The Laird Lowdown: It's nice to have my daughter back

Friday, January 30, 2009

It's nice to have my daughter back

Sometimes you don't realize how cool your kid is until she gets sick. Kaylee came down with (we think) the flu last Friday--at least that's when the symptoms "came up", if you catch my drift. She had been pretty cranky most of the week, and she continued to be cranky this week. Taking her to daycare in the morning was a real chore, as she didn't want me to leave. Usually she loves being there. Nights were difficult; she either wanted to sit and watch TV or cry.

Something clicked on Wednesday, though; when I came home, Kaylee and I sat on the floor playing with her little plastic animals (Little Tykes?). We had most of them out, and a piece of a fence from one of the sets, and we took turns walking the little animals up to the fence and pretending to have them eat. Kaylee was smiling, laughing, and daddy was breathing a sigh of relief.

When I got home last night, Kaylee was up at the dining room table playing with the cash register she got for Christmas; Jen sat next to her updating her food journal. Jen had to leave for an appointment, and so Kaylee and I played together again. This time, Kaylee spent probably 45 minutes using her toy hammer to "nail" little letter flash cards to various areas of the floor. She'd pull out a card, grab the hammer, and "bang, bang, bang!". She was having a blast, and I couldn't have been more proud. I can't wait till I can get her a toy nail gun. :)

To top it off, she's beginning to show an interest in using the potty; apparently she peed at daycare on both Wednesday and Thursday, and then last night, before going to bed, she wanted to sit on the potty and she went for us! Her doctor said that she's smart enough that she most likely could just potty train herself whenever she wants--but she wants control, and she has to have the interest. Maybe we're finally getting to that point.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...: Kaylee must have had someone extra special get her toys at Christmas time that she really likes.; January 31, 2009 at 1:50 AM

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Our Adoption Story

Everyone always wants to know our adoption story. It is a long and complicated affair, but the short of it goes like this:

Tim and I decided after long discussion to build a family through adoption. Any children we adopted would be ours but just not have his eyes, or my hair… Anyway, we started our adoption journey on September 11, 2003 in an international program to Thailand.

In late February of 2005 we received word that the Thai government had turned down our request. We were devastated. We began looking into other options. We turned to domestic adoption.

A girl at Aquinas, where I work, had a friend who was looking to find an adoptive home for her baby. We decided to go ahead and find out more about her. We then got news that she was pregnant with twin boys. Oh my… what to do? So after talking and praying we decided if that was what God meant for us, then that was great.

So we talked with her and it was progressing toward us having twins. Unfortunately, the mother went into premature labor and one of the boys was still born and the other boy was very sick. The mother wanted to keep him, which was fine with us, since to voluntarily give up a child is one thing, but to have one taken from you is another.

After much sorrow, we again started over. We had our portfolio looked at by a bunch of birth parents, but nothing came of it, so we waited… and waited… and waited. Until one day I was getting out of a meeting and my telephone rang at work. It was the social worker calling about a birth family. Finally we had been chosen. That was Tuesday, September 19th, 2006

The only downside was the baby would be here any minute, literally. The birth mother had come in on her due date to make an adoption plan… oh my, again! We said that yes of course we’d take the baby, so in a mad dash, we finished paperwork, bought out Babies R Us, and made many phone calls to parents, siblings, grandparents, friends, and the list went on.

It was Tuesday when we got the call and by Sunday, September 24th, we were a wreck, so we went to church. After church we had to do a little more shopping to get ready and so we stopped for lunch at Taco Bell. A familiar face jumped out of the crowd at Tim, it was the pregnancy counselor, Emily. He saw that she was talking on her phone and said, “Wouldn’t it be funny if she was talking about our baby?” I think I answered that it would be “scary, not funny.” So he went over to say hi. Well, it turns out he was right. She was talking to the birth mother; she had just gone into labor.

At around 7pm that evening we got to meet our little miracle, our Kaylee. Two days later we got to take her home to a house that was full of people waiting to hold her and even more people waiting to come over to the house to hold her. On, June 13, 2007, Kaylee Raquel Elaina Laird became officially ours and we are so happy to finally have an “official” complete family.