The Weekend

Last weekend Cade and I went to Sheldon.  This was Cade's first time to see Baby Lawson.  I think it's safe to say that Cade was pretty impressed with him.  He spent a lot of time Saturday afternoon holding Lawson.  I think Cade did really well with him if I do say so myself.  It seemed to be pretty natural for him...or at least as natural as can be expected for a 7 year old.  For a boy that moves constantly he was content to sit still and hold Lawson for long stretches of time.

Here is Cade seeing Lawson for the first time Friday night

Here is Cade finally getting to hold Lawson.  As you can see Avery didn't want to be left out of the picture.

Mom and the kids made cupcakes Saturday afternoon

Here is Cade holding Lawson again.  I have to admit that watching this made my heart hurt.  Cade would make such a great older brother.  I really hope he gets the opportunity to be one soon.  I had wondered what was going through his mind while he was holding Lawson Saturday and later that night I got my answer.  He told Papa Kerry that he wishes we could adopt our baby.  What do you say to that?

Before I left the kids that night, in the care of Grandma Robyn, I got a pampering session from Avery.  It went ok until she tried to wind my hair around a round brush.  I told her that I didn't want to have my hair cut to get a brush loose, because it was just starting to grow out.  Avery informed me that she was trying to make my hair longer....like her moms.  Right before I left that night I heard Cade say "No, I'm not a girl".  I asked him what was going on and he said Avery wanted to play beauty shop on him.  That would've been an interesting scene....

The Book Incident

About 4 weeks ago I checked out a book from the county library. One day I put the book in the front seat of my car so I could read it during lunch. When it was time for me to go to lunch that day I was so looking forward to it. I was going to Subway and have 30 minutes of uninterrupted bliss eating a sandwich and reading my new library book. Except when I got to Subway I picked up the book and it weighed about 10 pounds. It didn't weigh 10 pounds when I put it in the car. That's when I realized that a glass of water in the console tipped over when I got out of the car that morning. The book sat in the front seat of my car soaking up a huge glass of water for about 5 hours. I wasn't about to let something like a drippy book stop me from enjoying my lunch. I lugged the book into Subway dripping wet. I had water drops down the front of my khakis. I did try to stuff the book in my purse so it wasn't as obvious to everyone that the book was soaked. The first couple of chapters were relatively dry.

That evening I put the book in the upper drying cabinet of our dryer. It ran for 3 hours and didn't make a dent in the wetness of the book. Then I tried using the hairdryer, which worked pretty well except there were 375 pages in this book. All but about 50 of them were wet. I was going to burn up my hairdryer if I tried to dry every page. Over the next couple of days I ran it back through the dryer two more times for 3 hours a time. Then I opened it up and laid it by a furnace vent.

By this time about a week had gone by and I had two dilemmas. #1 was that the pages were pretty dry….except for the back cover. It was a hardback book but the back cover was like a soggy newspaper. Problem #2 was that the book was due. I couldn't decide if I wanted to face the music now, or delay it. Since I'm a procrastinator I decided to delay the punishment. I asked the library for an extension. Luckily our library will do that over the phone. I had two more weeks to get the back cover dry and figure out a plan.

Finally I got the bright idea to take the jacket off of the book. If I had thought about that little detail two weeks earlier the back cover probably wouldn't have bent. Sometimes the obvious ideas are slow in coming to me. After several more days the back cover finally dried. I had a totally dry book, but you know how paper dries – it was 5X as thick as it once was. I then got another brilliant idea. I put the book on the floor and piled a Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, my K-12 hardcover yearbooks, Jay's 9-12 hardcover yearbooks, a large John Deere book and any other book that had any weight to it on top of the ruined book. After a few days of that Jay put the books away and told me I was going to have to face the music.

The book was due today, but I took it back yesterday. I was very tempted to drop it in the night drop and hope they didn't notice. But what if they put a hold on my account? That would be really embarrassing if I was trying to check out a book and they asked me about a ruined book. You can't really pretend you didn't know anything was wrong when the book's pages are all puffed up and the back cover is bent. I also thought about buying the same book off Amazon. I'd put the old jacket on the new book. But again I didn't know what kind of information those librarians can see of their screen. There might have been something off with the book and they would've known it was an imposter. I knew facing it now would be the best thing.

I took the book to the counter and told my story. Confessing that you damaged a book to a librarian ranks right up there with confessing to your doctor that you smoke or your weight watcher team leader that you ate an entire cake. It's just not something a person looks forward to. The librarian was nice, but I could tell underneath her smile she was thinking I was a careless ninny and couldn't be trusted with anymore books….or at least that's what I thought she was thinking. I might have just been sensitive. She might have really been thinking about what she was going to have for lunch. Anyway, she told me I owed $18. I didn't have my checkbook with me yesterday, so I went back today to pay my fine.

When the librarian saw me she knew right away who I was. She disappeared into the office and came out with the mangled book. On top of the book was a yellow sticky note that said Crystal Shepherd is buying and can have book. Nice. I now have something permanent to remember this whole debacle by. I can't wait for Jay to see it tonight. He's going to love it.

Yeah…things have been a little slow around our house. I'm blogging about a ruined book.

 

Adoption Update

Today is a slow day at the office. Probably the slowest I've had since the middle of September. I seriously have everything done that I need to do…except for some pesky life insurance phone calls, but those can wait until tomorrow…or sometime next week…or as long as I can put it off. Leslie will hate me when she reads this, but since she's working 70 hours a week she probably won't see it until sometime later in the spring.

I decided to take this time and create a post to announce the new direction we are going to try with our adoption. For about the last year the topic of embryo adoption has kept coming up. At one time last spring our social worker even called us to see if that was something we would be interested in. It was, but every time we thought about doing something different the agency would get a rush of potential situations so we'd decide to wait before turning in our application (and paying the application $$$), if we didn't need to. Finally last summer, right before we went on vacation, we decided to send in the application. In turn, they sent us a bunch of paperwork back that needed to be filled out.

That was what made our doctors appointments last fall so hectic. I think I posted about that while we were going through everything. We had double the work in terms of medical tests and paperwork to be signed off on. Also, while I was updating our domestic adoption profile, I was also trying to create our profile for the embryo adoption. There was a lot of stress going on, but we weren't ready to announce yet that we were going to try the concurrent embryo adoption. We've just had so many ups and downs with this whole process I didn't feel like announcing something and then have to take it back.

We still aren't out of the woods yet in knowing if we will for sure be able to do this. Our homestudy has been approved, but we are on another waiting list. When I talked to the patient coordinator the first part of December she said that we were on the list then proceeded to shuffle papers and count each couple that was in line ahead of us in my ear. She seriously counted 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 out loud. There are 18 couples ahead of us waiting to have their initial appointment. I think that is the story of our lives with this adoption – hurry up and wait! I'm guessing that's going to put our initial appointment sometime this summer? I'm hoping by August we'll be headed to Knoxville, TN to meet with the doctor….which would put a transfer actually happening towards the end of the year.

At this initial appointment they will check us over and determine if I'm even a candidate for embryo adoption. Since we don't know the cause of our infertility I have no idea if this will even be an option for us.
We are excited about this prospect, but my hands also get sweaty thinking about it. I really want to do this, but I'm also scared. We've had so many disappointments over the last 5 years that I'm nervous about trying anything else. I'm nervous about the anxiety I'll have during the two week wait to see if the embryo(s) stuck. I'm terrified of bawling at my desk every day because I'm so stressed out wondering if it's going to work or not. I'm also nervous about all the medication I'll have to take. It all sounds so complicated. I'm really really nervous about the progesterone shots, which Jay will have to give to me. The thought of Jay coming towards my rear end with a needle is frightening. We get to try this 3 times. How will I feel if they don't take? These are all emotions that are running through my mind off and on.

I guess I'm making the announcement so that 1. I'll have something else to talk about on the blog except – oh we weren't picked again and 2. Some extra prayers for us while we go through this process would be great.

Right after our homestudy was approved we got our Bethany quarterly magazine and there was an article about embryo adoption. Their story sounds so much like ours – they were waiting for something every time they turned around. Like us they waited over 2 years on the domestic adoption list before they decided to try the concurrent embryo adoption. Then their first transfer didn't take. Then their second transfer resulted in a miscarriage. Finally their third transfer worked and they were pregnant with twins. But their waiting wasn't over. The pregnancy was very hard and she ended up on bed rest. Finally, the babies were born healthy and this couple has a wonderful relationship with their children's genetic parents. The article was called Worth the Wait. I try to keep focused on that thought – that someday we will finally be at peace with our wait and know that whatever happens will be worth everything that we went through.

If you are interested in reading more about embryo adoption or the clinic where we will be going – the link is here.

I know this is a topic that some of you may have never heard of.  If you have any questions feel free to leave a comment or just ask one of us.  We are excited to think about giving life to these frozen embryos....or "Snowflakes" as they've been nicknamed.

They Learn Early

Speaking of boys learning early how to handle women, I had another example happen to me last week.
It was the day after Lawson was born. It was a Wednesday, which is Jay's staff meeting day so I have to take Cade to school. This particular Wednesday I was pretty tried and was moving at snail speed. I usually am pretty good at getting around in a decent amount of time. I don't tend to hold up the family or make us habitually late getting where we need to be. I do have my days though and this day was one of them.

This is also a good time to mention that Cade can't tell time yet. But he very clearly has an internal clock because twice he marched back to the bathroom to ask me if I was ready yet. He worked himself up because he thought he was going to be late. School doesn't start until 8:20, but his internal clock was telling him that he and his dad would've left a long time ago. I kept telling him he was fine, we had plenty of time, etc. It settled him down somewhat and we were able to head out the door to school.

Everything went fine on the drive. We sat in silence, which is how he likes it in the morning. Things took a bad turn though when we pulled up and there was no one else being dropped off at that moment. Cade just knew we were late. I assured him everything was fine. I pulled up and unlocked the door for him to get out. I was in the middle of telling him to have a good day and that I loved him when he opened up the door, got out, turned around and huffily said "what took you so long to put on your makeup anyway", then slammed the door and marched into the school.

Oh, his poor wife. I hope he marries someone who doesn't piddle around because he's not going to have the patience to deal with it. Now, taking forever to find a toy to hold in his hand while you drive him to school is all together a different deal. Applying makeup and looking for a toy isn't even something you can compare to each other. I'm learning that boys learn very early that women stuff is dumb and a waste of time, but it's ok to spend lots of time on manly things.

When I told Jay the story he was relieved to learn that apparently Cade does have an internal clock.  Up to this point we really weren't sure he had one. 

It Was Back….

Remember my post right after Thanksgiving about the nasty mouse in my car? I hadn't had any more problems with it so I thought it was gone….until last Friday. Charlie has developed this irritating of habit of sitting in the garage until the door is about 6 inches from being completely down then he decides to run out. Then that triggers the sensor on the door and makes it go back up. Then he will stand right in the way so the door won't do anything. This is a new little trick he's learned in the last few weeks. I think he loves it because he knows there is nothing more irritating than a dog, which stands 6 inches off the ground, holding up your entire day. So last Friday he did this little trick and he wouldn't budge so that meant I had to actually get out of the car to physically move him. When I got out of the car I saw a mouse run under my car. I'm not 100% sure where it came from, but I really thought it ran from the inside of the car. Can you imagine if Charlie hadn't held me up? I probably would've ended up in a ditch on Highway 39 that morning. So that caused me to text Jay "Mouse 911, Call me when you can". When Jay called me back he said he'd take care of it.

Jay's taking care of it meant he bought more mouse poison, which we did the last time. My concern was what if the mouse ate the poison and then died somewhere in there car that we couldn't get to? I know there are probably a million fries stuck between my seat and the console because I can't get my hand in the crack. What if a mouse got down there? And the last time we did this we found that the mouse had drug the block of poison into the battery box. We were dealing with the mouse equivalent of the Incredible Hulk. Jay thought about that Saturday night/Sunday morning so he got up early Sunday and tore my car apart. He pulled up the back seat and did all sorts of things I didn't know the car was capable of. He declared it to be mouse free. I believed him.

Everything was all fine and dandy until yesterday when I left work to head home. I opened up my car door and tossed my purse in the passenger seat.  I then looked down and saw the mouse lying right where my feet should go on the driver's side.  I screamed and shut the door.  I hesitated for moment wondering if I should grab my phone from my purse.  I was too grossed out to reach across the seat so I ran in and called Jay from work. I repeatedly hit redial on the phone until Jay decided to answer. Once he finally answered the phone I told him the mouse was dead in the car and all he could do was laugh.   Pam heard and took pity on me. She said she'd get it out of the car. All Jay did was laugh at me on the phone. Luckily Darrell, my boss, came to the rescue. He took a pair of pliers and grabbed the mouse by the tail and threw it in a ditch.  Then he checked the other side to make sure there wasn't another one hiding out, waiting to run up my pant leg.   He said it wasn't a regular house mouse, he thought it was a field mouse because it was so big….which would explain how it was able to drag a bar of poison into the battery box.  Jay called the office as I was pulling out of the driveway and he and Pam had a good laugh over the whole experience. I drove home with my left leg extended straight out and the tip of my right big toe on the very top of the gas pedal. 

Cade came home and told me we should call my car the Mouse 'Mobile. Then when I was telling Jay how nasty this whole experience has been Cade threw up his hands and said "I'm not getting involved in this". I guess men learn at a young age to ignore women when they are having hysterics. I'm sure that's something Jay has taught him during all the hours they spend together before and after school. I am so out numbered.

I will be calling about getting my car detailed as soon as I can.  YUCK!!!

What Does It Mean.....

When your 7 year old boy insists on wearing a brown Fedora to school every day?  Does he think the hat is cool or that it makes him look like Indiana Jones?  I really don't have an idea what's swirling around his head, but I'd like to know.

Here's what's swirling around ours...
Jay - He's going to loose that thing and then we'll never hear the end of it....

Me - I hope the other kids aren't putting it on their heads....  I'm not germaphobic but I am liceaphobic.

We gently tried to voice our concerns today but Cade gave us such a disappointed look we let him go out the door again, with the Indiana Jones hat on his head.  (sigh) I really hope he doesn't bring home lice in the thing.

I'm an Aunt Again

Charity had her baby boy today. Lawson Heath was born at 3:18, weighed 7 lbs 8 oz and was 21 inches. Avery is very excited about her status of being a big sister. He is a very sweet boy. I need to tell them to enjoy it now. Before you know it he'll be running around shooting off a million rounds of imaginary ammunition with his mouth while driving his parents absolutely nuts!



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