A Week of Firsts...

Last night Tristan had his first REAL bath! What an experience! Up until now, he still had to have sponge baths. Last night we filled up his whale tub and tried it out! He never made one noise! His eyes just got really big and he stared at us like we were crazy! This picture shows Ryan and I drying Tristan off and trying to get him warm!

I still do not think he knows what is going on! We tried to go fast because the poor little guy was so cold and uncertain of what was going on!

Poor Tristan is scared to death!!
I had some much cuter pictures but I do not want to be arrested for anything inappropriate :)

Right before the bath he was all cozy and content...

I am sure I do not need to explain why I put this picture on here... Adorable!

This is not a first, but I love this picture. It's my "Where is Beamer" picture!! He was literally smushed under the pillow with Tristan on it. He didn't care. He just wanted to be close to his boys!

My school threw me a baby shower 2 Friday's ago. My team (the first grade teachers) went together to get Tristan this swing! THANKS GUYS!!! The box the swing came in said that the child must weight at least 5.5 lbs.... haha... as of Monday that is exactly what Tristan weighed! So, Ryan and I were alittle leary about putting the little man in there. On the highest speed, I think he would have been catapulted across the room! We settled on speed 2 :) Just barely moving! It plays music and the little moblie moves too. Tristan loved it!

Starting off the week we got our FIRST real snow in years! We had right under a foot of snow starting this past Sunday. The first picture is our deck and the second picture is out of the window on our front porch. The snow was gorgeous but we did not really get to enjoy it. Instead, we lost power and had to take Tristan to Ryan's mom and Paul's house to warm up! Thankfully, they have a generator. To make things even better, school has been out for 4 days so far. That means I have 4 days that do not count against me with my leave!!! Wooo Hoooo!! There are still trees down in Cumberland and still alot of power issues. The pipes at the school (most likely the trailors) froze which means the toilets etc are out of commission...

Thank you Melissa for helping me figure out how to get the pictures straight! Now I just need to work on getting them in the right order :) Everything is backwards!

Have a blessed day!

Ashley

traumatic weekend

It was bound to happen sometime but I thought it would take longer than a week to end up in the ER!! I called the dr on Wednesday about reflux issues with Tristan. She told us to try burping him more. He HATES being burped. Well that worked alittle bit for about a minute :) so I called her back on Friday and told her he was still aggitated and that it was so sad. She told us to come on in just to make sure everything was in check. While we were there... for reflux mind you... they (the dr and the nurse pract.) found a heart murmur. His poor little heart was beating over 190 beats per minute (for his age 160-180 is normal) and he was working overtime to breath. So at that moment we were ER bound. By the time we got to Chipenham hospital things just got worse. Tristan was fine, he is a real trooper. He had an EKG, chest x-ray, rsv screening and his blood pressure was checked on all four limbs. I think I cried more than he did! The monitor in his room barely worked, they had to run every test extra times because nothing was working and there were extremely sick people all around us. I thought I was going to go crazy. On top of it all, the nurse was a pain in the tail. Neither Ryan nor I were fond of here. Tristan on the other hand did great with everything. He passed all of his tests. The ER doc did find an extremely mild heart murmur that she said would most likely clear itself up. They are common in newborns, supposidly. So now we are enjoying being home. No more hospitals for a LONG time... lets pray that is really the case!! So now to address the reflux problem, the reason we went to the dr in the first place, is more of a problem than before. I called the dr at home this moring and she called in meds. We tried them tonight for the first time and Tristan is now completely conqued out. I hope they help him. It is so hard watching him in pain and not being able to do anything about it!

Side note... it is SNOWING!!!! I don't mean typical VA snow but REAL fluffy snowball making snow! yippeeee!!!!!!!!!!!! As of now, we have about 7 inches and it is still coming down strong! It is so beautiful to watch. I wish Tristan was old enough to go out and play!

4 whole weeks

It is hard to believe that yesterday Tristan was 4 weeks old. Saturday will mark his 1 month birthday! Time has really flown by! We will go back to the doctor on Monday for his next checkup. He will be seen more regularly since he is a preemie. They want to make sure that he continues to grow and gain weight. We are all for going frequently. That way the doctor can answer our 1000000 questions!

I love the picture of Tristan's hand in mine. His poor little fingers have doubled in width since he was born. They are the only body parts that he has that have a little "chunk" to them. :)

Some people have asked us how Beamer has responded to Tristan. Beamer is very curious and smells everything with Tristan's scent. He seems to be very protective already. Beamer comes running if Tristan ever makes a funny noise or if he gets fussy.

I am still working on getting pictures put in the right places... anyone know how to get the pictures to go with the comment???

I hope you all have a great night!

Medical Update

Today was Tristan's first well baby visit with the pediatrician. We really liked the doctor and thought the visit went really well!

Tristan is now 4 lbs and 15 oz!! Yippee! One more ounce to go! He has also grown length wise from 16 1/2 to 17 3/4. Its hard to believe how small he really was. His head has also grown 4 cms since birth. I guess the feeding issues we have been having have not disturbed his growth process!

Everything else is going great. The doctor even said that his poor little pee pee looks great and that the OB dr. did a wonderful job on his circumcision... All of the nurses at the hospital admired it too... kinda funny! At least we know he won't have to worry about that later in life ;)

Just Pictures

I will write more later. For now, enjoy the pictures :)

## I cant figure out how to get the captions by the right pictures... sorry!

** The pictures in the car seat are at the hospital getting all packed in and ready to go. Jill, the nurse, is carrying him to the car.

**The one with Ryan is the night we got home. Home at last!

**Tristan loves his Boppy seat! It is SO soft and it lays back just right for him. He looks nice and big in it, but what you cant tell is his outfit is actually about 3 inches too long in the legs and his sleeves are rolled up! He will fit into those newborn clothes eventually!!

The adoption process of Tristan

Quick overview of how things work...
Birthparents signed papers at Tristan's birth entrusting him to Social Services.
A 10 day waiting period went into effect for the birth parents to change their minds before a court date could be set. The court date came and allowed them to change their minds again. They did not. Now, from last Wednesday's court date, the birth parents are allowed an additional 10 days to appeal the courts to regain their rights. After this last 10 day waiting period is over (this upcoming weekend) they will no longer have any rights to Tristan ever again. At no point, ever, will they be allowed to come back and try to regain custody or visitation or anything. The judge even explained to them that in the start of Virginia there is no such thing as an open adoption. This confuses me a bit since that is all we have heard about in the past year and a half, but Va does not recognize this as a legally binding agreement. Open adoptions are basically gentlemens agreements only. With all this being said, the birth parents have only a few days left and then there is not a threat of Tristan being taken from us by them. After this week, our attorney and social servies will begin the whole adoption process. Right now Tristan is our Foster child. The adoption finalization will take around 6 months if things go smoothly.

We pray that things continue to go as smooth as silk! (Smooth as silk is how our attorney described court last week.)

It is all so hard to believe!

Looking back on the past 2 years, it is so hard to believe that we ended up with the one thing we were continuously told we could not have... a healthy newborn baby boy. In all angles that we look at our adoption process with Tristan, we see that this is truly a miracle of God for Ryan and myself, as well as for Tristan. Most of you know some of the story, and others, not so much. But the main thing is that we got a call 5 weeks ago that there was a couple who was going to put their unborn child up for adoption. They went to the social service office in our area and met with the social workers. (FYI- we have had all the training and paperwork done for social services for quite some time now.) A social worker called Ryan on Wed and explained to him the situation. The following wed we met the birth parents. The following wed a beautiful baby boy was born and were were the first to hold him! We named him Tristan Christopher. His birth mother even allowed us to put Frey on his paperwork. (She is an amazing girl...) Tristan was immediately emitted to the NICU since he was 8 weeks early. 3 weeks and 2 days later he was able to come home with us! He came home this past Friday, February 20th.