1st Anniversary of The Moose's Placement

Our son, Morrison Ryan, came home one year ago today!! One of Morrison's many nicknames is Moose, hence the name of my blog, The Crunchy Moose. He was born on August 30, 2012 and his placement was on October 1, 2012. Read more about his placement on this post.

Last year on his placement day, Ryan picked me up from the airport early that morning (I was in an out-of-state wedding the day before placement) and we had a few hours to waste before we were going to meet our son for the very first time! We went to my favorite antique mall (Montgomery Street Antique Mall in Fort Worth. I got a lot of things for his nursery there, see his nursery here). Ryan has a lot of vinyl records (yes, we listen to them all the time, almost daily the record player is turned on). Last year, we bought Harry Chapin's album Verities & Balderdash for his song "Cat's in the Cradle." After the antique mall, we went to a Mexican restaurant and ordered nachos. I'm pretty sure I didn't eat anything. How can you eat when you are about to meet your son?!?! Then we went to our adoption agency and waited for our Mo to arrive.

 Holding our son for the 1st time. That's his transition mother. She took care of him for a month while legalities were sorted out.

The inspiration for our "Cat's in the Cradle" album. This was before The Moose came home. Our cat, Dylan, slept in his cradle often.

So this year, we decided to celebrate the anniversary of our Gotcha day by getting a new album and visiting our agency (Gladney Center for Adoption). Here we are at the antique mall:

We decided on Marty Robbins for "El Paso." The finale of Breaking Bad was a few days ago, and that song made an appearance so it was fresh on our mind (side note: the finale episode was called "Felina", that's the name of the girl in the "El Paso" song).

We also scored and found The Moose's life chest!! I have been keeping my eyes open for something for the last year and finally found the perfect chest. The life chest is a common thing for adopted children. It's where we keep his life story. Things that are personal to him that we wouldn't exactly put on the coffee table for guests. Things from his birth family and our agency.

We stopped by Corner Bakery and bought some cookies for the ladies living in the dorm at our agency. Our agency (Gladney Center for Adoption) has dorm rooms that some expectant birth mothers live in while they are pregnant. It's a great support system for the ladies to be able to bond with other women going through similar experiences. Our birth mom lives out of town and did not live in the dorm.

Here we are at the agency.

I loved watching him roam the halls at Gladney! He made himself right at home!

Here's Ryan & The Moose watching the preview for Blossoms in the Dust. That's an Academy Award winning movie about Edna Gladney, the founder of the Gladney Agency. We haven't seen it yet. We need to track down a copy.

Here's our antique store loot. I love that chest!

Of course I dusted it with my lemon & olive oil dusting mix.

Here's some of the things we have in the chest. You won't see everything, this is his private life story, but here's some things you can see. The white binder is part of our application to the agency. Yes, I said PART of the application. The yellow book is a photo book for the birth moms. That book is how the birth moms choose their families, they get a handful of books and pick from that. So our birth mom read that yellow book and then picked us! The blue book is an album from his transition mother. During transition, there are legal things that need to be sorted out. During that time, he stayed with his transition mother. We couldn't meet him during transition but we did get updates.

Yep, that's part of our application.