baby’s first cold

Yeah, not so much a happy milestone, but inevitable, I suppose. He’s been kind of crabby the last few days, which I attributed to teething, and coughing just a bit, which I also attributed to teething. But this morning he woke up with light yellow goop escaping from his nostrils, which I don’t think I can blame on sore gums. It was kind of alarming, but after 30 minutes or so the secretions thinned to just plain watery, runny nose stuff. He just had his second dose of Tylenol for the day and really has been feeling pretty good. He slept for 12 hours last night, and had a good morning nap, and just went down for an afternoon nap, which is also a good sign: the doctor said that if it were an ear infection, he’d be uncomfortable lying down due to pressure or somesuch. So we’ll just keep an eye out for sleeplessness, fever, or general misery.

We went on a nice long walk and visited the park. A grandma was there with her little two year old granddaughter, and we swung beside her in the baby swings. They were both very friendly and I invited them to Ward’s birthday at the park this Sunday (at 1:00! Come if you can!) and we chatted about the Fishmaster’s school. It was a beautiful day to be outside at the park, and a nice chance to talk some about the playground. A big monarch butterfly came and fluttered around the grandma’s head as we were talking, a sweet little colorful visit.

Rainbow is whooping and babbling in his bed and HOPEFULLY winding down for a nap. As soon as he’s conked out, I’m joining him on a snooze cruise. I’m pooped after an action-packed weekend and night out last night: photos to come.

In the meantime, how about some footage of a little boy who knows how to shake his head?

sweetness

Feeling very blessed (and blissed) this morning. The big boys are doing amazingly well at their challenging schools, making friends, getting good reports from teachers, and just having a terrific year so far. Rainbow is an adorable, healthy little love. I get to be married to Daddy J and have this life we share.

And I get to be Ward’s mama, too.

This song was going through my head this morning. A tiny bit bittersweet, but mostly wonderful. I can’t wait to watch this movie with Rainbow, even though especially because it makes me cry.

giggles

This was from about a month ago. It’s so hard to film this boy; he can be laughing, chatting, doing all kinds of tricks, but as soon as he sees the camera, he’s FASCINATED. And then gets mad when he can’t eat it.

um…

So, evidently an insurance company had an issue with a 4 month old baby who weighed a whopping 17 pounds. They said he was obese and denied coverage, then later revised that decision.

Which, clearly, is goofy on so many levels, but specifically and personally: Rainbow weighed 20 pounds and 11 ounces at four months. I can’t imagine how much I would freak out if even the doctor gave me grief about his size, much less an insurance company I’d applied to. This boy has always been just beautiful and brimming with health. Roly-poly, perhaps, but also vigorous and energetic and never sick a day in his little life.

Good grief. I’m so glad our doctor is with us on this one: healthy, active, chunky babies are GREAT.

And on the flipside, one of the older boys was a lean baby, like in the 10-15th % range for weight while being in about the 75th % for height. (Yeah, I’m not feeling like looking up the exact amounts in his baby book.) BUT, he was most certainly not roly-poly, and the doctor gave me a copy of the “High Fat, High Protein Diet” for him when he started eating food. This boy also has always been the picture of health, and is still lean and beautifully made.

Babies, unless there’s an underlying health concern, healthily come in all sizes, no? Insurance is just so ridiculous sometimes.

The ghost of craft fairs past

My morning project (which turned out to be a LENGTHY project) was copying old private blog pages into Word, just in case the old blog got closed for some reason. It was quite an undertaking; I didn’t realize how very much I had written. It ended up being, I think, 54 pages with numerous posts per page, so, DANG, do the math. But once I got started, I didn’t want to stop and lose my place, and it was interesting and nostalgic to read little phrases here and there. When I have time to kill, I’ll poke around some more in the past few years and see what I had to say.

Also: WOO-dawgy!, but I’ve done some oversharing over the years, eh?

+++++

Craft fair is coming up in a few days and I wanted to revisit the last couple of years of it. I’ve downsized this year and am only doing a row of crafters on the road. They’re all on the fancy/crafty side of things (no flea market this year) so I am hopeful that this will go more pleasantly than it has when I’ve tried to cram in the cheapo booths.

So, let’s look back in time to LAST year:

Sunday, October 19, 2008
day two
Craft fair is mostly over, since the Sundays have historically been for bargain shoppers (helloooo! my name is Mama Jamz!) and packing up shop and heading out of town (for both happy, money-sated crafters and growly, net-loss-for-the-weekend crafters).

We did some impressive self-gifting in our household yesterday. Daddy J bought a large modern painting from the school part of the fair and is very proud of himself that it ended up winning first prize in the fair. He knows how to pick’em, huh? It’s a checkerboard kind of pattern, with fairly muted colors and a lot of texture. I think I like it; I need to look at it again. I tend to be like a monkey at these craft fairs and be drawn to the bright, festive jewel-toned items. (Or, well, meltingly soft knitted items. I’m drawn to those, too.)

We bought together some stained glass pieces for the dining room windows which I loooove. They are rainbow colored with fused together squares. I think we’re going back to get corner pieces of the same product to put in the big living room window, and there’s some stained glass from another guy that I think I need in my life.

And that’s all we bought yesterday, except for chocolate covered strawberries (nasty paraffin tasting chocolate that I picked off – don’t buy them), candied cinnamon almonds (yum), a big gulp fruit tea (also yum), and a turkey leg that Daddy J was delighted with.

The yard sale went fairly well. Aside from selling something that the Fishmaster did NOT want me to sell(well DANG, son, why’d you put it on the pile of stuff on the front porch???) we’ve gotten rid of quite a bit.

I’ve sold a few necklaces, but have mostly learned that I don’t want to deal with it. I think you have to buy 1000 items at a time to get the price break; apparently someone a few booths down is selling pendants like mine for, like, exactly what I paid for them.

I’m mostly avoiding the crafters in my yard, because I don’t want to hear it if sales are bad or they don’t like their spots. One woman was extremely chatty as I walked by and said that her sales have been GRRRREAT! so that’s good.

The Fishmaster had a good friend who has moved closeby spend the night, so that was nice for them to spend time together. They prowled around the fair and walked down to the creek yesterday. Rockinrolla’s team won their first playoff game (wooooo!!!!!) yesterday.

and…

Adoption news: There is no adoption news.

And how about the year before?

Sunday, October 21, 2007
at least it’s over
Craft fair was kind of a bummer this year. I tried to expand into a food court and a second row of crafters, with very limited success.

I really thought the food court would work. I rented two port-a-potties to pull people in (and they sure did – people do use those port-a-potties) and bought a FOOD COURT banner that we strung it between two concrete filled tires with poles. AND moved over my picnic table and another table from the front porch to give customers somewhere to sit.

But the food vendors didn’t do so well. I don’t think the snow cone people sold a single snow cone, even though it was pretty hot in the afternoons. They left Saturday night. And the other two vendors were very disappointed, too. Sigh.

And the cheapo second row booths were a disaster. The bra guy, the purse guy, and the guy selling junk out of banana boxes all yelled at me because they didn’t have that many customers. Although, they did MUCH better than the poor food vendors. The junk seller also left Saturday night.

I ended up not collecting the town permit and parking fees from most of them because I was tired of the negative energy. I think I’ll send a refund to the snow cone people. They were pitiful. Their car had broken down twice on the way down, and they didn’t get to a hotel room (with two kids) until 1:00 am Friday, and then had to come set up at 6:30 the next morning. Maybe I’ll send a half refund to the two food vendors, too. If I do that, the cost of the port-a-potties and the banner apparatus will be a wash.

I was so depleted yesterday after having the three vendors loudly voice their discontent with me that I just napped for a long time.

So, Missy. What have we learned from this debacle?

1. Crafters are much nicer, in general, than junk selling vendors.
2. Get ALL of the money up front, including town permit and parking fees, before they have time to realize that their product isn’t selling and argue with you about paying for the spot.
3. Forget the damn food court. Keep it to the front yard.

I limited the ordinarily glorious self-gifting this year because the crabby crafters harshed my mellow. I did get a few things, in addition to nasty fried food items:

1. Two prism glass window hanging things, one Celtic cross and one four-leaved clover made of hearts. Love those rainbows in the kitchen.
2. An apron, bought from one of my pitiful crafters who was very nice, but whose aprons weren’t flying off the shelves.
3. A couple of Christmas presents.
4. A Titans jersey for Daddy J, which he wore today.
5. A pink, brown, and white pleather purse, bought from the purse vendor, who was the least crabby of the three cheapo vendors, and who paid for almost the entire agreed-upon amount for his spot without arguing too much.
6. The bra guy insisted I pick out a package of six bras as a present (obviously, *before* he determined that he hated his spot.) They’re kind of gross – thickly padded underwire pastel bras with rainbow stripe trim. But they were the least yucky ones I saw. The others had things like Hello Kitty decals, and bizarre Japanese cartoon decorations. I guess I’ll wash them and see if they’re surprisingly comfy, but I’m not holding my breath.

Yeah, that’s about it. All done until next year.

So, fingers are crossed that this will be the magical, easy, delightful craft fair of my dreams. On my wishful shopping list: large metal yard art, a silly and warm winter hat for Rainbow, and a white or dark green wooden or metal porch glider. And Christmas gifts, of course.

And maybe, just maybe, someone will bring in a little Corgi princess who can find her way home…

my baby

I study his face all the time. I mostly see F’s features and smile, although sometimes a quirky little grin from J pops up. His default mood seems to be the same as what we saw in F: warm, open, interested, amused. He watches with raised eyebrows and a grin, tries out sounds, grabs for whatever’s in reach.

With our other boys, I looked for physical features from grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins. I see my brother and my father and his mother, and Daddy J’s paternal grandmother, and (interestingly enough) one of our nieces in Rockinrolla. I see a lot of my mother and some of myself in the Fishmaster. And Wardie looked just like his daddy.

But really, of course, they are genetic salads made from us and everyone related to us, with their own special flavors thrown in.

So I look at Rainbow and wonder whose features are starting to shine through, other than F’s and J’s? I wonder if I can get pictures for him of some of his extended biological family one of these days. I imagine that he would want them, but perhaps no. Maybe I should leave any researching or picture-procurement for him when he reaches adulthood, or at least becomes old enough to express the desire? And maybe that is overstepping my bounds, anyway, to ask for pictures of F’s and J’s families.

Such new territory, all of this, for everyone involved.

~~~~~

I study him and laugh with him and change a dirty diaper and it hits me: I change his diaper in the same familiar, natural way that I did his brothers. He’s one of my boys.

And maybe I am alone in this, but I have changed a lot of diapers over the years: mostly my own kids, but also two little girl babies that I did some part-time daycare for, a few cousins, and – quite memorably – some disabled kids when I subbed for the special needs class at the kids’ school. When they are not your own kids, the diaper changing is different; there’s a delicacy, a foreign-ness, a sense that this child is not of me and this is a little weird, and sometimes there is an ew factor that isn’t there when diapering your own. Of course I’ve always been gentle and respectful when diapering other babies; it’s just that, when they are your own, it’s almost like you’re cleaning an extension of yourself and it’s totally natural.

Does that make any sense whatsoever?

Anyway, I realized that with Rainbow, there was never that sense of delicacy or weirdness when I changed his diaper, from the get-go.

He always felt like mine.

mark your calendars

First up: Ward’s seventh (woo, really…? SEVENTH??) birthday at the park in town. This would be the park where his playground and statue are. This will be the fourth time we have done the cookie buffet and balloon release, and it is a very special day for all of us. It is by NO MEANS a requirement that you know us personally or that you knew Ward; it’s just great to have a crowd there, especially with kids. We’ll start at 1:00 on Sunday the 25th. If you can, bring a tray of cookies or candy or little Halloween toys to share. Kids are welcome to dress in costumes. I have to-go boxes for the kids to go through and fill with whatever catches their eye, and then they can go off and glut on treats and play on the playground. We’ll have face painting again and probably release balloons around 2:00. Last year was just wonderful and we appreciate everyone who comes to be part of this day.

And secondly, the Fishmaster’s school is hosting a 5K trail run on Halloween morning at 9:00. It is also a great time in a beautiful setting (a 300 acre farm about 20 minutes from our house.) Last year they had a nice bonfire and a great Country Store with handmade food (cakes, casseroles, and such) and crafty stuff to purchase. If you would like to have me email you the registration form, please let me know. If you get it in soon, you can get a t-shirt with the $20 registration fee.

And GUESS WHAT?? They are using my very own t-shirt design for the race shirts!! I am so excited!! Never mind that the lady in charge of the design selection thought that it was the Fishmaster who had drawn the Wile E. Coyote-ish cartoon (ahem!) – it was ME and I have never had a design on a t-shirt before and I am probably more thrilled about this than any normal person would be, but I am fully and completely okay with that. Whee!!! They picked my design!!

musing

I sent F another short note yesterday. It’s a pretty easy habit I’m falling into; I write a short little update toward the end of the week, sometimes skipping a week, but it’s never more than two weeks between mail. And every 3-4 weeks, I mail both her and J a card with letters.

I decided to start photocopying the letters I write her, so this one felt a little odd, like I was writing it for both her and Rainbow. I found myself being critical with my words again, agonizing like I did with the very first letters: Must I REALLY begin every single letter with, “I hope you are doing well”? Must I ALWAYS make some bland comments about weather here and how I imagine it might be where she is? Am I being too pushy when I say (every few letters) that we’d love to hear from her anytime? Is it annoying and way too repetitive to end every letter with, “I’ll write soon”? Which, in hindsight, seems ridiculous; I send her frequent, short notes that may sometimes be worded goofily or redundantly, but taken as a whole the correspondence is Good, I think.

+++++

I wonder what she and J thought, as they compared parent profiles, about the fact that one of our children is no longer alive. I wonder how that figured in to their discussions. I agonized over that, too, HOLY COW did I agonize over whether and how to include that information. I was afraid that potential birthparents would think we were a sad, grieving house, or else that we were people who were careless with their children.

As my good friend K (who has adopted twice domestically) pointed out, so many adoptive parents come from places of loss and don’t have cheery-bright and pain-free histories. “Perfect” adoptive parents don’t exist. And, I wouldn’t want to keep anything from the birthparents that would come up later and make them wish they’d known it before they relinquished their parental rights.

So, in it went: succinctly worded but quite clear.

I have wondered, as someone has suggested to me, if a birthmother might feel like an adoptive mother who has lost a child would better understand the loss of relinquishing a child for adoption. They are certainly different, but they are both losses nonetheless. Would that sense of connection be something she might consider is a good thing? I have never had the chance to ask a birthmother that question; it seems too delicate to ask F, at least at this point.

+++++

I had a nightmare night before last. It’s a fairly common theme in my dream canon: threatening things in the water. Daddy J and I had put a in a backyard pool that had two sections, a fairly shallow one and a deeper one, with a narrow swim-through in between. The shallow end had just a couple of small fish in it, but the deeper end was a saltwater coral reef that had gone bananas. The idea was that the big fish wouldn’t leave the deeper end, but there was no screen to keep them out. There were all sorts of writhing things in the deep end, with a twisty dark reef full of hiding holes in the middle. Eels, sharks, rays, and heavy, slimy, poisonous things that bumped against my legs when I ventured in. I was terrified and got out of the pool and told Daddy J that I didn’t care how cool it was, and yes it’s cool that we got a coral reef to grow and thrive in our backyard, we’re draining that thing and getting rid of the fish. We can let the aquariums and fish lovers know and they can come save them if they want to, but otherwise we can just let the fish die and scoop them out and clean out the pool, because I just don’t want that thing in my backyard.

Which is a straightforward enough dream, I suppose (DANGER IN THE WATER!!!), but still very scary to have. Things bumping into me in the water have always given me the creeps, even before Ward’s accident.

+++++

Anyway: was musing on how his accident has changed us, what with the Fear thing. The Fear of Something Awful Happening Again is just part of me now, although the real gut-punching fears that keep me up at night are few and far between. We have the sickening knowledge that Yes, indeed, awful stuff DOES happen and we are not immune, so PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE GOD KEEP THIS BOY HEALTHY AND SAFE AND HELP ME PROTECT HIM FROM ALL HARM.

So, yes, there’s that side of it, the Fear.

But I realized that there’s the flip side to that, too: the Amazement and the Gratitude. That every day we are aware of the miracle that he’s here, in a way that we weren’t four years ago. This wonderful boy is HERE and we get to love him and parent him and HALLELUJAH it’s magnificent that it’s TODAY and I get to love on this child RIGHT NOW and what a WONDERFUL THING it is to have another child in our family to teach things to and laugh and sing and dance with.

Hmm. Is it too trite to say that joy is deepened, enhanced, appreciated more after sorrow?

I don’t know if that’s really how I feel, but it’s interesting to consider, I think.

Hmm.

Your thoughts…?

a story in pictures

Oh, Hi.

Is that a phone you have there?

Say what? It’s relatively expensive and breakable and not really a baby item?

But…

I really want it…

If I could Just. Reach. IT.

Garrrraghhh!!! Surprise lunge attack for phone!!!

RAVENOUS BEBEH MUST NOM PHONE!!! NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM!!!

Phone nom attempt: Fail.

*sniff*

*sigh*

…

Induction of misty-eyed adoration by Mama: Wildly successful.

recipe 911

So, the Fishmaster’s school, which is completely awesome and involves a lot of parent participation, is having a special lunch week. The kids have to pack lunches every day anyway (there’s no cafeteria) but this week, on Monday-Wednesday-Friday, parents are bringing in the kids’ favorite dishes to share so the kids can have little lunchtime feasts.

The Fishmaster, in a clever move to keep me on my toes, stated that his favorite dish was STEAK.

Ahem.

STEAK…??

So, after initial panic, I’m thinking Meat on a Stick, right? I’m thinking I’ll get the most marbly looking steaks, cut them into cubes and marinade, and then… broil them until brown on each side? I’m thinking two Meat Kebabs per middle schooler…? I’m only supposed to do 10 servings, so I can handle this.

Any suggestions for marinades or food prep are MOST WELCOME. I have to go into the Big City for the afternoon and will pick up meat and marinade on the way home, but can read responses on my handy iPhone if any of you have any great ideas to share.