he is four

Lion's pirate birthday party was last Sunday. I think all of the kids had a good time. Lion was a little shy. Being the center of attention unnerved him, which is surprising, to say the least. I thought that boy thrived on attention! When it came time to blow out his candle, he made me do it. I did, because everyone was waiting, but I felt a bit silly.

I made little Reeses pirate ship cupcakes instead of a cake.

The dining room, all ready for the party!

a quiet moment with Daddy before the guests arrive

everyone painted little wooden treasure chests and decorated them with stickers

Daddy held the pinata

Mommy and Daddy with the birthday boy

lighting the candle

refusing to blow out his candle

Lion opened his presents at the party, but he opened the gifts from Jonathan and I after dinner that night. We got him a Bat-Cave with Bat-Man and Robin and a Joker. I don't even know how he knows who Bat-Man is, but that is what he circled in the Toys R Us catalog so that is what we got him!

This picture is my favorite picture from the entire day. I took it at the exact moment when he had torn the wrapping paper and realized his present was the Bat-Cave:


He was just starting to say, "Ohhhhhh, my gosh! Are you kidding me?"

Happy birthday, Little Lion Man! Thanks for an amazing four years...

it begins!

I have not had much time to blog this week. My mom is visiting and we have been waaaaay too busy going out to eat and celebrating my birthday and showing each other our farms on farmville for me to sit down and write much.

But.

I had to blog this. Because this is Blog-Worthy.

I turned in our formal application to the adoption agency tonight!

I thought, I'll take Mom up there, it's only about half an hour away, and drop this off and be back in time for dinner. No big deal.

I was wrong. It was a big deal. I am sad that Jonathan was working and couldn't be there to see our name go on the agency's list. But I am so happy my mom was there. And she took some pictures of me. I looked so sloppy and didn't want her to take pictures at the time, but after we got in the car and I got all teary-eyed and shaky and called Jonathan, then --then -- I was so grateful she had taken pictures. Who cares that I was wearing a hoodie and my hair was falling out of my ponytail? I want my son to see those pictures someday.

We drove home through the snow and traffic and when we walked in the door of my house Jonathan was making us a delicious Thai curry dinner. I love my life.

a nursery for a girl

Okay. So anyone who knows me knows that as soon as Jonathan and I began talking about adoption I began decorating a nursery. In my mind, at least. And I am so excited about it because all of the nursery option are so much better now than they were six years ago! It was very hard to find anything back when I was pregnant with Blue. We needed something gender-neutral and I liked the idea of yellow and red. And all of the nursery bedding in the stores was so cutesy and traditional... We managed to find a set we both liked that had a barnyard theme and went with the yellow and red we liked.

But now there are so many nursery bedding lines that are very modern or retro or graphic, as well as the usual bedding with ladybugs or trucks or barnyard animals. So I am excitedly poring over baby and nursery websites!

The first scheme I have come up with is for a baby girl. Because that is where our thoughts were lying originally. But now we are thinking about adopting a boy! Because it really doesn't matter to us which gender our next child is. I mean, if I got pregnant again, we would not be able to choose the sex of the baby. So maybe our next child will be a baby boy!

But here is the little girl nursery I came up with. And now I get to design a boy nursery, too! In case that is the direction we wind up going. Can you tell how much fun I am having with this?!

So the jumping off point for the nursery is these bookends from CB2:


Now before you start thinking I am going to go all-out and hang lanterns everywhere and fill the room with fans and panda bears and bamboo and other sterotypical Asian decor, let me explain. We are looking into adopting a baby from Korea. So I am trying to read up on Korean culture since I am woefully ignorant of almost all world geography and culture. I want to make sure he or she knows all about Korean culture and history and food and that it is an integral part of our lives. But I also refuse to foist any and all Asian culture on my child! I will not automatically buy her Mulan dolls (which is a Chinese legend, anyway!) or enroll him in Taekwondo. Maybe he'd rather play soccer. Maybe she won't like Korean food. Am I making sense? I feel like I am not explaining this very well...

Anyway, having said that, I do love the idea of having these fu lions in the baby's room. Because they are guardians. Maybe the baby's birth mother would like to think that there would be these Korean guardians in her child's room in America. If something had happened to me and my Blue wound up being raised in Korea, I would like to think the mother there tried, in her own way, to salute Blue's American heritage. Like maybe sticking a little American flag in Blue's room, or something...

So I like these fu lions. I like the idea of them up on a shelf, watching over the baby.

I would do the walls a soft, creamy yellow (again with the yellow and red nurseries!) and I fell in love with this bedding from Land of Nod:



You can't see it in this picture, but the set has a white eyelet cribskirt.


I would also hang white eyelet curtains in the window. I love quilts and I love white eyelet. So old fashioned and feminine in an Anne of Green Gables kind of way.

Anyway, then one day on Art.com I stumbled across this little print by Ezra Jack Keats, called Feeding the Birds from Jennie's Hat
which I love and which has both the soft yellow wall color in it as well as the orangey red of the fu lions. Perfect.


To continue the bird theme, I found these lovely bird decals from blik. I am really digging the combination of yellow and grey lately, so these would look so pretty on a yellow wall.

Anyway, that is all I have found so far for a baby girl's nursery. And now we are thinking about adopting a son, so I am starting to plan a baby boy's room, too. Stay tuned for those plans!

I am back!

Jonathan bought a new computer tonight while I was in class! I cannot believe how addicted I am to the internet. This was an absolutely horrible week. And I could kick myself for saying "it could be worse" in my last post. Idiot. Because Lion got a lot worse. sigh

He has a tendency to develop asthma whenever he gets any kind of respiratory problem. So the cough turned into a horrible, hacking coughing nonsleeping type of situation. We used all kind of over-the-counter stuff and the humidifier and his nebulizer and then finally Thursday night was terrible so I brought him to the pediatrician in the morning. It was terrible. Is there a more helpless feeling in the world than watching your child struggle for breath and not being able to help? So they prescribed a steroid and an antibiotic and checked him to make sure the nebulizer does help, that his oxygen levels do go up after using it. They do. And he was such a little trooper at the doctor's. We were there a while and he got to blow some bubbles for the doctor and suck on a popsicle, and listen to one of his favorite stories, Curious George Makes Pancakes.

So that was that. He is doing much better, coughing a lot less. Thank God.

offline

Just wanted to let you know our laptop died yesterday. Just as I was getting back into the habit of blogging again, too! So I am typing this at the computer lab at school between classes. And you may not hear from me for a few days as we look for a new computer.

When it rains, it pours. Last week I got a flat tire and needed to get not one but four new tires since we have all-wheel drive. Then our furnace wasn't working and we had to get a new part for it. Then we had a "small" gas leak in the house. Now our computer has died. I hate the feeling of not being able to get ahead.

But enough complaining. We are all doing well. The kids are still coughing and now Lion's ear hurts, too, but I know that things could be so much worse (knock on wood).

I really miss the internet, though. I'm not gonna lie.

learning

Today is my fourth day of class this semester. And I just have to say this semester is going to take considerably more of my time than the last one. I am taking the second half of Anatomy, which is a lot more intricate than the first half. A lot of the first half was memorizing bones and muscles. And, I have to admit, I have been blessed with a freaky strong memory. So all of those terms came pretty easily to me. But so far we are studying the endocrine system and it is a lot harder for me to memorize all of the hormones and their properties and the all of the steps of the second messenger systems the water-based hormones employ... Grrrr...

Also, last semester my second class was an English class which was cake. I mean, all we had to do was crank out five essays. Whether we attended class was pretty much optional.

My second class this semester is a Psychology course. Human Growth and Development. Which I am loving. But which is significantly harder than the English class.

The Psychology course is so fascinating. And I cannot stop applying everything we have been learning so far--about genetic psychology and nature vs. nurture--to the dynamics of adoption. Because it is always on my mind. I will read a paragraph in my book ... and then I am picturing a little baby face ... and then I will shake the image from my head, look back at the book and read another paragraph ... and then I am thinking of baby names ...

So I will discuss the adoption plan. I will blog about it a lot. Just a head's up.

Tomorrow night I am attending an adoption information session at our church. Which seems like very fortuitous timing. I think the focus will be on foster care and subsequent adoption. I want to hear about all of it. There will be families there who have gone through the adoption process and I cannot wait to hear their stories. I think it is fascinating how people arrive at the right decision for their family. Because every family is different. And every adoption situation is different.

So far I catch myself getting defensive when I talk to someone about our plan. Because often they have questions about it. Which is perfectly natural. But which I feel defensive about answering. A part of me feels like if I was pregnant, no one would be asking me about my reasons for becoming pregnant. But announcing we plan to adopt has opened a whole can of worms, such as Why China? Why not Haiti? Why not an American child? Why not foster care? Why not an older child?

When I first told my friend, Shannon, about our plan I felt like I was literally apologizing for the fact that I want to adopt a baby and not an older child. She interrupted me and said, "Erin, it's okay to want things." And it was like a wave crashing over me. What do I want? I want a baby. I do not want to adopt because I want to "save" some orphan from a lonely existence. I want to adopt because I want a baby.

Some people have implied that Jonathan and I are wonderful people because we are going to adopt. Like we are overly generous or something like that. It makes me smile. I mean, yeah, I think Jonathan and I are pretty wonderful, but our reason for adopting is completely selfish. We want another child.

putting it out there

I am going to do it. I am going to drop a bombshell.

Jonathan is on the phone and he just told his mom all about it and I heard him tell her, "Yeah, you can tell people!" He looked at me and nodded and frowned, like, Right? We are telling people? And I shrugged and nodded back. I already told my mom and once the moms are told, any news is completely allowed out of the bag, right?

Anyway, it is more a whisper than an announcement. Still in its infancy stages. But huge and all-consuming, none the less. And if I am building up some suspense, good. Because this little whisper, this plan, is suspense-worthy. I am full of it right now as I type.

We are planning to expand our family. Yes! It is out there now. Floating around the interwebs. We are planning to adopt a child.

Our plan is still in its infancy stage. We are looking into adopting a baby from China. We know that this is a very long process and plans can change, but whoever our next child we be and wherever he or she may come from, please, just bear with the lack of details and information and just revel in our decision and please please please please pray for us.