Home again, home again, jiggety-jig

So, uh, hey there.  How are you?  Long time, right?  I've been MIA, so let me catch you up on the haps over the last several months.

• Our day in court!  It was a neat experience to have the judge pronounce us officially as a family...but it was just the penultimate.  The warm-up, if you will.  The judge had the power to pronounce us a family till we die.  But that's not what we're in this for.  Eternity or bust, if you will.

The Whites...officially!

• We were sealed in the Mesa LDS temple for time and all eternity.  It was so special to have (some of) our family and friends join us for the most special day of our lives together.  When Baby Girl's hand was placed on ours in the sealing room, I don't think there was a dry eye in the room.  Incredible experience, one I'll never forget.

Practice run seeing the Mesa Temple lights

After we had been sealed for time and all eternity (and, yes, I'd dyed my hair redder for the occasion)

• I returned to work on Halloween.  It was awful.  I found that "awful" became "barely tolerable" after the first couple of weeks, but it was a no-brainer that I was going to leave.  It was hard saying goodbye to friends, but for the close friends, I know it won't really be goodbye (and I've already been able to prove that with several of them).  There were tiny flickers of temptation and reminders that accolades and success feel really, really nice.  Ultimately, though, it was a ridiculously easy decision to make.  A non-decision, really.  December 31st was a great day.

Last day in the office

• Baby Girl had her first Thanksgiving and her first Christmas (and New Years, and Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and...you get the picture), and they were beyond special and fun.  We made a point of getting BG "presents" that we were already planning to get her (being a cute new mom is fun, and all, but she thinks wrapping paper is a plate of truffles, y'all.  She doesn't care about presents), and we all had new pajamas.  I woke up early and brought BG in to "wake up" Daddy.  Cutest thing, watching 22's face.    

Halloween - we went to Birth Mom's family's Halloween party - it was a "Witch and Wizard" theme.  So we went as Wizards.  Washington style.  

Christmas

• New teeth, waving, shaking her head, sitting up, eating real food, saying "da da," "ba ba," "blah," "bthe," and "boof."

First tooth!

Getting her snack on

• Having random strangers consistently try to touch her and hold her and squeeze her...turns out that NEVER gets old.  EVER.  

• DISNEYLAND!  Baby Girl rocked that sucker (and Huntington Beach, and museums, and Wahoo's Fish Tacos black beans) like a champ.  Mickey made a guest appearance in her weekly bear pic.  She thought he was delicious, of course, but let's face it:  she has rubbish taste.  Girl.Eats.Anything.

Huntington Beach Pier

Mickey's special appearance

• BG went to her first spring training game!  The short stop for the White Sox, whom we were seeing, saw me with BG and tossed her a ball! How cute is that?

• Oh, and what else has been happening?  About eleventy million other cute things.  :)  

The last 8 1/2 months have been the best and happiest of my (already happy) life.  I pray every day to my Heavenly Father to thank him for each of these moments, and so many more.  I'm thankful every day, too, that 22 and I were committed to being happy in our blessings before BG came along, rather than focusing on the blessings we lacked.  In every possible way, she has only amplified (greatly) what joy was already there.  I think if we hadn't been living to have joy (2 Ne 2:27), we couldn't have experienced this new level of joy so fully.  So, for my dear friends who are still struggling with this trial that we struggled with for so long, be happy.  Happiness multiplied by misery ultimately doesn't yield happiness.  Happiness multiplied by happiness, however, equals crazy happiness.  

And I like it.

Remembering Suzy

In the four weeks since Baby Girl has been home, I've thought constantly about my mom and remembered things I haven't thought about in years.  Because Baby Girl's adoption happened so quickly, I'm just now thinking how to decorate her room.  As I've done so, a poem came to my mind called "Song for a Fifth Child," by Ruth Hulburt Hamilton.  My mom had a cross-stitch of the last stanza featuring a woman rocking her baby up in our dining room.

"...cleaning and scrubbing can wait till tomorrow,
For babies grow up, we've learned to our sorrow.
So quiet down, cobwebs. Dust go to sleep.
I’m rocking my baby and babies don’t keep."

Sweet, isn't it?  I can already understand the feelings that inspired my mom to put up this poem.  I take pride in keeping a tidy, comfortable home.  But I find myself not minding the things that are out of place as much.  Even as I look forward to each new day with Baby Girl, I'm jealous of every day that passes.  Babies don't keep.  My mom knew that.

Another reminder of my mom has been the Olympics.  My mom was sick in 1988 for both the summer and winter Olympics, but I distinctly remember sitting upstairs on the bed with her and watching different events and cheering on the Americans (my poor, displaced, American mother living in Canada.  Sigh.).  I've loved watching the events even more because of those memories of lying on the bed with my mom.

I've adored getting to make new memories of the Olympics by being at home with Baby Girl throughout the London games, too.  Granted, the memories have really been of staring at Baby Girl while I hear a low hum in the background.  I've stared at her delightfully expressive little face as she's eaten or started falling asleep or, really, done anything.  Whenever I put a bottle in her mouth, she grimaces in disgust and clicks her tongue a few times until it hits her that this is manna from baby heaven, and she partakes with vigor.  And when she's falling asleep, she goes from sleepy smiles and giggles to shudders and frowns and little panting sighs in the blink of her half-closed eyes.  It's hilarious, and I'm glued to her face.

In fact, I've missed out on significant events because of my enamor of Baby Girl.  22 came home several days ago laughing about the German diver, Stephen Feck, and his epic fail of a backward belly flop.  Straight 0s.  Knowing that it was all Olympics, all day for me, 22 naturally asked me what I thought.  Normally, this is the sort of thing that we'd get a lot of mileage out in our house.  "That dude seriously Fecked up," and such clever quips would certainly ensue.  But, I simply missed it.  I was lost in my daughter.

And I realize now that, despite her brood of children, my mom was once lost in me.

"Babies don't keep."