birthdays, bottles, and babies, and bunnies

Today is Kevin's 38th birthday... but he doesn't feel much like celebrating. It's hard to be happy these days when all we want to hear is good news from Taiwan. I had the day off work and we went to the "big town" for lunch and some shopping. I wonder if Kevin's feeling okay, because the first place he wanted to go to was Babies R Us. Not Circuit City, not Best Buy, not Game Stop... but Babies R Us. We hadn't bought any bottles yet, and Kevin decided that we needed some bottles. I had researched BPA free bottles at length and had already thought we'd use Born Free BPA free plastic bottles. Daddy and all of is military kitchen training asserts that glass is much cleaner than plastic, and that we should choose glass. Well, since Kevin's going to be the stay at home daddy and making and cleaning the bulk of the bottles... so what Daddy wants, Daddy gets. We're going to start out with three Born Free glass bottles and see how that goes. Of course, we'll get some bottles from the nursery when we pick up Hannah... but as we won't know if they are BPA free or not, we'd like to have these on hand and hope that she likes them.

After leaving Babies R Us, Kevin drove us over to the mall. We rarely go to the mall, so I wondered what he was interested in there today. Apparently, he had his sights on Build A Bear. I got teary eyed when I realized what store he was leading me by the hand to. He wanted to make a bear (or a kitty, or a bunny, or a puppy, or a dinosaur) for our little girl. We debated between a bear and a bunny for a while. I had a bunny named Mrs. Butterfly as a child that I really liked, so the bunny won out. We picked a voice box for her hand, kissed her heart, and got it thumping, and Kevin helped stuff her. We couldn't find any Asian looking clothes for the bunny, so a pink Hello Kitty t-shirt works.






Here's Sedona with the bunny. She'd like to hear some good news from Taiwan as well.



Monday night we went out for Chinese. When we were nearly finished with dinner, a couple with an eleven month old baby beautiful baby girl sat near us. I couldn't help but stare, watching and listening to her blow raspberries and squeal while her daddy fed her from a few containers of baby food. It's almost like I physically could not pay attention to Kevin while he was trying to talk to me, as my eyes were glued on this little girl. After 10-15 minutes I couldn't take it any more. I started to get teared up and I wanted to leave… like now… and went on out to the car while Kevin chatted it up with some people before leaving. Watching this little girl was thrilling and “rip my heart out” painful at the same time. Went home. Cried it out. Bought two pink frilly dresses and a tutu swimsuit for Hannah Claire for next summer, and felt much better. Retail therapy saves the day again. (And on eBay you can find Biscotti dresses for 1/3 the retail price shipped from Hong Kong!)

I'm starting to look at the calendar and think that this may not happen before Christmas. That's going to be really hard for us. I'm trying to prepare myself for the holidays without her... giving myself pep talks about having Hannah Claire home just in time for her first birthday in late January isn't so bad.

Mom, do you still have the bunny birthday cake mold that you used for me I when I was little? I think we should make a bunny cake for a first birthday party. Even if the ears fall off and it won't stay upright propped with toothpicks, it will still be fun.