Cade has now officially entered into the stage that Jay and I affectionately refer to as the Snaggletooth Era. If you're not familiar with the time frame of this era it starts (according to us) when they loose a top front tooth and ends either when their head grows into their new teeth or they get braces to fix the teeth jutting out from weird places in their gums.

I know we're partial, but we think this snaggletooth is pretty cute.



P.S. I just noticed how bad my plant looks in the background of this picture. Looks like I better water it tonight!

Another First Grade Funny

Jay and I were talking about this before we left home this morning. I hadn't posted about it last week when it happened so I will today.

As you all know Cade had a pretty active summer - he played baseball, he spent several nights with his grandparents, he went to church camp, he fell off the monkey bars and got stitches, he went to Florida, he saw the Blue Angels, he saw dolphins in the Gulf, he saw the USS Alabama, he swam in the Gulf of Mexico, he saw jellyfish, etc. Not to sound like I'm bragging, but there probably weren't a whole lot of kids in his class who got to do what he did. So the evening of the first day of school he told us Mrs S asked all the kids what they did over break. Jay and I prepared ourselves - we knew he had a great story to tell, we figured Mrs S had to make him stop talking about the really great summer he had, we were sure he was excited about everything we had tried to do for him. So we asked and this is what he said......

"I told her mommy took me to Bass Pro"

So much for Florida. He only wanted to talk about what I did to kill some time when I took him to the eye doctor a few days before school started. That was his great summer memory. Jay and I thought it was a little embarrassing.

How's School?

Since, as of last night Cade has been in school 5 days, you may be wondering how it's going. Here's how it's going:

Last night at bed time I was reading to him out of his Presidents Book. We were reading about President Harding and one of the lines was "he quit school at an early age". Cade's head shot up off his pillow and then he said "You mean we can quit school?" Things aren't looking good if he's only on the 5th day of his 1st grade year and the thought of quitting school is appealing to him.

First Day of School

School started last week so we now officially have a 1st grader living with us. According to Cade though, he's in 1st grade again. After being in 1st grade in Summer School he'd tell anyone who asked that he'd be in 1st grade again. He made it sound like he was repeating 1st grade. I hope that since school has finally started he'll quit saying that - I got tired of trying to correct what he meant.

As far as I know, the week was successful for both Jay and Cade. Last week only the parents had homework, but I think that's going to change this week. Last night I sat down to do my "homwork" and 30 minutes, a dozen papers and 3 checks later I was finally finished. One thing to make a mental note for those who don't have kids in school - make sure you have plenty of checks in your checkbook. I wrote a check to the PTO for dues, one to the teacher for snacks and one to the school for lunch. It took 3 checks to get one 48 inch 55 pound boy started in school. You'll also need plenty of envelopes. Each check had to be put in its own envelope with what is was for written on the front, along with Cade's name. It's a lot different than it was 25 years ago when dad would send me to the bus with a lunch check that had a 50/50 chance of actually being turned into the school. Most of the time mine never made it. This envelope in a folder system that is used now is much better. Cade's lunch checks have always been cashed - now if only the office staff at the high school would start a folder system......maybe I'd be more informed of what's going on with Jay at the high school......

Struggles of Infertility

With everything that’s happened with Skyler and Colby this summer I feel guilty about this post. My problems are nothing compared to what these two little boys and their families have gone through. But this blog is about our journey to and through adoption including our infertility. - which means all of the good and all of the bad. I try to keep things light hearted and as funny as I can, but I also don’t want to ignore that other part of this, which is infertility. If I don’t touch on infertility occasionally I feel like I’m doing a disservice to myself and to the millions of other couples going though it.

I’ll be honest – I’m going though a very rough patch right now. The roughest I have been though in months. Since February things had gotten so much better. I had even posted earlier in the summer that I was doing ok, I was pretty content with where we were at in our lives. So this rough patch snuck up out of nowhere and has kind of blindsided me.

In the last three years I’ve done a lot of thinking and a lot of analyzing and last year I discovered this time of year was hard. There are several reasons that have contributed to that
· We officially decided we were ready for another baby around our vacation time in 2005. While vacations are nice, it’s another reminder that another one has come and gone and were still dealing with infertility
· We’ve been contacted by our agency that we need to update our homestudy, which includes fingerprinting and filling out financial information. I went to the big Picnic last weekend and saw several girls who were like 5 years old when I graduated walking around pregnant with #1, some even #2. I don’t think they had to be fingerprinted or account for every dollar they spend each month like Jay and I have to.
· Our first miscarriage happened Thanksgiving Day 2006. If I had stayed pregnant that baby would’ve been born in August. I should be having a 1st birthday party, not hunting down the balance of every account that we have. I won’t even get started on what the thought of Thanksgiving does to me. That's another post for another time
· Cade starts school. I always have in the back of my mind – Is this the first and last time I have a child starting XX grade?

Even though I don’t think about all of this on a daily basis it’s like my body knows. Last year it was like my body knew something wasn’t right. I went through a pretty rough time until I figured it out. I don’t know or care what experts in the field of grief might say – my heart knew I should’ve had a baby last August and my heart hurt. This month has also been a little tougher because I’ve had a kidney infection for most of the month and that really had me physically down. When I went to the doctor for it last week he also started talking about my blood pressure (which is high) and the weight gain I’ve had the last three years. I left the doctors office not only with my antibiotic but also a prescription for a weight loss drug and feeling totally frustrated and confused about what I should do.

So here I am – frustrated, depressed, angry, irritable –emotions that infertility brings out in all their glory. I’m back to avoiding every pregnant woman and baby section that I come across. I’ve been at a work conference the last few days and there was a pregnant person there and I completely ignored her the whole time. Last weekend we ran into some old college friends and they had a new baby that I didn’t know about. I physically could not speak to them. I tried, but all I could get out were one syllable words, mostly answers to her questions. I’ve been angry and I’ve yelled to Jay (not at him) that we’re always waiting on it to be in God’s time so why is it time for every one else and never for us? Am I proud of my behavior? Of course not, but I want to be honest to myself and everyone else. This is hard. There’s no way around it. It is the way it is. This whole thing has been a roller coaster ride and there are times I’m up and there are times I’m down. This is a down time. I know it will turn around eventually, but this time it feels a little different. Early on in our infertility I could remind myself of our other options when I got down. Right now we have no other viable options. We are coming to the end of our road and we’re stuck at the bus stop waiting.

Regional Winners

Remember last month how Jay and Lyle won an award for having the Outstanding Ag Ed Program in the state? Well last Friday they found out they also were the regional winners. Their region includes several states, I think up to Michigan and over to Ohio, but I'm not 100% on that. Lyle and Jay will be headed to the NAAE convention in Charlotte, NC the first part of December. We don't know if Jania and I will be going with them or not. Jay and Lyle's trip will be paid for, so I think they were hatching a plan for us to go along with them......so we'll see.

Here is the link where you can read about their program on the NAAE website: Lyle and Jay

Adoption Update

Here's the latest in the adoption world - in the last couple of weeks we were asked about having our profile shown in 4 different situations which were the following:
Schizencephally on left frontal lobe
Porencephaly
Hydrocephaly
and extensive drug/alcohol abuse

The first three were conditions with the brain that we couldn't find enough information about to make us feel like these were conditions we were willing to take on. The last one just had too much alcohol use. According to research and talking with other adoptive parents alcohol use is much more harmful than drug use. To be honest, all of these things scared us. So for those of you who believed (before becoming educated by our blog :) ) that adoption was easy or hear people say they don't understand why we can't get a baby quicker there are so many available - just let them know how hard these decisions are to make.

This weekend we were joking about baby names with Cade. For some reason Jay has started calling Cade Larry. None of us are sure where it came from, it started sometime around our vacation. I told Cade that I thought we were going to name our baby Larry. Cade got a little ticked because that's not the name he wants. He informed us that the name was his decision to make, since he has waited a long time for a brother he will be the one deciding on the name. So I asked him what he would name a girl. He let out a big exasperated sigh and told me since I was a girl I would name a girl baby and he and daddy would take care of the name for a boy baby. Even though we were joking it made Jay and I a little sad. Even Cade is starting to notice the wait. That is what hurts my heart the most about all of this - Cade wants a sibling so badly and we can't do anything about it. He used to ask us how many years there would be between him and his brother/sister. He wouldn't settle for "I don't know" so we said probably 7. He's closing in on 6 1/2. I hope we were too far off on our guesstimate.