Wait for it....

Today many thoughts surround me. I have been anticipating this post all week but know that as I write emotions will stir and so I have needed to wait until I was ready to deal more intimately with them to post.



You see this last month has been for much growth myself.....I feel. Actually the last couple weeks have been the most. I feel like I have been in a huge adjustment phase with the whole adoption, parenthood, and life thing.


This little man has brought out so much joy in us and strength and talents that I didn't know existed yet. But he has also stirred some deep rooted pain in me. I tell you this to give you my perspective on infertility and adoption. When we first started the adoption process, at the first "consultation" appointment which was more like a counseling session the social worker surprised me by talking more about our infertility than adoption. I was thrown off guard, I sobbed, I was embarrassed, I was relieved. Someone could help us get through and give us insight to this trial we will forever deal with. I remember that he said that adoption does NOT cure infertility. That made total sense. He was not the only one to tell us this, other social workers and friends alike who have experienced or been close to those who have adopted know this. Adoption is also not the last resort to parenthood, it is a CHOICE. Lindsay and I prayed about adoption, if this was the will of our Heavenly Father to expand our family. We received that confirmation.



I knew that a baby wouldn't cure my infertility issues, but I also thought that becoming a parent would distract me enough away from it, that I could kind of push it out of my mind. Naive thinking if you ask me....or maybe wishful. So we come back to the present time, Erik has been with us for almost 2 months and recently he has stirred the old unwelcome visitor a bit. Seeing his precious innocence and amazing nature reminds me not only how lucky Lindsay and I are to be a part of his life and this miracle, but also that I may never co-create with God and carry a child in my womb. Please do not misunderstand this post as not being thankful for our little man, because I think in the end, it makes us appreciate him that much more. But I hurt for the experience of being pregnant, of delivering, of feeling a spirit move inside me. To bring such a gift to Earth...I have no idea what exactly S's journey has been like but my pain about not carrying a child has helped me to appreciate her experience of placing Erik into our home after doing those things I have not.



Dealing with some of this pain lately has been good for me though, to look at the silver lining.....I feel much more bonded to Erik than I did before. You see, Lindsay bonded with him almost instantly, and while I was so excited about that because I wasn't quite sure how he would react I was wanting the same thing. Bonding has come a bit slower for me, not like I haven't loved our son but it has been coming in steps. I think my hard recently have helped me grow closer to his little spirit and now I just enjoy every bit of him. I feel like my bond to him is growing each day. It's been hard because a lot of moms around me, their infants need them exclusively for feeding, but I am not needed in that way, and since we had so much help in the beginning, I didn't feel as strong as an urge towards him as I wanted or expected.

But perseverance pays off.....I am constantly working on trying to do things that would help me. I think it has been going rather nicely. Lindsay and I have been working with Erik to get more of a routine down. And it's not so much about getting things done at specific times of day but doing everything in the same order so Erik knows what to expect next has helped. I do the whole night during the week when Lindsay works and he helps on the weekends, unless Erik is having a particularly troubled night. And I think that spending lots of wee morning hours feeding and holding and then having him want to be held by me still in the morning has been a great success. When he needs me is when I feel the bond become more cemented.



Adoption is very unique, for those who have been a part of been close to those who have been a part knows that it is a roller coaster. And it seems that the lows are more low. but in exchange the highs are more high. What a wonderful blessing! It makes me think about how to experience such sweetness we must go through the prickly painful part. The rule of opposites that we learn about in the scriptures, we can't have one without the other. For if we only experienced good things we would never really know how good they were or appreciate them, but when we have the bad with the good......then we partake of the most sweetest things and and enjoy them.

So that is my deep thoughts for a while. On a lighter note but still on the adoption front... my surprise......... have you heard of "the r house?" If not you should check it out. There is a link on the right hand side of my blog. Especially sometime soon as I have been asked to a guest blogger! Not sure when it will happen....I will let you know, but I am working on everything and am so excited! Mrs. r is a huge adoption advocate and has two sweet little boys who have come to their family through adoption. Her blog rocks!



Even Erik thinks so! If you check out her thurs. march 26th post you can click on the link of the video slideshow and hear a birth mother tell a part of her story with pictures of her placement. So cool! And I will remind or inform those that may not know that Birth Mother's day is the saturday before Mother's day!

Have a great weekend!

Found them!

So here is a couple of videos for your delight. The one of Erik was taken last sunday after I had gotten him dressed for church. It is not real eventful but you get to see him coo a wee bit and just see him in action.

The second is the Orangutan Karen that I talked about. Lindsay found the videos...I am a knucklhead after all and somehow missed seeing them on the computer, I am not a technical person-it all confuses me. I just know how to get the basic stuff done. That's all I need right?

Hope you all had a great weekend!

Soon there will be some posts on more deep levels and a surprise to anounce this week as well (don't even think about babies and surprise in the same sentence....everyone always thinks that when I say I have a surprise, it will be good though!)

Party Animals

Shhh..... don't tell anyone, I am supposed to be preparing a sharing time lesson for tomorrow....but I would rather blog, so here I am. I thought I would share some of our pictures from the zoo. I am mad cause we had this awesome video of an orangutan named Karen doing somersaults and stuff and one of bears wrestling with each other but in the transfer from camera to computer, they are gone. Seems to be my luck lately, oh well. More reason for me to continue to ask Lindsay for a new camera with more megapixels that is smaller to fit in the diaper bag better.

This is Linds feeding Erik during a break. We were trying to keep his super fair skin out of the sun, so he has his extra pair of pants on his legs and feet and burp cloth on his head. We bought sunscreen finally today but it says babies need to be 6 months to use!? What? Here in Cali, he will definitely be in the sun before then....does anyone know about sunscreen with little infants. I think I might go ahead anyways and ask at his next appointment, I really don't want him to get burnt.

This was gogi the panda bear eating away at bamboo. This panda is a male and was sitting in the perfect light for the picture. It was fun to see that when he got up to get water, his bottom half where he is white was all dirty brown. I guess they sit most of the day eating.

The sweet giraffes eating away. I was amazed at how close we could get to them with the fence, there was a smaller one but was laying in the sun facing away from us.

Linds in front of the elephants......isn't he handsome? I know I tell you this all the time but he really is fantastic, the other night Erik was up quite a bit and he came and told me, "it's ok babe we will make it through this together." Meaning that night. Isn't he sweet, such the perfect cheerleader. He also thought it was cool that he was wearing a pig on his shirt that day because we were at the zoo. Notice the "Pink Floyd" under it though? Yeah I like the music but don't think they sing about the zoo. Nice one babe!

THis was Karen the Orangutan, she was quite the entertainer. One of the zoo employees was there on her day off and Lindsay heard her talking about how Karen came to the zoo with some bad heart problems, so she had a lot of one on one attention until she was better, so now she loves to do things to get attention and when she doesn't have it she gets mad. She was swinging from poles and sat right at the glass at the ground where a little girl was and put her hand at the glass was for the little girl to mimic, it was pretty cute! There was also a young orangutan who was doing somersaults when we first got to the exhibit and then went up into a hammock with it's mother, it was cute to watch them interact as well. The mother put her arm around her little one and picked at it's fur and things, very heartwarming.

Me and the awesome sling again. It was great. It does start to hurt after an extended (few hours) time but was great.

So all in all the San Diego zoo is awesome and even if you had to buy full price tickets, I would still say that it's worth it. They have all sorts of cool animals and what not. I am excited to go again in a few years, if we still live in Cali and take Erik when he can actually enjoy it. This time was Linds and I and we loved loved loved it!

Meet Erik

First of all I must apologize. For those of you who know Erik (the adult one) this was the only digital picture I could find. This one was taken outside the temple at our wedding. The real one of us posing has gone missing and I don't have any others so........if any of you reading this have a digital photo of Erik please let me know, I would love to have copies.

All right to the good stuff....

This man if you had the chance to meet him is the most genuine, kind, and caring people you have ever met. I feel blessed that he was such a huge part of Lindsay's life to have had such great influence. Erik and Lindsay were best friends and grew up down the street from each other. There are lots of stories of eating pizzas, turning on a microwave for 5 minutes at a time through an entire night to make sure they woke up for a paper route they were covering, pink helmets and rollerblades, too many to mention.

Erik and Linds pretty much shared everything, well actually Erik shared everything with Lindsay. When Erik went to college he even let Lindsay drive his truck until he left for his mission. Erik was the best type of friend you could ever want. Erik did not share all the same beliefs that Lindsay and I do and was not LDS but would stand up for Lindsay anytime. He respected Lindsay and even helped make right choices when Lindsay was tempted to do otherwise, even though it was not against Erik's beliefs-pretty amazing huh? I only had the opportunity to meet this fine creature twice. Once when Lindsay and I were engaged (Erik was actually supposed to be a part of Lindsay's proposal but Linds couldn't wait for Erik to get into town and did it earlier) we all went rock climbing and then again at our wedding.

Lindsay and I were married in the LDS temple in Spokane Washington and even though couldn't attend the ceremony he still came out to the temple and waited in the waiting room and was right there when we came out. He is near and dear to our hearts.

Ever since we got married we always wanted to name our first boy after Lindsay's best friend. But it became even more special when a year after Lindsay and I were married Erik went missing and was never found. He was a very adventurous man - remember Lindsay and him are just alike, and he got his pilot's license young (18 or 19), he went to college and then was a bush pilot in Alaska during the summers working super hard and then he would travel the world the rest of the year making it by however he could. He was working his last day in Alaska and getting ready for his fun season when he was on his way back with a fishing group, some storm came through and Erik's plane never landed. They never found any parts of his plane or passengers on land or in the sea. It was heartbreaking to say the least. Lindsay wanted so bad to fly up there as soon as we got the call to help with search efforts but we just couldn't make it work. I felt helpless. We prayed for him and his family.

And now we have this little man to help remember dear Erik James- we even kept his middle name the same. Our little guy has traveled parts of the world and is very mellow like his adult namesake. What a blessing to have both touch our lives. Even though I didn't know Erik as well as Linds, I feel like he has blessed our lives in more ways than I could describe, he is the epitome of a friend. I hope that we can raise our Erik to be the same.

Busy bees

Whoops that one is a little blurry but I couldn't get it to delete so you get to see a blurry picture. Erik is getting pretty interactive for a one month old and moves his head and facial features quite a bit! He is too cute

This last week brought us the last of our visitors for a while. We were so grateful for those that made the trip to come see us and delighted in the company. Great Grandpa came with Great Grandma and they snuggled and loved on Erik for a night. Grandpa was all about being involved and getting snugly with Erik. It was pretty cute!

Talk about snugly, Boomer is getting pretty comfortable with Erik and its nice! Here we put Erik next to Boomer on my bed so I could finish getting ready. I sat there with them for quite some time making sure that Boomer didn't get stressed out or accidentally step on Erik if he decided to get down. They both loved it, Boomer at one point had his head resting on Erik's legs and when Erik caught sight of Boomer he would stare intently and smile! It is nice to have a trained dog already, I can't imagine training a dog and having a baby at the same time. And yes you do see pink on Erik's blanket. He actually has a couple with pink in them. We got lots of gender neutral stuff and let's just say......Erik's already completely comfortable in his manhood, pink schmink! Plus a blanket is a blanket, he pees on them so much that he goes through one about every other day, it's either pee or puke- you take your pick!

One month old, I can't believe it! This one is a bit blurry too but like I said the little man is an active one when he is awake so we take what we can get. He is super alert and loves to smile for us now when we talk to him. He is starting to coo and i can't wait to hear more! He has had a couple of rough nights over the past week but on his normal nights he has been giving us some pretty good stretches (6-6.5 hours) of sleep! We are hoping that in the next few weeks we can either keep that consistent or get him to sleep through the night. I think he has got it in him to sleep through the night but it will just be being consistent with a schedule. I tried really hard to schedule while company was here but it wasn't easy. So now I get to work on getting the kinks out of that. Tomorrow we are going to attend our first story time at the library and I am so excited! I hope this little one enjoys books as he gets older. I know I can't force that but I hope that by introducing books early and doing it often that he will like them somewhat.

This weekend was a blast! On saturday we were invited to go out to the desert with friends and go dirt biking and hang out for the day. Lindsay's parents and brother came along for a bit before heading back to snow in washington. I think they enjoyed themselves, i know we loved their company. Then on sunday evening Lindsay needed to head out to LA for work so instead of staying alone for a few days with Erik, we accompanied him. We spend a day in LA and then went to San Diego for a day. Yesterday we went to the San Diego zoo and had a great day! Pictures to come soon! We got to see a distant friend while in LA and eat at the yummy cheesecake factory. The zoo was so fun and although Erik slept mostly, Lindsay an d I enjoyed ourselves. He got in for free as well as Erik and they gave me an employee discount (perks of military) so we hardly payed anything, except for the outrageously priced food, but the trip was worth it. Better than staying home missing Linds.

Aaahhhh life is great! I feel much more comfortable now being a new mom and lindsay has been such a great help. I love watching him father our child and interact in only a way that daddy's can. I thought that I would stress out so much with some stuff with Erik, but instincts and desire have kicked in. It has been a complete joy to have a little one in our home and I know it is just going to keep getting better. I will admit there have been a couple of breaking points in the middle of the night where I prayed for calm and peace as my stress was increasing with a screaming little one who was overtired and not feeling well, but Heavenly Father always prevails and things worked out.

Coming soon..............Orangutans, bears, and elephants, and a story about a namesake.

Until then, enjoy

Som

A week at the moon's

I love the above picture, it's like he is intently contemplating a deep issue.....but in actuality he is staring out the window of the car during a ride. Although I guess he still could be contemplating something great.

Me holding my little man while reading some great material ;) a gossip magazine! My mom and I love to read them, even though it's probably not the best thing. When we both lived in the same town whenever one of us would get one we would read it and then swap it and then pass it on to co-workers or friends who enjoy them. Now I get to try to read, which usually doesn't happen. You lucky ladies who breastfeed get the luxury of an extra hand while feeding, while I have the luxury of having help with feedings, both of my hands get tied up-well until Erik can hold his own bottle at least. But I don't want to think that far down the road yet!

Grammy Cindy came to hang out with us for the week while my mom has been here. We enjoyed her company thoroughly as we played scrabble, ate her yummy homemade cookies, chatted, and I can say that my house looks much much better after her and my mom worked their magic helping me to rearrange my furniture and set up the new nursery stuff. My house feels much more comfortable now! We wish Grammy Cindy could have stayed longer but we are excited for the next visit!

Grammy Spinelli is here helping out and has been helping with cooking and taking Erik in the morning for a couple of hours so that I could get a bit more sleep ( what will I do when everyone leaves?) . She taught me how to bath him and as you will see he loves his baths. Well actually he loves being in the bath and hates being taken out to get dressed. The ritual starting this week has been to play the barenaked ladies cd while bath time and dressing occurs and he loves it! Music will be this little guys passion I think. He loves all sorts and calms quickly when music is started.

We had our first "after placement" visit with our amazing social worker Travis! He came to make sure all of the adjustments are going smoothly and answer questions. He is such a great counselor and social worker, we have really enjoyed working with him!

Erik also had a doctors appointment this week and is growing well. Nothing to be worried about with our little man. He is up to 8.1 pounds and 22.something inches. He is in the 35 percentile for his weight but 75th for height and head circumfrence. So he is tall and skinny! But doing wonderfully! He is lifting his head more and is starting to smile sometimes when we talk to him. He loves Boomer and when Erik can see Boomer he always grins really big! Boomer is still cautious around the baby and curious. But when Erik cries he is the first at his side and if he doesn't think someone responds quick enough he runs from person, to baby, to the next person, until Erik is soothed. It's pretty cute. They will be good friends, no doubt in my mind!

chillin' like a villian on the bed while i was finishing up getting ready to run an errand!

looking adorable as a little fishie as he came out of the tub! Those hooded towels are so cute!

relaxing in the tub while mom washes him down. I can't wait for him to hold his head himself so it will be a little easier to let him stay in the bath a bit longer!

I added this pick to show the coolest sling! We went down to northridge last weekend to pick up a coat that I had repaired at REI and we did a little shopping. Instead of carrying the car seat I put Erik in the sling, and he was soooo content! Plus it helped with strangers not touching him because he was so close to my body. It's great because he will be able to grow and still use the sling. Erik will be able to face forward in it, and sit on my hip, and even on the back side of my hip as he grows. And the sling is soo comfortable. It's Hotslings brand, and though a bit spendy, already totally worth it!

All right Lindsay and my mom are waiting to start a movie. Until next time,

Som