Leopard Babies

My babies are beautiful. They have a nice head of dark hair, beautiful dark eyes, and a perfect olive complexion. One thing that I wasn't expecting, though, were their Mongolian spots. Apparently these are quite common with darker skinned babies. They are basically just dark patches of blue or brown on their backs or bums. I think they are pretty cute. :) Isaac's are pretty light, but Hunter's look like bruises all over his back. I'm pretty sure someone would report me to the police if they ever saw him without a shirt on. Mongolian spots usually fade by the time they are four or five, and I must say I am going to miss them!

Isaac

Hunter

 

 They are such cute little leapords!

Best Buds

When we first found out that we would have two babies, I told myself that if we could survive until Christmas we would be okay. I knew it would be crazy and overwhelming, but full of joy and happiness. Fortunately, the moments of joy and happiness have completely outnumbered the crazy and overwhelming. Last night we were all just sitting around the living room, I was holding Hunter while Tyler was attacking Isaac with tickles and kisses. I wanted to freeze that moment in time. I didn't know if I would ever be able to experience the joy of motherhood, but it is so much better than I ever thought possible.

Isaac and Hunter are both growing and changing like crazy. I often get a little bit sad about this, but every new stage is more fun than the last. I'm amazed at how much personality is crammed into those little bodies!

Isaac is now crawling, but I'm pretty sure he would rather be walking. He's always in such a hurry to grow up. His favorite thing to do is stand up with someone holding his hands or to stand against the couch. 

He thinks he's such a big boy. :) He is so happy most of the time, but he is also very capable of letting us know when he is unhappy (usually when he wants more food). That boy is loud! He is a big fan of baby food and grown-up food alike. I'm pretty sure he would down a whole hamburger if we let him. He makes us laugh every day, and although he's a bit shy around other people, as soon as he gets home he is a total nutcase.

His birth mom wanted a picture one day and I hadn't taken one in a while, so I hurried and snapped one on the spot. It's one of my favorites!

 

 He dumps out the diaper basket at least 20 times a day.

 
Hunter is such a little sweetheart. He is so much more vocal now, although much more subdued than his brother. While Isaac will shriek and yell, Hunter loves being held by someone and just talking to them. His sweet little smiles melt my heart. He still has so much hair! He has a bit of a bald spot in the back from rubbing it while he's on his back, but none of it has actually fallen out and it is SO long now. I really should cut it, but I just can't.

 

He wasn't too impressed with my hairdressing skills.

 

Mini Jackie Chan!

I really hope these two grow up to be best buddies. Isaac loves Hunter, and is his biggest crawling motivation. If I leave the room for a few seconds Isaac will have made his way over to Hunter and will be patting his face or grabbing his hair. Hunter is getting very good at tolerating Isaac's affection. I'm sure in a few months they will enjoy playing together and destroying our house. :)

And then there were two...

So, we have two kids. . .

We're still a bit in shock, but we are so happy to have both of our beautiful boys home safe and sound! Announcing the arrival (8 weeks late) of Hunter Scott McNiven, born on June 23rd in Arkansas. He was officially ours on June 30th and became part of our forever family on August 8th in the Rexburg LDS temple.

Way back last fall, shortly after we were matched with Isaac's birth parents, we received a very surprising message. It was from the birth parents we were originally matched with, who miscarried earlier in the year. The birth mother was pregnant again, and they really wanted us to be the adoptive parents. We were totally unprepared for this news, and didn't know what to say. My immediate reaction was "of course we will!", but this was a huge decision and needed to be carefully considered. The biggest question was finances. We were financially prepared for one adoption, but this wasn't exactly a "buy one get one free" kind of situation. After much prayer and fasting, Tyler and I decided to move forward with both adoptions. If it was meant to be, somehow everything would work out.

Once we made the decision to do both adoptions we started our adoption fundraiser. The fundraiser was such a blessing and helped us tremendously, but we still didn't come anywhere close to our needed amount. To this day I still do not know how we made it all work. Somehow the money was there when we needed it. We had little miracles here and there that gradually added up. I've heard people tell tithing and fast offering stories before, how after paying a generous fast offering or faithfully paying tithing somehow the money was there. That is truly what happened to us. This also helped us to know that these babies were meant to join our family.

Keeping Hunter's upcoming arrival was a much easier secret than Isaac's. Once Isaac came, no one asked us about future adoption plans, so we quietly prepared for another baby. When we found out that we would be having two little boys we were absolutely thrilled. Not only were we fully stocked with baby boy clothes, but we loved the idea of these two little ones growing up together, two peas in a pod.

As stressful as Isaac's arrival was, Hunter's adoption was so smooth. His due date was July 6th, but the evening of June 22nd we received a message that our birth mom's water broke and she was in labor. We were not expecting it because it was a few weeks early, and since we had just returned from camping for a week we weren't prepared at all! We quickly threw our suitcases together, tearfully dropped Isaac off at my parents' house, and at midnight started driving to Salt Lake to catch our flight. Since our travel was so last minute we had to take different flights, and the only available flight for me was a 1st class seat. Nice and cushy, but definitely not worth the extra money! We were both on our layover at 9:40 AM when Hunter was born, and we got to the hospital at around 1:00 that afternoon. Isaac was almost two days old when we saw him for the first time, so it was exciting to see Hunter at only a few hours old. His delivery was almost 12 hours long, so he was pretty swollen and bruised. We called him our little Chinese potato! We had a lovely afternoon with Hunter's birth family. They are such wonderful people. Hunter's birth father speaks English fluently so we felt like we were able to get to know them pretty well. Hunter and his birth mom were discharged the next day, and we spent the next week hanging out in the Bentonville area waiting for our court date. We were able to meet up with the birth family two more times, and we were truly sad to leave them. Our court appearance went so smoothly, and then we were on our way home! I was so homesick for Isaac I couldn't be more anxious to get home. We Skyped my mom a few times, but every time I just started crying when I saw Isaac because I missed him so much. It didn't help that Isaac was teething the whole week we were gone, so he was pretty miserable.

So that's basically the story! Hunter is a bit of a tender soul, but he really is a sweety. He was a super slow eater at first, but once we figured out that his stomach is more tender we switched formulas and he's doing much better. Life is so crazy with two babies! It's really hard to say if it's easier or harder than having twins. They are very different developmentally, but they are still completely dependent on us so it is very busy all of the time. Isaac started rolling over the week after we got back, and he's about to get his third tooth! He knows he's a big brother and is in a hurry to grow up. He also likes to hold his own bottle. :) Isaac loves watching Hunter and always holds his hand. I am so excited to watch these two grow up together. Our lives are crazy but so full of love and happiness. :)

 

 Our awesome birth family.

 

Mama and baby's first meeting. Love at first sight.

 

Chinese potato! He changed so much in those first few days. 

 

 This kid had even more hair than Isaac did! It hasn't fallen out yet, but Isaac's fell out at around 2 months so I'm preparing myself. :)

It's official! Our judge was so sweet. We had such a great experience with her.

 

While we were hanging out in Arkansas we had a friend take a few newborn pictures.

Last night before going home! We made sure to pack the important things. :)

First picture as a family of four. It was such a sweet reunion with Isaac! I couldn't believe how big he seemed after being with a newborn all week.  

Isaac has turned into such a clown. He smiles like this all the time. He has such a fun personality! Also, I love baby chubs. :)

 Five months and five weeks

      

Finally started to smile last week!

Bedtime routine with dad

 

Life is good. :)

 

Arizona

Back in April Isaac and I went drove down to Arizona to visit my sister Abby and her family for a few days. I always love road trips with my mom, especially when we're visiting family. Isaac was only six weeks old but he handled the long driving days like a champ. Abby's husband teaches band in a small town in the middle of a Navajo reservation, so they were really excited to get some visitors.

The most memorable part of the trip was definitely our trip to The Grand Canyon. Since I already typed this post once (and it got deleted), I'm stealing Abby's excellent description of it from her blog. It is so ridiculous and definitely worth the read. I added a few pictures at the end. Thanks for an awesome visit Abby! We can't wait to see you soon!

From Abby's post:

My mom said the one thing she wanted to do while she was here was to see the Grand Canyon.  It's supposed to be a 2 hour drive from here, so we thought we'd leave Monday morning and be back in the early afternoon.  I'm just going to say right now that we should've done a little more planning before we left.  David couldn't come because he had school, but we left around 9am.  Things were going pretty good for the first little while!  Both babies (yes, Asher is still my baby!) slept for the first hour and a half, but started waking up when we stopped for gas at Tuba City.  Just past Tuba City, we came to a fork in the road.  Our GPS said to turn left, but the sign said the place we wanted to go was to the right.  Since sometimes the GPS doesn't work very well in this area, and we thought the sign would be pointing us in the right direction, we turned right.  THAT WAS A HORRIBLE CHOICE!!!!!!  Just to give you a warning for the rest of the story.  

We drove for a long time.  I was thinking that it should've only taken 2 hours to drive there, but we were having a fun time and Asher was happy so I just went along with it.  We saw a couple more signs and the GPS was giving us directions that seemed right and we were heading towards some big mountains so everything seemed fine.  And we kept driving....and driving....and then Isaac started to wake up and get a little hungry.  And we started to drive away from the mountains.  And the GPS wanted us to turn into ditches.  So we decided it was time to stop and ask for directions!  We stopped at this jewelry stand where my mom got out to ask for directions, I got Asher out so he could walk around, and Lisa was digging through her bag to find the formula.  

I went over to my mom to see what she found out, and it was bad news.  At the turn, we should've turned left.  So we had a choice, go back the 2 hour drive to that turn or try to find something else.  I went back to Lisa to tell her the bad news, and I found her sitting in the car almost in tears.  She had forgotten the formula at our house and only had about an ounce of liquid formula left.  And it's not like we were in a big metropolis, this is the reservation where every town is about 2 hours away.  So we all got back in the car and tried to find gas stations that had any formula.  But no luck.  I knew Page had a Wal-Mart, so we drove about an hour away from the Grand Canyon to save little Isaac from being hungry!  Lisa was a little tender during that part of the drive...which I can understand!  I think every mother has done something like that.  I usually forget diapers so Asher has to sit in a wet diaper until I can track down a dry one.  

But we made it to Page and to Wal-Mart and everyone was ok!  We thought it would be a good time to get lunch and eat at the park so Asher could run around.  He was being so good and not even grumpy about how much time he had to spend in the car!  We went to the park and while my mom watched Asher, Lisa and I went to find directions to the Grand Canyon.  We were directed to the visitors center where they told us that we would still have to go back to that turn where we picked the wrong way.  To be honest, I kind of wanted to just go home, but I knew Lisa and my mom would be leaving the next day and might not get another chance to see the Grand Canyon, so we buckled everyone in again and headed off to see it!  I have to say, Lisa was a lot calmer at this point and Asher fell asleep pretty quickly.  But Isaac was sick of being in the carseat and he got the hiccups, and I was in back with both of them so I did everything I could to keep everyone happy!  

When we started off this adventure, I told my mom that that the speed limit says 65, but everyone goes about 80 because there are never any cops patrolling on the reservation.  My mom took that to heart and said that after we left Page, she did something she'd never done before and went over 90 mph!  Don't worry, it's pretty flat land and not too many cars drive on that road.  We made it back to the turn, and went the right way this time!  David was getting a little concerned because by now it was about 5pm and we'd been gone since 9am, but I told him we were almost there and would head home soon.  Finally, we made it to the entrance to the park!  We paid the $25 and all agreed that the first canyon-looking place we saw, we'd stop and then go home.  So we were happy when about 2 minutes into the park we found a lookout!  We all got out of the car and made our way down to the viewing area.

We made it to the Grand Canyon!  What we thought was going to be a 2 hour drive turned out to be an 8 hour trip, just to get there!  It was another 2 hours to drive back home.  Lisa pointed out that they could've driven back to Rexburg for the amount of time it took us to drive there, and that they would get to be in the car just as long the next day when they did drive back!  My mom wasn't too happy about that.  I asked my mom if it was all worth it and it really made me laugh when she replied "I don't know....."  It probably would've been more rewarding if we hadn't have been in the car all day!  But I had a lot of fun with my family.  I love just hanging out and talking with them, so I really didn't feel like it was a wasted day.  And I can guarantee that we will always remember that trip!  It was an adventure I won't forget!

The babies were SO excited to get out of the car for a while!

We didn't notice that the grown-ups and babies were matching. :)

Isaac was being such a good sport!

We even saw some wildlife (well, the back end of it!).

We're all so proud of ourselves

Isaac is such a traveler! First plane ride at two weeks and a trip to the Grand Canyon at six weeks!

I really like these people. :)

On our way back to Idaho we passed some interesting geological features.

Definitely the desert!