It's A Felony To Be This Cool

I thought I'd share Nolan's birth announcement. Somebody said it was cheesy.
Collin's response was "new dad=extra cheesy".

I agree. :) We're all cheese around here!

Happy Wednesday.

Past, Present, Future

I've been thinking a lot about you lately. That's right, you. My readers. My friends. And in so many cases the people who know how infertility actually feels. I feel the overwhelming need to be loyal to you because it really seems like we've been through so much together. So in a lot of ways it has been really hard to share my son with you. It feels a little bit like I'm rubbing it in your face, or bragging, or joining "the club" and leaving you all behind. It feels weird. But at the same time, this is truly been the best 12 days of my life, and friends share everything, right? Anyway, I haven't gone to the other side, I haven't forgotten what it feels like to be childless or infertile, and the truth is that I am still infertile and will deal with infertility my whole life. Please don't forget that. I'm still the same ol' infertile, sometimes bitter, sometimes optimistic, Ashlee. I just have a baby now. :) This blog will still be about infertility. But for me, my infertility includes my sweet, sweet son. So Infertility Spoiled Eggs will just cover a few more topics. I hope that's okay with all of you. You really are my favorite people in the whole wide world. Your e-mails and comments make me smile every time. I never want to hurt your feelings or gloat about something that I know is so sensitive.

Apology/explanation accepted? Please? :)

I've also been thinking about the 1st week and a half of baby Nolan's life and what the next week and a half holds for him. In his short little past he has been smothered with love from family in Idaho and in Utah. In the present, he is being smothered with love by family in his mommy's hometown, and in the future he will be smothered with love by family in his daddy's hometown. What an absolute miracle! We are so grateful for our Idaho/Utah family, our Eagar family, and are SOO excited to see our Mesa family!

To make up for all of the wordiness above, here are some photos of the aforementioned love smothering!

Happy Thursday!

Nolan From The View Of My Phone

We are over the moon for this little guy.


Love him and his little hands that MUST be next to his face at all times! Delicious!

And That Place In My Heart Was Filled

Nolan Blake Smith
Born on May 21, 2011 (take that, Dooms Day)
7.14 pounds
20.5 inches long
Perfect in every way

Things I love:
*when he gives me hungry kisses
*the sweet smell of baby lotion left on my hands after we've snuggled
*the way his daddy looks at him
*when he smiles during a dream
*his big feet
*how he likes to wrap his hand around my finger when he eats

We are a happy family!

Happy Tuesday. :)

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

{Photo of my senior recital last weekend, taken by family friends}

Okay, I'm a huge Christmas fan, so Christmas actually is the most wonderful time of the year, but right now, where I'm at in this year, and at in life in general, it feels pretty wonderful. In the next 3 months we will:

move at least twice
travel to Utah
have 2 family reunions
graduate from Arizona State University
sell our car
sell all our furniture
travel to Idaho
have a baby!
start fresh

It's taken me a little longer that I would have liked, to think of these things as wonderful rather than stressful but I'm there! And I'm so excited! Especially about graduating, moving to Chicago and meeting baby boy. So much to look forward to! And I can't wait to share it all with you.

Speaking of sharing wonderful things; last weekend was my senior recital and my family outdid themselves on the beautiful decorations and atmosphere and it was so much fun to sing my heart out!







{Photos taken by my beautiful SIL}

Five Weeks and Counting

Time is going by so fast.



Baby boy is due 5 weeks from Sunday. Five weeks! I've never been more excited, apprehensive, or worried about anything in my life. Being a mom is a really big deal and between Collin's parents and my parents, we have some really big shoes to fill! I feel so unprepared and so anxious.

But then, when I take a minute to rock in my rocking chair, and pretend like I'm cradling baby boy, I get this feeling that everything will be okay, and I know it will be. A lot of things will be different, but everything will be okay.

I'm sure I'll put a diaper on wrong at least once a day
I'm sure I'll forget to give baby enough tummy time
I'm sure I'll be stumped as to why he's crying more often than not
I'm sure I'll get frustrated, scared, and sad

But I'm also sure of 100 other things, like

I know I'll never forget to give baby enough kisses
I know I'll never forget to read baby stories before bed
I know I'll never let a day go by without telling baby I love him
I know I'll never hold baby without being so grateful he's ours

I'm so grateful for adoption, and am so excited to be a mom. Yesterday I had some flashback feelings, and I was stuck in a moment of "what if I'm never a mom" and my little heart broke. I was so thankful to come back to reality and realize that thanks to Kenz, I'm going to be a mommy. In real life! I'm really going to be a mommy! And Collin's going to be a daddy. What a miracle.

Happy Friday everyone.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Things I'll Miss

Out to dinner at St. Francis in Phoenix with Coll's siblings and their spouses- - best food ever BTW


We're moving soon. To Chicago. We're really excited. It's going to be a bundle of changes all at once with baby boy, Coll starting grad. school, and moving 1,752 miles happening all within about 5 weeks, but really, we're very excited!

I'm a large proponent of pros and cons lists. So naturally, when we were given the opportunity to move across the country, I weighed it all out.

The Pros:
* in 1994 Illinois passed the "Family Building Act" requiring that all health insurance providers cover infertility treatment/diagnostics
* before there were the Diamondbacks there were the Cubs. I've been a loyal Cubs-fan my whole life, and when you all sing "for it's root, root, root for the home-team" in stead of "root root root for the Cubbies", you're singing it wrong
* Chicagoans dye the river green on St. Patrick's Day
* there is no such thing as 120° in The Windy City
* white Christmases
* great public transportation
* the thrift stores, OHHH the thrift stores
* it's a really cool place to visit (insert hint for family and friend visits here)
* we'll be only a 13 hour drive from family we don't get to see as often as we'd like
* getting to know a brand new city, full of rich history

Cons:
* the first few years of baby boy's life will be spent getting to know his grandparents, cousins, aunts, and uncles via Skype rather than real life hugs and kisses (thank heaven for Skype though)
* I swear the year we're moving is the year everything cool is happening in AZ
* we're leaving most of our family behind, and that's the very hardest part, in fact when I hang out with my brother these days, I find myself crying on the way home (nobody told me that pregnancy hormones come when you're adopting)

As you can see, the pros outweighed the cons, so come July we're making our way to the home of the best pizza I've ever had, which really, should be reason enough to move.

So, does anybody know anything about Chicago? Safe places to live? Good places to eat? Take a car, no need for a car? Send your Chicago info. my way if you please.

Oh, and Happy Tuesday

Adoption Chapter 3

It's about time for chapter 3 of our adoption story. If you missed chapter 1 and chapter 2 go

here
and
here

Chapter 3:

The next day was Monday which meant we had to go back to real life. C went to work and I went to school, but neither of us had our heads in the game. We were more like Zac Efron when his heart was in the song, but not the game. Anyway, C and I texted all day, and at one point, M and I were chatting online and I totally ditched a class in order to chat with her. We were in la la land. We e-mailed, chatted, and texted all day long just getting to know each other and talking about life. We hit it off right away and it felt like this was going to be our baby and our birth mom.

At the end of the day I started realizing that we had talked about everything under the sun, except if M was officially "picking us" to be her couple or not. I didn't want to push it, but I was feeling the need to know one way or another so I didn't get my hopes up just to be let down.

The next day, on Tuesday, and completely against C's desires, I asked M where we stood. She replied with what was the official beginning to our baby journal. She said

"you guys are the couple I want to place my baby with"

And that was it! Things had begun and life all of the sudden had a light, a purpose, and a freshness that it hadn't had before.

The next few weeks consisted of more chatting, e-mailing, texting, Skyping, and talking. Soon it felt like it was time to meet face to face. We crossed 3 state-lines and made our way to M's hometown where we spent the most fantastic 3 days meeting her family, learning all about her and where she came from, and most importantly getting to know our birth mom and some family history of our baby boy.

We learned that baby boy might like bowling




We learned that baby boy might not like to eat his pizza crust because none of his biological aunts, uncles, cousins, or grandparents like the crust

We learned that be it by nature or nurture baby will likely stand like this


We had an amazing time and we learned above all, that there will always be so, so many people that will love baby boy




Thank you M, and M's family for your love and hospitality. We love you!

Ramblings of a Sleep-Deprived Mother To be

You can tell what we've been eating all day every day. I wish cold cereal had a high nutritional value.

I hope there are still strong people in this world who can listen to Justin and not get Bieber Fever. I unfortunately am not one of those people. I bought 2 songs last week, having never heard him before, and now I know every world and belt it when I'm home alone. In my defense, I only have BF when I hear him sing, not when I see him on TV. There's a BIG difference. Right? {Please say 'yes'}

Chapter 3 of our adoption story is going to come soon. It's harder to write than you'd think.

Spring Break is coming soon, yet not soon enough. I am incredibly excited.

Baby boy keeps getting stuff from people. Aunt M. has bought him more stuff than we have, Grandma S. has given us a jumper swing thingy, Aunt K. and the other Aunt K. have both sent a bunch of stuff our way, and that was just off the top of my 8 o'clock-just woke up-head. Having big boy cousins will be the best!

No matter how hard I try, I can not love school. And believe you me, {what does that even mean}, I have tried.

No matter how hard I try, I can not sleep at night when I start day-dreaming about baby boy, nurseries, hanging out with M, and all of the other fun things that are about to happen.

Good things are happening.

Happy Thursday.

P.S. I'm not really sleep-deprived. It's just that I always want more sleep. If I get 10 hours, I want 11. I'm so hard to please. Sheesh.

Happy Is What Happens

Monday morning, as I was riding my Schwinn to school, I took a big breath and it smelled like Spring. I don't really even know how to explain it but the air was fresh, cool, light, and breezy. I got butterflies in my stomach, and rode to school feeling happy.

Today, it's summer.

Though my idea of Spring didn't last as long as I would have liked, I'm grateful that I was outside when that Springy moment hit.

C and I have been feeling a bit overwhelmed lately. I'm in my last semester of school which is amazing, but I could write a book series on how not to get through college, and chapter 1 would be called " Don't Save All The Classes You Hate For Your Last Semester". Anatomy/Physiology, Abnormal Psychology, Music History-so not my thing. C starts school in the fall, and all at once assumes the responsibility of providing for a wife and a child (woohoo!!) and is trying to manage moving out of state, starting a new program at school, up-keeping his website, staying on top of his design side projects, and building 101 things for our baby.

We're a bit stressed. But this morning as I was taking C to work, we talked about what makes us happy, and how to be happy when we're doing things that stress us out, and I realized that there is a little bit of that Spring-feeling in each day, we just have to make sure we're outside to feel it.

Our goal for the next week is to find happiness in each aspect of our lives, even the ones we don't enjoy as much.

What makes you happy? I really want to know.

Life is good. We have M in our life. We have a baby in our life. We have great friends and family in our life. We are happy.

Happy Thursday.

There Is Beauty All Around

Do you take your breakfast like this?

Or like this?

I dropped an entire carton of eggs on my floor while preparing breakfast this morning, so frankly just having breakfast on a plate is good enough for me.

I was talking with a dear friend a while back who struggles with infertility. She had just gone through the painful process of IVF and she was pregnant with twins! We were talking about the years of infertility that had led up to her pregnancy and how now that she was finally pregnant, those infertility feelings should be gone, but they weren't. That made sense to me. She was pregnant, and she was having babies, but she was still infertile.

I've been waiting for the infertile feelings to kick back in since the news of our May Baby and they haven't yet. I'm still in the overly excited/scared out of my brains phase. But I know that one day in the future, those infertile feelings will return, if only briefly. And when they do, I will be grateful for modern medicine, and for strong women, which allows us infertiles to have children.

The world is filled with good people. Sometimes we have to look hard to find them, but it is worth the search.

Happy Tuesday.

Adoption Chapter 1

Sundays are always sweet for me. They're a little bit slower, full of spiritual enlightenment, and we're usually enveloped in family love. This Sunday was no different. We had been to 3 hours of church where we spent time worshiping, and gaining strength from those in attendance, and then we came home, had a nap, and made cookies and soup. We laughed in the kitchen together and I especially giggled when C insisted on being the one to make the cookies. He made quite the mess! Flour, sugar, and oatmeal were everywhere and to me it was the perfect scene. We finished in the kitchen, and loaded up our goodies in the car and headed to C's parents' house. We spent the rest of the afternoon and into the evening with brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, and grandparents eating dinner, discussing current events and church/gospel topics, and of course watching football.

At some point during the riveting football game, my phone informed me that I had a new e-mail. I looked at my inbox only to see what appeared to be a filthy spam messaged entitled "couple contact". I ignored it, but for some reason, didn't delete it, and fell back into that ever so peaceful sleep one gets during a football game.

After the game we said thank you and goodbye to our family and headed home. On the way home I decided to call my mom because I hadn't talked to her yet that day and, well, I talk to my mom every day. We had a good chat, and we got to talking about something good because before I knew it, we were home, and still in the middle of a good conversation. C opened the door for me and we went inside. C headed for the bathroom to brush his teeth before bed, and I sat down at the computer to finish my conversation with mama. While talking to my mom, I pulled up my e-mail again and saw that dirty e-mail still sitting there. "Couple Contact" it said, and for some reason I was drawn to it. I actually felt inspired to open it. And I justified opening it by saying to myself "I'm on the phone with my mom!! If this is a bad e-mail I will just scream, tell my mom about it, and all will be well". So I opened it.

"Hey! I read your message & looked at your pictures! I am a 19 year old, expecting mother of a baby boy..."

To Be Continued.....

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