Good Morning

Every morning when Matthew wakes up I go into his room and say "Good Morning". We have the following "conversation"
Me: Did you have a good sleep?
Matthew: yes
Me: Did you have any dreams?
Matthew: yes
Me: What did you dream about?
Matthew: Golf

As long as he has been talking and somewhat answering questions, that is his answer every morning and as far as I know Eric hasn't coached him on it. I just think it is funny.

Cannon's Open House

I truly have such good friends down here. Today they threw me and Cannon an open house. I realize mostly to see the baby, but I am so okay with that!! He is just so cute everyone needs to meet him :) It was so much fun to visit with my friends, eat yummy food and open fun presents. I think I am still getting used to how lucky I am to have these two beautiful boys in my life (three counting Eric). Thanks everyone for coming and being great friends!

Happy Birthday to me!

What a great husband I have. He surprised me this week by coming home early, which is a gift all in itself. Then he had a beautiful bouquet of flowers and asked his mom to watch the kiddos so we could go to dinner. FUN!! We went out to eat at the Grotto on Market Street here in The Woodlands. It was so delicious! We had a great time. It was nice to just have a few minutes to catch up with Eric. He is such a great husband and I am so lucky to have him.

When we left Jean we thought she had a pretty sweet gig - both kids down for a good sleep. When we got home however we were both surprised to see Matthew up. He got so excited and came running towards us and as i turned the corner I saw him slip and hit his head full throttle on our window next to the door. Oh man, I thought we were headed to the hospital for sure he hit so hard. I grabbed him and checked him out really fast while he was screaming. Thankfully no blood, but we let him stay up for a couple of hours to make sure he didn't have a concussion. Do you see how bit that goose egg is? Oh I was so sick to my stomach and lucky for me when I thought about it, I got to relive it in my head. So sad. A couple of days later he is pretty bruised and even his eye is black and blue. He hit really hard.

The next night on my real birthday, Eric had YM but Jean told me to go out shopping. I took her up on it. I got a fun shirt and a few things for the kids. I can't really go shopping without getting stuff for them anymore. When I got home, my friends had all come over for cake. It was so much fun to visit with them and catch up. I feel so blessed to have such a good group of friends here in Texas. I truly love them all!

Cannon Thomas Detton

Born April 3, 2009
Weight: 7 lbs 4 oz
Height 19 1/4
Time 5:25 pm

YIPPEE!! Our little guy finally has a name.

Cannon's Home!

Just some pics

The trip!

Wow, so we had a flight out of Portland on Tuesday at 10 am. Luckily we decided to clear out of the condo on Monday night and get a hotel near the Portland airport. We are definitely not used to getting anywhere on time. It ended up taking us the entire Monday to pack and clean and get out of the condo. We started towards Portland around 7 pm and grabbed some dinner at the traditional Camp 18 and since both kids fell asleep in the car before we got there, we did take out and ate in the parking lot. Along the way we hit rain, snow, sleet and with every mile we got closer to Portland, either Eric or I would say “man I am glad we left tonight, I can’t imagine doing this in the morning at 6 am”. So we got to our hotel that night around 10:30 or so and attempted to settle Matthew down in the pack and play in the bathroom. Needless to say, around midnight, he ended up in our bed and slept soundly until we left at 7:30 the next morning. Eric and I woke that day with pretty bad head colds, so we were grateful for Matthew was feeling better and had slept.

The airport was quite the funny ordeal, we had so much stuff we were almost embarrassed. We thought adding one more kid would mean just a little more luggage, after all he is pretty tiny. Nope, I think it at least tripled our usual luggage. We felt lucky to get it on the flights with us. The boys both did really well and I give most of the credit to Matthew doing well due to having an entire row to ourselves and he could at least move a little bit. We got a lot of funny looks when people saw our tiny little one in tow. If I got the chance to tell them we were taking him home they were fine but otherwise, we got the evil eye every once in awhile.

After a layover in LAX we finally arrived home to the beautiful Houston airport at 9:30 and my parents were there to pick up the tired little crew. We were grateful to have them there and really grateful for the food they had prepared back at home when we got there. We were the most grateful when they volunteered to feed the baby that night and Eric and I were so exhausted and sick that we didn’t even say no.

Wow, so that was quite the update, sorry if it was too much info, but I wanted to document it for us and so there you go.

We get to come home!

April 10, 2009
We had really just started to feel the craziness of the last couple of days wearing off and were happy to be able to settle in at the condo and enjoy these two sweet spirits that have come into our family. After all is said and done we are just about the happiest people in the world right now and are loving saying “our boys”. We are just all of a sudden a family of four and are forever grateful for all the people and events that have brought us to this point.

You are probably all thinking don’t settle in too much and yes that is exactly the truth. Today we got a phone call from Julie saying we were cleared to leave the state of Oregon and go home! Yippee!! We were excited and very surprised that it took only 5 days instead of the two weeks we had planned on. Again we got on the phone and made travel arrangements to go back to Texas. We were able to get tickets for Tuesday, April 14th and go home all together. So we had a couple of days to relax and enjoy our little family. It was a lot of fun. We really didn’t’ do much because it is cold in Oregon this time of year. We did at least go to the beach with all of us and let Matthew run in the sand. He loved it!

Some of Cannons first pics

Oregon round 3

Monday we woke up (or were woken up - whichever you choose) at 5 am. That is such a joyful hour :) We started getting ready to leave for the coast around 6:30 and finally pulled out of dodge at 11:00. Yes folks, it took us that long to round us up and get all of our stuff into the car and ready for our long journey. Matthew and his baby brother were asleep within minutes of getting in the car. I know you are all waiting for a name for this little guy and need I remind you that I am working with Eric who continues to suggest any and all names that he sees on signs along the side of the road. A couple worth mentioning.... Zone River Detton, Caldwell Char Detton, Multnomah Detton (that one was enough without a middle name). Anyway, I am working on getting him to think of more normal names, but it is a slow process. We are enjoying our two little boys. On our drive I stopped into a grocery store to get Matthew some milk and I was walking out to the car and just had a happy joyful moment to think that all my boys were waiting for me. We are definitely feeling so blessed to have these two boys in our lives. They did so great on the trip. We stopped for lunch at a park and let Matthew play a little and put the little guy out in the sun for a bit. (He is a little jaundice). Other than that we arrived safely and in great shape at the condo at Cannon Beach that night at 7:00 or so. We pretty much got our pajamas on, tried to get Matthew to eat and all went to bed.

Tuesday morning Matthew woke up with a pretty good fever, so I sent Eric off to the grocery store to get Tylenol at 6:30 am. Notice the early hour every day! He came back with groceries for the week. What a good husband! The pediatrician at the hospital wanted the baby to see a doctor within 2-3 days of release, so Tuesday was the day to find a doctor in Oregon . After a couple of unhelpful offices, I talked to a nurse who was able to get us into another doctor’s office as soon as we could get there. So we hurried and packed all of us in the car for the 45 minute drive to Astoria . It is a beautiful drive and we got to cross over a drawbridge and tried to get Matthew to say “boat” and he did pretty good. The baby checked out and after a few peeing and pooping accidents during the checkup, I felt pretty lucky not to have it all over me and somewhat contained on the baby and the surrounding blankets and diapers. Needless to say the baby got his first bath today when we got home. He is now out cold from the exertion.

Oregon adventure cont

Sunday April 5th - We were able to pick up our sweet new little son for our family. We are so grateful to have him and he is adorable. Eric and I realized after we picked the little dude up on Sunday that we were still holding our breath about the whole thing going through. Sunday was such an emotional day for us as you can imagine. We got the call to go to the hospital around 11:30 and had one of our friends watch Matthew while we went to the placement. We met with Carisa and her parents. They are wonderful people and wanted to make sure we were going to love this little guy. WE WILL of course. We had many tender moments in that hospital room. We love Carisa for the decision she is making and are forever grateful for her spirit and her courage to do it.

Sunday afternoon we stayed in La Grande and held our little guy. He is just so sweet and calm. I know I am somewhat biased and he is a newborn and they do just sleep, but Eric and I are taking all the credit as being the best parents ever :) haha! We had a wild night as we had two babies up at the same time due to all sleeping in the same room YIKES! What fun we will have with these two little boys.

Our little adventure to Oregon

Friday April 3rd around 3 pm, I was in the process of feeding Matthew a snack. Since I had him contained in a high chair I took advantage of the situation and was going through the baby clothes I had washed and had pulled the suitcase out to pack up the baby stuff. The phone rang and I picked it up and it was Julie our caseworker. She told me that our birthmom was in labor and our son was being born. I screamed and I think I said something like “no way”. She told me we needed to get to Oregon fast!!! Man was my head spinning! I called my good friend Emily, put Matthew in the car and off he went to play at her house for the afternoon. I got on the phone called Eric, and started getting the airline stuff figured out. I think all in all that afternoon I spent 3 hours on the phone trying to figure out the plane, car and hotel and trying to get everything else figured out. The very very helpful Delta agent spent an hour with me working out the kinks and getting me the best deal I think he could have. He was amazing! We ended up on a flight at 9:25 pm out of Houston arriving in Portland at midnight. When Eric got home we packed like crazy people, my friend came to pick us up and off we went to the airport. We had so much stuff it was crazy. We forgot a few things, but mostly we are all there.

Saturday April 4th - We woke up early and had plans to get to La Grande to visit with Cannon birthmom in the hospital. We found out that our little boy was born on April 3rd at 5:25 pm weighing in at 7 lbs 4 oz and 19 ¼ inches tall. We were so excited. We had a few things we wanted to pick up in Portland so off we went to the store. I shouldn’t mention this, but a tiny tiny bit of my alter personality lovingly referred to as “psycho Jenni” came out. Really truly only a little I think. We were doing some shopping for a gift. Man that is a very stressful emotional thing for me. So we got back on the road and arrived in La Grande at 4 or so. We did get flowers ordered ahead of time but when I went to get them, she had only yellow flowers. I thought I had asked for a colorful spring bouquet. The florist was very kind when I asked if we could put some more color in.
We went straight to the hospital for a visit. She was doing well and had some of her family visiting her. It was nice to meet them and get to know them a little bit. It was nice to get to know her a little and I even got to hold the little guy for just a few minutes. Saturday was a little different because it felt like we were just visiting a friend who had a baby.

18 Months!

Matthew is officially 18 months, and to celebrate, I had my friend Katie take some pictures of him. They turned out really cute. Take a look on her site to get a sneak peak! I personally love the cowboy hat ones! simplykphotos.blogspot.com