Souvenirs II

Dear Maximus,
  From time to time I think it is important for me to make a record of some of my favorite things you do so that I may never forget them. You are 21 months this week and every day I fall more and more in love with you, and so does everyone else. In the past 6 months you have become a talking machine. Every word uttered out of your sweet mouth is cute, but by far the best thing you say is "mommy hold you." I think you started saying it around 19 months. You walk up to me and lift up your precious little arms to me and say it. Then I drop whatever I am doing to take part in this great privilege I have and I hold you until you decide you are done. Some people have tried to correct you and say "no, say hold me," but I always stop them because I love what you saw and how you say it. I have tried to get it on video, but you usually don't cooperate when the camera is on.
  Another souvenir I want to keep of this age is your love to make everyone laugh. You light up when there is a room full of people that you can perform for. At dinner you often will go into a state of chronic eye rolling over and over because everyone laughs at you for it. While you are doing it you have an ornery grin on your face. You also have a tendency to bust out dance moves and to sing at the top of your lungs during dinner every night. We don't usually know what you are singing, but you get really into it and you have the sweetest voice.
   At night when I am holding you and about to put you to sleep you alway say, "mommy, song" which is your way of asking me to sing to you. I always ask you "what song?" and you follow up with saying "ummmm..." Sometimes you choose a song like "Jesus Loves Me," or "Amazing Grace," but sometimes you leave it at "umm."
   You also blow me away by your intelligence. By 20 months you were able to count to 13 by yourself and can identify every letter by name. Now you are starting to know what sounds all the letters make and there are some words you recognize and "read" including 'artistic' and ruckus.'

   I always want to remember the days we spend at the park. On my days off we wake up early (usually you are up by 530am), have breakfast and then go on a run to the park. While we are there we play in the sand, go down the slide and run up and down the hill. Its simple but so special to me. I never want to forget these special days. Its very important to me that since I work outside of the home several days a week that the days that I am home I am 100% present with you so that we make memories and you know how much I treasure you.

I do treasure you baby. You are my world and I hope I can be as good of a mommy to you as you are a son to me.

Big Brother Maximus

Since November we had been trying to have another baby. In November I found out I was pregnant but then I miscarried. This was very difficult for us. What made it more difficult was that we didn't get pregnant again right away. Months passed by and I would take a pregnancy test only to be disappointed by the clear words saying "not pregnant." During that time I started really getting into shape and started running 20+ miles per week. When I went to the OB she said I may be affecting my ovulation cycle. So, Ricky asked me to cut back my running. In May I took a pregnancy test before a missed period. It was negative. A day after my missed period I checked again. Still negative.

In the meantime Ricky and I had started to discuss adoption. It has always been on my heart to consider adopting, but Ricky has always been less than eager to discuss it. However, as the months went by, we both started believing that maybe that was God's plan for our next child- to adopt. So we started reading and researching. I started daydreaming about what our second child would be like- how old? What gender? What race? We contacted an agency and requested an application in the mail. On Saturday, May 11th we received the packet and started reading through it. We were quite overwhelmed by everything we were reading, but in my mind this was what we had to do- it was God's calling on our life. At that point I was 10 days late on my period, but assumed it was because of my running and that I had done some damage to my cycle. Just to be sure, though, Ricky asked me to take one more test.

I reluctantly went into the bathroom to pee on one more stick. I intentionally disallowed myself to feel any hope that the test would say "pregnant," but to my shock and surprise, it did. I could barely speak and I walked into the room where Ricky was sitting and I tried to tell him but I couldn't talk, I just cried and showed him the test.

The day we found out happened to be the day before Mother's Day, so we had an excellent surprise for our mom's the next day. Since then we have been pretty tight-lipped about it, wanting to make sure that we survive the first trimester before shouting it to the world like we did in November. Maximus is already the most precious big brother. When you ask him what he's going to be, he says "big brother," then points to mommy's belly and says "baby, sleeping... kiss it." Then he insists on kissing my tummy. He may not fully understand what it means yet, but I think he is already falling in love with his future best buddy and sibling.