God bless

God bless little James Fulton Engstrom and his family, my good friends.  James was stillborn, then brain damaged.  His healing, which is widely attributed to the intercession of Venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen, is being submitted as the alleged miracle to the Congregation for Causes of the Saints for the beatification of the good archbishop.  

James is now a perfectly healthy happy 1 1/2 year old little boy.  Click here to read Bonnie's account of how everything happened.

God is great!

Advice

I love taking Elijah to Mass with me.  I think it's important for him to know this is something we do every week unless we have a very strong reason not to.  I also like watching everyone else smile at him as he smiles at them.

Usually we leave around 8:20 for 9 am Mass and I give him his morning bottle in the pew before Mass starts.  My problem is what to do when I want to go to confession.  Those days I usually just leave him at home with Nathan, but I hate that.

For other Catholic moms or dads who go to Mass on their own, how do you handle this situation?  Is it okay to take him into the confessional with me?

7 Quick Takes

one

One of the reasons I haven't posted much lately, apart from work and a baby who doesn't like napping, is because I've been trying hard to come up with a post topic that isn't baby-centric.  And I honestly haven't been able to.  I promise, I'm still my own person, but it seems like everything I do, with the exception of going to work, centers around Elijah.  Not that that's a bad thing.

two

 Earlier this week, my laptop's hard drive crashed, taking all of our pictures and all of my writing with it.  Nathan rushed it to his good friend A., who is very handy with things like that, and I was told the information is still there, it is just inaccessible at this point.  For a day or two Nathan and I shared his computer, which is never a good idea, trust me, there's a reason we have two computers.  A. took the bad hard drive out and installed a fresh clean one and sent the computer back.  So, we have to look into finding a data recovery service that isn't horribly expensive.

three

  I'm never any good at cooking in the summer time.  I like heavy rich foods, and I'm not overly fond of vegetables.  I can never come up with any light recipes that sound good.  I usually just resort to making the heavier foods in the crock pot so I don't overheat the house.

four

Elijah's first real baby food was carrots.  He was undecided about them at first, but eventually got to the point where I couldn't get the spoon to his mouth fast enough.  Today we started him on peas.  He had no problems with peas, which was surprising to me, I have always thought of peas as an acquired taste.

five

My brother and sisters and their families are coming home this weekend!  Unfortunately, I won't get to see Elizabeth because she's only going to be at the big family gathering tomorrow, which I have to miss.  But Nate and his family and Anne are both going to be in town for several days!  I'm very excited about this.  Mom even has some free passes to the Shedd Aquarium so Anne and I are going to take Elijah downtown on one of my days off.

Six

    We only have one month left to go before the adoption should be finalized!  I'm sure we'll have some kind of party.

Seven

I know I talk about Elijah not napping, but I took this picture earlier this week during one of our morning naps, which have been getting shorter and shorter. It's one of my new favorite pictures.

Check out more 7 Quick Takes here!

Down on the Farm

The nursery is finally so much put together that I'm calling it done.  And Elijah's only 4 months old.

Come on in.

A long time ago...like, back when we decided we were going to pursue adoption, I decided the nursery theme would be "farm animals."  I love the wall appliques, they were just what I wanted.  And the ducky on the hamper was actually a present to me a long time ago from a friend of Anne's.

The glider was a $25 garage sale purchase.  The reason all the nursery furniture is white is: I wanted a white bookcase that I could paint with our favorite quotes from books.  It turns out my painting skills kind of suck, but I love it anyway.  The two quotes you can see are "Cry God for Harry, England, and St. George" from Shakespeare's Henry V, and "And the tree was happy," from The Giving Tree.  There are also lines from Tale of Two Cities, Richard II, Hamlet, I Robot, The Story of Ferdinand, Peter Pan, Julius the Baby of the World, Jane Eyre, The Christmas Carol, The Princess Bride, Sharpe's Fury, Agnes Grey, Through the Looking Glass, and The Gunslinger.

For reasons I don't fully understand, when we brought Elijah home, I became a crafting machine.  I blame Pinterest.  I couldn't find a cute reasonably priced farm mobile, so I thought...I can knit, I'll just make the mobile.  The pig, chicken, and sheep are cute.  The cow looks like a giant weasel.  When he's done with needing a mobile, I'm going to keep the first three as toys in his room, the cow's going in the trash.

The rocking sheep came from a garage sale as a birthday present from my in-laws, who also bought the bookcase for my birthday.  I love it, seriously, a rocking sheep.  The shelves are filled with farm animal stuffed animals.  The top shelf has something which is actually directly from Pinterest, it is the alphabet framed with the 'E' in blue, and the bottom says "is for Elijah."  I love it.  Above the window to the left is his name in painted letters, but I couldn't get it in the picture.  The wall to the right are 3 closets, the middle one has his dresser in it.

And that's Elijah's room.  Hope you enjoyed the tour!

Elijah update

Elijah is almost five months old now, and baby boy has changed a lot.

At his doctor's appointment at the beginning of this month we found out he weighed 14.5 lbs and was 25 inches long.  I think he's probably closer to 15 lbs now. 

He can sit fairly straight with minimal support.
He eats baby oatmeal and carrots now.  We'll start him on something else later this week.
He has a real belly laugh.
He sleeps reliably through the night.
He eats very well.
He has favorite toys: Baby Einstein musical panda and Baby Einstein music box.
His favorite person is probably still Mama.
He will roll from his back to his tummy, but not the other way.
He still hates tummy time.
He loves to play chase.  I hold him and we "run" while Nathan chases us, then he tickles Elijah's tummy and turns around and we chase him.  
He spends a lot of time outside and loves it.  But not this week.

His least favorite thing is probably napping.  (Seriously, he does NOT nap well.  Which is probably why it's taken me a month to get this blog updated.)

It seems like he has just noticed Hecate and Hyperion.  He watches them a lot these days. 

He's a lot of fun.