For Eternity

Last Thursday at 4pm we legally became Gabriel's parents! We went downtown to a restaurant with Mark's parents and Sarah's mom and had lunch before the court hearing. We then made our way over to the court house where we wound our way through the maze of metal detectors and hallways, until we found the tiny waiting room for the courtroom where our fate would be decided.

The judge was very nice. She made an effort to help us feel comfortable while still stressing the seriousness of the hearing. We were asked many questions about our ability to give Gabriel the things he needs. Both the judge and our attorney stressed over and over that this was final, that he would be our responsibility legally until he turns 18, and that no matter what happens he will be our child. Mark and I both knew that this would not change anything for us. Gabriel has been our child from the very start. When they asked if we felt that we had developed a bond with Gabriel and he with us, there was no doubt. We love him and he loves us. We are a family.

After all of the questions were asked and answered she declared that from this time forward Gabriel is legally our son! And Gabriel slept through the whole thing. I know, funny right? he woke up just in time for us to take pictures in his cute new outfit.

Then on Saturday we took Gabriel to the LDS Temple and we were sealed as a family for not just this life, but for eternity. As members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, we believe that we can be sealed together forever. We believe that after this life here on earth we continue in our relationships together and we will love and support one another. This was the greatest experience we have ever had. Gabriel was chatty, as usual, but as soon as the sealer started speaking, he stared up at him as if he knew the importance of what was happening. In the sealing room there are mirrors on opposite walls representing eternity. Once the words were spoken the sealer had the three of us kneel at the alter and look into the mirror on the opposite wall. He then had all of our family members who were there stand behind us and he reminded us of all of those who love us and support us. It was beautiful. If you have any questions about our church click here or contact your local LDS missionaries.

The next day Mark got up in Sacrament meeting and gave Gabriel a name and a blessing. He was emotional from the start and he did an amazing job. It was a beautiful blessing full of love and guidance.

The whole time these events were occurring our minds and hearts were aware of a person who was not with us- Andrea, Gabriel's birth mother. We are so grateful to her for the selfless gift she has given all of us. We haven't heard from her for a while, but we think about her and Audrey, her 2 year old daughter. We hope that they are doing well. Andrea- we want you to know that you are in our thoughts and prayers. Thank you for making this indescribable blessing possible!

Some of you may be wondering why it took me so long to post this. On Saturday, after we had an open house that about 100 people attended, I started running a fever. On Monday I went to my doctor who took one look at me and said, "I'm not even going to swab you for a culture. You definitely need to be on antibiotics." We're pretty sure I have strep throat.

Thanks to the Military Channel

Mark's favorite channel on TV is the Military channel. I know, weird. He loves to watch the the History channel, Discovery channel, How It's Made shows, etc. Some of these I'm okay with. The majority of the time I'm bored out of my mind. He is very courteous about it though. He usually will offer to let me change the channel, which I REALLY appreciate.

So, the other day we were watching one of these shows and they were talking about how some farms use the animal waste (ie. cow crap) to create electricity to run the farm. That got me thinking about how we could put the 8 poopy diapers we are changing every day to good use. Gabriel certainly is not having a problem with too little fiber in his diet any more. (Don't worry, I'm not going to post a picture of a pile of poopy diapers to demonstrate what I'm talking about.)
I'm not saying this to complain. Gabriel is one of the two greatest joys in my life, poopy diapers and all. It was just an idea.

The most wonderful gift

I am a free woman. Okay, I'm free from school work anyway.

Gabriel's four month check up was last thursday. He is so big! He weighs 16lbs 7oz (80th percentile) and is 251/4 inches long (75th percentile). His head is 60th percentile, so pretty much normal. Mark couldn't go to this appointment, so he gave me a list of things he wanted me to ask our pediatrician. One of them was about Gabriel's bowel movements (I know, really pleasant). Mark is a worrier. Me? Not so much. However, the doctor did say we should start feeding him veggies, fruit, diluted apple juice, and cereal in order to give him more fiber. I wasn't incredibly surprised, but Mark was really taken off guard. He said, "I just didn't realize that we were there yet. That's a whole new area to think about." I didn't think it was really that big a deal, but I do think Mark is awfully cute for being so surprised. He really is a wonderful and involved dad. I love him.

Yesterday Gabriel rolled over for the first time! I put him on his tummy on the floor and he eventually rolled onto his back. I left him there for a minute to go check on some baking, and when I came back he was back on his tummy. I was so excited that I was there. I am loving being home. I love being at home with Gabriel.

The holidays have taken on a whole new meaning for me this year, and we are loving the experience of Christmas with him. He is our greatest gift and blessing this year. I can't express how thankful I am to have him. Plus, how could you not love those cheeks? I am continuing a tradition of my mother's by making pastries for our friends, neighbors, and family. This is not just any pastry. It is filled with homemade custard, a crumb mixture, and has icing drizzeled all over it. It is soooo good. Here is a pic of the final product.

This Christmas I decided I was not going to let myself get stressed out about stuff and I am really enjoying myself.

Here are some photos from Christmas so far. He is such an inquisitive and happy baby and it really shows. We love him. What is the most wonderful gift I have this year? My family. No doubt. Merry Christmas.

Pumpkins, Romance, A Prince, and Beautiful New clothes. All we need is talking mice (or not).

Is he the cutest pumpkin ever, or what?! Halloween was a lot of fun. Gabriel and I came home early that day since I only had one class instead of three. We cleaned the house, played together, and got ready for everyone to come over later that evening. Mark came home and decided that he needed to carve the pumpkin that was sitting on our kitchen table. Normally, I would have been irritated by this, but I was just so excited that I didn't care. Admittedly, when he was using that as an excuse to not go with us, I got a little miffed, but he finished quickly and came with us, so it was okay. Mark isn't fond of Halloween, but that's a completely different story.

So, my dad, Mark's parent's, his sister, Sarah, and Becky, Peter, Chase, Parker and Isaac all arrived between 5:45 and 6:15pm. We made last minute adjustments to costumes, took some pictures, and we were off. Poor Parker has asthma and was wheezing pretty bad about 15 minutes into trick-or-treating, so Mark and Peter took him back to our house for a breathing treatment. He insisted on going back out though once that was done. Our beautiful little pumpkin fell asleep about 3 minutes into it. Literally, we hadn't even gotten past the first house. But, the trick-or-treating part wasn't really for him anyway, so it was more cute than anything.

Last week was the most exhausting week of this quarter, so far. I had to write a mental health policy paper on an act concerning mentally ill offenders (sounds like a good time, doesn't it?). It ended up being 17 pages long, after I cut out some sections. Yeah, it was a beast and not what I wanted to be doing. I wanted to be reading Eclipse, the third book in the Twighlight series, with Mark and playing with my cute three month old. But, Mark didn't think that was the responsible thing to do. Thank goodness for my responsible husband. I finished the paper at 10:30pm Thursday evening after having worked on it all week and all that day (and I do mean ALL). It still wasn't as good as I wanted it to be, but it was done and I didn't care.

On Friday, Mark and I had planned 24 hours away. This included taking Gabriel to Mark's mom's house, going to a hotel, and spending 24 hours alone together. I know, you are all shocked that Mark was able to talk me into doing this so quickly, but I am really glad we did. Things didn't really go as planned. Mark had also had a really crappy week at work, and he didn't get home that night until 8:15pm. He was in an awful mood from what had happened at work that day and was really tired. I had decided that I wasn't going to be upset about it being so late, or even if we didn't go at all (and not because I didn't really want to go). We went back and forth about whether or not we should go, but Mark decided that we should. So, we quickly finished packing and were off. We didn't eat dinner until 10:30pm that night and we didn't get to see a movie as we had planned, but we had a great time. We went shopping the next day, we talked a ton, and we just enjoyed being together. We were both so glad we decided to go and make our relationship a priority.

Don't get me wrong, we both really missed Gabriel. He is an amazing blessing to us, and we are grateful for him every day of our lives. But, as Mark put it, one day all of our kids will be gone and we still want to know each other when it is just the two of us. Gabriel had a great time at Grandma and Grandpa's house (or at least Grandma and Grandpa had a great time with him). I did think it was cute that Mark was the first one to suggest that we should call his mom to make sure everything was going okay. He loves his son :).

I'm posting some of the family pictures that were taken a few weeks ago. I think they turned out really great! As predicted, Gabriel's stent of sleeping through the night did not last long. He did that for about a week or so, and then said, "okay, I'm done with that" and started getting up around 3am again. We're working back up to 7 or more hours at a time, but it is hit or miss at this point. Wish us luck.

Did you get up? No, did you?

For the last week Mark and I have been given a wonderful gift.... the gift of sleep. Gabriel has been sleeping between 7-10 hours in a single chunk! He was falling asleep around 7:30 or 8pm and then getting up around 3am to eat. Suddenly, he decided he wanted to be awake until 10pm, which I wasn't happy about. But, when he slept until 5am I decided I could handle his being up until 10 thing. It is amazing how precious an uninterupted nights sleep becomes when you go without for so long. I didn't really think I was capable of functioning on so little sleep, but it is suprising what you can do when there isn't any other choice. I fully expect that this pattern of sleeping through the night will not hold indefinately, but while it does last, we'll take full advantage.

We're getting ready to go trick-or-treating tomorrow! I can't wait to put Gabriel's costume on him. We've carved pumkins and decorated the house. We'll be sure to post lots of pictures. Now, if I can just finish this paper that is due tomorrow :).

Yum, applesauce.

A few weeks ago we went to a local farm with our next door neighbors, and picked apples. We had a blast. We picked twenty pounds each of golden delicious and jonathan apples. Some of the apples were as big as Gabriel's head. The next week Stacie, my neighbor, came over and my mom coached us in making and canning applesauce and apple pie filling. It was so much fun and everything turned out wonderfuly. I went to Bed, Bath and Beyond and bought a sauce maker in order to make the apples into yummy mush. I ended up going to the other side of Columbus to buy it the morning we did the canning, due to my procrastination. Even with this, everything turned out great. I'm especially excited that we will be able to feed the applesauce to Gabriel when he gets a little bit older. I'll also be able to use the sauce maker to mush up other foods for him, like carrots, peas, yams, and other great fresh foods.

Mark took Gabriel for his two month check up two weeks ago. He weighed 13 pound 4 1/2 ounces, and was 22 inches long. This put him in the 90th percentile for weight and 25th percentile for height. Mark's sister, Becky, said "aw, he's his daddy's son". Mark didn't think she was very funny.

My family also had family pictures taken by a family friend a couple weeks ago. Here are a few of the pictures taken with our camera. I'll post more when we get a copy of the "professional" ones. I loved the fall feel of the pictures and the use of a local park where the trees were changing color. Thanks to my older sister, Elaine for her planning and creativity. She always comes up with great ideas for things like this.

I'm almost half way through fall quarter. I just can't wait to be done with this quarter. This is the busiest quarter I've had so far, and it's all the more difficult because I just want to spend all my time with Gabriel and Mark. I fell like I will be able to get through the rest of the program if I can just survive this quarter.

Things we don't want to do, and doing them anyway.

I started back to school on Friday, September 26th. I have three more quarters until I graduate with my masters in Social Work. The first two years of my program were not easy, but not too hard either. Going back for this final nine months has been the hardest part of the whole experience. More precisely, leaving Gabriel with my sister-in-law all day long was the hardest thing I have had to do. This is not because I'm worried about the care he is getting at her house or anything like that. In fact, I think he is enjoying being at her house, because he gets a lot of attention from her three boys. I just don't want to be away from him.

The first day I left him, I called Mark and cried. He told me he understood and that it was going to be alright. I replied I knew that, but it didn't really make it any easier. The next time I had to leave him, Monday, it wasn't quite as hard. I think mainly because I was nervous about starting my internship. Tuesday, however, was even harder than either of the first two. I bawled as I got in my car and drove to my internship. I told Mark that evening, "I don't want to do this anymore". He said he wouldn't force me to finish, but he thought it was what was best for all of us. I know he is right, but again, it doesn't make it any easier.

On a happier note, he started to smile at us (on purpose) two weeks ago. It is the cutest thing in the entire world, and the most rewarding. I haven't been able to catch it on film yet, so I don't have a picture to post. He is also talking to us a ton. He is such a social baby. He loves to have someone talk to him and to talk back. He would love it if I would sit and talk to him for hours. A lot of the time I'm tempted. Some times I do. I don't ever regret it. He's getting so big! Mark is taking him for his two month check up this Friday. He will get his first immunizations. I'm a little sad and a little glad that I won't be there. I am really interested to see how much he's grown though.

These pictures were taken about three weeks apart. The one on the left was taken first. Maybe they don't look that different to you, but I see a big difference. He is really filling out, and gaining more control of his neck and arms.

We are also getting excited about Halloween. We bought him a pumkin costume, and I can't wait to take pictures. I was a pumkin for my first Halloween, so it's kind of a tradition. I know, he's only going to be three months old. But, I loved trick or treating when I was a kid. Mark was a little traumatized, which is another story, and I want Gabriel to enjoy it as much as I did. Plus, we're going with Becky and the boys, so it won't just be me carrying around a three month old. I can't wait!