Dave and Linda Boris treated us to lunch this week.
Wow, kids are easy to have at a restaurant when they are one month old! Well, the sleeping ones are, anyway. :-)
In Tuscaloosa they got a mile-wide tornado ("bigger than 100 elephants stacked on one another?", Sam asked) and Rochester got a heavy downpour. We won't complain.
It goes without saying that Sam and I had to investigate. We were rewarded with a beautiful rosy sunset, a huge arcing rainbow, and the company of several fellow gawkers.
Hope you enjoy the photos!
A fine weekend. Sam wore his first vest and tie to church today (under protest). Enjoyed the company of friends, Corinne and Juli, for Easter dinner. Joshua, who is vibrating away in the bouncy chair as I write, slept two three-hour stretches last night, which was a real gift from God.
Yesterday, skyped with Mom and Dad and Amy, which was a treat. Next time we do it, maybe Joshua will be awake.
Gorgeous weather yesterday, so we god some good playground time. The fresh air did us all good.
While saying prayers we each always thank God for two things. These can be very random. Tonight Sam actually thanked God for Joshua. It's possible that is partially motivated by the kindness people have shown in giving Sam gifts when they give them to Josh--but I think he's got a good attitude most of the time as well.
An attitude which soared when Kate, an old friend who used to watch Sam when he is young and is now a nurse (or in nursing school?)--anyway when Kate gave Sam all her old Legos! It's a big box, and she says when she was a kid she loved Legos. She certainly kept a great collection, and Sam was in heaven today exploring them.
Also included: A movie of Josh at bedtime, inert. At least, til 2 AM.
An eventful weekend. Included are photos of Sam at Friday Gym Frolics, a small-group baby shower, and Sunday Easter-egg dying. (Dieing?)
At FGF Sam is shown playing with a parachute, and rescuing "canaries" from the "cat"--i.e., Mister Dave. This was Friday afternoon, and my first time attending. Fun!
Our generous small-group friends held a baby shower for Joshua. They were all very kind about including Sam as well. Hors d'oevres, pleasant conversation and very thoughtful gifts!
Notice Dave Dill reading to Sam. Despite plans to go on a trip the next day, Heidi and Dave agreed, last-minute, to host, when an emergency made the Elliots' unavailable. On top of them, they were very king about playing with Sam the whole time. It was a restful evening to say the least.
All this is in addition to the many very thoughtful gifts which our families have sent from afar (or sent by courier--Stu!). And some local friends have even given us meals, which has proven immensely useful! I had wondered if the attitude with #2 would be: We gave you gifts for #1; for #2, well, you knew what was coming! But the generosity keeps flowing.
Little Micron continues to be very even-tempered. He nominally goes 2-3 hours between feedings, which ought to mean that if we take shifts we could each get 4-6 hours of sleep at a stretch. Unfortunately, he was up another three separate hours, once with gas pains, the other two... I am not sure. Susan drew the short straw for them. Tomorrow morning we take him to the doc for his first well-baby-sleepy-parent checkup. We will be interested to hear what he says. Josh's getting gas drops with each meal, but given last night's experience, saying they are preventing gas is a little like saying they are keeping the crocodiles away. Correlation, causation, blah blah blah.
But I am not willing to stop using them.
Hi all! Exciting day yesterday. Right now Joshua is sleeping in the car seat in the kitchen, so I have a moment to send some info. Recall Uncle Stu drove up Tuesday night. Yesterday morning we all headed out for Syracuse at 10 AM. After a quick lunch (Red Lobster--our tradition whenever we adopt), we went to the agency.
First we signed several documents, while Stu and Sam read books in a waiting room. Then the foster couple came in with Joshua. She is a retired nurse, and did us some important favors by discovering which diapers he doesn't wet through, and by identifying the right brand of formula to use. (On two standard brands he was terribly constipated--five days!) They were a sweet couple, and this was their first time as foster parents, and it was clear they loved him tremendously and took great care of him. The notes she gave us read like a manual designed particularly for him.
We talked for quite some time with them and the agency staff. (In the photo below, Linda, our caseworker, is on the right, and the foster father is on the left.) It's always an exciting day for them as well when everything comes together. We left around 3:30. Joshua was a good traveler all the way back to Rochester, waking up at the very end to tell us with indignation that he was due for a feeding.
Sam was great through the whole thing. He is in heaven when Uncle Stu plays with him. But he's also really taken to the idea of being an older brother. So, no resentment as yet. I am hopeful he'll continue to have a good attitude, at least most of the time.
Last night we didn't get all that much sleep. The foster mother said he's been sleeping 3-4 hours between feedings, but the cold (I turn the heat to 62 at night) and the new environment had him up more often, and us with him. Tonight we'll be smart and go to sleep a little earlier.
Big weekend!
At some point in the weekend we were talking about the baby and Sam started acting babyish to get attention. I took a moment to point out all the things he can do which the baby can't. Hopefully we can keep the focus on that. A friend, Jim, has two boys with the same age difference. He says the first year with both was not rough on the older one. It was only when the younger became able to crawl and get into his stuff that it got hard for him.
Last night we made a trip to Babies R Us to buy some essentials. Susan had Sam pick out a couple of toys for the baby, which Sam appreciated. The weather mirrored our mood--it was warm and the sky was aglow with a beautiful sunset. There's something magical about wandering through a nearly empty B-R-Us on a Sunday night, as if the store were reserved just for equipping our new family member.
Took Sam to the Play Museum on Saturday. There is a new Tinker-Toy exhibit. We sat building toys for quite some time at a big table filled with U of R engineering frat brothers. (One said "Damn!" and the others scolded him sotto voce for cursing in front of a minor :-) The P.M. was also hosting some sort of Princesspalooza, including a station were girls could get their hair made up. Fortunately we came in on the tail end of that and just got to wade through the rubble afterward. Which is why you see Sam playing with a castle. The P.M. also has a new toucan, so we went into the Butterfly room. High 80s and humid--a nice taste of things to come.
This weekend we also finished stripping and scraping and priming the walls of the nursery. My good friend Andy helped, which somehow made it an incarnational moment. It's impossible to overestimate, I think, the value of just being present in others' lives. (His is ours, in this case.) One reason why we are so excited to see Uncle Stu on Tuesday, and my parents and sister in May, and Sue and Kevin and Emily in June, and Katie in the summer, and Ruth and Paul and Jon and the other Gilberts and Mansons as soon we can get out their way!
This morning Sam went off by himself and sat on the family-room couch holding a stuffed bunny which itself was holding a tinier stuffed bunny. During the drive in he said he liked it because it reminded him of him and the baby.
This weekend the temperature spiked into the low 50s, so Sam and I made a trip to the Zoo. We have seen various interesting things at the zoo. Once in deep winter, when we were about the only ones there, we got to play with a bored and lonely sea lion, who chased Sam back and forth across the glass walls of his tank. Another time the wolves howled a soul-chilling cry like nothing out of a Disney movie. 
This time we got to see the polar bears being fed. There are two now. You really have no idea how huge they are until they are diving down ten feet from you to pick a fish off the bottom of the tank.
For the first time we also got to see the rhinos, well, doing about anything. During this visit we got to see them locking horns, one slowly and deliberately pushing the other back step by step until he yielded. Susan tells me they are, in fact, brothers.
Our river otter is the oldest in captivity in North America. New within the last year is a younger mate for him. He and his new companion were happily cavorting in and out of the water.
Other than that... let's see. Susan and I stripped wallpaper in what might at some point turn into a nursery. And we all played UNO during nursery duty at church Sunday night. Sam's an UNO fiend these days. Can't get enough of it.
Started reading the Magic Tree House series of books to Sam. A young brother and sister get sent on missions to exotic times and places, which gives the author the excuse to teach about medieval Japan, ancient Arabia, African cloud forests, etc. These are chapter books. I had resisted chapter books, but Sam is enjoying getting something of somewhat greater depth. Right now we are in medieval Japan. This is timely, since at the end of the month some very good friends from Japan will be visiting.
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