Happy Birthday Ava!

It’s safe to say that this blog has been neglected. (I could barely remember my password to log in.  And it always takes longer than I think to write and format and then get pictures loaded and sorted properly--but hey I did it!  And I'm glad I took the time to do it.  Don't even ask me how to change the pictures on the main screen--it was a miracle I ever got them there in the first place)

As our daughter's first birthday nears I was once again reminded that I never wrote her on this blog.   I kept wanting to, but then it seemed like so much time had passed and I figured everyone knew that we had adopted her and what we were up to via our adoption page on FB so time passed by and the blog got dustier and dustier.  But since this blog was set up so long ago to help spread the word of our desire to adopt,  I wanted to post at least once here about Ava and how blessed we were to be able to adopt her and become the little family of four that we now are.

Also, until I came to post what I had written I hadn’t realized that the last post prior to this was a mother’s day post written by Jacob’s birth mother.  What an amazing person she is.  Both she and Ava's birth mother make me want to be the best person and mother I can be.     

Mother’s Day was less than a week ago. This time I was blessed to spend it for the first time with my almost 1 yr old daughter and that was a special thing.  In saying that, I know it was most likely a difficult day for Ava’s birth mother and she was definitely in our thoughts. We always take time to celebrate our children’s birth mothers’ on Mother's day as well.  And we hope she knows how much we love and cherish her.   

Well it has been quite a year, so I thought I would share just a little bit about our sweet daughter Ava.  She is so fun. She can whistle, she can wave, she can say “bye bye!”, she can clap, and crawl and climb.  How she grew up so fast and got so big so fast, I’ll never know.

Ava is a beautiful baby. She has the cutest head of curly hair.  She has a cute little mouth and always has a twinkle in her eye.  I’ve never felt completely comfortable or known quite what to say when people say, “your baby is so cute”, or “she’s beautiful”.  I usually just agree with them—“Yeah, you’re right, I agree” J  or say a quick “thanks”. But as time has gone on and as I’ve thought about it, I now  say “Thank you”---not because I feel like they are complimenting me—but because if Ava could talk and they told her how beautiful she was, then she would tell them thank you.  I also love knowing of the features that she shares with her beautiful birth mother and when I say thank you to their compliment on Ava’s beauty I am also saying thank you from her birthmother too, and thinking of how beautiful and wonderful Ava’s birth mother is as well. 

Ava is a smiley little girl. When Ava smiles, her whole face smiles.  I love it!  It is the cutest thing ever.  Her eyes light up and also get squinty, her nose crinkles up, and she has the biggest happiest grin on her face. 

She is also very social and loves to jump out of my arms to give other people a hug.  She is also especially drawn to jewelry—so if you have earrings or a necklace on, she will go straight to you in an attempt to admire it. 

She loves music and she also loves to try to sing along or copy whatever words you are saying.  She loves to shout “BA!”  It is hilarious.  I make a fool of myself while out shopping with her while we say “BA!” to each other.  Tonight I read her a little book about baby animals and she was doing all of the animal noises.  She especially liked it when we were at the page of the baby bear because she loves to growl!

She loves to be with her brother—he can make her laugh so hard.  It is so fun to see them together.  She loves playing peek a boo with him and she loves it when we try to chase him around.   I love when Jacob tells me, “I chose Ava.  She was the one I chose to be in our family.”  He loves his little sister, and its safe to say that she adores him too. 

Today while I was driving Jacob to preschool he asked me, “Mom can we stop at the donut shop?”  I said, “not today, we are headed to school.”  He of course had a response for that—“ well we did it a different time on the way to school, remember that?”  Ha! of course I did.  I was going to say, but “not today, another time”, but then I remembered how Jacob had once wanted to take his little sister to the donut shop and how we would break our donut into little pieces for her.  And so we stopped and did that with her.  It warmed my heart to be in the donut shop with my two sweet children today.  No picture was taken this time to share, just a happy memory and moment in my heart as I remembered how much we hoped for and wept for and prayed for this little girl to join our family.  And through the miracle of adoption and the amazing strength and love that her birth mother has for her, she chose us to care for and love her.  And we do.  We most certainly love and adore little Ava. 

It is hard to put into words how much we admire and love Ava’s birth mother and how thankful we are that Ava is a part of our family.  But hopefully this post gives a little idea of how we feel about adoption and Ava’s birthmother and also of what a joy sweet Ava is to our lives. As we look back on this last year we feel humbled, grateful, and joyful.

Happy Birthday Ava! We love you!

Mother's Day thoughts from Jacob's birth mother

Hi everybody, I'm Jessi.  I'm Jacob's birth mother!

So today is Mother's Day. Every time on this day I get a little sad, but I think it's completely normal in my situation. But I also get a lot of joy...thinking about Jana and how she is such a great mother to Jacob and of how much happiness that they have, that it fills my heart with joy and happiness, and it overcomes the sadness! (: 

Every year on Mother's Day a lot of thoughts come to mind....happy ones, sad ones, all kinds of emotions.  And every year Jana, Rob and Jacob send me gifts for this special day of their love and it makes me so happy that I catch myself in tears of happiness because they are so sweet and to this day I think of how lucky I am to have them all in my life. 

Sometimes as birth mothers we tend to think too much and sometimes it feels depressing and we become sad. A day like this can be emotional because it's a reminder of our birth child and all the "what if's" and ways it could of been... Of how our birth child could be with us. And yes I think of those things but I'm sure I'm not the only one! But what lifts me up is the little details Jana does and I can't help but love her even more... The pictures, gifts, videos, texts, emails, etc etc. She is so loving and caring. She is an AMAZING mother. We have a special bond and I'm so glad we do! I'm sure I made the right choice.  It was extremely hard and still is hard... but Jana makes it easy to deal with because she is so thoughtful! 

I'm so happy she is able to be a mother, not only does she have that opportunity now but I was able to help her be one and she has become a great one...and that brings joy to me on this day because it's her day too. Jacob is so loved. I love him very much... I'm so thankful for Open Adoption and for Jana and Rob. They are great. 

Jana, on this day I want to wish you a Happy Mother's Day and I want to remind ya'll that ya'll have a very very very special place in my heart... My love for all of you will keep growing! We love ya'll...