Four! Seriously....Four Years Old!

Georgia asked to see a picture of herself when she was "just a little bitty baby born in the hospital" today.  We flipped through a few pages of our first picture book that she's a part of and it is just mind-blowing to me to look at those pictures of four extremely short years ago and know that the girl I am in those pictures and the baby that she was in those pictures would become the people we are today; so completely transformed, and me.......so much better because of Georgia.

I interviewed Georgia today and asked her a few questions about being four and what we should remember about her as she says good-bye to three.

And the video was really cute.  And I've been trying for the last hour to get Vimeo and Flickr and even You Tube to upload it and neither one will cooperate.  I've spoken nicely to the computer screen and not so nicely.  It's not responding to either.  I've done the same thing I always do to upload videos to Vimeo.....to no avail. So, I'm giving up on the video.

I knew vlogging wasn't in the cards for me.

We celebrated the big four on Saturday with a Peter Pan birthday party.  I gotta be honest....I ignored my camera for most of the afternoon and just talked and laughed and watched Georgia without a Canon in my face.  Sometimes that's kind of a relief to give yourself permission to just........be.  I took enough pictures to fill up the birthday page in the photo album for 2013...but that's it.  Here's a few......

One of my favorite Pinterest ideas ever....Buy one of those Little Golden books that cost about $4 (the cardboard covered ones).  They come in just about every little kid birthday theme under the rainbow.  Make a banner out of the pages!  So incredibly easy and tells a great story!

I made the cake.  From a box.  And added some almond extract to rock it out.  Oh, and I burned one of the layers.  Thankfully, in retrospect, a four layer cake would have been crazy and I'm going to say it burned itself (even though I put it on the bottom rack and I guess that's a no-no).  The alligator cookies; a woman I work with made them. So cute!

The three of us with Tarah & her mom Sharon. 

Georgia really was having a good time. I think she was all, "Mom....I thought we were going to cut back on the camera this time."

Thankfully, my camera snapped this keeper.  Georgia & Tarah.

And just a few we grabbed with phones.........

And today........a new year......the first picture of myself with my brand new big four year old.  Gulp.

"On my bobom."

I found this video buried on my desktop last week.  Georgia was about one and half at the time and just like today.....back then she had extremely strong opinions on very important things like what we used on her bottom, ahem, bobom, for diaper rash.  I remember after we taped this little conversation Chris and I watched it over and over and laughed and laughed.  It was just so quintessentially her.  And when I found it last week we had the same reaction.  Because it's still so her in a nutshell.  

But at the same that finding it is just so awesome, like finding a $20 bill in your spring coat from last year, it's so sad because it was so long ago.  And so much has happened since.  Some of it, a lot of it, that I can't remember and while I can't expect to remember three years of details like what kind of diaper rash cream Georgia preferred, it's one of those mom things that you just feel like you should remember.  She's my kid.  Mine.  Nothing is more important to me on this planet than her and her daddy.  

It's just another one of those reminders to make the most of every moment when you're in them because chances are....you're not going to remember that many little moments.....that ones that truly end up defining who you are as an individual and as a family.  Of course you'll remember some, maybe more than some.  But you can't remember them all--and as sad as that may be, it's just the truth.  So all we can do as mamas is make the most of them when they're happening and hope that a few of those fleeting bits of sand stick in the palms of our hands forever.  

And speaking of sand.......(let's hear it for bad segues), 

We went to the beach this weekend.  I've never, in over a decade of living in West Michigan, gone to the beach in the winter.  Which is crazy--it's like a college rite of passage here in Grand Rapids to spend some precarious moments out on the frozen white caps--but I'd never done it and I really wanted to.  It was a little late in the season to fully appreciate it--things had started to melt, the snow was a little dirty, and we couldn't tell exactly what was frozen and what wasn't so we had to be extra careful--especially with an almost four year old.  But we did it.  And it was hilarious.  We laughed, Georgia begged to be carried, Chris warned us about being careful, frequently, I told him to relax more than I should have, and we breathed in Lake Michigan fresh air.  

Before we left the house I thought, "Is this really going to be fun?  Should we just stay home?  It's starting to drizzle.  A movie and a nap would be fun awesome."  But the thing is--it's a moment.  A moment that was going to pass and that day--I was in the mood to capture it.  I'm not everyday--no one is and that's okay, but when we feel a flutter of it, we should snatch it.  Because if we don't snatch them when they come, those feelings might not come as frequently.  

Who knew....my husband can juggle. 

My daughter can't however. 

This is Chris's poster for a movie called, "The Last Man on Earth." 

So snatch those feelings when you can.  They usually won't let you down. 

Triangle & Arrow Stuff

Quenching my need to shop online but not actually buy anything, I bring you another round of nine things.  I consider these montages a goodwill initiative as well--I mean...if anyone is ever wondering what to buy me as a present.....hello?

Arrows and triangles are pretty much everywhere right now and I love their simplicity and modern feel.  I bring you my nine favorite arrow and triangle things..........
at least right now.

1.  Little Boogaweezin leggings for kiddos!  Love these, love these, love these and I wish they came in adult sizes.

2.  Candy Kirby......I found this amazing lady on Instagram and have been dreaming of cuddling up in her blankets ever since. 

3.  Chicwish never disappoints.  Pretty sure I could make this sweater a staple for the next few months. Pretty sure. 

4.  Not shocking--but Target carries this triangle awesomeness.  And it matches my living room. 

5.  I own the turquoise version of this garland.....and it's pretty adorable.  The yellow one might not be far behind. 

6. Have you registered for Brickyard Buffalo yet?  It's like Groop Dealz, but with good stuff, that doesn't break, and isn't 100x smaller than it looked in the picture.  And right now, they have these pillow covers.  And I like them a lot.
7. This beauty is about to kick a stretched out Otterbox to the curb.
8. I was thankful for the invite to a Stella and Dot jewelry party last week in the new hood.  Usually I feel like I have to force myself into picking out the cheapest, most acceptable thing in those home party catalogs--but this little bracelet--I knew it was there and I was happy to bring it home.
9. Sometimes, actually a lot of times, JC Penney, really delivers.  My sister and I were actually talking a few weeks ago about how they might just be one of the best kept secrets.  I believe this pendant light possibly proves this theory.  

You Say It's Your Birthday......

This girl.......

Seriously.  Is she not adorable?  

turned into this girl........

and today she's 31!

Happy Birthday little sister.
I'm sorry for pinching your eye (really hard) that one time at the piano. And I'm sorry for ratting you out and telling mom and dad you peed behind the hill in the backyard even though I did it too.

And that's pretty much the only fights I ever really remember getting into with you while we were growing up.  Honestly.

I know there were more.  I mean, there was the way you avoided doing dishes every night--that special way--and that time you cut yourself or something and told mom and dad I did it (which was right after the eye pinching incident so it was clearly believable--well played, well played)......but really......you were an easy little sister to grow up with....and a fun one.

And even though you're 31 today--you're still really like eight in my book.  I think you'll be eight until you're eighty.

Love you whimsickle!  And your little Georgia loves you like crazy too.
Hope year thirty one is your best one yet.

What does openness mean to me?

The Open Adoption Roundtable is a series of occasional writing prompts about open adoption. It’s designed to showcase the diversity of thought and experience in the open adoption community. You don’t need to be listed at Open Adoption Bloggers to participate or even be in a traditional open adoption. If you’re thinking about openness in adoption, you have a place at the table. The prompts are meant to be starting points–please feel free to adapt or expand on them. 

For us, the definition of open adoption is fluid.  And by that I mean, we learn more everyday about why we love it so much.  It's kind of like when your child is born--you know you love them.

And then, when your child is six months old the degree of love you feel for them is staggering. You never knew it'd be possible to feel this way about someone who has so completely altered your life in ways that include sleep deprivation and mountains of laundry.  

A year roles around and the love for your baby takes your breath away.  It's hard to remember a time when you didn't love them. 

At two years there is almost no one other than this amazing little person you're raising that you'd rather spend time with.  

Three years old and you love them so much that even when they've given you hell all day long you can't wait for them to wake up in the morning (anytime after 6:30 a.m.) and crawl into your bed with you and do it all over again. 

And as their fourth birthday approaches the love has compounded so exponentially that you start to panic that you haven't soaked enough of your child in, you might have wasted some precious moment of their first four years that you'll never get back, and the weight of raising this fantastic human is so heavy, and such an honor.  

The love.  It takes over in this all consuming way that is so good.  So good that you can't believe you ever questioned if kids were what you wanted.  So good that no matter how lofty your career aspirations were before kids you can't imagine anything more important than your baby.  Because they will forever be your baby.  So good that even on hard days, excruciatingly hard and uncomfortable and soul stretching days, you wouldn't take anything back because you know you are a better person because of your child.  So good that when you think ahead to eight years old and twelve years old and seventeen years old and twenty five years old you get teary because you so desperately want to stop the passage of time from inevitably slipping through your fingers.   

Your love for your child is fluid.  Not in an ebb and flow kind of way.  In a growing so huge it re-defines who you are in the greatest way kind of way. 

And that's what openness in adoption has become for me.  I had no idea how crucial it would be, how much I'd need it, for me, for my daughter, when we first met her expectant parents. I knew as soon as we met them, that my hard resolve against an open adoption began to melt.  And every time we saw them before our daughter was born it melted some more until there was nothing left of it.  In it's place was instead, a hardened resolve to have an open adoption--the kind of open adoption that I used to think was irresponsible and confusing and just too much.  

And that feeling, that need, has only grown in the first four years of my daughters life.  

When Georgia tells me she loves Tarah, I love open adoption more. 

When Georgia begs to go swimming at Tarah's house, I love open adoption more. 

When I see Georgia so comfortable at Tarah's house that she walks right over to the popcorn maker and helps herself, I love open adoption more. 

When Georgia tells me that she has hair the color of honey, just like Tarah's, I really love open adoption more. 

When Georgia astounds me everyday with her seemingly endless supply of energy and zest for life, I love open adoption more because I know she's inherited that from her amazing birth grandma--a woman with more passion for life than most I know.  

When I miss Georgia's birth family if it's been a month or two since we've seen them, I love open adoption even more......because it's then that I know, adoption isn't just incredible because of the gift of our daughter, but because of the gift of the families that she started with--who I now think of as family.  

And as Georgia gets older and continues to process her adoption in different ways, I know that openness will mean a life-line for us, and for her.  It will mean she can ask questions and get concrete answers.  She can express feelings that we'll all hear and be able to respond to.  It will mean that the truth about where she came from and who she is will never be a mystery to her.  

We went swimming today at Tarah's house.  Georgia is usually terrified of water.  Even though we go swimming there every time we're over, she's still terrified.  But today, she was a different girl in the water.  She ventured out on her own.  She believed us when we all told her she could touch the bottom of the shallow side of the pool and tried it, and was so excited.  She didn't really want anyone holding onto her after that.  She wanted to be a big girl on her own.  And in that moment I loved openness again, because all that confidence that she got to stop screaming in the water and trust us and see what she could do? She got it from all of us.  Because we all love her.  And I love that we get to do it together.

I don't think I'll ever get to the period in my definition of what openness means to me.  It will be the biggest and best run-on sentence of my life.