that there are only 8 days left until Christmas. Wow! We've been doing so many fun things the last few weeks that time has flown by faster than usual. In November we celebrated lots of birthdays including Daddy's with his favorite Trader Joe's carrot cake. Mommy had a girls weekend shopping trip with her mom and sisters. And we had a great Thanksgiving and spent a few days with Grandma and Pop Pop. We also had a fun baby shower for Aunt Erica and soon to be born cousin baby Ben. And since Thanksgiving we have reunited with our Elf - Ellie, cut down and decorated our Christmas tree, attended one holiday party with more to come,  visited with Santa and Mrs. Claus along with Faith's friend Luca and his brothers & sister (they all got a great picture with Santa while Faith kept a death grip on my neck), had lunch and/or dinner with friends, saw beautiful Christmas lights while visiting Grandma and Pappy and wrapped lots of presents. I've been working on this post for weeks and realized that I haven't even posted any photos from November yet. Yikes! So without further delay, here are a few updates and pictures from November and these first few weeks of December. 

Our biggest news is that our house is officially binkie free. Hallelujah! Right before Thanksgiving our last binkie got a hole in it. We had been telling Faith for months that we wouldn't buy any new ones, so, we bit the bullet. We're in the clear now, but boy did we have a rough first night especially. Think screaming and crying and jumping up and down in her crib so much that we had to keep moving the crib make to it's spot because she was moving it all the way across the room. And I think I sang "You are my Sunshine" at least 1000 times that first night. I won't even try to deny the fact that I thought about driving to Target more than once (aka like every 3 minutes). But we stuck it out and by day 5 - we were totally in the clear and now she doesn't even ask for it any more. And in a recent visit to the dentist - we were proud to report our success! 

I mentioned "You are my Sunshine" above. With the elimination of the binkie, we have added quite the ritual of song singing in it's place. 4 songs are now required at bedtime. In no particular order we have: Sunshine, ABC's, Rockabye Baby and Twinkle Star.  And then of course we say our prayers. Some days I love it and other days I can't help but think about all of the things on my "Faith is in bed" to do list. I try hard not to wish away these precious moments but boy is that hard from night to night. No  matter what, I know one day I will give anything for her to want me to tuck her in, let alone sing 4(!!!!) songs over and over.

She is still loving preschool and morning tears are a rare occurrence. She loves being the line leader, but her favorite job by far is flag holder. She knows most of the pledge of allegiance (give or take a few words). Maybe that's normal for an almost 3 year old, but I was highly impressed. Her memory is amazing! We are looking forward to a preschool holiday program this week. She knows most of Frosty the Snowman and some of Jingle Bells (although she thinks they are flying in an airplane instead of a one horse open sleigh). Given how her dance performances have gone - we have some pretty high expectations :-) We'll see how it goes and will of course take pictures. 

More from us soon on holiday festivities. 

Much Love,

The Groves

A lazy morning in Mommy & Daddy's bed

Taking over mommy's closet

Celebrating Daddy & Aunt Kelly's birthday with chocolate cake

Cute girl in O's hat during her Daddy-daughter weekend

Dance class parent watch night

Catching snow flakes during our first snow of the season

Celebrating our amazing guy's birthday!

What our mornings look like when it's cold

Happy Thanksgiving!

Mommy & Faith

Family Thanksgiving selfie

We call this one - 3 cousins on a chair. What happened to our babies :-(

Beautiful girl

Kira LOVES Faith and kept hugging her over and over

Ellie brought Elf PJ's for Faith on her first visit

Pre-Santa happy girl

Faith and her buddy Luca

Only in Mt. Airy would Santa visit the John Deere store.

Off to find the perfect tree

Found it! 

Mommy needs a picture too

"Here's your cart daddy"

One more photo with our perfect tree

Mommy & Faith selfie - Daddy photo bomb = best part of this photo

Family selfie

I call this one "team work"

Apple cider donuts for all our hard work 

Dance performance. Costume = could be worse, right?

Hanging out with Luca

As our friend Kym captioned this one "Best babysitter ever" 

Time to decorate the tree

Such a big girl

The Faith Show

Happy December!

I have been working on an update post, but I can't seem to find the time to finish it amongst all of the holiday craziness. However, this little gem was too good to make you wait. Faith continues to LOVE her dance class and tonight they did a little mini performance at a local nursing home in costume. I took a video because only one parent was allowed to go due to limited space. I wanted to make sure Randy could see the performance. Well Faith did not disappoint and now I have to share this with all of you too. I can't even do it justice. It speaks for itself...oh and she's the second one from the left (right next to the girl picking her nose) in case the fuzzy video makes it hard to see.

More soon!

XO
Jess, Randy & Faith

Family Photos and a surprise (for some) announcement!

Back on November 4th our new friends at Thread and Feather Photography (http://www.thread-and-feather.com) took some family photos for us. They were all amazing, but we chose a few highlights to share below - in no particular order. 

Make sure you scroll all of the way to the bottom for a special photo announcement! Our family and some of our friends already know this news, but for those of you who don't...

That's right...our family will be growing. As of mid October, we are officially on the waiting list to adopt another baby. Today is National Adoption Day and we thought it was the perfect day to make the big announcement. We've been working on this since May and have told quite a few people along the way, but we know many of you that we don't see very often but read our blog may not have heard the news. We're VERY excited (and anxious and nervous and many other emotions that are hard to describe). Faith can not wait to be a big sister - although we don't really think she knows what that means. However, given how much she loves taking care of her baby dolls we think she'll be an amazing little helper whenever the time comes. 

We are using the same adoption agency we used last time - Adoptions Together. We had to do another home study, which took a little more time than before since we have a toddler this time around. It's hard to know when we will get "the call" but the official word from Adoptions Together is that their waiting list is averaging between one and two years. With that kind of crazy wide window of time we basically have NO idea when this will happen. We could get a call tomorrow or two years from now or anything in between. The best way to not let that get to you - is to try not to think about it too much. Jess still thinks about it at least once a day, but that's certainly an improvement believe it or not. It is much easier to be distracted with a two year old to keep us very busy, but it's crazy to think that Faith could be two, three or four years old when we bring a baby home. For those of you that are interested in seeing what the social workers show birth parents that are considering an adoption plan for their child, there is a link to a copy of the profile book we created below. And if you have any questions about this process, adoption, or anything in general - we love talking about it and answering questions so please, please don't hesitate to ask.

So...please send us some good vibes for our baby to come to us sooner rather than later. But we know no matter what happens our baby will come to us when the time is right and much of this is out of our control. Thank you all for your support and love during this time. We will be sure to keep you posted! 

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