Alligators!

 When Zane and I visited Miami to meet Talmage, we spent the whole time in the hospital except for two outings in the afternoon to get a break. After our outings, we would head back to the hospital and stay late. One afternoon we had lunch on Ocean Drive in South Beach and another we checked out Gator Park. We wanted to see if this was an outing that we could take our boys to when we came back with them. We also knew when we came back, only one of us would go with the boys while the other stayed behind with Lili (and if Talmage was out of the hospital, then with him.) We had a great time and were so excited to show it to Dallin and Gavin who are obsessed with alligators!

 

 There were three different places to check out the alligators in cages.

We saw an alligator show which included seeing alligators and a scorpion up close and then the presenter showed us how to capture an alligator.

The presenter liked to put animals right up to any girl that was a little skirmish. He picked me out right away! He wanted to make sure I got a good picture!

As long as he didn't touch anything in the alligators mouth, the presenter was fine. As soon as he touched something, the alligator snapped. Good thing the presenter had great reflexes!

The presenter came up from behind and got on the alligators back. He then grabbed the mouth and pulled it up tucking it under his chin so that his hands are free to tie up the mouth.

We also went on an airboat ride to see alligators and other wild life in the wild.

Can you see him?

Camping Anyone? Count Us Out!

We found out Talmage was born, that he was sick and being life flighted to Miami Children's, and then we heard nothing else. To distract our thoughts from the worry (and to stop checking our cell phones and email every 2 minutes) we decided to not cancel out camping plans and to enjoy some Mother Nature. We have a favorite campsite about 20 minutes from our home so we headed there with my brother's and sister's families and my parents.

It was a good thing the camp out was only 20 minutes away. When it came to putting the kids to bed, Dallin and Gavin were too hyper to go to bed. They kept each other up, woke Lili up, woke Bryson up, kept Haley's older boys up... Zane and I tried splitting the boys up and taking one to the car to sleep. Once Lili was awake, she refused to go back to sleep. Zane drove Gavin around the campsite until he fell asleep while I worked on getting Dallin to sleep. By the time we had everyone asleep, Zane and I were exhausted from the fights. Then Lili woke up screaming around 2 a.m. and refused to fall back to sleep. It is the worse to have a screaming baby while everyone is sound asleep! Zane tried to walk Lili around probably passing Matt in the dark who was walking Bryson around since Lili had woke him up. Finally Zane decided it was best to just drive Lili home and put her to sleep in her bed. What a night! We told the boys the next morning to enjoy this camp out a lot because it was the last one they get to do until everyone in our family learns to sleep in the same tent!

Enjoying Our Last Camp Out

We decided to take a walk to the river.  Lili is a little obsessed with water and decided to try it out despite the water being pretty chilly.

The other kids soon followed Lili into the water.

And then slowly the clothes started coming off.

Eventually everyone was in the underwear.

Lili was the first one in and the first one out. She hung out with Bryson and watched the other silly kids.

They walked back to camp in their underwear. I wonder what everyone thought of us.

The next morning the kids went to check out the animals in the nature center.

We had a great little camp out (despite the sleeping part!)

An Even Bigger Announcement

 I posted the below picture on March 9th with our big announcement. It turns out I was wrong.

 The big announcement was Talmage's arrival on March 11 two days later at 35 weeks.

Talmage Zane 

4 lbs 8 oz

March 11 is my birthday. I had just returned from lunch with my sister and friend when I got the phone call from our caseworker telling us Talmage was born a couple of hours earlier. Right away the news wasn't good though. Talmage wasn't doing well. He was on oxygen and the doctors were worried about a few other things. It was an emotional few hours as we tried to get our heads around the situation. I am really grateful my sister and friend Sylvia were there that afternoon to help me with watching kids so that I could take all the phone calls (I swear my phone was glued to my ear that day) and of course with just the right words of encouragement. My sister had also brought a yummy treat which is always helpful when I'm down!

That night we got the news that Talmage was being life flighted to Miami Children's because he was having seizures.

After that the information stopped coming. We didn't get another true update for a week. It was a long week!

We could get information about how our birth mom was doing but we could no longer get information about Talmage until the consent to the adoption was done or our birth mom signed paperwork letting the adoption agency have rights to Talmage's medical information.  Our birth mom had her own medical issues after the delivery and was in ICU for a few days. Before she could sign the consent to the adoption at 48 hours, the doctor had to clear her medically and that didn't happen. There were many phone calls each day about why we were not getting information but really in my mind our birth mom's lawyer and our agency were not communicating well with each other. Our birthmom was willing to sign paperwork giving us access to Talmage's medical records, but it just didn't happen. She was frustrated and we were frustrated (and angry, and anxious and lots of other feelings!)

Tuesday night March 18th (Talmage was 7 days old) we got the word that our birth mom had signed the paperwork consenting to the adoption. Zane immediately booked tickets and found us a hotel room. By the next morning, my mom and dad moved into our home and we headed to Miami to meet our baby boy.

Miami Children's hospital was so welcoming and did a great job treating us like the parents (that hasn't always been the case for us.) We were at the hospital late Wednesday afternoon and immediately we had nurses calling doctors to come down and give us updates. We welcomed all the news!

 By the time we met Talmage, he was 5 pounds 5 oz. He had a feeding tube and PICC line but was off oxygen. He was also holding his own temperature.

Holding my pinky

Talmage's crib and all the wires/machines hooked to him

Thursday morning though we came in to see Talmage hooked back up to oxygen and his head wrapped up for an EGG to monitor his brain for indications for seizures. A nurse during the night was worried he was having signs of seizures again. He wasn't though so by Friday it was off.

First feed with mommy (through the tube)

My one frustration was that Talmage didn't have a picture with his name on his crib. He had gone a week without a name and I wanted everyone to know this baby did have a name and was loved. (I also wanted a picture of our family taped to his crib for when we were gone but after going to 3 different CVS pharmacies to find all their photo labs not working despite me calling ahead to find out if they were working, we gave up on that. After our short stay in Miami, we came to the conclusion that English is a second language there.) Zane finally took it upon himself to color Talmage a picture with his name on it.

He was busy coloring when all the medical students came through for their teaching/lessons. I kept telling Zane he needed to email his work to let them know that while they were slaving over numbers, he was coloring. Didn't he do a great job?!

The coloring was a representation of how we felt in the hospital. It reminded us of a Psych episode where Shawn tells the medical students to talk to him like he was five and then talk to him like he was three years old. The doctors tried to dumb down the termanology so that we could understand it, but they never succeeded. At one point with the neurologist I was just blunt and asked if he was saying my son may be mentally retarded. He just looked at me in surprise and said what he meant was it is hard to tell the future but Talmage may develop slower. We clearly hadn't been understanding each other! (This doctor has a thick accent so it was even harder to understand his terminology.) Thank goodness the nurses could explain everything and then there were lots of phone calls to my brother who is also a nurse. 

After talking to all the doctors, Zane and I were relieved to realize Talmage is doing just fine. His main focus is learning to eat. After a week of no information and imaging the worse situations, our fears calmed down and we were thrilled to just soak up so much baby time. I think Thursday night was the first time in a week and a half I didn't go to bed with a pounding head ache.

First feed with a bottle- the nurses average 15 ml with him but when I fed him he consistently took between 18 and 25 ml. He liked eating for mommy!

It was super hard to say good bye Saturday morning. Zane and I loved spending so much one on one time together with Talmage. That hasn't happened with any of our kids as babies since Dallin. In the end though Talmage is in great hands and sleeps most of the time. My other three kids need us though. Thank you to my parents for taking such great care of our kids! My mom made my job look too easy! We aren't sure when Talmage will be discharged yet but hopefully soon!

A Little Update

 Instead of blogging, I have been busy teaching (and adoption paperwork, doctor's appointments etc). We have two of Dallin's friends come over and do lessons with us. This gives Dallin a chance to work with a partner and it motivates him to get his school work done so he can play.

 Zane's been busy building our garden. He started working on this soon after we moved in and like so many projects it takes 6 months to finish (kids really slow us down!) The garden fit perfectly on the side of our house so that it is out of sight from the kids and they still have plenty of room to play.

Vegetables are growing! Crossing our fingers for lots of vegetables!

Dallin has been busy learning, playing and enjoying being 6! We really spent all of February celebrating his birthday. More to come on that. 

He also started piano lessons. We started him with a teacher for a month and it didn't really go well. He loves piano and practices with me just fine (meaning he plays a song, bounces on the couch for a little, runs around the room, then comes back to the piano), but he can't focus for thirty minutes with a teacher. We decided to hold off on formal lessons and I just added music to our home school schedule. It is working out well.

 In the below picture Dallin is making Valentine's. He put them all over Zane and my bed. He can be so sweet. He isn't wearing a shirt because we were headed to his swim lessons after making Valentine's. We stopped gymnastics and both boys started weekly swim lessons. They love it. Dallin's backstroke is looking beautiful!

Gavin is as silly as ever. He likes to play dress ups. In the below picture he is Luke Skywalker/Indiana Jones with clown pants.

He loves to do art projects. A lady in my church started an art class once a week and Gavin loves it!

Lili is walking! She started walking two weeks ago and cruises all days long.

 She also loves cuddling with Dallin, and she loves playing with my phone. In fact if you take a phone away from her she screams really loud. She has learn to use that scream effectively to get her way. 

Lili also loves toothpaste. She usually follows me around the house so you can imagine once that I panicked when I couldn't find her. We searched all the rooms on our first floor with no luck and I really started panicking. I ran upstairs frantically calling her name to find her in the kids' bathroom eating the toothpaste with a big smile. Sneaky.

More to come!

I'm Back...With a Pretty Big Announcement

 Oh blog, how I have neglected you. There are so many fun times and important moments to document and yet so little time to do it. I thought I would come back to the blogging world with a pretty big announcement.

Shocked? So were we! And in case you were wondering, Lili will be 16 1/2 months. 

This is an unusual situation for us. In the past when our kids turn 12-18 months old we start thinking about getting our paperwork together to try for another baby knowing the process takes awhile. All our kids our 2 1/2 years apart. When Lili turned one, we were not thinking about paperwork. We knew another baby was meant for our family...eventually. Eventually came sooner than we planned. We were approached by a friend about her family member that wanted to place her baby for adoption. We have worked very hard to find our birthmoms in the past, so to have a situation just fall in our laps was shocking. We put together the world's fastest home study and are praying our FBI clearance comes back in time for us to head out to another state to pick up our baby boy.

In the adoption world, a couple is used to surprises that make you jump and go. We found out about Gavin the day before we left to Florida to go get him. Lili came a month early so we had to hurry and pack for a trip in another state not knowing how long we would be there. Usually, the adoptive couple has been waiting so long for a baby that we do just jump and go. We have put a lot of faith and trust in God's plan and at times felt like we were heading blindly down a path He chose for us.

This adoption feels more like my fertile friends who thought they were done at 4 kids and then surprise, a 5th one is on its way. It has taken me a little bit to get my head around the situation. I'm a control freak with plans and well a baby wasn't part of the plan right now.

But one thing I have learned over and over again with each of my kids is that God's plan is so much better than mine.

For a little I wondered if this baby was actually meant for another couple. We have two friends who have been waiting for a baby since before we got Lili. Zane and I did what we always do when we need answers. We went to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint temple in our area fasting and praying. We both had the confirmation and peace we were seeking knowing we were chosen to be the parents of this child.

I'm still scared though to have kids 16 months apart plus two other kids. I hear being a mom of four kids is easier than three. We will see.

I have lots of help though. Dallin loves babies and has a special bond with them. In the below picture, I was trying to make dinner while the boys got a little TV time. When Lili started fussing to be held by me making dinner prep difficult, Dallin picked her up and cuddled with her. She loves hanging with her big brother.

 Dallin is super excited to have another little brother. He asked Santa Claus for a baby for Christmas.

 Gavin is also a super helper. Right now he and Lili are starting to play together more. Dallin sees Lili as a baby but Gavin sees her as a play mate. I hope they stay close.

And if I need more help, the house across the street is for sell and maybe I can convince my parents to move in there! :)

 

We are super excited to be a family of 6!