For the love of a pony

Today Sparrow and I took a trip to Gardner Village in West Jordan, Utah. I had never been there before but saw on their website that they had a petting zoo AND a yarn store and I just couldn't pass it up.

Sparrow was very well behaved in all the shops we visited. I had him on his "leash" because sometimes he bolts and I didn't want him to break something expensive, but he held my hand most of the time and didn't throw too many tantrums.

Except when it came to the pony. Oh, the pony. Sparrow's pony was named Charlie, and boy did Sparrow love Charlie. He sobbed and sobbed and SOBBED when his pony ride was over. It was one of the most pathetically sad moments of his life. I'm glad he loved the ride though and I definitely will be taking him back for another pony ride next month, poor kid. I've also informed Hawk that we will need to buy Sparrow a pony for his 4th birthday. I don't think Hawk believes me.

Here are some pictures from our wonderful afternoon at the Gardner Village petting zoo.


He looks nervous, but I just snapped the picture at the wrong moment.


Trying to figure out how to get back onto his Charlie.


Giving the donkey a dental exam...


He decided every animal was a dog and barked at all of them.


Also, the goats tried to eat our diaper bag. I think they smelled the fudge.


"Hey Mr. Goat, whatcha doin'?"


Sparrow called every pumpkin a ball ("bop!"). It was pretty adorable.

We had a great day - but now both of us are exhausted! Time to hit the hay.



Heh.

Will you go out with me?

Hawk and I try to have date nights at least twice a month. Sparrow usually goes to play at Nana's house, but sometimes Hawk's sister watches him too. Really, by the time date night rolls around, Sparrow doesn't care where he is going, he just wants a break from his parents. And um, vice versa.

We're pretty boring and rarely deviate from the normal pattern of dinner and a movie. We love food and we love movies, so it works for us. Sometimes we'll stop at a book store to browse (one of our favorite pre-Sparrow activities), but most of the time we're just lame.

Tonight we did something different. We went to see Jim Gaffigan, one of our favorite comedians, at Kingsbury Hall. Hawk and I have been quoting his routines at each other ever since I made him sit down and listen to Gaffigan 3 years ago. He's not squeaky clean, but he's also not dirty. I can only recall a couple of curses in his routines, and generally he stays away from gross stuff, which I appreciate.

It was lots of fun. Although we knew a lot of his material by heart, there were a couple of new things in there that had us rolling! It was kind of a neat experience too; I've never seen a stand-up comedian perform live before so it was a new thing for me. Still, I don't think we'll do that again. The seats cost over $80 (I nearly peed my pants when I saw how pricey they were) and I'd much rather spend the money on dance lessons or something (*hint*hint* Hawk.)

I'm looking forward to when Sparrow gets to be a little older. We'll still go out on date nights then of course, but there won't be so many things I want to cram into one night because I can't do them normally. Like I would love to go see a play every weekend, or go ice skating, or there's this pianist I would love to see in concert someday (Jon Schmidt, Hawk. *hint*hint*) When Sparrow gets older we'll be able to do much more and I won't have to worry so much about "we have to do this for date night or I'll never be able to do it again!"

Do you have date nights? Do you have a standard dating routine? What do you do?

This boy

See this boy?



This cute, innocent, cherub-faced boy?



This boy pooped 8 times in 30 minutes yesterday.

He's determined to be an only child.

Adoption...

My best friend, Dove, had a baby on Thursday. She had a fast labor (4 hours) and was able to have a home waterbirth. Baby Turtledove is a gorgeous, perfect little girl.

And I am so jealous.

I'm very happy for them, but I am so jealous. I don't know if I've ever felt so at odds with myself before. I want another baby. Words can't express how much I want another baby.

Previously, Hawk and I were against adoption for a few reasons. I am partially adopted and my parents had two biological kids after me. I always felt like the odd one out and like I was treated differently than my siblings. I'm sure they feel that I was treated differently because my parents loved them more while I feel just the opposite. My siblings are half Latino and it's weird growing up in a family being the only white kid. I didn't want to put any child of mine in that position. Would it be even harder being the only black/Latino/Asian kid in our family? I've read so many things that say yes.

If we adopt, we'd want to be matched as soon as possible because Hawk and I don't want Sparrow to remember being an only child. The window there is closing quickly - while my grandma insists that people don't remember before their 10th birthday, I have memories as early as age 2. Hawk does as well.

But we have no control over how quickly we'd be matched, and there's the question of if any adoption agency would even accept us with my health problems. And the money. Oh the money. Granted, Sparrow cost $70,000 when all was said and done, but we didn't have to come up with it up front, and we only had to pay $6,000, which we're still chipping away at.

Adoption scares me. But if it will take away the nagging feeling that someone is missing from our family, I am willing to try it. Most of the time. Sometimes, I'll admit, it's very nice to be just the three of us. I guess we'll see.

I found the camera cord!

Just for fun, here are some assorted pictures of my wonderful little boy. We had his professional pictures done today and I can't wait to share them when they arrive in a few weeks! For the first year of Sparrow's life, we did professional pictures every 3 months. Once he turned 1, we decided to just do every 6 months. But I kept forgetting to make an appointment, so instead of 18 month pictures he has 20 month pictures. Oh well!



This is how I typically find Sparrow after quiet time is over: asleep or just waking up, surrounded by his books and snuggled with his favorite blanket.


We visited The Living Planet aquarium in Sandy, Utah over Labor Day weekend. Hawk and I really enjoyed it. Sparrow is a little young for it, so we'll go back when he turns 2 and see how he likes it then.


Nana (my mom) gave Sparrow this horse for his first Christmas. He loves it!


Nana sure has some great toys!


Sparrow had his first hair cut courtesy of his Great Grandma. His hair was so curly and beautiful, but I'm not a fan of long hair on boys. I really like his new short'n'sweet style. Sparrow's Nana sat on a chair in the living room and held him while Great Grandma snipped away. He held totally still for the whole thing thanks to...


Baby Signing Time!


Love this boy!

Honestly.

I asked Hawk to take away my debit card for the time being. I don't know when I will get it back, or if I ever will (apart from "needing it" for scheduled trips to the photographer and stuff like that.)

I've been grieving a lot this week. I feel like less of a woman now that I can no longer have children, and since I haven't been able to exercise since the surgery I feel down about myself in general. (I'm allowed to start working out again next week, yay! Never thought I would say yay and exercise in the same sentence.) So today I took Sparrow and went on a crazy shopping spree.

It's really a defense mechanism or something, it makes me feel better for a while until I get buyer's remorse. I'm feeling so guilty tonight and even though Hawk's been nice about it, I can tell he's frustrated. He works so hard to keep our family financially stable and trying to get us out of debt, and I can go blow his hard work in an hour at the mall.

So from now on, I'll be getting the grocery money in cash at the beginning of the week, and that's about it. I do have a monthly "allowance" but I've basically spent every allowance in advance for the next year, so I'm not asking for it anytime soon! If I want to buy something, I have to ask Hawk first. I really like this idea. Even though it's going to be hard to get used to, I think it's going to help us save money in the long run, plus it will keep me accountable and stop me from buying things that I'll later regret.

There are a lot of things Hawk and I don't particularly want to give up as we work to get out of debt. Netflix, eating out once a week, Sparrow's music class, all these things we deem necessary to keep us from feeling like total financial losers. Maybe someday I'll write a post about the awesome money mistakes we've made in our 2.5 years of marriage. In the meantime, keeping the debt card away from me is one of the best ideas I've come up with in a long time.

Do you engage in retail therapy? How do you keep from going crazy with the money card?

A boy and his cat

It's a lazy morning. After eating the last of the cold cereal for breakfast, we retreated to the playroom for knitting (me) and playing (Sparrow). But all those toys wears a boy out, and so after hauling himself ever-so-cutely up onto the couch ("up! up! UP!"), Sparrow asked to watch Baby Signing Time ("more? more?"). With the cat curled up close, Sparrow spent a half hour engrossed in the tunes of Miss Rachel.

But we should probably change out of our pajamas now.

It's pretty much all I think about.

Jayne Taylor, a social worker at Primary Children's Medical Center who has done work with infertile couples describes dealing with the loss of future children as, "a very difficult task because the loss is so vague. It is hard to define a potential. There are no funerals, no rituals to help the bereaved. It is an invisible process."

And yet it feels like cheating, because I have my one. I should be grateful. Instead I am mourning.

But the world keeps turning

High school sophomore. New school, new state. The bell rang and my table mate said something about planes crashing. I didn't hear her.

The principal came on the intercom and said something. I didn't hear it either; everyone was talking. Mr. Moser turned on the TV and I understood.

No biology that day, just staring and wondering and shock and terror and despair. I had just visited the Pentagon that summer. "I've been there, I've been there, I've been there." Silence in our normally rowdy classroom. The tower fell. Sickness.

Algebra was next. Hurried to class, not wanting to miss what was happening. My teacher wouldn't let us watch the news until after the lesson had been taught. Anger. The remainder of the day passes, a blur.

Terrified. After school I was locked out of my house, family nowhere to be found. It was a grey and rainy and yucky day. We were all scared terrorists would aim for Disneyworld next. I lived a few miles north of Orlando. Confusion.

My grandma told me once that she could remember exactly where she was and what she was doing when JFK was assassinated, when the Challenger spaceship exploded. I didn't understand what she meant then.

Eight years later, I do.

Imagination post

I have lost my camera cord, so this post will require your imagination.

[picture]

These are the hats I knitted for Hawk, Sparrow and me for the winter time. Hawk and Sparrow's hats are matching navy blue and mine is white. The thing I like about these hats is that they have ear flaps to keep our ears warm and a chin strap to keep the hat ON the head. I plan on making mittens to match the hats, but haven't started that yet.

[picture]

These are the dishcloths I have been up to my ears making. I am so sick of dishcloths! We have a color coded system now. Kitchen cloths are beige, general housecleaning cloths are blue and white, my wipe-down-the-machines-at-the-gym cloth is the ugliest black, gray and white, and our toilet cloths are peach. It's nice to have a system.

[picture]

This is the pile of frogged (ripped out) yarn left from my attempts at knitting baby sweaters. I'm just going to knit some freaking baby blankets instead. I'm pretty sure the baby recipients won't care either way.

[picture]

And this is a picture of my INCISION. HA! Weren't expecting that, were you? I have 3 incisions, one is in my belly button and thus not visible. Then I have two very tiny incisions right next to the belly button, about 6 inches apart. These incisions are maybe half an inch long. Makes me feel like a total whiner because outwardly I look fine. But let me tell you friends, when you have someone cut your ovary away from your uterine wall, IT HURTS. FOR WEEKS.

And on that TMI note, I'm off to finish knitting my stinkin' gym towel.

Eeee!

Congratulations to my awesome friend Bethany, who just had her second baby, a beautiful girl they named Katelyn! Her oldest, Jeffy, is Sparrow's age and when they were living in Utah it was fun to play together. Yay Bethany! I am so happy for you!

Re-settling

Sparrow and I came home yesterday. Poor Hawk had some sort of stomach bug and threw up for the first time in 11 years. 11 years! When I was pregnant I threw up 3 times a day minimum! I have never seen the guy so sick, but today he is doing so much better.

Sparrow had a doctor's appointment today. He is almost 30 lbs now and pretty stinkin' tall. We had delayed vaccinations but we are all caught up now, which is a relief. Mostly because I hate watching him get shots. But today I gave him a piece of British chocolate right before the nurse shot him, and he cried for about 15 seconds and then finished his chocolate. My boy is already a chocolate snob!