This last Easter weekend, I went to see the movie “October Baby.” For those of you who have not seen it or heard of it, I highly recommend it. It is a very moving film about a young girl who, at age 19, discovers she is adopted. Not only is she adopted, but she is the survivor of a failed abortion that is shrouded with secrecy and mystery. The film is a coming of age for this young girl as she seeks to find her birth mom. But perhaps one of the neatest points in this film doesn’t even happen during the film. There is a trailer to the movie where one of the main actresses reveals she, in real life, had an abortion at a young age. With tears streaming down her face, she explains that by being in this movie, she found tremendous healing and forgiveness from God.
The irony didn’t escape me that I have my own October baby. Brae was born on October 31, 2008.
And now turning to my October baby, here are some coveted Brae-isms:
1) Brae is very into chapstick. The other day, Tygh came downstairs to find Brae smearing chapstick all over his face. Tygh thought, “Hmm.. That is an awfully large chapstick container… Brae, come here. What? What is that you have in your hand? … Oh no, Brae, this is not chapstick. This is a gluestick.”
2) Brae loves to play hide-n-seek. But he hasn’t quite grasped the concept. The other day, he told me to go count to 10, and then to come find him. He then proceeded to “hide.” After I counted to 10, I wandered around the house looking for him, opening closet doors, looking under furniture. Finally, I made my way upstairs to find him standing, lights on, right in the middle of our bedroom. “You found me, mama!” he proclaimed. “Now, mama, come here,” as he took my hand. “I want you to hide right here,” he said, pointing to behind the bedroom door. “You stay here, and then I’ll come find you.”
3) Me: “Brae, tomorrow is Easter. We celebrate Easter because it is the day Jesus died and then woke up again. And only Jesus can do that.”
(Long pause).
Brae: “No, Mommy. Only big boys can do that.”
4) Brae: “Mommy, shut up!”
Me: “Brae, that’s not a nice word. We don’t tell people to shut up.”
(Long pause).
Brae: “Mommy, shut down!”
5) Brae: “Daddy, what sound does a shoe horn make?”
//And here are some photos from our Easter weekend:
As we drove the fuschia pink Nissan Cube up the freeway, I thought, “I can’t go through with this.”
We passsed miles and miles of nothingness, getting even farther and farther from our destination. I was more convinced than ever that we had made a mistake. There was no way I could possibly survive seven nights of this.
If you are a parent who has ever gone on vacation – sans kids – you know what I’m talking about.
Friday Night:
– Grandparents pick up kids. Ruminate about decision for hours. Try to fall asleep. Not successful.
Saturday Morning:
– 5 am: Barely slept. Miss kids. A lot. Wander around house aimlessly. Husband puts me in car.
– 7 am: Airport busy. Spring break. Planes down. Airport clerk informs hundreds of passengers they are stuck for 4 days. Re-book new flight. Rent a car. Not a cute car. Drive 3.5 hours to Seattle to catch red eye flight.
– 9 pm: Really miss kids.
– Midnight: Catch flight. Wonder if I’m a good mom.
Sunday:
– Midday: Have not slept. Miss kids. Call grandparents repeatedly. Listen to sound of Sienna breathing. Laugh at Brae’s sweet voice.
– Late midday: Arrive in Cabo. See good friends. Good weather. Amazing resort. Awesome company.
– Midnight: Toss and turn. Miss kids. Dream of kids.
Seven nights of “rinse and repeat” the above schedule.
Kids probably not scarred. Mama may be.
So this is what it means to be a mother: To agree that I will forever allow my heart to live outside my body.
Really, really hard to function when my heart is hundreds of miles away.
Not sure I’ll be doing this again anytime soon.
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.
What you may not know about these kiddos:
1.) Two of them are siblings. Those two siblings are first cousins to the other; not one is genetically related.
2) Together, they have Hispanic, Peruvian, Native American and German blood pulsating through their veins.
3) Two of their birth moms are now friends.
4) One of them was conceived 10 years before birth.
5) Each one was and is a long-awaited answer to prayer and proof that God's timing is perfect.
In the interest of levity… Five Little Known Facts about Me:
1. I wear slippers or fuzzy socks to bed every night. However, invariably, I slip them off after about 5 minutes. Into the covers. So, at any given time, there are at least six pairs of socks or slippers under the covers, at the foot of my bed. It causes my husband endless frustration.
2. I was a prep in high school. I went to a hippie college. I had a lot of trouble reconciling the two. I resolved it by wearing Grateful Dead shirts, ripped up jeans, and penny loafers. I rocked it.
3. I hate to cook. You would hate to eat what I cook. In high school, my parents made me cook a meal once a week. It didn’t last long. For enchiladas, did you know you are supposed to brown the meat before you put it in the tortillas, and then in the oven? Why you would need to cook it twice is beyond me.
4. I love 80s music. A great day for me is when I can hear Lionel Ritchie, Starship, and Peter Cetera on the radio in one sitting.
5. I have a pretty expansive vocabulary. I like using ridiculously commodious words whenever possible. And, when I can’t think of a word that works, I will make one up.
– What is it with boys and their bowel movements? The other day, Brae wanted to play with some toys outside. He went outside, dropped his drawers, and peed. Then, he decided to take all of his clothes off, except his socks (in February?). I was preparing dinner, so I wasn’t watching him closely. When he trotted in after about 10 minutes, the bottom of his socks were black. And they smelled.
“Brae,” I asked. “Did you go poop outside?”
He nodded approvingly. “Yes, mama! C’mon, let me show you!”
And then he gallivanted me proudly around the backyard, showing me the three places he went poop, and then had stepped in each with his feet.
Seriously?
– The other morning, as I’m waiting for Brae to go pee, he declares, “Mama, I’m going to go pee like a Warrior!”
And then, while pants down, he proceeds to get into a warrior (think yoga-warrior) pose, and remarkably, aimed perfectly into the toilet.
– Every Sunday Tygh takes Brae to the driving range after church. They go to this local golf course called Langdon Farms that has big, beautiful red farmhouses all throughout the golf course. After they finish at the driving range, they have lunch together. The wait staff know Brae so well, his chicken nuggets and chocolate milk are already waiting for him when they step in from outside.
This last Sunday, as Tygh and Brae were driving up to the golf course, Brae began to sing:
“Old MacDonald had a farm, ee-i-ee-i-ooo… and on that farm he had some ….. (long pause) ….. golf balls… ee-i-ee-i-ooo…. and on that farm he had some ….. (long pause) ….. chicken nuggets ….. ee-i-ee-i-ooo…..”
Here are some recent pics of the kiddos (and, drumroll… Sienna. Is. Crawling!!!!!):
Happy Valentine’s Day!
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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.
A series of coincidences, or something more?
I have a very good friend, whose privacy I have agreed to maintain, but we’ll call her Zoe.
Zoe has been trying to get pregnant for many years, and a couple years ago, adopted a son. She and her husband have gone through many rounds of fertility treatment, unsuccessfully.
Recently, Zoe and I made an informal pact to step up our quiet times in the morning, reading the Bible, and sharing what we’re learning with each other. A couple of weeks ago, we decided to earnestly be praying that we would each spontaneously get pregnant. (You heard that right — Tygh and I are open to a 3rd child, but only if it happens spontaneously.)
We each know the medical diagnoses we’ve received, so that if we did get pregnant spontaneously, it would be no small miracle. And, because we believe it’s important to pray specific prayers so you receive specific answers, we’ve each boldly and with great faith and expectation have begun praying to spontaneously get pregnant this year.
A couple days ago, Zoe and her husband were wrestling with whether to do another round of fertility treatment. Yesterday, I was flipping through FaceBook, and found this verse on a friend’s page: “The Lord will fight for you. You just need to be still.” Exodus 14:14. (Other interpretations are “You need to stay calm” and “You need to hold your peace”).
I texted this verse to Zoe. Immediately, she wrote back that was the confirmation she needed. She and her husband decided that they would not do any more fertility treatment, but instead “be still” and fervent in prayer that God would indeed bless them with a spontaneous pregnancy.
For many months, she and her husband have believed that God would bless them with a pregnancy, with a daughter, and that they were to name her “Abby”. (Does any of this sound familiar?!) “Abby” was one of their son’s first words, and lately, Zoe has been seeing that name EVERYWHERE.
Zoe and I emailed most of yesterday. During one of the emails, I told her I had this very strong “picture/vision” in my head. It was of a forest. I was looking at a forest full of trees, and yet could see this very bright, multi-colored light behind the trees. The light was moving. I told Zoe I felt very strongly that this “picture/vision” was from God and that He was using it to tell us that even in the midst of the forests of our lives (infertility), He IS moving. He IS working. He’s already in the forest, working on our behalf.
Last night, as I was driving home, I texted Zoe, “So what does Abby mean, anyway?”
Zoe: “It means ‘Joy of the Father’”.
When I received that text, my heart stopped. I almost couldn’t breathe.
I texted back, “You know that Bible verse I sent you this morning? You know how I told you I saw it on a friend’s FaceBook page? Do you know which friend it was? It was my friend Joy’s page.”
(I still get chills).
And, then, this morning, Zoe sent me an email with this picture, below. “Look what randomly popped up on Pinterest last night. It’s your vision.”
Again, full. body. chills.
A series of coincidences?
I think not.
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!
