Mother’s Day

There is some sort of irony, or divine intervention, that Julia’s birthday happened to fall on Mother’s Day and that it happened to be the first Mother’s Day that I could celebrate openly.

Imagine this: Julia would have turned 4 today. She would be a Sunbeam this year, and so she would have gotten to walk up to the front of the chapel and sing Mother’s Day songs with the other primary children. The cake that we ate at dinner to celebrate Mother’s Day would have had four fun candles in it and what a perfect way to celebrate MY day by enjoying the blessing that made me a Mother in the first place.

Except that is not reality. That perfect beautiful scenario didn’t happen because … well, because it didn’t.  BUT that didn’t make today any less perfect.

I became a Mother four years ago, but today I got to openly celebrate because I have been blessed with the most amazing miracle.

Imagine this: Another mother loved her daughter so much she picked out someone else to raise her. She entrusted to my care the most precious thing in the world: a little soul to teach and train and love. So today on Mother’s Day I walked the halls with a sleepy, cranky, baby who will someday get to sing those Mother’s Day songs, and we did eat cake (though she had mashed potatoes) and we were happy.

I was even lucky enough to get to spend today with my own wonderful mother who made my favorite dinner. We picked asparagus, cooked dinner, did the dishes, and played with baby kitties.

It really was a most wonderful day!

 

In fact, I think that the baby kitties were the only ones who didn’t have too great of a day today.

Dinner time

We’ve been slowly working on exposing Lillian to all of the standard fruits and veggies. We give her one new food a week. Going slowly has helped us figure out that she breaks out in a rash on her back whenever she eats bananas. I hope she grows out of that.  

Most of the time she hates the foods we give her.

Occasionally she likes one okay.

A few weeks ago my friend, Amanda, came over and helped me make a TON of baby food. We cooked, blended, and froze green beans, peas, carrots, sweet potatoes, squash, pears, peaches, and mixed veggies.

Most of the time, I mix the mushed up food with baby cereal because… well, because several people, including her doctor, had said that it would make the food more palatable. It does seem to help. She rarely eats her fruits and veggies plain any more.

My sister and nephew are trying a system called Baby Led Weaning. I haven't researched it, yet,  but basically the child eats whatever the parents are eating minus the salt, butter, etc.

So I gave it a try. Below are two videos, 24 hours apart. In the first one I am feeding her peas and cereal with a spoon. The next day she is feeding herself green beans. 

Eating her peas and carrots. Kind of.

Eating her green beans.

She gagged a few times but never choked. After she ate her green beans, she still accepted several big bites of cereal and squash. I’m too invested in the mushed up veggies to stop completely, but I can see the appeal of letting her feed herself.

They’re both messy but at least she’s getting food in her tummy!

Crawling!

 

Lillian is crawling!  She’s a little bit unsure of herself still, but she is super gung-ho to keep trying.

Videos of the big event!

Almost crawling

Any day now I should be able to post a video of Lillian crawling for the first time. She is so close it is funny and frustrating at the same time.  She is really good at going backwards but she doesn’t want to go backwards. She is very determined and doesn’t give up easily. 

Yesterday during the afternoon session of General Conference she really wanted to get ahold of the dog’s toy.  We all had to take a break from watching to watch her instead.

 

If she had been able to get the rope, we would have taken it away. I promise.

Scrapbooking

I realized a few weeks ago that I have not printed any pictures of Lillian since she was born!  How could this be? 

It turns out that I haven’t printed any pictures whatsoever since May of 2010. Oops. I know that was a dark period in my life, but so many things have happened since then and I haven’t scrapbooked a single one of them.  (Now, before anyone gets their hopes up, I’m not a real scrapbooker. I’m a fake scrapbooker. I just put the pictures in photo albums but I leave occasional slots blank and I journal in those blanks instead. It’s pretty easy.)

It should be easy, but it’s not going to be. When I realized that I haven’t printed or catalogued any pictures in the last 3.75 years, I had a bit of a heart attack. So I got to work. I printed 142 pictures of deployments, vacations, holidays, weddings, family reunions, and more.

       

Then I got to August of 2013.

Lillian.

 

Lillian Grace.

 

I started printing pictures of her and then I couldn’t stop. I printed 141 pictures of her and that’s just the first six months of her life!!! I think I need help!

But she’s changed so much. She looks completely different! And which events should I not record?

First Halloween costume? (She was a pumpkin).

First Christmas jammies? (Candy cane stripes!)

This?

Or this? (Squash isn’t really her thing).

 

I think I might be obsessed with this child. And more than just a little bit. But how am I supposed to cut back? Or keep up?

So if you need me I’ll be in my craft room, trying to scrapbook and journal 243 pictures. Oh my.

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P.S. Most of the pictures were taken with my cell phone camera and printed to Costco.com. They turned out surprisingly well for cell phone pictures and were really cheap too!

Finding the Words

I’ve been neglecting the blog. Sorry. It wasn’t on purpose, but it wasn’t completely accidental either.  There’s a lot going on around here  and a lot to blog about. 

I could write about how the adoption is final and we’re so happy! We’ve been sealed in the temple and are a FOREVER FAMILY!

I could write about how strong Lily is- she holds herself up like a champ, she sits up, feeds herself, and is almost crawling:

3 months old

4 months old

5 months old

6 months old

I could write about how much she loves to laugh and play:

7 months old!

I could write about how going back to school has been both really hard and really fun. Lily goes to a wonderful babysitter which makes going back a little bit easier, but I really miss her smiles when I’m away. I have to block her out of my mind completely or I’d go crazy. I have the best group of students and coworkers ever so that does make my time go quickly and enjoyably.

I will write about going to the temple because that was as incredible experience that is very near and dear to my heart.  That will be another post.

So if there is so much to write about, why have there been no posts, you ask?  Well… it’s complicated.   This will sound silly, so bear with me.  This blog has the potential to turn into a mommy-blog. It’s what I’ve wanted for years. I’ve always been jealous of my friends who get to post about their family activities and their children’s milestones. Now I can do that too. I’m one of the in-crowd! And I feel a little guilty about it.

Not that I’d change anything for even a millisecond. I love this baby more than words can express. I can’t imagine a life without her. But every time I talk about her, I wonder about the people who aren’t so lucky. I wonder if they’ll sigh and say, “there’s another blog I’ll stop reading because I can no longer relate.”

Another reason I’ve slowed down on blogging about the baby is for security reasons. I know that I don’t know all of my readers and that was fine with me when it was just my husband and I. (Just try to stalk me- I have more guns in this house than fingers to count them on) but now there’s Lil’ Lil to consider. Does the whole world need to know about her every smile?  The super proud Me say Yes! and the more cautious me says NO!

So I apologize for the lack of blogs and updates. I apologize for the length of this post.  Please bear with me. I’m back. I’ve missed blogging so I know I’ll figure this out somehow.

Lillian Grace!

Little Lillian finally has a middle name! We had several choices that we couldn’t agree upon, so we hosted a poll in our living room. We put out five jars each with a different name on it. Visitors who dropped by got a chance to vote for their favorite.  The leading two names were Lillian Grace and Lillian Kate. 

A few other facts about this little one:

She’s a good traveller, whether it be in her stroller or her car seat.

Sometimes we go to school, where she takes a nap and I do work stuff.

Sammy is not too keen on sharing the back seat, but he’ll get over it.

 

She gets more cuddles than any baby on the planet!!

 

Happiness Happens Day 27- Garden Food

Maybe it’s the gardening memoir that I’m reading but for lunch today I was inspired to do as much cooking as I could from things grown in my own garden. So for lunch today we had creamy peas and potatoes, corn on the cob, and toast.

The potatoes and the peas came from my garden.

The corn came from my dad.

The strawberry jam was homemade from strawberries that I picked last summer at Raugust’s. I miss them. 

I wish that the bread had been homemade but that will be tomorrow’s lunch because I didn’t think of it in time today. There’s something very happy about eating food that you have grown yourself!

Happiness Happens Day 26- 2 week check up

Today, the 26th, was a very busy day. LDS Family Services came over and did their home study to make sure we are bonding and taking good care of Lillian. We passed and we have been given the go ahead to proceed with the adoption. It will be a few weeks while paperwork gets completed and processed but then we are off to the courthouse!

Also today we went to Lillian’s 2 week check up at the St. Luke’s Pediatric Center that is just a few blocks from our house. Happy fact #1: I don’t have to drive across town when she is ill. Yea!

Happy fact #2: Her appointment went great!  She now weighs 6 lbs. and 8.5 ounces! That’s almost a full pound of growth from her weight when we checked out of the hospital! She is beginning to get little rolls and cute baby dimples on her arms and legs.

Happy fact #3: We no longer have to wake her up every three hours to feed her. We can now get up on her schedule, when she feels that she is ready to eat! So far, this means that we get up every 3.5 hours instead, but that half hour makes me pretty happy!

Happiness Happens Day 25- Corn on the Cob

August is a great month for many reasons, not least among them is the beginning of the harvest! On Sunday the 25th, we had BLTs and corn on the cob for dinner. I think that I could probably eat this for every meal for a month and still not be tired of it. Butter, salt, more butter- is there anything tastier? Probably not…