Approved!

It took me much longer than I hoped, but our adoption application is finally approved. Feel free to check out our online profile at www.itsaboutlove.org. The Church has recently revamped this website and there are lots of great resources for women who find themselves in a crisis pregnancy or couples considering adoption, as well as friends and family who want to support adoption.

If you want to see our profile or point someone to our profile, go to this link: https://www.itsaboutlove.org/ial/search.jsf and then search for Dan and Alisa.

Approximately 750,000 teenage girls (15-19) become pregnant each year.* And this figure doesn't include women outside of this age range who also find themselves in crisis pregnancies. We don't need more crisis pregnancies, we just need our society to think more positively about adoption and to recognize it as a positive third option to choosing to abort or choosing to parent.

If you know a young woman in a crisis pregnancy, let her know first of all that you love her and will support her whatever decision she makes. If you share a relationship of trust with her, you might consider letting her know about adoption or about our profile. And you never know when your positive attitude (or negative) about adoption might influence someone who is in a position to choose to place.

We appreciate all of you who hope and pray for us.

*statistics come from a report prepared by the Guttmacher Institute in Sept. 2006.

Lounging and Swimming

This isn't a very flattering photo of me (I know I'm stating the obvious), but I post it because of what Anna is doing. I had just finished running 12.5 miles (I'm training for a half marathon on Sept. 5) and while I was stretching, Anna decided to use my legs as a chair. And because I'm crazy in love with my child (most of the time), instead of making her get up, I told Dan to get the camera. AND I let him take a picture of me in all my sweatiness.
So, it's the end of the summer and I finally got Anna some floaties, water wings, arm bands, or whatever you want to call them. We took a Mommy and Me swim class in April and I've been trying to keep up our skills all summer. Anna's great about sitting on the side and leaning in to be caught and dunked by me. She's also pretty good about kicking her legs when I tell her to. But she has no idea how to do anything that resembles swimming and she's not content to float in her inflatable ring. She wants me to carry her around the pool wherever she directs and usually that is into the middle of a bunch of splashing kids. Then one day while we were at the pool, I learned from a friend that they have floaties for kids Anna's age.

Of course, it's the end of the season so I had to get a pair that Anna will grow into. I figure she's still small enough that I've got to keep an eye on her constantly anyway, so it's okay if they're a little big. She's pretty cute to watch because she doesn't understand the concept of floating on her tummy and dog paddling. Instead she keeps her body perpendicular to the pool floor and kicks madly to keep her chin and mouth out of the water. The kicking usually causes her to spin in circles, making it hard for me to get a photo of her facing forward. But most importantly, she has more fun in the floaties, she works harder, and she takes longer naps when we get home form the pool.

July and August Update

Geez, it has been a long time since I posted here. For the past month I have been working hard to finish our adoption application and I'm finally getting to the point where I have to wait for feedback before I can do anymore. I hope we'll be approved in the next few weeks.

Over the past month, Anna has started talking and signing more. I sort of gave up on sign language when she didn't seem to show any interest in it at nine months but then she started to actually do some of the signs a month or two ago. Of course many of the signs look the same. "More" and "shoes" look a lot alike, but if she really focuses, she can say "mo" and she usually only says "shoes" when we ask her to. Learning to sign "cracker" also helped her figure out where her elbow is, but most of the time she still likes to stand at the open pantry door, point to the top shelf, and cry rather than pat her elbow or say "cacka." Other favorite words include no, ball, purple, baseball, touch down (you can probably guess who has been teaching her those last two words), and "thank you." She can also make the sign for thank you and it looks like she's blowing a kiss, which I think is just too cute for words. Her first true word was probably "mom" and that's still what she calls both Dan and I. She can say "Da da" but if I point to a photo of Dan and ask who that is she says "Mom!" Ball was her second real word. It took me a long time to figure out that that's what she was saying at the pool. But she wanted the other kids' balls enough that she finally got the message across to me. She will also frequently pick up just about everything from the TV remote to a calculator to my cell phone, hold it up to her ear, say "hello" and then continue to babble. Of course, I think it's adorable, but I'm not biased or anything.

Here are some photos from the last month.

We finally went on a picnic up Provo Canyon. Anna loved the idea of sitting on a blanket and eating Pringles. Recently she's learned how to pull herself up onto a chair and a few times, she's made it on top of the table. So she's not to keen about sitting in her high chair when she could be dancing on a chair. But sitting on the ground outside and eating, now that was right up her alley.
Anna's also been working on going down the slide by herself.

We've been spending some time coloring, but I have to admit that several crayons have teeth marks in them. My pediatrician warned me that she would try to eat them, but she's so dang fast! I turn away for a minute and she's got a big hunk of purple crayon in her mouth.
Our ward went to see an Orem Owlz baseball game and Anna discovered root beer. I'm learning that if I don't want her to eat junk food, then I can't eat junk food, but despite my best intentions, I continue to be a bad example. She couldn't get enough of my root beer and eventually I had to hide it from her, because she was turning into a sticky mess.
This stream was ice cold, but Anna didn't care and my mom was nice enough to help Anna dip her toes in the stream. I'm glad grandma was there because I probably would have tried to prevent her from getting close to the stream and then it would have been a big kicking and screaming mess.