Cole at 7 Weeks

Not really sure what this face is all about, but it's funny!

Tomorrow will mark 7 weeks since we became parents in whirlwind fashion. Cole will be 8 weeks old on Monday. Last night, for the first time, he slept from 9pm-6am with a feeding at 2am. It was pure bliss! I also hope it's a sneak preview of good things to come.Cole's "Old Pappy" Great Grandfather Rosenwald with me and Cole in his James Dean outfit.

Most people have 9 months to prepare. We had 2 1/2 hours. Combine that with a baby who was less than happy for his 1st 6 weeks and things were difficult to accomplish. But with Cole's new-found fondness of napping, I finally feel like I have been able to accomplish some things around the house. I unpacked the last bag of donated baby items given to us by friends this morning. I still have a couple "piles" of things that are too advanced for Cole to use yet that I need to find homes for until they are needed, but everything else is finally put away.Cole looking all "cool dude" in his bucket hat and shades. Our first walk outside.

My favorite part now is that he likes to play. He can spend minutes (literally minutes!!) staring at his brightly colored toys dangling above him, kicking his legs and punching the air with wild abandon. He also has started smiling more. He smiles when we talk to him. He smiles when he gets picked up after a nap. He even smiles when we make hilariously funny jokes (not really, but he IS gifted!)Cole's big bro, Charlie Murphy, guards his little brother closely during naptime.

He is the cutest baby we could have wished for. As I thought about writing this post, I wondered how I would ever decide just which pictures to include in the post. Then I decided I would have to just choose a number and pick my favorite to fill the quota to keep it from being ridiculously filled with adorable baby pictures. So here are my top 5 pics of Cole in recent weeks....enjoy the cuteness!

Come on, who can resist this pitiful little face?

Cole's Arrival Story

I mainly use this blog space to blog about my Etsy business and my craftiness with occasional personal entries interjected. (although I've been a terrible blogger over the past year!) So many of you don't know about our struggles with infertility. It just seemed a very emotional and private part of our lives that I didn't feel ready to share with the world. I'll spare everyone the details unless there is someone out there that has a burning desire to know the specifics. I'll just say that we tried to conceive by not preventing pregnancy since 2004, casually sought answers in 2006-2008, got tired of it and took a break for a while, and then really hit things hard with full infertility work-up and treatments starting in Nov. 2009 until Feb. 2011 with one failed pregnancy in Mar. 2010.

After the failed pregnancy in 2010, we sought information on adoption. We were ignorant. So we met with a social worker that helps families through the process by completing the home study and assisting with all the work that goes into adopting. It sounded like something that was definitely an option for us, and I felt good about it after the meeting. But the mom inside of me just wasn't ready to give up on the idea of being pregnant. So back to the treatments we went. Then in December of 2010, I did laparoscopic surgery thinking my issue was endometriosis and all would be right with the world after that. Well, it wasn't endometriosis and all did not magically become right with the world, which we discovered after 3 more agonizing months getting to know our reproductive endocrinologist on a first name basis. It was especially romantic when I was inseminated on Valentine's Day. It's just every girl's dream!

My breaking point was when my husband and I decided on one last try. An end point was in sight. Either it was going to happen or we moved into the adoption route. The thought was comforting in a way. I went in for my baseline ultrasound and had a large cyst in my ovary. The options I was given were to take a month off or go on birth control pills and try again in 2 weeks. I chose option 3. Put a fork in me, I was done. It was too hard emotionally to deal with month after month. So we talked about it and decided it was time to have our 2nd meeting for our home study (10 months after our initial visit). We had already done our fingerprinting for our FBI and state clearances and had our child abuse checks done. We were on the road!

We had meeting #2 on Saturday, Apr. 2nd (oddly enough, 1 year to the day of my miscarriage in 2010). We discussed all the possibilities, options, etc. We chose an agency, started making calls to ask questions, and working on our application. We told our friends and family what we were doing. We called to get references written. Jumping in with both feet. We wanted to get the process rolling as soon as possible. I was just finishing up our application for the agency on Thursday evening (Apr. 7th), putting it in a priority mail envelope, and was sitting at the computer typing a cover letter to let the agency know that our home study was nearly complete and would be following our application shortly................


and the phone rang. It was 10 pm. It was our social worker. She wanted to know if my husband was home and asked me to put him on another line so she could talk to us both. There was a baby. He needed a home and he needed it tonight!!! We were both shocked and overwhelmed. We have no children...we have no nursery, no crib, no diapers, NOTHING!! Yes, we wanted him. Bring on the noise, bring on the funk!

We spent the next 2 hours glued to the phone calling our parents, our friends, our employers, random people from the phone book, and customer service lines to tell them the good news. Jeff ran out to Wal*Mart to get some essentials to get us through. A little after midnight on April 8th, our son, Cole, arrived on our doorstep and he was perfect! We became parents in the blink of an eye. So from start to finish I guess you could say our process was 10 months. Truthfully though, from the time we decided to be "in it to win it" until our son was placed with us was a whopping 6 days!!!! What a ride!