More San Diego snaps....

Lauren wrote her name in the sand and posed by it. We do this every year on Christmas Eve when we go to the beach. This is the first year that SHE could write her own name. I have 5 years of these pictures.

For some reason I love Speedo suits on little kids. Maybe it is because they are not too grown up (as in...not too sexy). Maybe it is because little kids have such perfect little bodies...who knows. Anyway, she is always happy to pose for a picture. This is right before she went body boarding w/ her Grandpa (who is 63 going on 25...he bikes across countries, he runs marathons...he is unbelievable).
Here is Jacob's "name" picture. Lu wrote this one too. We couldn't get him to look at the camera...but we DID get about 12 shots of him shoveling sand into his mouth...with an actual shovel. It didn't bother him nearly as much in his mouth as it did on his feet.

Another day, another beach, another bucket.

One night we went to dinner w/ Derek's sister and her husband. Grandma and Grandpa babysat the kids for us. Jacob recently learned how to climb out of his crib and we had been having quite a time getting him back into bed. When we got home from dinner we asked if JJ had given them a hard time. They told us no...they put him back in bed once and then didn't hear from him again. This is where we found him asleep. He is fast asleep in this picture..but squinted b/c of the flash. This continued for the rest of the trip. We found him behind doors, in the bathroom, etc. We bought a crib tent the minute we got home. It is the only way that I know he is safe (he can open the sliding glass door in his room and he is on the second floor.....).


Nori slept a lot. This suitcase was her bed on the trip. We used dish towels for her burp clothes. Poor little matchstick baby. :-) Don't worry, she only slept in the suitcase on the trip. At home she doesn't sleep in one. She sleeps in a laundry basket. Seriously.

Norah slept in lots of great places on the trip...in a suitcase, on pool chairs, in strollers at SeaWorld and the Zoo, at many dinners while on my shoulder. Just never at night.



Poor red Lulu. We did use sunscreen, just not enough. Nori already looks so small to me here. She has changed so much.


Now that Lauren is able to write she can take pictures with all kinds of stuff in the sand. This one says "I love Peter Pan".

Busy weekend...........

We have been pretty busy this weekend. Our social worker called twice this week to tell us that she is "in the area" and wants to drop in for a post placement visit (this is to check the house to make sure it is safe and to see how we are all adjusting). I spend the very few free hours that I have making the house spic and span, arranging for everyone to be here (that means Derek and Lulu too...) and each time, about 30 minutes after she was supposed to be here.....she calls to cancel.

WHHHHHHAAAAAAA?????????

Finally she "had some time" today and we just got it done this morning. Sheesh. Two more to go. We are blessing the baby tomorrow in church and are having a small dinner at our house afterwards (50 people...but for me that is small). In honor of Nori's Caribbean heritage we are having all Caribbean food. Not all of it is Bahamian, but it is all from the general area. It all has lime juice in it........ I juiced 40 limes this weekend. Want to come over? Come on. You know you want to. Here is the menu to tempt you...............

--Island Pork (pork loin w/ a spicy rub and basted in a caramelized orange and honey sauce...sweet and spicy)
--Jerk Chicken w/ mango salsa
--Grilled Lemon Thyme Chicken w/ Peanut Satay or Curry Dipping Sauce
--Caribbean Black Beans (Black beans w/ bacon, onion, pepper, carrots and garlic...yummm)
--Black Eye Pea Salad (white beans, peppers, pumpkin, red onion, celery, and lime vinaigrette)
--Roast Bake (a coconut bread made w/ unsweetened coconut..so it isn't too sweet..but coconuty and delicious)
--Rice w/ Green Onion and Cilantro
--Honey and Cinnamon Roasted Sweet Potatoes
--Macaroni and Cheese Pie
--Lime Punch (make a simple syrup and steep 6 cups of banana's in the syrup. Then add water and fresh lime juice............Delicious)

Dessert:
--Blueberry cobbler
--Brownies
--Vanilla cupcakes w/ dried pineapple flowers
--Pumpkin pie

Now don't you want to come over?

What I did on my summer vacation.....

Earlier in the summer Derek's family made plans to take a trip to San Diego. We go on a vacation with them every year. Every other year it is a "big" trip. We have been to Hawaii several times, last year we went to Tuscany for cooking school and who knows where the future trips will be (Africa, I hope). On the off years we take a trip that doesn't require a long plane ride, passports and shots. Also, we can bring the kids. :-)

It turned out that Norah was only two weeks when we were scheduled to go. I went back and forth about whether to go or not, but in the end we got an extra room (so everyone else could sleep) and we were off. We stayed at a small-ish hotel RIGHT on the beach in La Jolla. It was great to be so close to the sand. We had a public beach, a pool and a huge playground structure and park right next door to the hotel. In a word.....awesome!! Jacob loved the sand have the time and hated it the other half (it was so soft...I have never seen sand like it...not up here anyway....). We usually hit the beach early and were in the normal pool by 10:00 am.

I finally cracked out my camera and took pictures. This one is for the grandmas!! We did the beach (fun), the zoo (not fun), Seaworld (started fun then turned QUICKLY into NOT AT ALL FUN) and general sitting around. It was great. Just yesterday my mom reminded me she hadn't seem many pictures of the kids...so here they are Mamma Jane. Here is the warning... there are a ton of pictures on this....so leave now if you aren't as interested as a grandma!!

The kids loved to go in the ocean but were a bit worried at first...especially Cubby

Lucky Daddy gets to hold all of Lu's "treasures"

We built lots of sand castles...

This bucket was a source of endless fun for the boy. Mostly it stayed on his head.

Jacob still loves sand...he spent many hours playing in it and was fine, as long as it wasn't on his feet.

This was the hotel's "childrens pool". It looked suspiciously like a fountian that was turned off. Or is it just me? Jcob sat in this pool for hours at a time. When you see the pictures of him "swimming" you will see why that is just fine with me. The boy think he can swim. This way I didn't have to keep scooping him off the bottom of the pool.

Lauren thinks the best part about hotels is the bathrobe!! This was taken on the morning of her actual birthday. She got room service breakfast in bed. We love that (especially when I don't have to worry about the sheets).

Jacob eating the rest of Lu's breakfast. I loved the light on his skin in this picture. He looks so little here.

I am not going to push my luck with blogger tonight so I will post the rest tomorrow.

He kills me!!

This is courtesy of the daycare where Cubby went while I was in Africa. They took this picture and sent it to me. Apparently, he was thrilled with the wig and wore it a lot.

He reminds me of a lunch lady...I don't know why. Also, this is proof that not only would he be a pretty girl (I KNEW it) but that those eyelashes ARE wasted on a boy......

Do you like the new look? Kelly from Nello Designs did if for me!! How great is this? I wanted a little change..............

My name is Rebecca....and I am an addict....

Yesterday I got ambitious and took the kids out of the house. I had three stops planned. About 12 seconds into the first stop I realized that it would be the ONLY one that day. The other errands weren't really that important (diapers and formula...who needs them REALLY?) I knew that I absolutely could not go home without getting some more caffeine. This was my third day w/ no sleep (Derek is in Boston) and the baby is still using the night time hours as her personal Mommy and Me bonding time. If I was going to make it through the day with out anyone crying (well, without me crying) I needed some help. Frankly, I wish someone would just invent something I can inject directly into my veins and save me from all that bothersome swallowing.........but since the FDA has all of their "rules" and "regulations" I was forced to find the liquid variety (not to mention that it is a slippery slope from injecting caffeine to injecting other naughty things like Nutella and Hollandaise Sauce....Caffeine is the gateway drug).

The store that I was at didn't have much selection. None, in fact. What they had was the new Diet Pepsi JAZZ soda in Strawberries and Cream. Clearly this is a new idea because I haven't seen this before. This might be a reaction to the Diet Coke w/ Black Cherry Vanilla, Cinnamon, gold powder and fairy dust. How many flavors does a soda need? Besides...isn't Diet Coke with Black Cherry and Vanilla called Diet Dr. Pepper?

As for the Diet Pepsi with strawberries, cream, puppies, unicorns, rainbows and fairies. NO. NO and NO.

Who's idea was this? Did they test market it AT ALL? The topnote of this soda is what Strawberry markers would taste like if they tasted like they smell. The backnote was a delightful combination of Pepto and that really crappy cheap store brand strawberry soda that stopped tasting good when I was 7. Plus, this is brown. Soda that tastes like that should be radioactive pink. It is the only way to justify it. Bleach....

But, like an alcoholic that drinks fingernail polish remover when there is nothing else in the house. I drank it. I drank it all.

(hangs her head in shame).......

Jacob loves sand.....

In an effort to take lots and lots of pictures for Nori's mom, T, I tried to do a photo session w/ her. Jacob decided that he needed to hold her NOW and not put her down. He is a little bit rough with her sometimes. I figured it could be cute to get pictures of the two of them together so I started snapping.

Sadly, most of the pictures turned out looking like THIS:

It's like she KNOWS what he wants to do to her (poke her eyeballs out, stick the bottle so far down her throat that she chokes.....but all in the name of love, people). She looked equally disturbed in all the other photos, like the love child of Star Jones and Yoda. Then I remembered another photo shoot that I tried to do when Jacob was Nori's age. The pictures turned out like this:

It's ok. Not cute. Neither of them. Lauren was not a very cute baby either. I think I just get little gremlin babies that eventually become cute. Lauren is a cute girl and Cubby is dreamy now (although will I look back on THESE pictures and think "ewww, not cute?" Who knows, I will tell you in 10 years). I guess there is hope.

So, as you all head into your weekend (esp you Fizz-GOOD LUCK on the half Iron Man....) remember that I gave you something to smile about. It is almost comic when you think about it..... my poor little troll babies.

Project Runway...

I love this show. I LOVE LOVE LOVE this show. This season it does seem a bit contrived and edited and judged for maximum controversy, but still. I TIVO it and then watch it in the middle of the night when the screacher isn't sleeping. It makes me not quite as bitter.

Tonights highlights:

1--The fact that Laura has started showing in just a few days. Did you see her in the Paris outfits? Dude!! She looks like she is much farther a long then she really is. Also, this show is shot in about 30 days so when it is all over she is only about 4 months along. I guess it is her 6th child, but I am surprised how quickly she popped. (P.S. I hated her dress tonight...).

2--Michael when he said he was "sweating like a whore in church" about his dress. I haven't heard that phrase in donkey's years. That was great. I love him and I love his clothes. He seems like a nice guy who isn't too full of himself. Everyone else seems to like him too and he manages to stay under the radar. I would have been so sad if he had been booted.

3--I love Jeffrey's dress....but he still bugs me. He is too..I don't know, blechy.

Next week they design for the Olsen twins. I can't wait to see that. Also, Laura cries. I can't imagine how hard it must be to do that show...but doing it pregnant. Yowza.

Sigh..

Internet,

I am a terrible mother. Today I took Lauren to school at her regular time (10:30) and when I got home had a call from the office that it was EARLY RELEASE DAY.

I sent her to school two hours late.

For the second week in a row. Sigh......








I swear that it is because I am not sleeping and NOT because I am an airhead. On a lighter note...this is how my kids entertain themselves when I am not around. These are baby floaties that became fun costumes...... We should be the Jetsons for Halloween. More pictures and huge post tomorrow.

A mini me after all...

It is a widely accepted fact that my daughter Lauren is a lot like her dad. They have the same personality, the same likes and dislikes. They can both quote SpongeBob Square Pants to the point of me wanting to jump off a bridge. He can read her like a book and is the parent that can say "I just know what she is going to do before she does it". I think she looks like his side of the family, but he thinks that she looks like one of my sisters...

The other day I was adding some pictures to her "book". This is a photo album of pictures that she gets to choose and she loves to read at night. There are pictures of her as a baby, pictures of far away grandparents and cousins, pictures of her every 6 months with all the princesses at Disneyland.........

I came across this picture......

click on the picture to see it larger...

We go to the beach every year on Christmas Eve. It is actually a great time to go because there isn't much fog. It is a fun little tradition for our family. This is a picture that Derek took. I was struck by the fact that even though she doesn't look much like me, we have lots of similarities. We are standing exactly the same way with our head cocked to one side. She even looks a little bit like me here. Notice in the next picture...the family picture that she is back to looking exactly like her daddy (it's the cheekbones).

click on the picture to see it larger

P.S. I love that in this picture Jacob is licking his coat. He still does that. From the time he was a tiny baby when Derek would wipe his mouth he would stick out his tongue and lick the cloth or our fingers. To this day it is not uncommon to hear the phrase "hey, no licking" when one is dealing w/ Cubby. The poor kid was born tongue tied. That is when the skin that holds your tongue to the bottom of your mouth is connected all the way to the tip. It means that they can't stick their tongue beyond their lips (that is only bad if you want to sass your parents, lick ice cream or French kiss). We had it clipped when he was one and ever since then you can't KEEP this kids tongue in his mouth.

Update on all parts of my life that are not adoption or Africa related!

Lately this blog has been full of really heavy things...babies being adopted, trips to Africa..... it has been less light and fun and there has been a serious lack of pictures of the other children (according to my family). So, from here on out..there will be more pictures and more fun..... Also, I haven't written down anything funny that the kids are saying or doing. That might not be a big deal to the rest of blogworld but so far, this is the only baby book my kids get so if it doesn't make the blog then it doesn't get recorded. And they have been saying REALLY funny things.

The baby is doing fine..she is getting positively chunky! Look at those cheeks. Yippe. She is about 8 pounds now and THAT means she should be able to start sleeping longer. The picture above is her in the swing. She seems so big to me, but then I catch a look at her in the swing and she looks SO TINY. The hat is on because she makes herself cry (and wakes herself up) by pulling her hair. Her little hand gets up in there and just yanks it out until she cries. The bottom picture doesn't do her hair any justice. It is so soft and curly and perfect to rub when you tuck her head under you chin... I know it will change soon and that is fine too, but I am enjoying the baby soft afro that she is sporting right now (and it looks remarkably similar to all the old ladies in my ward...but with a little bit of extra mullet).


We are finally getting into a bit of a routine with her. It helps that Lu has gone back to school. I am either getting the hang of this or learning how to function better on less sleep. Either way, things are slowly becoming easier. There is lots to be thankful for. Earlier this week my friend Suzi told me that her sister came home from church last Sunday to a message on the phone from the school district. Apparently the office staff was on strike and school would NOT be starting the next day as planned. Cancelled. If they had cancelled Lauren's school I might have offered to work the office myself. Thank goodness for school. (I am clearly not a home schooling Mom).

I can't believe that I have a first grader. This year Lauren is in a split class that is half 1st grade and half kindergarten. This is actually a pretty good thing for her because she can still get a bit of the "hand holding" that happens in kindergarten but still get to be a big kid in the class. We had a tradition in our house where on the first day of school you can choose to eat what ever you want for breakfast. Nothing is off limits. If she said she wanted a 10 lb bag of sugar w/ a spoon, it would happen. Do you know what she chose? French toast, hard boiled eggs and doughnuts. Silly girl. Last year it was cupcakes and fruit. She is her fathers child for sure. Here is her breakfast.

She also didn't want to wear a dress this year (sob). It was boots, jeans and a cool jacket. Oh, and a messenger bag. She just trotted onto the bus without a backwards glance. She is also bugging me to cut her hair. She wants it cut to her ears--but I think that she thinks if she cuts it that short it will be straight. The other day I did her hair and she looked in the mirror and said "this looks like a Jenny hair do" When I asked her what she meant she said "this looks like the hair a girl named Jenny would have." Every day since then she has told me who she looks like. Today it was Shirley. She has such an imagination. I think we will end up cutting it (the hair, not the imagination), but I can't bear the thought of cutting off her curls. She just turned 6 last week. It is unbelievable how fast they grow up. In many ways she is still my baby. In other ways, she is grown up and seems like she is already out the door (actually, yesterday she told me she had packed some things because she was tired of me being grumpy and the baby crying so she was going to move out.....). I feel like I can see a glimpse of the young woman she will become and (thankfully) there are still traces of my toddler. We celebrated her big day a week early with a traditional breakfast at McDonald's (we were traveling on her actual birthday....for the third year in a row...but it is also our anniversary that day and we haven't managed to celebrate that for a few years now....).

Next post...what is new with Cubby. He got a bad hair cut (from me....that was the last one, it is off to the barber shop from now on) and has taken a liking to Laurens pink cowboy boots while riding his horse.... silly kid.

A baby and a story...part two

Let's see...... when I left the story we had just met our daughter and her first family for the first time. It was pretty surreal. It is always a bit awkward to meet the family. On the one hand, you are so excited you want to just grab the baby and hold her and look at her and slobber all over her. On the other hand, we are aware that this is a sad and difficult time for her family and we want to be sensitive to their needs and feelings. They are dealing with lots of emotions and not many of them are happy ones. It was nice that it was a done deal by the time we met them. It put our mind at ease. It turned the meeting into a "get to know you" session rather then an audition.

Nori's family was very kind and they kept asking us if we wanted to hold the baby but we were very conscious of the fact that they had limited time with her and we didn't want them to feel that they didn't get the time they needed with her. T had to stay in the hospital an extra day so she and the baby were going to go home the next day. In many ways this was good too. We stayed w/ the family for about a half an hour and then we took off as well. We decided to stay at a hotel in Salt Lake City instead of going back to my parents house (about an hour away). It had been SUCH a long couple of days. It seemed like it went so fast...but it was so charged with emotion that we were both just exhausted. We grabbed dinner and made a few calls (mostly to tell people that we had a new baby...no one except our parents knew) and fell into bed. T and family got one more night with her and we arranged to pick the baby up in the morning after T had checked out.

I couldn't sleep that night which was hard because I KNEW that I wouldn't be sleeping much after that night. I was too worked up. We were supposed to meet the social worker at the hospital at 11:30 am the next morning. So, it was time to make the obligatory trip to Walmart. This is the best part of the adoption journey in our family...the trip to the store when you know you are bringing home a baby and you go buy all the sweet baby stuff that you hadn't let yourself think about until now. Onsies, bottles, blankets, formula, clothes, etc. It is so much fun. For me, the worst part of a failed adoption is taking everything back so we don't buy ANYTHING ahead of time. Once we were loaded to the gills w/ baby stuff we headed to the hospital. We even bought a baby book so we could start thinking about names.


We met our social worker in the hospital lobby and headed to the nursery. It was so easy. They had us sign a few papers and they just handed her to us. She was SO tiny. We started to dress her in the preemie outfit we had purchased and realized that it just drowned her. I was too nervous to dress her so Derek did it.

I also wanted to take pictures. We had tons of Jacob b/c we stayed w/ him in the hospital and we had tons of Lu because, well, she was our first. I wanted to be sure that we had pictures for Nori too. You know, Nori in her hospital bassinet, Nori w/ the nurses, etc. We dressed her and boom, that was it. We walked out the door with the baby. It was too easy. We just kept saying over and over that it seemed too easy. We headed home to have her meet the family. You can see the account of how she met Lauren in the previous post.

After we had been home for a few days, we called the agency to check in and to see how the family was doing. They were having a hard time (of course) and they were trying to decide if they wanted to see us again. Ultimately, they decided they did want to see us so we met them for dinner. It was so much fun. We had a great time just visiting w/ Nori's grandparents and finally got T to come out of her shell a bit. We handed off the baby when we walked in the door and let them have her as much as they wanted. It was so neat to see them hold her and coo over her. They are her FAMILY. They love her as much as we do, more even. I love that I got to see three generations of Nori's family all int he same room. It was a blessing for us to know them and that they opened their hearts and wanted to know us. I know it was scary and hard for them. We had such a good time that T's dad invited us to come hear him preach at a Baptist church in SLC (he is a Baptist minister).

We went and it was AWESOME. If you haven't been to a service before, you should go. I love a good Baptist service. I love the fact that in the joyous exuberance and electric guitar, I can feel the same calm and reassurance from the spirit that I feel in quite times of reflection. It is a very different type of service then the one that I attend, but it is God is there all the same. The church is the center of the African American community and going to a "black" church is a great way to understand a little bit more about the culture. As I listened to the sermon, I reflected on how similar it was to the way that they teach school in Africa. It is very interactive. The preacher asks and the congregation answers. I am sure we have all heard the stereotypes, but it is really true. There are lots of "amens" "praise the Lords", etc. Have you ever been to a movie in a predominantly black neighborhood? There is a lot of talking to the screen too. :-) In Africa, this is the same way they teach school--ask and answer. Not at all like our version where the children are silent and the teacher in the front talks.

After the service on Sunday, Derek and Jacob went home and we stuck around to wait for the legal approval to leave the state. I managed to visit w/ the family one more time before they left. It was so much fun to visit with them and just have a chance to be with them w/out being nervous or tired. I loved hearing stories about T as a little girl. I loved that we were able to build the relationship a little bit more. By the end of the trip..this family that thought they didn't want to know us at all had invited us to come and visit them in the Caribbean when ever we wanted. I am hopeful that little Norah will have the chance to know her other family. I have spoken to the family several times since we have all been home and they are doing well. There have been several bad storms that have hit their Island, but they are hanging in there. T started school last week and is working again. She is a trooper.

Derek and I remarked how grateful we are for the experience we had with this adoption. It was very calm and peaceful and serene and spiritual. It was very healing. I feel like we have given Jacob a black mark because we have only spoken about the hard/bad parts of our process with his brother. If we had used an agency, that experience would have been very different too. The agency would have buffered much of the stress and anxiety between both us and his family. With both of my adopted kids we felt a very strong, immediate connections to their families. With both of these kids, we felt a deep love for their birth family and a strong desire to have them stay a part of our lives. They are our family now. I feel very protective and tender for all of them. Even thought they are very different, they are ours and we want only good things for them. Even though you all have heard the hard things about Jacob's story, there were and will continue to be lots of very special and sweet things about his story as well. In retrospect, I can see I did a disservice to my son by making much of the story public (meaning to my friends and family) but since they were living it with us at the time and had to support me thought the aftermath, I don't know how I could have done it differently. I will say, however, that there are still many parts of that story that belong to just Jacob and were not made public. I am not a total failure as an adoptive parent. For the record, she is doing pretty well. Jacob's bmom is working, she just had another baby (a girl this time) and is married and his brothers are doing well in school. They live in a better area (actually they moved to Utah) and are being helped and supported by some wonderful people there who are helping them make some big changes. We pray all the time that it continues.

Blogger won't let me add pictures (and I have tried using Firefox and other browsers.....) so I will add those as soon as I can. I feel like I need to get this baby posted or it will never happen.

There you go..that is the "nuts and bolts" part of the story. There are some other "feelings" parts that I can add to this, but I am too tired to remember them right now. The baby is asleep...so I need to go sleep because we are going to be partying at my house at about 3:00 am. If you are ever up at 3:00 am, give me a call!!!!

Back...

Hey all,

We were out of town (making it a grand total of 6 days that we have been in our home since Norah was born....). I have the second half of the adoption story and some fun pictures of our trip to San Diego but...

Right now all three of my kids are watching tv and being quiet at the same time. Do you know what they are watching?

CHEETAH GIRLS on Good Morning America. An eerie silence settled over the room and I looked in to see what was happening. Even the baby is staring at the TV. Whatever those Cheetah Girls have, I will take it. It is the first moment of silence in about a week.

School starts tomorrow. SWEET. I'll update soon.

Happy Birthday Lauren...

"Lauren, come upstairs...we have your birthday present"

"Come see...it is on the couch"

As she walked over and looked at the blanket she turned to us and asked....

".....is this REAL?"

"...is this really a real baby sister or a doll?"

(running up for a hug)

Lauren got to show new baby to Grandma Jane

The big sister

We asked Lu what she thought the name should be and she cast the deciding vote for Norah

That was how Lauren got her first birthday present....................