Too big, eh?

Testing

Working on photo orientation.

"My Grandma" by Baby S.

My grandma had foot surgery today. When I found out I told my mommy, "Let's make a photo diary so Grandma can see what I do all day." My mommy said OK, so here it is. This post is very picture heavy, so if you don't think I'm cute, or you think I'm too cute, you might not want to look. Love, Baby

















1. I like to play in the hall, dangerously near outlets that my mom stuck little plastic things in.



2. I brush my teeth.



3. Next I terrorize my kitties.



4. I pull Punky’s tail. He doesn’t like it.



5. Subluxations are bad. My chiropractor gets me straightened out.



6. Time for a nap.



7. Yay, naptime is over.



8. Another nap? I don’t think so, mommy. (She put me right back down and I gave in.)



9. I can climb up on lots of things.



10. I liked my fresh peach the best.



11. Daddy comes home!!!



12. Big blue has a flat head.



13. I tickle the ivories after almost every meal.



14. Bath time. I like sushi.



15. Night-night bottle. (I’m embarrassed. You saw me in my underwear.)


Ain’t life grand? I love my grandma. Get well soon!

My first tag - awww......

The Rules: 1. I have to post these rules before I give you the facts. 2. Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves. 3. People who are tagged need to write their own blog (about their eight things) and post these rules. (**if you’re a non-blogger, you can email them!) 4. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names. 5. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

1. I can't decide whether I couldn't do without chocolate or french fries.

2. I've lived in 3 countries and 6 states (U.S., England, Scotland, California, Iowa, South Carolina, Colorado, Kansas, and Texas.)

3. I bought new shoes this morning - Birkenstocks. They are so comfortable I can barely contain my excitement.

4. Every time I go to Thelma's blog I want an apple.

5. I need to shower and wash my hair right now. It's 1:40 p.m.

6. I've had the same pair of Ray Ban sunglasses since 1999.

7. I took ballet lessons for 8 years and was a flower in the Nutcracker for 5 years.

8. When I was little I got a snowcone machine, a bicycle, and a puppy all for quitting sucking my thumb three different times. I finally quit when I was about 12.

I'm going to tag my HP aunties Thelma, Allison, Wendi, Judi, Melody, Niki, and Sarah, plus one more that I'll have to edit this post to add!

Hi, I'm new here.

Taking a break from my hea-vy posts to introduce to you my new computer. I shall call her Fran. Maybe not, but that's the first name that came to my mind.

I've graduated from the iBook G4, which I bought in my first year of graduate school at UT, to the MacBook. It's rather nifty. It has Garage Band which I've always wanted, and iDVD which will be very nice, indeed. I'd love to learn how to do more video editing. Remember "One Kirk Stuck?" I'll have to do another movie some day.

Photo Booth - what's that? How do I use iChat? These are things I must know. One of my first orders of business is to download and send some pictures to my mother who can be quite pesky about that.

(As an aside, we are watching a Star Wars episode right now, and I wonder - was there ever a character as annoying as JarJarBinks? I think not.)

Fran says "bye" - she wants to play.

Childbirth education part II - **pg talk**

I started feeling better right before lunch. There is nothing like a feeling of physical health after I've felt sick. I chalked my body's behavior up to nerves and an excess of fiber and set out to face the rest of the day.

I can't remember now what we talked about right before lunch - oh, yes, relaxation techniques and pain management. "Hee hee hee hoo" and stuff like that, including a nice hand massage. "Wait," I thought, "What about my feet?" (Somewhere in my head I hear my husband saying, "Rub your own stinky, puffy feet," but he would never say that. Think it, maybe.)

There were 20 happy couples in our class, and there might have been one woman there by herself. This started me to thinking about K and how she might have felt in the hospital. Without going into too many details that are her story, because it's hers, she did have support at the hospital, hospital staff treated her like the mother, which she was, and she was the first and only to hold the baby in the first 24 hours.

But there her exclusive rights began to fade. What must she have been thinking as she watched the other moms with their babies? What must she have gone through every time she saw me standing there smiling at her and her baby? It was challenging for us at the hospital not knowing whether this would really be our baby, but I would have much rather been in our position.

Yesterday I used the word "relieved" to describe how it would feel in the hospital knowing that New Baby will be our forever baby. I don't think that was the right choice of words. I think a better word would be blessed. Perhaps we won't even compare the two situations at all, because they really don't compare. But the fact that a childbirth education class brought up all of these unexpected feelings indicates to me that they will come up again at the hospital.

Speaking of word choices, "guilt" wasn't the right word to describe how I feel about having a baby after infertility. So scratch that, but I'll have to come back to that topic tomorrow. It was a big day Saturday and I'm still processing.

Musings of a pregnant adoptive parent.

***Lots of pg talk, as evidenced by my title.***

We went to our childbirth education class yesterday, and it brought up all sorts of ideas and feelings. I was excited about it all week, but then I got nervous. Would I look stupid doing my "hee-hee-hee-hoo" breathing? Was I going to have to lie on the floor with my knees east and west? Were my pillow cases clean?

For the morning session, anatomy and physiology and the process of childbirth, I felt physically ill and had to leave the room several times. It could have been the fiber fiesta I held a night or two before, it could have been something I ate that morning, but it had never occurred to me that I would be squeamish about this. I've seen it, right? I didn't pass out in the delivery room or feel physically ill when Thing 1 was born.

At some point during the morning, as I was sort of reliving the birth of our son, I realized that unlike that time, we know that this baby will be ours from the moment of his/her birth. With Big Guy we spent the first few days of his life wondering if we would really be his parents. I don't begrudge the necessity of that, but it certainly was different than this experience. It will be a relief to be able to really bond with New Baby from minute 1 - before minute 1, actually. (Relief really might not be the right word, here. let me work this out and I'll edit.)

I have much more to say about this, but I need to try to get some extra sleep tonight. Tomorrow night is Girl's Night!

Stay tuned for the next installment about my emotions surrounding what K must have experienced as she gave birth to her first precious baby - our sweet son. Also, the guilt I feel as a parent preparing for #2 when so many precious women are still waiting for one dear child to love. I hated it when I thought about how my friends might feel badly about being pregnant or being parents when DH and I were struggling with infertility, but the cold, hard, slap-you-in-the-face truth is that I do feel that way. It's not pity guys, really, just understanding and compassion, I think. I love you.

More latah.

What not to say.

Let's revisit what to say and what not to say when talking about children with someone who doesn't have them (yet).

DO NOT say:
Adopt and you will get pregnant. (It's hardly ever true, although it might seem like it is. Only 3-10% of the time is it true.)

Stick with me - I get pregnant just standing next to my husband. (That one is never, ever true. Has that person never taken biology? Nor is it in the water. Sperm can't live that long, they don't travel through the water system, and they don't get to an egg by swimming down through your digestive system.)

You can have mine. (I don't want your children, I want my own children. By "my own," that means by adoption, too.)

At least you don't have to get up in the middle of the night a dozen times. (Never, ever start any sentence with the words "At least," or "Why don't you just...")

You need to relax.

DO say:
That must be difficult.

I'm sorry.

Can I buy you some very tasty chocolates or your dream home while you wait?

^^^^^^^^^^^^^
So, I can tell you it's very hurtful for people to say that you need to relax. That makes it your fault that you cannot get pregnant. After we adopted and did actually conceive and it seems like will carry to term, people said, "See, you finally relaxed and then you got pregnant." One person actually did say this directly to me, and several made the comment to friends as I was walking away from a conversation.

First, do they really think that having a newborn baby is relaxing? That's all I have to say about that. Second, doesn't that imply that each and every time my sweet husband and I "got romantic," as one of our nurse practitioners said (love her), in 4 years, we were never relaxed? I'm not going to go into these details for ya', but that's seriously dumb.

Message truncated - going to the airport to pick up K!