FINALLY!!!!

Isn't that the cutest laugh ever? I managed to sneak up while mom was playing goofball games and catch him laughing. His other favorite game is peek-a-boo, but true to his habit, he stopped laughing by the time I got there. In this video, he really doesn't seem to be looking at mom much... why? Well, we made the mistake of putting him under the christmas tree for the game. This means he has a hard time deciding which is better... mom and dad, or the lights. Guess what wins more than half the time?


So I stand humbly chastised about the blog... no one cares about christmas trees, they all want to see Jaeden. And I totally understand, but you have to at least see this house... it is the most crazily decorated house that I have EVER seen for christmas! Enjoy!

Christimas time is Great, yeah?

So I love the holday season (despite the increasingly large impact that it has on my belly). It is just so fun to have everyone be happilyl thinking of others, with snow, lights, trees, and gifts. Here is our spectacular tree (I had no idea that trees would be so cheap in Pittsburgh... a similar tree would be 3x as much in Centerville) but we like it.




Here it is lit up...





We had our friends the Curtis Family over for FHE last week to enjoy some gingerbread house decorating. Renee says she overdid it with the candy, but I think she got the right amount (lots of leftovers). The only problem was that it was our favorite candies, rather than practical decorating candies. Really, that's not a big problem, but there are really only so many things you can do with butterfinger candy bars on a gingerbread house, you know?

Jaeden laughed a long laugh today. The first one that was more than just a chuckle! I'm not sure why, because it was while I was kissing his cheeks, but I can't get him to do it again. Of course, true to the laws of nature, there was no working camera around so that I could record it. Oh well. One of these times you guys will be able to hear him laugh...

The True Joy of Parenthood

I used to think that love for your child came from sacrifice and the hard work of parenting-- having true charity where you honestly think of someone else's needs before yourself-- and that loving someone that much and so unconditionally was the true joy of parenthood. But this weekend, I found out that I was wrong.

This is the true joy of parenting:

Hearing your baby laugh for the first time. He first laughed Friday afternoon. It was just half a giggle amidst his babbling to me, but definitely a real laugh. He then proceeded to laugh more later in the day as I twirled him. Matthew and I spent all weekend finding out different ways to make Jaeden laugh. It is such a thrill to hear his giggle time and time again. There is no other sound like it in the world.

A visit to New England...

Jaeden is such a cute little boy! I know, I say that every post, but he really is, you know? Here is a video of a typical morning with Jaeden. You may want to turn the sound down, since I'm talking to him, and I just woke up... pretty painful. The scene is the morning after Halloween (hence the Giraffe costume from Grandma and Grandpa Memmott). He's not as smiley as usual, but you get the idea.

So last week our house in Pittsburgh was completely empty! I went on a business trip to Charelston, SC, while Renee went back home to NH to visit family and friends! She had a wonderful time, visiting family, going to the temple (so nice to have a close temple, can I tell you? We were definately spoiled in Boston), and just hanging out. I have pictures from her visit below, but you'll have to try to get her to blog about the details, since I wasn't there. What I do know, however, is that Jaeden LOVES his cousins. You can see in some of these pictures that he loves looking at, smiling at, and being around other kids, and Bowman and Ivy (Renee's sister's kids) were no exception.

Grandma Clark, Bowman, Ivy, Jaeden, and Mom.

Renee and Jaeden at the temple.

Jaeden with mom looking at his cousin Bowman.

Bowman and his cousin Ivy

Since I've been home, however, Renee and I have made a serious tactical error. Jaeden was given a bumbo seat by a few of our friends in Boston (thanks guys!) and we thought we'd give it a try. He LOVED sitting in the seat. There's only one problem... he now wants to be sitting up ALL THE TIME!! Today in church he would start to whine, then cry, then scream if I had him in any position except sitting or standing, but the second I sat him up, he'd smile, and be totally happy. That is until I stopped holding him up. It was almost comical that I could make him smile or cry, just based on how I held him. That and because he loves other kids so much, he was enthralled by all the primary kids (today was our primary program) and wanted to be looking at them the entire time they were up there. If only everyone was so easy to please! Here are a few pictures of him in the seat he now loves.

Bumbo time! (sorry about the picture quality... all I had was the iPhone!)

Could he BE any cuter?

Look at this face:


Do you know why he's smiling? Because as of last week, he started sleeping through the night... that means EVERYONE is smiling like this in the morning. What a cute little guy! I think he will be a photographer when he gets older... why? Because he sure knows how to work the camera. He knows exactly when, and how long to smile so that I can't get a picture or a video of him! The picture above was taken just last Wednesday, (and it took about 5 weeks to catch him in the act).

He is a very chill, happy baby, and he smiles a lot. There are two times that we can guarantee that he will smile at us: 1) when we "rescue" him from his crib in the morning, and 2) when daddy comes home from work. But, even when we plan for those times, it's still a little tough to get it on camera.
The department at work got together and got him some baby clothes for a gift:



Despite Renee's deep held family Patriots roots, this kid may end up a Steelers fan!

He is getting very interested in his hands now, and is totally entertained for 1/2 hour at a time just trying to fit his hand inside his mouth. It's hilarious to watch because he'll ball up his hand into a fist, and then jam it right into his eye, then back up and pop himself in the nose, and then finally he'll get it into his mouth, and man is he a happy camper! He'll suck on his fist for like 10 seconds, and then start the process all over again. I'll have to try to get a video of it to show next week (sorry about the delay in blogs... between travel and sickness, we've been out for the last few weekends).

Jaeden has started singing along with Renee during his meals. Renee would sing to him "Called to Serve", or "I Hope, they Call me on a mission!" when he gets fed. Sometime last week, I was sitting in the same room, reading, when I noticed he was making all kinds of noises. After listening for a bit, I realized that it was ONLY when mom was singing! He was totally singing along! I think he's gonna be a rock star, eh?

The last thing about Jaeden that we find kinda funny is that he's obsessed with his swing that has fish and music... really, it's just the fish... the swing can be stopped, and the music not playing, and he will spend every minute he can just staring at the fish. I had an ego deflating moment last week: I was playing with Jaeden in the morning, and usually he loves daddy time before work. However, he just kept looking above his head and crying. I couldn't figure out what was wrong, until I noticed WHAT he was looking at... you guessed it... his fish. So I picked him up and put him in the swing, and got the biggest smile I've seen yet, before completely losing my baby boy to the joys of aquatic animals! Like father like son, eh? This doesn't quite do justice to how much he likes them, but here are some photos of his latest passion.


By the way, if any of you want to know the definition of nerds, geeks, and technofreaks, check out below:

Just me and my dad, building a massive beast of a super fast computer. Talk about Christmas in September, baby!

Missing the trips...

Matt's in Japan without a camera. I think a souped up digital SLR with HD video capability would be nice. Japan is the land of technotoys, so maybe I can convince him to buy one there. I am blissfully unaware of how the dollar is doing on the international market right now. Without visual evidence, I guess you'll just have to take his word for it that he went. Apparently the hotel is really cake eater and beautiful (Pics courtesy of Hotel Nikko Kanazawa's Website).

I wish I was there...

But instead, I am home with a poor, sick baby.

We were going to visit my parents this week and have a baby shower courtesy of friends in Cambridge, but Jaeden was in no condition to fly, and I knew he'd be miserable. I feel so bad about missing the shower, but I am sure that the person who would have sat next to me on the plane thanks you. I couldn't control where the spitup (vomit) went this morning. And Jaeden almost never spits up. Thank you Southwest for making it easy and worthwhile to postpone trips! I think I am converted!

Jaeden did better once I learned to only feed him an ounce or two at a time, but he was being fussy no matter what I tried, so we went on a walk this afternoon because being outside is his favorite thing. The wind was so strong that it practically pushed the stroller up the huge hills here. Jaeden loved the sound the wind made in the trees and watching them whip around (when not sleeping).


Good thing we left when we did because the power went out due to a broken branch, but it turned back on within a few minutes of being home.

Jaeden

So several people have asked why we named our boy Jaeden, so we thought we'd shed some light on the subject:

Jaeden was a name that Renee has always liked, and when she suggested it long ago, I agreed. This was before we knew Jaeden was coming, and certainly before we knew he was a boy -- I spent about 1.5 years thinking our baby was going to be a girl... oops. Now we have tons of baby girl clothes (and I admit, there were times that if Jaeden had a big diaper blow-out when all his blankets are dirty (we just got our washing machine yesterday), he does get a pink blanket occasionally... just don't tell him that when he gets older!) However, once we found out Jaeden was coming, I wasn't sure at all about the name for him. For one, I knew that I wanted my oldest son to have the middle name "J", just like me and my dad and my grandpa. I wasn't sure I wanted a son named J. J.
Well, sometime around the end of June, both Renee and I felt strongly prompted that his name was indeed Jaeden. After that, there was no more discussion, his name was simply Jaeden J!
The interesting part of this story comes, however, when Renee's mom was helping us pack our stuff right before Jaeden was born. She came in and said "Just so you know, I looked up what Jaeden means." She told us, and we were amazed. Jaeden means "...and God heard". What better name could there be for our little miracle than that? Truly God answered our pleas for a child with Jaeden, and so we feel like the name is absolutely perfect for him (even if he does end up calling himself J. J.)

Matt Won't Believe It!

Yes, I am blogging. Matt is off home teaching, and I am home alone with Jaeden happily asleep (finally!), so I thought I'd give the update for this week.


We had our first doctor visit in Pittsburgh for Jaeden on Friday. Matt and I made a wager on how much he would weigh, being almost 5 weeks old. He has filled out alot and now has the cute baby chubbiness. Matt guessed 10 pounds 1 ounce. I guessed 10 pounds 5 ounces... I was the winner! He weighed in at 10 pounds 6 ounces.

Erin, Brett, and Aerianna were our first visitors for Jaeden. They came over Labor Day Weekend, and Brett took some adorable pictures of our little boy.


Matt normally hates feet, but we both agree that Jaeden's feet are adorable!


Jaeden loves to put his arms under his chin, as shown here. He is also learning more motor control, which means he has a better chance of getting his fists to his mouth to suck on, but this also means that he thinks he is hungry a lot more often than he actually is.

Matt laughed at me during Sacrament Meeting today. We were both speaking, but realized that we still don't have Sunday morning timing down with a child. We left in a rush, and on the way found that we had forgotten the diaper bag. We walked up to the stand after the opening prayer. Of course, Jaeden wanted to be heard while Sacrament was being passed. With nothing else in tow, I surreptitiously shoved his fist into his mouth and held it there for him. He was quite happy at the prospect. Matt says he'll now blame any and all thumb sucking on this day where I so readily condoned it.

Best thing about being a dad...?

Total Indoctrination!

Uh.... I mean... sharing the simple pleasures of life with your son! Like:

Lord of the Rings (oh, yes, he's going to...)

Ice Cream (can we say Graeter's?)

Brandon Sanderson (sooo good)

Zelda (um... didn't you see the announcement? Of course he's going to play Zelda with me!)

Skiing (but not here)

Star Wars (Have any of you seen my sister Hilary's boys?)

Fillet Minion (Bacon wrapped of course)

Mandarin (Hello Grandma and Grandpa Memmott!!)

Laser Tag

Video Games


Okay... maybe your right... maybe he's too young for all of that stuff right now. So what? We'll just start small:



SUNDAY AFTERNOON NAPS!!!!!!! (apparently I got hijacked by Renee with the camera while sleeping today)




Thanks so much to everyone for the comments and congratulations. We are of course so happy, and so excited. It's odd, after waiting so long, it seems like a dream (a very good one) and we are so enjoying every minute of it. A friend of Renee's told us that she was trying to explain adoption to her 6 year old daughter, the little girl got a knowing look on her face and said “…So the mom put the baby in a basket and left it on their doorstep, rang the doorbell and ran away?” Ummm… almost! :) Really, though we are so grateful to Raquel and the wonderful gift that she has brought into our lives. We will forever be indebted to her! Jaeden is such a wonderful little guy, and very cute. He already is taking after his parents in important ways: He HATES the cold, just like Mom (and by cold we mean 73 degrees instead of 83 degrees.) and he LOVES to eat, just like dad. I don’t know if you can tell, but he is getting a little chunky (which we love.) He’s also claimed mommy and daddy's bed, and below you can see him getting comfortable lounging on mommy and daddy’s bed. (well, at least the air mattress we’re sleeping on until we get the house unpacked.)




















Other than that we’re loving being parents, and working like mad to get our new home painted, stocked, and comfortable. In the coming weeks I”ll have to do a before and after video for the house, so you can see WHY we’ve been so busy!

I found this awesome movie...

Happy fourth of July!

Well, not much is new for us, except that we're still traveling everyhwere (no more than 6 nights at one location all accross the country) but things are bound to slow down soon. I start my job at Westinghouse in 2 weeks, for example. The fourth of July was fun, but rather than spend the day at Disneyworld (it's the busiest day of the year) we basically sat around chillaxin', and then we snuck into the Grand Floridian Hotel, because the grounds were right on the shore the lake where the fireworks are. It was pretty fun. You can check out my iPhone version of the fireworks below. Still shakey, but far better than the first one, right?... Right? Okay, maybe not...

We now live in Pittsburgh!

Wow. Apparently being finished with a PhD doesn't insure large amounts of free time! We drove out to visit family in UT, thinking to stay and relax for a month or two. Oops. Turns out that we got a call from Westinghouse saying I had the job. Yay! So to Pittsburgh we will go (yeah, I know, I know; we've heard it all before... "who wants to live in Pittsburgh!" But it really is beautiful there...) then, a couple days later, we got an even better phone call... We've been selected by a birth mom! Yay. Now, this doesn't mean anything's final, because birth mom's change their minds all the time (we've already experienced such changes in our searching) but it's worth being excited over for now. Unfortunately, this means that severe complications were in store: we are moving! Because of the complications of moving 3 states west, we had to get a home, get a home study, re-fill out paper work, and get a FBI background check, all before the end of july. So, accross the country we trecked, back to Pittsburg to find a house. Thank goodness, after looking at 21 houses on Thursday, we found the perfect house for us. It's not huge, but it's affordable, it's got central air (halelujah!!!), and its close to my job. In fact, included below is a video tour of the home. My appologies for the shakiness of the video... those you prone to motion sickness will be cursing my name, but I've never done this before, so I didn't realize how bad it was. Enjoy!





As for now, we're down in Naples Florida, where the birth-mom's mom lives, and tomorrow we're heading up to visit the birth mom in Alabama (she's living with her aunt and uncle for the summer; since the due date is August 22nd, she'll be ready for school in the fall). We're pretty nervous, but we know God is at the helm, and thus if this is right, then everything will work out no matter how dorky, out of shape, or lame we act.

Dr. Memmott

Wait, who's that? Surely not me. I'm still an immature nerd who has the mentality of a 12 year old (to prove it, that's who some of my best friends in the ward are)... All I know is that I've gone from writing and working 100 hours a week (yes, that's possible, and no, you don't ever want to have to do that) to not having to write any more. Was the sky always this blue? Was grass always this green? Wow, this feels good. Finally.

Seriously???

My family has often enjoyed the fact that, well, in their words "For someone who's smart, you're kinda dumb!" Why do they say such things? Well, I've really earned the reputation... after driving into a huge city (after being told it was a city where some amish people lived) I exclaim..."Hey wait! There's cars here!" Or perhaps I'm found wandering around the house looking for my keys, and they're in my hand. Yes, there is no end to the absent minded fun times that are me. So, it should come as no surprise that lately I have experience the ultimate in "Oops" moments!
I've been writing like mad on my thesis, to get it finished (25 more pages), and though I missed my May 1st deadline, I think my advisors will still let me pass. I looked up a few nuclear PhD thesises online, and they were about 200-300 pages, so I've been shooting for about 250-300 pages. After a few months of crazy around the clock writing, I have a happy thesis of around 260 single spaced, well illustrated pages. So, I finally got around to actually looking at some other dissertations online on Thursday, and you know what? They were DOUBLE SPACED!!! You know what that means?? I have a 500 PAGE THESIS! Why did I not look that up earlier? I have no idea. Duh, Matt. Nice. Where do you go to school? yeah, ok.
On the flip side, my advisors on Friday said "Matt, you have a very full, very complete, and thorough thsis. Well done." I was so unused to praise from them, that I just sat there, blank faced. One of them mistook my confused look and said "No, Matt, I'm praising you! It's a very good thesis!" Ha ha. (keep in mind that one of my advisors is infamous for writing a 700 page thesis) At least someone's happy. One of these days I'll learn to be a little-less... out of it.

One month...

No, that's not my maturity level, (well, that's not the only thing one month represents, at least...), no it's not how long it would take me to eat 5 lbs of chocolate (um try a day? Easter proved that one...). No, that's the amount of time until my thesis is due, and real life begins... 33 days at least, on May 22nd, I defend my thesis, and finally graduate... after 23 years of being a student (technically, being a missionary is a spiritual internship, right? ). What will life be like? Renee will have a husband again, I'll have time to return more phone calls and blog more (theoretcially), and we'll be homeless! That's right, we STILL don't know what job we will take. Mostly because no concrete offers have come in, but what can you do, right?
On the brighter side, I'm a happy man. Why, you ask? 4 words... Deer Valley Turkey Chili. Wow. Yeah, I know... I'm revealing what dork I really am with this post, but what can I say... food is my passion, and this is some good food. We've had the mix for about 3 years, and I never could bring myself to make it, because then it would be gone. However, since we are moving in a little over a month, the eating through the food storage time has come, and we decided to make it. Can we say ecstasy? (yeah, the mix probably has some of that in there too...). Man is it good. See?

We had no idea how much soup it actually made, so we now have a pot of soup that looks like this: and I will be nice and portly by the time I graduate. Nothing like good food and 16 hours of sitting at a desk to help that butt look great, eh? So why don't I post about more interesting things? Sorry, we have no kids, and I'm writing a thesis... end of story. I could outline the details of what I'm writing about, since about 16 hours a day goes into that... but judging from the look on Renee's face when she reads through my dissertation, I've decided to spare you that torture... for now.

Car? What car?

We had an interesting experience while driving down to NJ to visit our friends Erin and Brett for conference weekend. We were stopped at a tollbooth, maybe 3 cars away from the toll, and were stopped while waiting for our turn. Renee turned to look at me, and suddenly looked past me with terror written all over her face, right about the same time that our car started vibrating, shaking, and then was lifted up a couple inches. Turned out a semi, not seeing us, ran right into the back left corner of our car. Dang. I turned just in time to see the truck grill stop inches from my face. Well, after a long wait, and the need to pull through the tolls, the cop came, and after trying to intimidate me into saying that I ran into the truck, decided it was a no fault accident. We were bummed, because our car looked something like this:

The estimate for a fix was around $1500 minimum, and that wasn't something we could pay. After our initial frustration, we decided it was for the best: this economy is NOT a time for a trucker to loose his job because he totaled private car (yes, sad as it is, our car would have been totaled at that price). We would be out some money this way, but that poor guy would be out of a job, possibly for a LONG time. Also, our car is only $1000 blue book, and there's no way we could have found a new car. So Heavenly Father really was looking out for us.
Turns out I got to practice my car mechanic skills. Renee found a new back door at a junkyard that matched for $157, and Thursday afternoon I went up to her parents place and I put the door back on with some help from the brother-in-law. Now, true, it doesn't look like a new car, and we had to miss our trip to Missouri because of this (sorry Josh and Kyra, but we WILL be coming later), but shoot, I'm pretty dang proud of my body work! Doesn't this look better?


I'm in the wrong line of business... who needs to build nuke plants when I can fix fiberglass siding, eh?

...Does this mean I lose my man card...?

I had a terrifying experience last night. I came up with hundreds of excuses, and plenty of reasons why it was okay, but it wasn't. The day started out okay, with Renee going to the temple with rest of the stake primary presidency, and me staying home to clean the apartment. I gave her a valentines card when she got back, and we both went to eat at the Texas Roadhouse here in Boston. As an aside, this definately WASN'T the scary part... I don't know how many of you have been there, but good steakhouses in Boston are a rarity. Good steakhouses in Boston that are less than $30 per plate are an impossibility. Texas Roadhouse was both! What a great Valentines Day Dinner! Renee is a good sport to let me take her to a rowdy steak house for her Valentine's dinner. I'll have to do the romantic candlelight thing for her birthday next month.
No, the scary part comes later. Renee really wanted to go to the movie "Confessions of a Shopaholic". I decided that it would be a good valentines movie, so we went after dinner. And you know what? I liked it. I tried to claim that it was because I was with my beautiful wife, or that it was good to get out after being sick for the last 3 weekends, but I just liked it. In fact, I REALLY liked it. This is a CHICK FLICK about fashion, feminine magazines, and girls in new york... and I LIKED IT! I know, I'm scared too. Is this what happens to every married guy? Hmmm....

Groundhog's day, anyone?

To any of you who have seen the movie groundhog's day, I have made a surprising discovery... I AM LIVING THAT MOVIE! Well, not really, but when you wake up every day, and do the same thing all day, every day, it really seems like it. It's now thesis time for me, which means lots and lots of writing and organizing the work I've done the past 3 years. I doesn't seem like it's been that long, but it has. Renee has had the flu the last couple of weeks, so I've pretty much been writing and working all day while she rests. I knew it was a problem when this morning I told her that I hadn't cleaned the kitchen for about 3 weeks, when she reminded me that it was indeed 3 DAYS ago. wow, time crawls when you are writing a thesis.
It's weird to think that come 4-5 more months, we'll no longer live in Boston. That's where we've been the whole time we've known each other, so it's a bit strange to think we'll be somewhere else soon! Everyone is wanting to know where we'll go, including us, but we still don't know. We're hoping to have a good idea by the end of this month, but we'll see. Of course, since we're leaving boston, we've got to enjoy the perks while we can:



Yes, that is Brutus, and yes, he's eating at Mikes Pastries. For everyone who just asked, "What's Mike's Pastries?", it's time to stop working, fly to visit us, and eat the most decadent canolis and pastries you've ever tasted. (You've been missing out on some of the best that life has to offer otherwise...) We'll have room for anyone to stay with us for at least 3 more months, but no promises after that! I've given Renee a list of about 15 different restaurants that we need to eat at before we leave Boston. Wow, so much for saving money for a house, eh? :) I truly AM a Memmott, that the part of a home that I'll miss most is not people, nor culture, nor experiences, but the FOOD.
As far as the adoption, we've had kind of a harder week. There was a mother who had chosen us, was excited about adoption, and even contacted LDS Family services. She was due in about a month, and we were quite excited, but she has changed her mind and stopped contacting us. That isn't the first time it's happened, but it was a little hard since things had progressed so far. It didn't help that we were home all week sick by ourselves, but we're doing considerably better now. We just really hope that we've displayed enough faith that Heavenly Father can spare us from too many more of those kinds of experinces! :) We're excited that no matter where we move we'll be able to get a 3+ bedroom home/apartment, so that we'll be able to adopt at least 3 children before needing to get a bigger home. I wonder if there's any nuclear engineering positions open in Hawaii... Anyone got any referalls from Oahu?

Snow Day!

Well, Christmas break is over, France was great, and now it's back to real life... or is it? We woke up this morning to find MORE snow on the ground (there were already 20 ft high drifts in the parking lots of the local stores) and not enough equipment to clear it out. We got an email letting us know that church meetings were all canceled, so we have a snowy Sunday to relax some more! Even Brutus had some fun in the snow, making snow-Brutuses.

Life is good for us here in Boston, although as you can tell from Hilary's and Heather's blogs, it was a fun break, and hard to leave. (I think my favorite things in the world are now Coleman's "Go Watah [Utah], Leah's full on laugh when her mom startles her, and Brooke's Ice Queen glare).
Renee got back at around 1:30 AM Monday night, just in time to chat with me online (it was morning for me in Paris) and go to bed. At about 4:00 AM, however, someone started ringing the doorbell and pounding on the door nonstop. Poor Renee was scared out of her wits, because he wouldn't answer, and wouldn't stop knocking. Even the upstairs neighbors tried unsuccessfully to scare him off, or to try to get him to talk. It turns out it was the downstairs neighbor, and his ceiling was leaking on him. While we were gone, the pipes in our closet (which, if any of you know, is NOT insulated, nor is it possible to keep warm, since the heater is only in the front 2 rooms) froze and burst, and so our closet flooded, and our neighbors ceiling started leaking. Renee spent the next couple of days cleaning out the closet, trying to fix the flooded stuff, and so on. Quite the adventure while I just sat on my duff listening to old PhD's talk for hours. But, we finally got the problem fixed, the plumber came quickly, and I got home late wednesday night.
We did have an interesting night last night. We finally met one of the couples who has contacted us about adoption. They are New Hampshire natives, so we drove up to Manchester to take them to dinner and talk. It's pretty hard on them, and they were so nervous, but so was Renee. I wasn't that nervous, but I think it's just because I don't think I'll get excited until the baby is in our arms with the papers signed. After all the "near hits" that we've had so far that then change their minds, it's hard to get excited (see emotional constipated = men) They seemed like nice people, and she is 16 weeks along, but they're still not even sure that they want to place the child for adoption. It seems like he wants to because he doesn't want a potential breakup (they're dating) that would be hard for a child, while she seems to want the keep the baby a bit more. Both of them are struggling, so we recommended they call the free counseling that LDS family services offers. We'll see how it goes. Well, I better go shovel the walks before it ices over...