My Little Man

So I have gone and torn my house apart. "Why?" you might ask. The reason is very simple. I am trying to find things that were packed up in cardboard boxes when we thought we were moving to Delaware in 2006. When that didn't work out the stuff stayed right where we put it. I still haven't found all my mugs or my "Gone With the Wind" handpainted porcelain figurines, but I did find all my Ukrainian Eggs that I made at camp and my high school yearbook. And I found my journals.

I was an avid writer until I had my surgery in 2007. When we first got the girls it became very sporadic, but I eventually got back into it. Reading them has been an eye opening experience. I think that when they took a chunk of my brain out that a lot of my memories went with it. Re-reading them has been an eye-opening experience. "O.M.G....did I really think like that?" is what keeps going through my little grey cells now. I hope and pray that when my kids finally read all this that they will understand me a little bit more. I don't think that any child really understands their parents until they are wearing the same kind of shoes.

I took two months off from work when we got the girls. When I went back to BRL I was able to go back part-time. My mom came down quite a bit to spend time with the grand-younglings and I also had them in day-care while I was at work. Nick and I had put the Frog House on the market, and had an offer on it while we were at Mechuwana. When we got back to Massachusetts we found a house that we loved, and it was right next door to my Gramma and Uncle Dick! We then had three weeks to pack up the Frog House. My parents came down to spend some time with us and help with our packing. 

I got home from work around 12:30 in the afternoon. It was a Tuesday, July 17th. The girls social worker had come for her monthly visit. She left around one in the afternoon. Mom and I sat down to have a cup of tea and then start packing some more. The phone rang and I answered it. It was Nancy, our social worker. She told me that Kianni and Naissa's mom had another baby on July 13th. DSS had the baby in their care and wanted to know if we would like to take him to be with his sisters. I remember standing there with my phone stuck to my face in utter awe and said "Sure!" Nancy told me that Annette would be over with little Jayden in about an hour. I hung up the phone and yelled "We just had a baby!" My mother simply looked in utter shock and my dad just had a blank look on his face. I called Nick and told him that he should come home because he just had a son. I called BRL and told them the story and was able to take the last month of my FMLA that had been approved when we got the girls.

Annette pulled in about an hour later with little Jayden and Nick pulled in right behind her. He was a little tyke; six pounds, 4 ounces. He was sleeping when Annette brought him in. Jayden came to us with two extra diapers and the clothes on his back. She stayed awhile so that we could explain to the girls why Jayden was now with us. Kianni kept petting the top of his head like he was a little dog, and Naissa was looking at him like "Okay, what is that?" After Annette left my father looked at us and said "I think that the two of you need to go shopping." Nick and I took off for Target and about $700 later we came home with everything that we needed for a newborn. When we got the girls we were okay as we had stocked up on things once we were approved to be pre-adoptive parents. But this was a whole different ball of wax. We hadn't been expecting another child, let alone a newborn.

The first picture that was taken of Jayden and I was me holding him with one arm and I had a glass of wine in the other. I guess that was the plus of not having to breast feed. I was told that if I wanted to breast feed him that I could be put on a medication that would help me produce milk. I remember looking at the doctor and asking her if she were serious. She was. I told her "No thanks, I'll stick with bottles." Jayden was two weeks old when we moved into our house here on Alderbrook Lane. He's now going to be eleven in July. He has grown so much and so have his sisters. I will always remember special things about all of my kids, but there is one thing that I so love about my little Jayden. I have called him "My Little Man" since we got him. I think I say it more than I realize. We were both in the kitchen one afternoon recently and I gave him a kiss on the top of his head. I said "Jayden, are you my little man?" He looked up at me and with the most serious look on his face said "Mama, I will always be your Little Man."

My Geneaology Addiction

All right. So I know that many of you have been following my blog to read about my life and how I dealt with my epilepsy. I know that I have not had much to say lately (huh, go figure that one) but I do have a good excuse as to why. Since Nick and I split and divorced (don't worry, dear blog readers as that saga will come later) I had to find a little something to do and lose myself in when I am feeling down and out. I am a genealogist-aholic.

My mother and my Uncle Jamie have always been big into working on their family trees. They have tons of Rubbermaid totes full of pictures and documents of their family. So I decided that because there is not much known about my fathers families, particularly the Sterndales and Zarecki's that I should take a trip out to Lawrence and Methuen and see what I could find. I brought my Aunt Barb with me and we decided to start at Lawrence City Hall. It only cost us twenty dollars, but we were able to look through the birth, marriage and death records that they had as far back as the early 1800's. We were then able to ask to look at the original books to find more information about grandparents, great grandparents and great-great grandparents. It was wonderful to find out that my great-grandfather, Peter Zarecki had a sister named Terese that came over from Lithuania as well. We were able to see Peter and my great-grandmother Augustina's marriage documentation and the birth record for my grandfather, Peter Jr. We had a field day there!

We then meandered over to Methuen to see if we could find out about the infamous Richard Sterndale. He was my grandmother Elizabeth Lundgren's maternal grandfather. We knew that he had been married several times, but while we were there we discovered a fourth time! We were also able to find out when and where he had died and where he was buried. We got death certificates for Richard and for his second wife, Annie and then decided to do some grave hopping. We headed over to the cemeteries where my great-great grandparents are buried. We found John Peter Lundgren and Alida Carlson and two children who died in infancy. We went to see Peter, Augustina, Terese and my Great-Aunt Anna and her husband, Joe. We then went to Walnut Grove cemetery which is listed on Richard's death certificate. It was a smaller cemetery than the others we had been to, and there was no office. So we asked the ground caretakers where we could find information as to where people were buried there. They let us look through the original books in which who had which plot was documented in beautiful, flourishing handwriting. We found where his plot was, and the caretakers directed us there. We were both so giddy like little schoolgirls! As we were driving to the area where they supposedly were I squealed "Stop the car!" I hopped out as I saw the headstone for Richard's third wife, Ida Bottomley. She was buried there with her first husband. Five stones down from Ida was Richard. He is buried there with Annie, his second wife and the one he was married to the longest. They are there with their son, Herbert who had made the journey from England with them, but passed when he was very young. We were so excited to find that this man we had only heard about really and truly existed! But then we had a moment of silence for Richard, Annie, Herbert and the Sterndale family as we thought about the hardships that they had gone through in England and then while setting up their family here in America.

There are still Sterndale cousins of mine out there. Just finding them all is a wee bit tricky as the census records are not released until 72 years after they are taken to respect privacy. Ancestry is a wonderful puzzle, an addicting puzzle, but a fulfilling puzzle. The excitement of finding these records makes you feel as giddy as a little schoolgirl. The inner peace that you feel when you stand at a tombstone and recall what these people went through in order to set up a good home here in America for their family is serenity. I pray that my children will enjoy the work that I am putting into all of this so that they can understand our family history. And for my children, for their inner peace, I have  started a family tree for them with their biological family. These are things that I hope that they will cherish, for a long, long time.