Did you hear the one about the lawyer and the UFO?

Q: What do honest lawyers and UFO's have in common?
A: You always hear about them, but you never see them.

Ahhhh, lawyers! What would we do without them? I feel like up until recently I have been doing more without our lawyer. Unfortunately, I have hit a wall. I have hit this wall despite hours of calls to City, County and State agencies. Every agency sends me to another agency that sends me to another agency that sends me back to the first agency where (if I'm lucky) I might finally get someone to tell me they don't deal with private adoptions. Otherwise I continue to spin my wheels with each subsequent call. It has been so frustrating that I've begun to wonder if Colorado private adoption law even exists! This is all work I shouldn't have to be doing. This is work our lawyer should be doing but every time I call him for an update he's got some sort of excuse as to why he hasn't completed the tasks that we are paying him to complete.

The tasks he has been assigned: 1-Find out if we also need to send our fingerprints to the FBI and 2-Find out if we need to complete a home study.

Task 1 - FBI - According to our county's sheriff's department private adoptions only require Colorado Bureau of Investigation (CBI) background checks. However, that is not what our lawyer told us in our last meeting. According to him (at that time at least, now he is unsure) we need to send copies of our fingerprints to both bureaus.

Task 2 - Home Study - This is something he told us he would look into from the beginning and here we are 10 months into working with him and we still don't know the answer to the question. If we do have to complete a home study that brings up even more questions such as who do we contact to complete the study? We don't have to have as thorough of a home study as we would have if we had gone through an agency. So do we contact a county social worker to set up the home study? Someone who works for an agency? Will we have to wait another two months to get answers to these questions? AAAGGGGHHHHH!

Why don't we kick our lawyer to the curb you may wonder? Well, unfortunately both my proffession as well as DH's have been hit hard by the economic slump and right now the lawyer we have is all we can afford. I contacted several other lawyers back in November and December and each one was at least twice as expensive as ours. That means we're stuck :(

So, this is a call to all of my fellow adoptive mommies. Does anyone else have any recommendations on where I should start? I know the law varies from state to state but perhaps what you know may give me a place to start. I'm getting desperate here. Originally I wanted to have the adoption finalized by April for my birthday but now I think we are going to be lucky to finalize by June. If you have any suggestions let me know. If not (regardless of whether you are an adoptive mommy or not) we could use as many prayers as possible!

Thank you to everyone in advance! Here are some pictures of why this is all worth it:



River channeling his inner hippy playing drums, wearing nothing but his beanie.

Good Morning, Son.

Good morning, son
I am a bird
Wearing a brown polyester shirt
You want a coke?
Maybe some fries?
The roast beef combos only $9.95
But its okay
You don't have to pay
I've got all the change

Everybody knows
It hurts to grow up
And everybody does
It's so weird to be back here
Let me tell you what
The years go on and
We're still fighting it, we're still fighting it
And you're so much like me

- Ben Folds, Still Fighting It.

In honor of my son's half dozen of one, six of the other months of life here are some old and new pictures set to the Ben Fold's song that I sing to him every morning when I wake him up. It just came naturally since the first line of the song is, "Good morning, son." Plus I love Ben Folds and he wrote this song for his son :)

Happy 6 month Birthday, River! Love, Mommy and Daddy

Photo of the day.

Wow, so this may be a first. I'll probably have to check my list of posts but this may be the first time I've blogged two days in a row! I have been trying to post more often lately and enjoying it immensely.

This evening River and I made a delicious dessert and then brought it over to my sister-in-law Jami's house to share in the deliciousness... and of course the calories! As proof of River's help I am posting my favorite photos of the day.


So the dessert making started out as River watching me crunch up the pretzels, mix in the butter and the sugar for the crust. But when I turned back around after putting dirty dishes in the sink I found him helping out by continuing the mixing. And I didn't even have to ask for his help!

ps Does anyone know how to get rid of that stupid orange banner up at the top?

pss Yay my two votes helped save Anoop! I was sad to see Jasmine go, though. I really liked her.

Let's get ready to BUMBOOOOO!

River loves to be in the upright position so he can be a part of what is going on around him. However, he still needs to be propped up on all sides to get him there. So, my awesome sister-in-law Jodi lent us her Bumbo (actually this one is called bebePOD, and looks cooler but is the same concept) and my mother-in-law and sister-in-law Kelli made sure it was sent off to us ASAP. I have been waiting with baited breath checking the mail daily for for its arrival and today was the big day that we received it! Here are some pictures of River enjoying his new seat!

He really liked it earlier in the evening when DH first put him in it. Unfortunately, I waited until after his bath and right before bed to put him in it to take pictures and by this time he was a little cranky. I couldn't help including that second picture because his little pout is so cute. The picture doesn't even do it justice. I laughed so hard when he made this pout because he looked exactly like Spanky's (as in the Little Rascal) baby brother. Too cute for words even when he is pouting.

On a totally unrelated topic, I voted for an American Idol contestant for the first time since Elliot Yamin. That season, in my opinion, is the season when Idol hit its peak. If I had my druthers they would have bowed out George Costanza style at that point because each subsequent year has reached a lower low. (*cough* *sanjaya* *cough* *cough*) Why, oh, why do I not listen to myself when I promise that this year is the year that I won't watch past the horrid initial audition shows if even at all? I've promised myself this every season post Elliot. Unfortunately, I let myself slip yet again. Might as well just dive in head first. So I voted for Anoop Desai because I think that the judges were unfair to him. His performance wasn't too bad and certainly wasn't much different than that stupid poser emo kid who sang another "untouchable" Michael Jackson song. Why, oh, why do I do this to myself?

A requiem for things past...

As spring time nears I thought it appropriate to blog about a few of the habits that River has put to rest and the new habits that are beginning to bloom in all their glory... good and bad. Luckily, they have mostly been good!



Things past:

• The days of clothes sized for 3 months and younger. Now he fits into 6 month clothes and sometimes even 9 month clothes!
• Having to be bounced or rocked to sleep. When we lost the bouncy chair to bouncy fatigue I was very afraid of what nap times and bedtime would be like. It seemed to us as though he was incapable of sleep without some sort of repetitive movement to lull him to sleep. However, what we found is that a swaddle and a pacifier were all he needed. Sometimes he doesn't even need the swaddle or the pacifier... but more on that later.
• Okay, it's later! Heavy reliance upon the pacifier is a thing of the past. He now prefers his thumb. Even when I do give him his pacifier at bedtime or nap time, whenever I check on him a few minutes later, he has ditched the pacifier and shoved his thumb in his mouth.
• Happy peaceful teething :'( Now that tooth #2 has joined the club he often gets crankier during the day and the only thing that seems to help is to hold him and walk him around. I would venture to guess that within the past week or so I have walked several miles all within the walls of our small house.
• Breastfeeding. This has been a tough one for me. Unfortunately, I had to abandon night feedings because he took too long (sometimes close to 2 hours) to take an entire feeding. Then I had to abandon some daytime feedings while I was at work. Put that all together and EVERY feeding started to take too long (1 hour +). So after innumerable tears I turned the torch fully over to Playtex, Dr. Brown, and Soothie.
• Sleeping on his back. Now, almost 100% of the time when I check on him while he is sleeping I find him on his tummy. As a matter of fact the other day he was having an unusually difficult time falling asleep for a nap. As usual I had put him in his crib on his back (Back is Best!) with a pacifier. About 2 minutes after I put him in the crib he started fussing. So I put him on his tummy and made sure his hand was close enough to access his thumb should he want it. Sho'nuf he was practically asleep before I walked out of his room.
• I saved the best for last... And I announce this cautiously for fear of jinxing us... But, midnight feedings are a thing of the past! River now sleeps 10-11 hours consecutively! Words cannot describe how wonderful it has been. It has only been a couple of weeks that I've had uninterrupted sleep and already I've begun to wonder how I made it 5 months without it!

Out with the old, in with the new!