It All Starts with One Stitch

No matter how many projects I complete, it never ceases to amaze me that an entire sweater begins with one stitch. One lonely stitch on the needle. I don't always take the time to appreciate that first stitch, but this time I am, because this is more than a stitch, it's a beginning, a promise of more to come.

This small bit of yarn, twisted thoughtfully into a slipknot has bigger dreams than just being beautiful yarn that is soft to pet. (For you non-fibrephiles out there, yes, we pet our yarn. Sometimes we rub it on our cheeks and coo gently to it) There's nothing wrong with being beautiful yarn left in a skein. Yarn alone can be aesthetically pleasing.

I display my yarn stash proudly on an open shelf in my office because I love to look at the textures and colors. It's a shelf full of possibilities. And, yes, those baskets on the bottom are filled with more yarn. :) I have pared it down quite a bit after the move, believe it or not.

But I digress. Back to my current yarn inspiration. There is a customer who frequents the store my husband manages who is also a fibrephile, which means her stash is also out of control. We can't help it we see yarn and we buy it, not for projects but for possibilities. She had recently begun paring down her stash to make room for more and she graciously gave some to me through my husband who told her that I, too, love to knit. I say gracious because this is high quality yarn. 

This is Debbie Bliss baby cashmerino. 55% merino wool, 33% microfibre, 12% cashmere. It's luxurious. And it's pink!! My favorite color! She gave me enough of it to make a sweater. I have saved this yarn for something special. I didn't want to waste it. I needed a project worthy of the size of the gift. I have flipped through piles of knitting magazines and books and swatched with every pair of needles I own (which is a lot, almost every size in straight, circular, and double pointed; and in metal, bamboo, rosewood, birch... I have a lot of needles.) I have finally found the perfect pattern for this yarn. 

It is simply called Scalloped Edge Pullover form KnitSimple's Spring/Summer 2008 issue. I usually don't knit with a yarn this small. Bulky yarns knit up quicker, and my drive for instant results makes a bulky yarn appealing. The finer yarns make such a pretty fabric though. And I tend to be hot natured and would be a lot more likely to wear a lightweight sweater over a thick bulky one, and the yarn is too beautiful to waste. So I gathered my gumption and started. I made the first stitch.

That one stitch will loop into another stitch and another until it becomes a row. Then another row will join followed by another. Pretty soon you have a section then the whole back and then all the pieces to sew together. 

And finally it will be a sweater, and I will wear it proudly. Sometimes I will study it and look at all the individual stitches. Maybe if I'm bored I will try and count how many stitches make up the entire piece. But the sweater would not exist had it not been for the first stitch. 

The longer the journey, the harder it may seem to begin. The accomplishment of completing that journey is always worth it though. Once this journey is complete, I will post pictures of the whole sweater. 

The Secret to Good Parenting

I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Hyland's Teething Tablets. Write it down. Here's a picture.

See the picture of the baby on the package? He's not crying or fussy, and he's obviously teething since he's gnawing that teething ring like a hungry dog attacking a chicken bone. Look at his sweet little blood thirsty eyes. Ok, I'm exaggerating on that last sentence, but the rest is true. And if you've had a teething baby you may have believed that last exaggerated sentence more quickly than those who haven't experienced it. 

Many educated people with multiple letters after their names on the signature of their emails would tell you that children don't get fussy when they are teething. My own children's pediatrician whom I adore told me the same thing. And there does tend to be a movement towards over medicating children that I don't want to be a part of. So I know many parents use "teething" as an excuse to give their children an extra dose of Tylenol or Benadryl when they don't want to sleep. But I do believe that some children experience pain during teething. I mean, their teeth are ripping their way through baby's tender gums. That's got to hurt some. I also think babies, just like adults have different tolerances to pain. So while some babies can pop up a few teeth without batting a sweet little eyelash, some are miserable drooling messes who can't sleep and only want to chew on their hands, your hands, pacifiers, anything they can get their stubby little fingers on. 

My husband and I discovered the magic of Hyland's Teething Tablets when our oldest child went through the process. Someone was kind enough to share the secret with us and so I'm passing on the majesty of these unassuming little white tablets to anyone who cares to read this blog post. My son is very dramatic. Even though he is adopted, he inherited this trait straight from me. I can't even get mad at him for it because it's like looking into a mirror. I should have known that he would be dramatic by the way he went through teething. He is usually extremely laid back and easy in general. When he was teething, he cried non stop. If he actually fell asleep, it was short lived. The pain would wake him up. I gave him pain relievers sparingly because, as I stated above, I'm not one to over medicate my child. We tried every type and brand of gel that is supposed to numb the gums. They seemed to work for a short period of time, but his whole mouth would get numb, which only led to more drool. When we were told about the tablets, we were skeptical. "Yeah right," we scoffed, "a homeopathic tablet is supposed to make my child fall asleep instantly and stop crying from the pain?" So we bought some just to try it out, and went ahead and picked up an extra bottle of Ibuprofen for when it didn't work.

It worked.

The next time he cried and drooled and began shoving things in his mouth all at the same time, I slipped in a teething tablet under his tongue. He kept right on crying. Then as it started to dissolve, he slowly started to forget what he had been crying about. I gave him another. He sucked on it and pressed his tongue against it until it dissolved, and then he fell asleep.

I had forgotten about the baby NyQuil until my nearly four month old began drooling her way through several outfits a day. She's pretty tough and seems to have a high tolerance to pain and pesky brothers always trying to tickle her feet. She hasn't started to get fussy, but there are times when sleep doesnt come quickly. I'll give her a pacifier and rock her and she fights me unearthed tooth and nail to shove the pacifier out of the way to make room for her chubby tiny fist. Tonight was a hand chewing night, and I had a brand new pack of the tablets. She dropped the pacifier and immediately started crying. I saw my opportunity and took it. I slipped a tablet in during the wide open mouth wail part of the cry.  It immediately started to dissolve. I put her pacifier back in her mouth and Voila! Instant sleep.

If only everything in life was so instantly gratifying. Now I, too, need to go sleep while the euphoria lasts.

New Arrivals Day

This past Sunday was New Arrivals Day at our church. Because our new baby girl snuck in at the tail end of 2012, we got to present her to and celebrate her with our church family. We were asked to speak about our story of becoming parents, but I was too busy to even think of putting something together to say. I had forgotten about the following that I wrote a while back. It means a lot to me, so I would like share it. This was written before my newest arrival came into my life. I promise to write about her journey into our family too. Her story is as beautiful and as special as her big brother's.

The Choice of Adoption

I remember when my sister told me she and her husband were trying to get pregnant.  My response was one word: why?  I’m not sure which was more of a driver behind my question, that my formerly party-crazed sister wanted to be a mother or that people could choose to have a baby.  I thought babies happened accidentally for the most part.  I’d never thought about someone planning to have one.  My sister was three and a half years older than me. Most of my friends were still in the stage where you pray that you aren’t pregnant and not the reverse.  On top of that my sister and I, both, have health problems that complicate the whole fertility process.  I found out when I was eighteen.  A nurse practitioner ordered an ultrasound, handed me a pamphlet, and sent me on my way.  I didn’t even know what it meant until I shared the pamphlet with my mother.  She cried, mourning the loss of future grandchildren that I may not have had anyway.  My mom’s tears affected me, and I did feel bad, like I’d lost something that I never even thought about pursuing, but I was eighteen.  Not having children didn’t mean much to me at that point. I never fully accepted that pregnancy was even an option.

My sister shared her fertility pursuit with me.  I was curious to learn how much people would go through just to have a baby.  I watched her cry over failed pregnancy test after failed pregnancy test and the strain it put on her marriage. And still, when I reached that same decision point in my life, after scoffing at my sister’s choice a few years earlier, I walked straight into the door of hope, believing that I, too, could get pregnant.  My sister was older and I knew that meant that she would have the first grandchild.  I really struggled with the decision to start the process.  I saw how much pain she had been through in her quest to become a mother, and I didn’t want to add to it by getting pregnant before she did.  At the same time, I didn’t want to miss my chance.  The odds were stacked against me; I at least needed youth on my side. 

Looking back, I don’t know why my husband and I didn’t consider all of our options to begin with.  We, like all other people seemed to, assumed pregnancy was the first route everyone had to choose if you wanted to be parents.  We lined up like cattle along with all the other couples being prodded through the fertility clinic gate.  We went along with the whole regimen.  We did as we were told; I took the pills I was supposed to take.  We had scheduled intercourse according to the doctors’ schedules and not ours, it was no longer making love or even sex, it was a mandated mission.  They made appointments and I showed up, sometimes not even knowing what was on the agenda for the day.  The first time there was a real chance of pregnancy, I found myself believing.  I let go of all my inhibitions and all the voices telling me it was impossible, and I believed.  I enjoyed a few weeks of bliss, a few weeks of still having a chance.  I hadn’t read the negative test yet; I could still pretend it was happening.  I even told my husband to just let me enjoy pretending that it worked because I knew it might be the closest I’d come to getting pregnant. And when I did read the negative test, I fell hard.  I was devastated.  I felt like a fool for believing. I couldn’t go through it again.  I had two more appointments scheduled at that time, but I didn’t show up.  I didn’t even call to cancel. 

I pushed the longing to be a mother just outside my reach and tried to move on with my life.  My husband and I had spoken the word adoption before.  With all the fertility issues, it was bound to come up.  We had always said it was a beautiful thing and that if the biological route didn’t work out we’d consider it.  I was just talking, though.  It was just something you say, something to take the pressure off.  I never even thought it through; at the time I still believed I would get pregnant.  Sometime during my motherhood hiatus, God started to work on me.  Maybe he started before that even, but he kicked it into high gear during that time, while he was rebuilding my heart.  During that time my sister started working at an adoption agency.  She told me beautiful stories of families uniting.  She told me about the process, the good and the bad.  I found it all interesting, but I hadn’t thought about it for me yet.  I think some part of me was still waiting for her to go first. 

This was also the time period when Angelina Jolie was about to adopt her second child.  She has been criticized by the media and has been the butt of many jokes.  I don’t know her.  I don’t know how she is in real life, but she served a purpose in mine.  I saw pictures of her with her tan-skinned baby boy clinging to her neck.  She was his mother and he was her son.  I could see, from a picture of someone I had never met, that your mother is not only the woman who gave birth to you.  Genes don’t matter.  Children know who their mommies are.  I dreamt of my own tan-skinned baby after seeing that picture of her.  She named her baby Maddox and so did I.

My husband and I came to the decision at the same time.  The day we heard on the radio a woman born in Korea, telling her own adoption story, of how at eight-years-old she spit in the face of a tall white man and still he chose her, we grabbed for each other’s hand and shared a look – his wistful, mine tear-filled – and we knew right then that we were going to adopt someone.  We were going to accept a living breathing person as our own and raise him as our child.  Several months later, when we got our referral and were given pictures of a tiny four-day-old baby, we did the math.  My Maddox was conceived around the same time my husband and I had made our decision.  He belonged to me from the beginning.  From the moment he was two cells combining, he was mine. 

Adoption is miraculous and meaningful, but the choice is not as simple as, “I want to be a parent.”  That’s the basis, but it’s more.  You have to also choose to love, accept, and parent a child who is different than you.  Even in same race adoptions, the child is not physically an extension of you.  You have to accept what all that means before you open your arms and your home to a child.  But even though the child isn’t a physical extension of you, he will be an extension of your love, if you let him.   

Someday I will tell Maddox how much he means to me.  How God made him for me, and how special he is.  For he has not one mommy, but three who loved him dearly.  A birth mother who loved him enough to save him from a life of hunger and poverty; a foster mother who loved him as her own for the first eight months of his life, knowing the whole time it would end too soon, and not loving him less because of that; and me, the mother that prayed for him to belong to her for years, not even knowing who he was or how he would come to her.   I will also tell him of the sacrifices the other mommies made for him.  I promised his foster mother that I wouldn’t let him forget her and I intend to keep that promise.  

Nine Years and Counting

Today is my nine year wedding anniversary. Nine years ago today I walked so confidently down the aisle the entire wedding party thought I'd taken a Xanax. The theme song to the ABC miniseries North and South played, growing in intensity as I waited behind the door for my big entrance. Then as the music hit the climax, the doors dramatically swung open. Everyone's breath caught in their throats, including mine. I walked my way to the front of the church to the man I knew I would spend my life with since our very first date and maybe before that even. We said, "I do," and then our life began. All of our crazy adventures, as we call them, began. Buying and building and remodeling and selling houses, Trying for biological children, facing infertility head on, deciding on adoption, raising money for adoptions, raising more money for adoptions. Interesting vacations like going to Forks, Washington. Learning how to parent and how to balance it with being good spouses. 

So many trips to IKEA where we bought so much it took us an hour or more to figure out how to pack the car. Most of those trips resulting in luggage being strapped on top of the car, and for our most recent trip renting a U-Haul trailer for our IKEA trappings because we now have a second car seat to work around. I always look over the receipt trying to remember what I bought. All the names are crazy Swedish words so it does little to jog my memory, and as I fold up the receipt that is about six feet long I feel guilty that I can only recall the can opener and the knife sharpener when the receipt is six feet long. I can't remember what I filled my big yellow bag with, but I remember the adventure I'd just experienced with my husband. 

He's so good to me. If you can believe it, I'm a bit high maintenance. And I require an even higher level of maintaining when I'm trying to keep two kids happy while I'm deciding how I can fit the wonderful organizational ideas into my life. My wonderful husband knows me. He knows when he shouldn't ask if I want him to change the baby because he already knows the answer. He knows when to suggest a snack and to sit down for a bit when I'm having low blood sugar and starting to get irritable. He completes me. We are truly each other's other half, and together we are whole. 

Our life has changed so much since that day that started it all. I have changed so much since that day. Sometimes it seems that people within a marriage grow at different rates or in different directions and find themselves waking up to virtual strangers after nine years. My husband and I are not that way. We have grown in sync, matching each other flawlessly. We are two trained Ficus trees seamlessly woven together to make one strong tree. I’m not saying our tree doesn’t crook and bend; it does. It’s just that when one of us veers, the other compensates.

Carrying the tree analogy through, I have been feeling the lack of roots lately. Since I’ve been living my independent adult life, I find the commitment of laying down roots a hard one to make. I’ve been in the Nashville Area for over thirteen years now and I’ve never been to a hair stylist twice. Since we’ve been married, my husband and I have rented two homes, bought four homes, and built two additional homes we never got to move into for various reasons. My husband and I have both changed jobs over the years. We've been through six vehicles and two scooters. My son has been at two different daycares and two different schools and he’s only in kindergarten. My family has no roots.

The only thing that never changes is my husband. He is committed to me, even when everything else changes. And as we add to our family, we commit to them too. So even though we are a ball of roots floating through life, the roots are strong and they bind us together. And who knows? Maybe we’ll stay at the new house for a while, dare I say forev… Nope, I can’t even type it.

On this special day thanks to my husband for loving me with every change and growing with me for the past nine years and forever. There, I can type it in that sentence. It's where it belongs. I love you Jamie.