Sienna had her 9 month checkup today. The highlights:
- We have a lovely, larger than life daughter. She is 20 lbs, 8 oz. That is the 85th percentile. [When Brae was 9 months, he weighed 19.5 lbs, which was the 40th percentile for boys].
- She is 29 inches. That is the 95th percentile. [When Brae was 9 months, he was 28.5 inches, which was the 60th percentile for boys].
- She has 8 teeth, with two more on the way. [When Brae was 9 months, he still only had 2]
- She is extremely strong. The doctor noticed that even on her first day of life when he remarked that she had very good muscle tone. She can pull a tall TV tray (with food on it) across the floor. This is particularly troublesome when the food on the tray belonged to Brae and he was trying to eat it.
- She has been crawling since 8 months, and has been pulling herself up for the last several weeks. She is just starting to do some cruising. I think she’ll be walking by age 1.
- She loves her pureed food, but solids not so much. When I try to give her something small, even Cheerios, she will often gag. The doctor said she has a very strong gag reflex. If she’s still not readily manipulating solid foods in her mouth and swallowing by age 1, we may need to see a specialist.
- She’s a great sleeper and napper. 12 hours at night, and 2 naps during the day of 45 minutes – 3 hours.
- What I can gauge about her personality so far: she’s extremely physically active and curious; she loves her brother; she’s a friendly child, but is not effusive or gregarious like Brae; she loves baths; she loves being outdoors; she really does not like it when Brae takes away her toys.
Love this girl.
On Sunday, January 15, we dedicated Sienna at our church. What this means is that we made a commitment to raise her in a Christian family, knowing and loving the Lord.
My grandmother insisted on buying her dedication dress, and because we were dedicating her to God, we thought the more gaudy the dress, the better. She was a pink poof ball. I loved it.
On our way to church, I tried to explain to Brae what it meant that we were dedicating Sienna to God.
Me: “God gave Sienna to us as a gift, and today, we are going to give her back to God.”
Brae: (Long pause). “Mommy, I want to go golfing.”
Good talk, Russ.
Unfortunately, none of the professional pictures turned out that great, due to lighting, so the only shots that we really got were from my sister’s camera (below).
Some other Sienna highlights:
– Girl weighs over 20 lbs. She’s in 12-18 month, oh heck, yes some 2T clothes.
– She has 7 teeth, and the 8th is bulging.
– She just (like this morning) learned how to get into a sitting position from lying down. She also just recently learned how to get from sitting to lying down. She’s rolling, rolling, rolling. She gets on all 4′s and rocks back and forth, and kind of crawls backward, but no forward motion yet.
– She’s eating solids (pureed), but no real solids yet. She can’t seem to yet figure out how to move the food from the front of her tongue to the back. So when I’ve tried to feed her solids, she tends to gag and puke up what she’s just eaten.
– Still the only person who can get her to belly laugh is her brother. Which is odd, because he likely poses the greatest threat to her safety. But, all he has to do is walk in the room, and she just lights up like a Christmas tree. She adores him.
Brae. Sigh. That boy. I know most parents say this, but our son really is very intelligent. He’s working on spelling out words when we read, he can count up to 50 (well, he could really go up to 100, but who has the time for that? ha ha!), and he can play Jedi Mind Control games on you.
A couple recent moments of fun:
The other day, Brae was downstairs going potty. (He has a different potty in the house that he prefers for different times of the day. The morning pee pee is downstairs). Anyway, I’m standing next to him, and he points to a small brown spot on the bathroom rug. “Mommy, that’s my poop,” he says. “Huh? Your poop?” “Yes, some of my poop fell there the other day.” “Oh, okay,” I say, “Thanks, I’ll put it in the washing machine.” “Yeah, but Mommy, don’t touch it. It’s icky. It’s for the dogs.”
(Apparently he remembers that both of our dogs fondly liked eating the others’ poop. Yummy.)
We went to the doctor’s on Friday. We were in the waiting room. They had a water cooler. Brae filled up a Dixie cup of water and proclaimed to the waiting room: “I am going to drink this water like a dog.” And then he placed the Dixie cup in the middle of the room, got on all fours, and lapped up the water like a dog.
A proud moment for me as a mother.
Last night, for the first time ever, I became a prop in one of Brae’s imaginations. I was sitting in Sienna’s room, watching her roll on the floor. Brae declared to me that he was going to cut my hair. So, he took blanket after blanket after blanket and draped them around me, around my neck, trying to tie them in the back, and preparing to cut my hair. And then he got the eraser from the chalkboard and pretended to shave my head.
Sienna was dedicated at our church this last Sunday (I will post about that awesome dedication next week). But the event got me thinking about Brae’s dedication when he was just shy of 3 months old.
It was January 2009. It was Sanctity of Life Sunday. Our church asked us to give our testimony about Brae’s adoption.
As I was speaking before the hundreds of people in the congregation, I got to the place in the story when Rachael (Brae’s birth mom) and I talked about her decision to not abort.
Brae was a mere several hours old. It was Halloween night. Rachael and I were in her hospital room. It was late and it was dark. Brae was asleep. Rachael was in the bed, and I was on the couch beside her. We’d just finished a long, wonderful conversation about her life and dreams. Then, the conversation turned to when she found out she was pregnant, and what decision she was going to make. She and her longtime boyfriend were having problems and she did not think they would stay together.
Me: “Did you think about abortion?”
Rachael: “Yes.”
Me: “And what did you think about?”
Rachael: “I decided that I was not going to abort this child because it was not the baby’s fault. Getting pregnant was not the baby’s fault. I was not going to punish this baby for something I did. That’s when I decided that God had placed this baby in me as a gift for someone else. I was merely the vessel.”
I told her that she’d had three options, and she chose the most unselfish. She could have aborted him, and he wouldn’t be here. She could have said, “I’m going to keep him because he’s ‘mine,’ no matter what his life may look like. But, she did the most loving — she carried him for 9 months, gave birth to him, and said “I love you so much, I want a better life for you.”
As I was sharing the testimony, Tygh was holding Brae up on stage. Then, all of a sudden, when I got to this part of the testimony about Rachael choosing life for our son, Brae got the BIGGEST smile on his face. The crowd erupted with laughter and tears.
So, on Sunday, as we were driving to church to dedicate Sienna, I thought back on this story. And I decided to text Rachael:
Me: “I don’t think I ever told you about Brae’s dedication. When I was giving our testimony and got to the part where you told me you were going to choose life for Brae and not abort him, Brae got the biggest smile on his face. We have it on video.”
Rachael: “I’d love to see it.”
Me: “Ok. I will send you a copy.”
I have a copy of Brae’s dedication and I’m going to send it to her.
She will see living proof that, even as an infant, Brae was ecstatic that his birth mom chose life for him.
Over Christmas, my sister-in-law (thank you!) made the most amazing video about Sienna’s journey to us. Warning: you may cry.
The lyrics of the first song are most poignant (from Norah Jones, “Seven Years”):
Spinning, laughing, dancing to
Her favorite song
A little girl with nothing wrong
Is all alone
Eyes wide open
Always hoping for the sun
And she’ll sing her song to anyone
That comes along
Fragile as a leaf in autumn
Just fallin’ to the ground
Without a sound
Crooked little smile on her face
Tells a tale of grace
That’s all her own
Fragile as a leaf in autumn
Just fallin’ to the ground
Without a sound
Spinning, laughing, dancing to her favorite song
She’s a little girl with nothing wrong
And she’s all alone
She’s alone no more!
– As the product of divorce, we travel all over God’s green earth celebrating Christmas. This year was no exception. Four Christmases this year = lots of booty for the kiddos.
– Yet, in it all, we kept reminding Brae that Christmas is Jesus’ birthday. Because Jesus is so special, we get to celebrate His birthday over a period of 4 days. And the reason we give each other gifts on Christmas is because the 3 wise men brought presents when Jesus was born. Giving gifts to each other is a way to celebrate the birth of Jesus.
– Brae must have sung “Happy Birthday” to Jesus about 10 times over the long weekend. When I would ask him how old Jesus is, he replied, “Jesus is 2.”
– When Brae woke up Christmas morning, he immediately started heading downstairs. I had to yell, “WAIT! Don’t go downstairs yet!”, as I quickly finished getting dressed, raced downstairs after him, in search of the video camera. “Don’t come down, Brae! Mommy has to get the video camera!” At that point, Brae was on the bottom step, but had not yet turned to see the tree or presents. I jumped over him, and darted toward the camera. Huffing and puffing, I turned it on, and said, “Okay, now you can come downstairs.” Brae smiled. Then he gleefully climbed all the way back up the stairs and started s.l.o.w.l.y coming down the stairs again. Cute kid — he thought the big excitement was him climbing down the stairs. Ha ha! When he did turn the corner on the last step, and saw all the presents that were not there the night before, he stopped dead in his tracks and his mouth fell to the floor.
– Brae’s birth family mailed to the agency a TON of gifts for him that I then picked up. We feel so blessed that his birth family has sent gifts to him each year, and a card with all their signatures saying how much they love him.
– Sienna’s genetic family also sent her a TON of gifts that were so special to us and meant so much. The best, by far, was a recordable storybook about Frosty the Snowman. The first page of the book opens with them all wishing her a first merry Christmas with her family. They say how much they love her and think of her and how they hope to meet her one day. I still have yet to read the entire book, because I can’t stop crying long enough to turn the first page. We are so blessed to have extended families that love our kiddos so much.
– Brae-ism: We are practicing putting on underwear the correct way. The other day, I must have told Brae three different times that the flap in the front indicates the front of his underwear, and that the solid part in the back indicates the back of his underwear. Yet, each time, he kept putting the underwear on backwards. Finally, sensing my frustration, he pulled off his underwear, held it out in front of him, stuck his head inside it, looked around, and then pulled his head out. “Mom,” he said, “there’s no map in there.” And then he walked away, naked.
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We celebrated our 6-year wedding anniversary this last weekend. Six years of joyfully bumpy wedded bliss. By far, our biggest marital “struggle” has been infertility. When we got married, we had no idea that we would be blessed with at least one confirmed miscarriage and years of infertility.
That’s right, I said blessed.
I say blessed because without infertility, we would not have experienced the joy of adoption. If you have never experienced domestic adoption, and been on that wild ride, you cannot relate to the whirlwind journey. It is a ride. It is thrilling, exhilarating, desperate, painful, anxious, nervous, climactic, a bring-you-to-your-knees encounter to the very core of who you are. Everything you’ve ever thought about life and the loss of life (abortion, miscarriage, child neglect) is challenged.
I say blessed because without infertility, we would not have come face to face with our need for God. During our struggle, we’ve never been more angry at, scared of, in awe of, delighted by, and humbled by our Maker.
I say blessed because without infertility, we would never have been given the lens through which you see miracles take place.
I say blessed because without infertility, we would never have had so many tears shed, fights, bitter silence, sob-filled hugs, or cling-to-each-other moments.
I say blessed because without infertility, we would have never taken our journey to NEDC and Tennessee. We would never have met Jennifer and Dave. We never would have got to experience the miracle of life, frozen, in a Petri dish, thawed, transferred, and given the chance to grow into a beautiful baby girl.
Sure, we could have been blessed by getting pregnant easily, and carrying to term without any complications, and giving birth to beautiful children.
But, then we would not have Brae and Sienna. The only way for Brae and Sienna to come to be ours was through infertility and adoption.
And, we wouldn’t have it any other way.
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Dear Son,
Today, you turn three years old. I well up with tears just thinking at the immense joy you have brought us these last three years. By your birth, you filled in us a longing that ached so profoundly. You filled our arms. You made us parents.
Son, you were chosen before the dawn of humanity to be ours. We believe God destined you to be ours from the very beginning. And His perfect plan was that you would be placed in another woman’s belly, but would be called ours.
I still remember the chills that ran up and down my spine when your birthmom asked us what name we had picked for a girl. We said Hanna. Her reply? That is her last name. And then the second set of chills when she asked us what name we had picked for a boy. We said Brae. Her reply? Her middle name is Rae.
You were meant for us.
I am so thankful to your birthmom and can never repay her for the gift she gave us: you. She took care of you from inception until birth and then out of an incredible act of love, handed you to us.
Son, Mommy and Daddy were there at your birth. We held your birthmom’s hand as she pushed you out. Mommy cut your cord. We kissed you in all your nakie glory, weeping.
One day, I know you will understand what all of this “adoption stuff” is, and that you will likely have a lot of questions. We will be ready and willing to answer all of them.
Giving birth doesn’t define what it means to be a parent. Genetics doesn’t define what it means to be a parent.
Son, as you read this one day, know that we loved you before we even knew who you were. You may have been placed in someone else’s belly, but you grew in our hearts until we could hold you in our arms.
You can never lose our love.
In honor of the gift your birthmom gave to us, and in honor of your special day, we dedicate to you “Your Own” by Nate Huss.
Happy birthday, baby boy.
– Mommy and Daddy
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1) He is now into identifying the shapes of his bowel movements. Last night’s was a triangle.
2) He likes to take a.l.l. of the books off his bookshelves (at least 100) and stay up into the wee hours of the night neatly putting them one next to the other on the floor, all around his room. When I walked in this morning to find his floor covered with neatly separated books, I asked him what he was doing. He declared proudly, “I made a choo-choo train! All the people are in the choo-choo train! All aboard!”
3) Along the same lines, the boy takes e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g to bed with him. We’re talking books, balls, puzzles, shoes, socks, underwear, everything. He barely has a place on the bed to lay his head.
4) He believes in monsters. I’m not sure where he picked that up, but he believes in monsters. After successfully convincing him that Daddy had put all the monsters in the garage, and buying 3 nightlights, he is back to sleeping through the night. Granted, it’s broad as day in there, but at least he’s sleeping.
5) He’s inherited his Mommy’s penchant for cleanliness. The other day, I walked in his room to find him washing his walls.
6) He believes anything that is broken can be fixed by adding batteries. Yesterday, he was having trouble putting the tupperware lid back on the cookie dish (the lid is bent). He declared, “Mommy! I need some batteries. The lid is broken.”
And on Halloween, my precious boy turns 3 years old. What oh what will come out of his mouth this next year?
A year ago today, baby Sienna was transferred in my womb. She was five days gestation. She was also transferred with her other sibling, who was released straight into Jesus’s arms.
A year ago today, I saw a picture of Sienna as an embryo. (She’s a lot cuter now).
A year ago today, I saw life on a photograph, and life was growing inside of me.
A year ago today, my dreams of experiencing pregnancy were fulfilled. The words God spoke to me a year prior were being completed. He had given me a “promise of God;” He had given me my Sienna.
Thank you, Lord, for doing a great work in me. I’m so very blessed and thankful.
….
What I will miss most about maternity leave (a Top Ten list):
#10: Not showering for two, three (okay, maybe four) days in a row
#9: Wearing the same clothes for a week
#8: Going to the grocery store on Mondays and hanging out with all the old people
#7: Dr. Phil
#6: The morning and afternoon stroller walks taking Brae to school … ten miles each way, up hills both ways, with holes in my shoes, in ten feet of snow … oh, wait
#5: Cleaning house, wiping Sienna’s mouth, doing laundry, wiping Sienna’s mouth, making dinner, wiping Sienna’s mouth …
#4: Mid-morning naps, afternoon naps, late afternoon naps … (Sienna’s, unfortunately, not mine)
#3: Organizing the pantry… alphabetically
#2: Finding random people on facebook, stalking their lives, but never befriending them
…. and the #1 thing I will miss most about maternity leave…
#1: Being able to pick up my daughter, hold her, hug her, and kiss her whenever I wanted to.
I’ll miss you so much, baby girl. Work is a necessary evil.
