Adoption Update

You know the saying "No news is good news". In the world of adoption no news is.........no news. There has been nothing going on for the last few weeks. Our agency has not been made aware of any new situations. They did send out a quarterly update earlier in the week to let us know how many times our profile has been shown since January. I'm not sure if that number included the times we agreed to have it shown or not. I had asked our Social Worker to include that information in her e-mail back to me, but she didn't. And honestly I just didn't have the energy to bug her about it nor did I go back and re-read all of my e-mails to try and figure out for myself. Rather than obsess over it I'm trying to take the approach of "it will happen when it happens". As busy as this month has been in our household that really hasn't been too hard. There hasn't been time to think about anything besides who's dropping off Cade and who's picking him up. I will be glad when contest season is over. Between Jay's job and Cade's birthday month it makes March Madness take on a whole new meaning in our family.

6th Birthday Party

We've always tried to make Cade's birthday parties special. Some would think that we spoil him too much with what we do, but we really don't care. The more time that goes in between Cade and another baby reinforces how much of a miracle Cade truly was for our family. I know every child is a miracle, but after all of the problems we've had, we feel so blessed to have Cade. Therefore we really like to celebrate his birthdays. Someday we want Cade to look back and realize how special we tried to make his parties. I think his 6th Birthday will be the one that really sticks out to him. It was a Civil War themed party and we got him a Union costume to wear.
Janella, who made our wedding cake and every one of Cade's birthday cakes, did another excellent job. I know we've asked her to do some strange things over the years and she always does more then we expect.

Instead of getting paper plates this year, I thought using our china would look more authentic.

Then the real excitement began. There were Confederate's hiding in our yard.



Union Generals came to the front door to alert Cade that a battle was about to take place.

A battle took place right in our front yard (I wonder what the neighbors thought????)




Finally all the Confederates got rounded up and were ordered to bring in the presents


Avery even got in on the excitement



It was a great party and we all had a good time. Thanks to MeMo, Papa Jim, Nana, Granddad and Uncle Terry for really making it one he won't forget.

Happy Birthday Cade

I know this is a day late for Cade’s birthday, it was yesterday. Since he can’t read yet I think he’ll forgive me. I was at home because he was sick and I had a hurt right pointer finger (which was a story in itself) that made typing difficult and our internet at home is a nightmare. I decided to wait until today to post about his birthday. Since he was born at 11:56 pm his birthday is almost on the 20th. We really didn’t get a chance to get to know him until 6 years ago today anyway….

March 19, 2002 – I woke up about 4 am with contractions. I waited until I had another one and them I woke up Jay. We laid in bed for 15 minutes waiting on the next one. When it came we thought that we were in business. I got up and started getting ready and then they stopped. We waited around the house for another hour and nothing happened. We figured it was false labor and we were so disappointed. Since Jay is pretty practical and it is contest season he decided to go ahead with the student trip he had planned that day. He encouraged me to do the same so I headed to work. I work 45 minutes from where we live and back in 2002 we only had one cell phone between the two of us and Jay had it that day. As soon as I headed to work the contractions started again. So I’m in labor on the road and I didn’t even have a cell phone. Once I got to work they went to 7 minutes apart and stayed like that until about 1:00 pm that afternoon. I still thought it was false labor. I really don’t remember how I made it through that day – I worked from 9 to about 1. My boss had no clue that I was in labor and just staring blankly at my computer all day. Finally Mom and Dad showed up and Mom drove me home to meet Jay. As soon as Mom and I got in my car (which was on empty) my contractions went to 3 minutes apart. I also need to mention that we had a new car Mom had never driven and it was raining. I’m sure that was the longest trip Mom has ever made to our house. We got Jay and got to the hospital by about 3:00 pm. They checked me and after all those contractions I was only at a 1. In the terms of having a baby I was no where close. They did admit me to the hospital eventually and we just waited. I figured he wouldn’t be here until at least the 20th. At 11:45 pm the nurse checked me again and much to everyone’s surprise he was ready. The actual labor was extremely easy and he was born at 11:56 pm. He weighed 7 pounds (which meant I had gained 43 non baby pounds) and was 20 inches long and he was completely perfect. Knowing him the way we do now his personality was evident from the moment he was born. Everyone came into see him and he stared at all of us as much as we stared at him. He never closed his eyes for a second. They brought him into my room early on the 20th and he was still wide awake. That was the pattern for much of his first 4 years.

Looking back on my pregnancy I honestly did not enjoy it much. It was stressful because I’m a worrier and I swelled so bad that it was very uncomfortable. Sometimes I wonder why I tried so hard to become pregnant again and then I remember:


Here is the hospital picture. It was taken 6 years ago today


This was taken his first week at home. It's always been one of my favorites.

His sweet face made it so worth it and it gets better the older he gets.

I'm 31 Today

I didn't catch that the post showed 3/17. I've changed it to 3/18 which is my birthday

Today is my 31st birthday. I haven’t given much thought to my birthday or my age this year. Last year the thought of turning 30 was a little traumatizing to me. People would tell me it’s not that bad, your only as old as you feel, etc. I did get a little irritated with the comments. No one realized how in my mind I had set goals for myself that I hoped to accomplish by the time I was 30 and one of those was to have our second child. To me turning 30 didn’t mean I was old, it meant by biological clock was ticking louder. A woman’s fertility does go down after 30 and it hadn’t been great at 28, so I knew it wasn’t going to be getting any better. I was having to totally change my mindset about what age was too old to have children. For me changing my mind about something like this is like getting Cade to hurry up in the mornings. It’s pretty much impossible. It also didn’t help that I took my first dose of Clomid that morning for my last round of fertility treatments. Cade also was turning 5 the next day, my baby would be old enough to start school. So for those of you who thought I was just worried about getting old, it was so much more than that. It was a point in my life where I had so much to be thankful for, but yet I was still missing something so huge. I was forcing my body to do something that it obviously didn’t want to do. I knew that Jay and I were soon going to not be the only main influences in Cade’s life, we would be sending him to the world of public school. He would be around kids who’s lives were very similar to his and some that were vastly different. My life was changing drastically and it just happened to all happen at the same time I turned 30…lucky for me. I guess I’m accustomed to the fact that Cade is in school and that we still don’t have a baby because I haven’t thought much about 31 (or Cade turning 6). I have reset my age of what is too old for us to have a baby, but that also isn’t black and white, there are shades of gray. At what age do we want to say is too old to adopt an infant? Is that the same age we think is too old to have a biological pregnancy? Once we reach that age if we still don’t have another child will be push the age out farther or decide we are a family of three? These are many of the things I never thought I’d think about into my thirties, but I am. Most of the time we try not to think about it, just take it one day at a time and enjoy what we have.

If your wondering if we're doing anything for my birthday tonight we aren't. We hadn't planned anything because Jay has a school thing this evening. It's turned out to be for the best because Jay and Cade are both sick. It looks like I'll be staying home with Cade tomorrow, his birthday. I've been fortunate that I haven't been sick when the two of them have gotten sick this school year. I hope that can continue until we at least get through Cade's party on Saturday. Jay and I are planning on going out Friday night to get Cade's present (a new bike just for you Leslie) and that will be my "celebration"

St Patricks Day - 2002

Today I'm sitting at work feeling pretty good, wearing a green sweater and reminiscing about this same day 6 years ago. I wasn't feeling nearly as good then and didn't even care that I wasn't wearing green.....

March 17, 2002 was a Sunday. Jay and I went to church and then left before Sunday School started. I wanted to go to work to get a few things finished up so Jay went along with me. He helped me do some filing because some of our files were so huge I couldn’t get them out of the cabinet very easily. I ate Mexican again for lunch, I
was trying anything I could think of. That afternoon we went to the mall to walk (trying to start labor) and I needed to have my wedding ring checked. I have to get it checked every 6 months or my warranty will be voided. My fingers had been so swollen since New Years that I wasn’t wearing my ring anymore. I waddled into Zales with the ring on my pinkie. After the salesperson had checked and cleaned it she told me it was a pretty ring. I agreed and then said how I couldn’t wait to wear it again. She asked me why I wasn’t wearing it – I really thought that answer was pretty obvious, but I told her it didn’t fit at the moment. She told me they could stretch it if I wanted them to. I remember thinking how stupid of a comment that was – surely my fingers weren’t permanently swollen. She did realize I was pregnant didn’t she? Then to add insult to injury Jay said I needed one of those triangles on my back that they put on farm machinery to indicate a slow moving vehicle. Looking back on the day, I had to have looked hilarious. I was wearing the same outfit I had worn the night before and it hadn’t gotten any prettier overnight. I also went for comfort on my feet so I wore tennis shoes. Actually it wasn’t so much for comfort, it was that tennis shoes were the only thing that fit anymore. My Nikes looked like these,


except where the shoe is light blue just imagine bright royal blue ( remember my outfit was navy). Yes, those were also purchased during my pregnancy. Cade was extremely low by this point so walking was quite an effort. I just waddled along at a very slow pace. Of course Jay didn’t realize what it was like, he just thought he was incredibly witty when he came up with the triangle idea. After we left the mall we headed to Wal-Mart to get stocked up so we wouldn’t have to worry about anything after the baby was born. I bought a new pair of shoes that day that I could just slip on. They were white canvas and they were a whole size bigger than my normal size. After I recovered from Cade and my brain went back to normal I realized that the shoes looked like Bugs Bunny’s feet. But at the time I didn’t care, I no longer had to bend over and tie my shoes.

Back to 2008
This weekend Mom had a birthday dinner for me. After we were done eating we sat around the table and talked for awhile. One of the highlights was my maternity wardrobe. For any of you that think I may be exaggerating about my clothes during that time just ask Charity or Mom or even Jay for that matter. We still laugh over some of my selections. I was telling Jay about this series of blogs leading up to mine and Cade's birthdays and we started laughing again about my pregnancy. I asked Jay if he thought things would be different if I ever got pregnant again. He didn't even hesitate with his response - "Nah, you're just the type who swells up, that won't ever change" Doesn't that sound encouraging!

2002

All this week when I’ve written out the date I’ve been putting 02 as the year. I even set up a payment over the phone Wednesday and when I punched in the date I used 02. Luckily I caught it before the payment was finalized. At first I wondered what in the heck was wrong with me and then realized there were some pretty important things going on in our lives back in 2002. Maybe I'm subconsciously reliving that time???? Whatever the reason, it made me start reminiscing……

I clearly remember what I was going 6 years ago today. I had just been transferred to this new position and we had a closing for a home remodel that evening. I was the only one in the office during the day so I took my shoes off. My feet swelled so bad that by the time the customers came in I couldn’t get my shoes back on. I had to walk to my car barefoot. This particular closing is etched in my memory because it had what is called Right of Recession. Since the borrowers were using their primary residence for collateral they have 3 business days to change their mind about the loan. We don’t record the deed of trust or disburse any money until the recession period has ended. Well guess what their disbursement day ended up being – March 19, but I’ll get to that next week.

March 15 I had a doctor’s appointment in the afternoon. The doctor was going to let me go another week. If I hadn’t had him by the next Friday then we’d schedule an induction date. Charity and I ate Mexican that night. I don’t believe in many of the old wives tales, but I thought it wouldn’t hurt to try. Charity, do you remember that night? When I walked in the restaurant I felt like every eye in the place was on me.

March 16 Sharon had a birthday party for me. Mom, Dad, Mamma and Pampa all came over for it. I remember I was extremely short tempered that evening because we were having Mamma get tags for our new car. The dealer hadn’t done something correctly and we were running out of time. Since the dealer was closer to Mamma and Pampa they took care of it. Mamma didn’t believe me that our personal property tax receipt was a receipt because it didn’t look like hers. That set me off that evening. I also remember what I wore that night to the party. For some reason being pregnant made me loose all sense of fashion. I looked and felt awful. I wore a very attractive pair of navy blue knit pants with a mock turtleneck. I had given up wearing anything but knit about a month earlier. At the party that night I was sitting on the fireplace hearth and Dad told me I looked terrible (meaning uncomfortable). I was so ready for our baby to make his appearance. I figured we'd be setting an induction date the next week. Little did I know everything was closer than I thought.

Read anything good lateley?????

Much to Jay's enjoyment (insert sarcasm), I've been a frequent visitor to our local library since the beginning of the year. The problem withchecking out a book is that all I want to do is read it until I'm done with it. But, I can read pretty fast so a book doesn't take me long to finish. I know those of you with small children are jealous of that and I will admit I'm enjoying it. I think I finally reached the point about a year ago where I had time to read. Cade was self entertaining and he was out of the putting things in his mouth stage, so I started up reading again. The problem is I go into the library and I'm slightly overwhelmed. Kind of like when you go to rent a movie - you've seen so many previews of movies that you want to see, but you go completely blank the minute you walk into the store.

That brings me to the title of the post - Have you read anything good lately that you would recommend? I'm somewhat wide on my range of books that I enjoy....as long as they fall in the fiction department. There's nothing like a non-fiction book (especially those political ones that Jay likes)to put me to sleep. Right now I'm currently finishing up James Patterson's Alex Cross series (I'm on book 10 out of 13). It has been good, at least good enough to make me want to stick with the series. I will warn you, if you plan on reading them there are crime scenes described and the language in some parts are not the best. Pretty much it's like CSI and Law & Order rolled into a book. I've also recently read the Beverly Lewis Abraham's Daughters series. It's takes you through several decades in the life of an Amish family. I learned a lot about Amish beliefs through those books.

Another book that I just finished was Can't Wait to Get to Heaven by Fannie Flagg. She is also the author of Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe. I enjoyed the book because one of the main characters, Norma, reminded me of myself. She was a constant worrier so I could relate to many of her situations. Every morning Norma would wake up and read a note she had posted on her bathroom mirror - Good morning, this is God, I will be handling all of your worries today so go in peace. Every morning she would vow that was what she was going to do. By 9:00 or 10:00 that morning she would snatch them back. Sound familiar?

I know out of the handful of people that read this blog many don't have the time to read. If you do, leave a comment on a good book that you've read lately. I'm always looking for new ideas.