3 Months

Little Pirate turned three months old on Tuesday. He's looking so much bigger already! And him turning three months means that we sent our first set of pictures and a letter to the birth mom. Well, we mailed it all to the agency and then they will get it to her.

For some adoptive parents, this isn't easy to do. But honestly, I was SO excited to send in pictures. I've been dying for her to get some for weeks now. I just can't wait for her to see how absolutely adorable the little life she created is.

I wish I could watch her look through the pictures. I want to tell her all the teeny-tiny, pointless stories behind each picture. I imagine her "oohing" and "aahing" over each sweet little face. The totally asleep and non-smile faces that only a mom could truly appreciate.

That's the beautiful thing about adoption. Little Pirate has two mom's who love him with a crazy passion. I am the mom who will raise him and she is his first mom who gave him life. Although we may not see her and directly communcate, she still is a part of our family. Without her, our family wouldn't exist.

I could not feel more blessed to know her and be able to say that she is in our family.

First Halloween

What a wonderful experience it was to finally celebrate Halloween with a child! Halloween is my favorite holiday, so I've been waiting for this for such a long time. Of course, Little Pirate wasn't able to do much since he wasn't even three months old. But it was still so much fun and I loved getting to celebrate his first Halloween.

We had a busy weekend full with a wedding, birthday party, Fall Festival at our church, and then trick or treating on Monday. Great memories and I can't wait for next year!

At the birthday party with his oldest cousin.

She wanted to help Nana give him his bottle. So sweet!

With the birthday boy and his only boy cousin. They're going to have a lot of fun growing up with each other!

My boys at the Fall Festival.

Trick or treating at Nana and Papa's door. He decided to take a nap for a little bit.

Our pirate family!

His trick or treating buddies on Halloween night.

He fell asleep during trick or treating too. But yes, I did still get candy for us him.

Lots of fun!

Puzzle Update

Okay, folks, get excited...this is a legitimate puzzle update! The first one since Little Pirate has been born. We don't actually have all of the sold pieces together in this picture shown. Like I've said, it takes a lot longer to work on it now. But I do have all of the stats for you!

The last update I gave you was on August 7th and we had sold a total of 436 pieces. Since then we have sold 302 more pieces!! That puts us at a total of 738 pieces sold. Only 269 pieces left to go!

So please keep spreading the word about us. Once we sell those 269 pieces, we will be completely done! That will give us all the money we need to pay for Little Pirate's adoption.

As always, thank you so much to everyone who has given already. You will never know how much we appreciate you and what a big part of our lives you are.

2 Months

So I'm a pretty terrible blogger now. Someone is keeping me pretty busy, but I don't mind. :) Here is Little Pirate's two month picture. It is amazing the difference between one month and two months. He definitely hit a growth spurt! Barely even looks like the same baby!

And here are some pictures from his first trip to the pumpkin patch. It was a dream come true for me to get to do that. Fall is my favorite time of they year and Halloween is my favorite holiday. I was enjoying every moment and can't wait for many more years of this!

Fun at the pumpkin patch with some of his buddies!

Me and my boy!

In his first hay bale maze. He was real excited about it...

Getting his diaper changed in said hay bale maze. haha!

Headed out on the hayride out to the real pumpkin patch.

On the way home with his first pumpkin!

Mommy Lessons From the Mall

Last Friday night the hubs and I went to the mall to accomplish a few errands. It wasn't the first time we've gone since Little Pirate has been born. We went a month ago when he was about four weeks old. But somehow this trip was more eventful than the first one. It even taught me a few "Mommy Lessons" that I thought I'd share with you all!

Lesson #1 - Some stores just simply aren't stroller friendly. We were in the store PacSun when I learned this lesson. Which is not a store I would normally shop in, but we were looking for a present. The rows of clothes were packed in so close together. I could barely maneuver through with our giant stroller. I was also in the way of someone at least five different times. And then Little Pirate started crying. I was just ready to get out of there! So I let the hubs finish the browsing while Little Pirate and I sat outside of the store on a bench. Definitely won't be going back in there anytime soon, at least not with a stroller.

Lesson #2 - It's not easy to find a changing table. No, seriously, I couldn't find one anywhere! There wasn't one out in the open in the women's bathroom. I checked the handicap stalls and didn't see a thing. I even walked around trying to find a family bathroom for a minute, but no luck. So I gave up. A few minutes later the hubs decided to check the men's bathroom, just incase. He returned with a triumphant look on his face and had Little Pirate in a clean diaper. I swear, there really wasn't one in the women's bathroom!

Lesson #3 - I'm officially in the "Mom Club" now. As I was wandering around the women's bathroom looking for the changing table, I had a lady stop me. She was in there with her son and said, "Are you needing to change him or do you need to go to the bathroom??" She sounded quite concerned. I think if I had told her I needed to go, she might have been about to offer to hold Little Pirate for me. Not sure I would have taken her up on that offer, but still, it was nice. A mom trying to help out another mom. It just made me feel special to actually be in that exclusive "Mom Club" I've been coveting for so long.

Lesson #4 - Strangers are really nice when you have a baby. The previous story is an example of this, but I have another one as well. After the diaper changing fiasco, I sat down in the food court to feed Little Pirate a bottle. I settled in at a table that was right next to a man who was probably in his early 50's eating dinner. He saw Little Pirate and immediately struck up a conversation with me. (He had a wedding ring on, so that means he wasn't a creeper, right??) He asked about if Little Pirate sleeps well, talked about his own kids, and just kept smiling at my boy. Soon enough Little Pirate was done eating and was sitting up just looking around. Before the man left he stroked Little Pirate's cheek, looked at me, and said, "He's going to be a fine young man some day." Normally a stranger touching my baby would creep me out and bother me, but for some reason this didn't. It was just a sweet moment from a sweet man that I really appreciated.

Lesson #5 - My baby is really cute. I know, I know...every baby is cute. But seriously, we get stopped like crazy! People "ooh" and "ahh" over him all the time when we're out and about. We went into Bath and Body Works and a worker recognized him from when we were there a month ago! When does that happen?? That just means that my baby's really super cute, right? That he's just so incredibly memorable. That's what I think it means at least. :)

Lesson #6 - I am now wider than I used to be. After the Bath and Body Works worker fawned over Little Pirate, I turned around to walk the other way and proceeded to knock over the corner of a display with our diaper bag. Slightly embarrassing, to say the least. We use a backpack as our diaper bag and I just can't seem to remember that I have some extra width back there now. The hubs helped me quickly set things back up and then we hurried out of there.

We were definitely done with the mall for the evening at that point! I'm sure we'll be waiting at least another month before we do that again. After all, I can find nice strangers who think my baby's cute just about anywhere! ;)

1 Month

I'm a little behind on writing this since Little Pirate is 6 weeks old today, but here is our one month post! This may be pretty boring to most people, but it's all the little things I want to remember about my baby boy. He's changing every day and I don't want to forget a thing.

It really is hard to believe that time is passing by so quickly. It has been so much fun to watch Little Pirate grow and develop. He is, naturally, awake a lot more lately. During that awake time he loves to give us lots of smiles while we just sit there and talk to him. It definitely melts your heart and makes the 4:00 am feedings all worthwhile.

Two weeks ago Little Pirate had to go to the doctor for his first "sick visit". He'd been having some grey colored stools that just did not seem natural at all. Our doctor at first thought this might be due to bile being backed up in his system. We had to take him to have some blood drawn to check his bilirubin levels, which all turned out to be normal. Thanks goodness! The next thought was thought he probably had an ulcer (which isn't uncommon for babies) and the discolored stools was from bleeding. We started him on some Axid and everything has become normal since then.

On Saturday I took him in to be seen again for his spitting up. (Yes, our doctor is open on Saturday's. Yes, he's awesome. No, I'm not biased because I work there and he's my boss.) ;) We ended up switching his formula again, so I'm hoping this one will work a little better. We first started him out on Enfamil Newborn, then went to Enfamil Gentlease, and now we're trying Enfamil A.R. It is a heavier formula, which has caused him to sleep a little bit longer during the night. I'm not complaining! :)

Little Pirate's skin tone continues to get darker and darker. He's African American and Caucasian, so right now he has that gorgeous olive color. But I've been told that the more he's out in the sun, he'll probably continue to get darker until he's about 18 months or 2 years old. We'll see what he's looking like after his first summer out in the sun!

It's been a lot of fun taking Little Pirate out places with us. We're a social couple and we like to go places. We don't spend a ton of time at home. We don't plan on having a baby slow us down much, within reason of course. Within the first few weeks so many people would ask us, "Oh, is this his first time out??" and we'd just tell them no, that'd he'd already been plenty of places before.

I wish I could give this blog credit, but I don't remember where I saw it... But one time I read a blog where a mom was talking about this same thing. She said that they never stayed at home or skipped out on something simply because they had a child now. She believed that as a result of that, her child was a lot more social and had a flourishing vocabulary. I hope to see the same things for our Little Pirate.

As a mom I've seen myself become emotional over some of the silliest things as my baby boy grows up...like moving into size 1 diapers, certain little onesies already being too small, and all the other little things to come with time. Parenthood is such an incredible journey and I feel so blessed that the hubs and I were handpicked to be Little Pirate's parents.

His first balloon!

His pirate themed baby shower! I plan on blogging about this as well. I have a bit of catching up to do on here.

My sleepy boys.

One of Little Pirate's adoring cousin.

About to get his heel pricked to test his bilirubin levels.

He is adored by many people!

Sitting like a big boy in his Bumbo! He can hold his head up for several minutes at a time, so we like putting him in that seat every once and a while.

Dressed and ready for his first wedding in his bowtie and suspenders onesie!

Playing at the park with some friends!

And now for his one month professional pictures by our great friend at Jenny White Photography...

Puzzle Update

I promise, promise that a puzzle update is coming soon! It's just been a little hard to work on with this cute little face around now. :) But we do still have a few hundred pieces left and definitely need to sell them, so please don't forget about us!

Thankfully, we are so close to our $30,000 goal that all we need to do is finish the puzzle and we will have all of our money together. But the puzzle must be completed. So keep spreading our name around and we will work hard on keeping you updated on everything. Thank you!!

In other news, let me just say... Being a Mommy is SO amazing! I can't believe the hubs and I were chosen to be Little Pirate's parents. We are beyond blessed and love him more than words could ever express.

Two Weeks Old

Confession: I used to be one of those people who never understood it when mom's would say stuff like, "I can't believe my baby's 6 months old!" I mean, you were there for the whole six months, right? It's not like you were away for half of it.

But here I am. As we drove to the doctors office on Monday for Little Pirate's checkup I was saying, "I can't believe my baby's two weeks old!!" So yes, I'm one of them now. But really, how did two weeks go by so fast??

In these wonderful two weeks we've had so much fun. Baths, outings, naps together, tummy time, rolling over. Yes, rolling over! My two week old can roll over from his tummy to his back. He's definitely going to keep us on our toes. And I know we'll love every second of it!

He LOVES being on his tummy! Passed out asleep.

2 week checkup

First trip to Target!

Wide eyed

We have happy moments and some very fussy moments. :)

He has little sideburns already! hehe!

Just saying a little prayer.

First time in a highchair at my parents house. He looks so teeny tiny in it!

First real bath. Yeah, he hated it. haha!

Our best friends son helping the hubs carry Little Pirate out of a restaurant. As we were walking by we heard someone say, "Aww, look at that big brother helping carry his little brother!" It's so true for them. They will be best buddies.

The boys just hanging out.

Enjoying a nap on his tummy on the Boppy pillow.

The rolling over wonder!