Friday, March 30, 2007

a slight chance of gloom

well, i think the rain is getting a tad redundant. i think it is starting to wear on me now. i usually enjoy the rain, and thunderstorms i find thrilling. but enough is enough. or maybe it isn't. today i have experienced an emotion that usually make me uncomfortable. bittersweetism. this is perhaps not technically defined as an emotion per se, but you know what i am talking about. today makes 24 hours without having breastfed knox. i am relieved to feel more confident since he will be drinking from an animal that perhaps has better milk than i at this point. i am curious to see if the weight i have not been able to lose this time around is due in any respect to breastfeeding so long (since i have never gone this long before!). i am elated that soon i will be able to run without wearing 4 sports bras! maybe that was too much information.

i am also pretty sad about it. i have only cried about it once, but today as i look out the window and it is dark and wet, it seems this change is even more sad. i will really miss the bonding in that way. i have never thought of breastfeeding as bonding until this time around. i am still not one who believes that breastfeeding is a way to bond with your baby that cannot be replaced by any other means. i think that is untrue. God has not limited us in expressing and receiving motherly love to this alone. i do not feel like my other children are less loved or less bonded with than knox. i believe adopted children can bond with mothers just as children from her stomach can. that being said; it has been wonderful. i am thankful i was able to stick with it, and then i was even thankful i couldn't stop when i wanted to. i have to admit that if knox were doing better with his weight, i would probably not stop for a while. i know that it is perfectly normal for women to nurse to a year, but for me that never seemed achievable for many reasons!

so, today i am grateful that God has seen fit to have given me this opportunity, and i am also grateful that there is another option and other ways to love and care for knox. he is amazing with his cup. he prefers the type of cup his siblings use to the "baby" cup that i was offering him. he is loving solids, though i can tell he tires of eating mush and constantly tries to take our food right off of our plates! if he would only sprout those teeth that are threatening to come out!

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Happy Birthday and Best Wishes!

Surprise! This is Taryn being surprised at her surprise engagement/birthday party! We had a lot of fun visiting with friends and family at Tim's brother's (amazing) house. We were sad that we couldn't stay for the dinner Tim was cooking up, because he is a legendary chef.

This is Cal aquiescing to some Anna-lovin'. He looks really excited. Not that you can really tell since my husband's beer bottle is hiding Cal in it's shadow.

Taryn got Tim the chef jacket for his birthday. Very nice. He looks like a natural.


Best wishes to Taryn and congratulations to Tim. You know, there is a difference. You always say "best wishes" to the girl and "congratulations" to the boy. It makes sense if you think about it. Well, if you think about it the way I do, which you should!



Wednesday, March 14, 2007

some pics

These are some pictures from our visit last weekend to the OKC Zoo and some from our daily lives. You know, we have the third best zoo in the nation. This weekend they opened a new exhibit called Oklahoma Trails. It is really awesome. We had so much fun and the children, as always, were enthralled by the animals. I have bittersweet feelings about zoos. Ours seems kept very well, but still the imprisonment is very sad. The new exhibit is very open and the animals seem little restricted. Above is Piper the sea lion we watched at the Fin and Feathers show. The children especially enjoyed this. Particularly Knox, who watches it, quite captivated as you can tell in the next picture. Watching this show was great because I got to bring out the sports lens on my camera, which I have rare occasion to employ. I super enjoy using that lens. I felt that I got to enjoy the show as from first row even though our seats were pretty far.


The older ones enjoying the sounds of the scaled down version of Turner Falls. This is part of the new exhibit and it is really cool. There are a couple of waterfalls and the bears seem to enjoy them.


This is Knox at home in his precrawl position. As of today he has officially failed to meet the age standards
for crawling that his older siblings attained. It is not like we love him less because he didn't crawl at five months, but we are a little disappointed. Just kidding. I promise.


We are having a lot of dress up around the house these days. It is really innate in girls to do this because I am just not a makeup or accessory girl and Norah Catherine loves both. Not that we allow her to actually use makeup but she has pretend makeup that she loves to use. How does she know how one puts on lipstick? I have not worn lipstick ever except when Kirsten made me for Valerie Hilliard's wedding. And then Norah Catherine was inside of me so I am pretty sure she couldn't see what we were doing. I think this is all because Chewy lived with us for a summer. No one accessorizes like those Stafford girls.




Whit on the way to his soccer game. He and Aiden play on the same team. So cute. I mean masculine.





this is whit and aiden at soccer practice. it is good to be a soccer mom.







This is Chewy and Norah Catherine on the way out the door to go to ballet. At two and a half, this really means she is in a room with a mirror and spins around until she falls over. And with other girls doing the same thing, it is super fun to her. Definitely amusing for us.






























Friday, March 09, 2007

Trying to Capitalize

So this girl that I used to work with at the Sooner Schooner has been calling me and telling me these crazy things about my Dad. Apparently, since there is no longer family working there to hold him accountable to reality (okay, new family like my stepmother and stepbrothers who have known him for about a year) my Dad has been sharing some of stories of the things he did in his twenties. Let's get the framework going here: My mom married my (step) Dad when I was like eighteen months old. He was twenty. He had not been to college yet and was just working. I think he delivered Tombstone pizzas to local grocery stores. Again, he was twenty when they were married. My brother, mother, and I began living with this man (or really, boy). He grew up in Warner Robin Georgia, but moved to Oklahoma after graduating. Or so I thought. He told Addison* and anyone who now works there or who patronizes the Schooner the following:

1. He played football at Georgia for two years and was then drafted to the NFL.
2. He played football for the Baltimore Colts.
3. He had a band in college called Roundhouse. Alleged band opened for the Allman brothers. One of the Allman brothers thought he was such an amazing drummer that he asked my dad to go to LA with him to help this obscure musician write this obscure song. Who was it? Oh yeah, ERIC CLAPTON. What song? LAYLA.
4. He previously was an overseas assasin for the government. Hmm. I always thought it took him a long time to get home from coaching soccer every weekend.
5. This one I won't detail because I am still recovering from the nastiness of it, but it has something to do with a renown (or so I am told) adult film star and their having a competition and my dad wasn't the loser.
6. He trained kickboxers in Europe for a few years. This is the only one with even a hint of truth, he was a kickboxer and then did train other boxer/kickboxers/karate people, not so much in Europe, unless that was the code name for our garage.

No doubt there are more, but these are the most outrageous. I don't even know what to say to this girl when she calls to tell me these things. I hesitated to even post about this because even though it is funny and yet it is so sad. Exaggeration is one thing. This is not even smart. Does he not think Addison will call me and ask me about it? "Was your dad mysteriously ever gone as you were growing up, perhaps overseas assasinating people?" Yeah, not so much. Does he not think that maybe people will have the tiniest shred of dubiosity towards as to his genuineness? Maybe run a quick search on the internet to see about the NFL thing or the Georgia Bulldog thing? Maybe in a couple of years we will hear about how he and Al Gore put their heads together to end global warming.