I Love Christmas Cards!

My Christmas Cards went out last year two days before we got the call about Little Sis. I really wanted to send an addendum… but I refrained! 🙂 I have been waiting anxiously for our Thanksgiving trip to the cabin to take our annual front porch Christmas card photo and I had these babies styled up two hours after we returned home. Can’t wait until they get here!

Protected: Happy Birthday, Sweet Girl!

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Staying at home

Well, hello there!  We are still kicking over here and we have been adjusting to our new way of life… and adjusting to the way it keeps changing.

I remember very well the stay-at-home mom vs work-outside the home mom debate.  I’m here to settle the score.  Haha!  Just kidding.  But I certainly have an opinion on the whole thing having experienced both perspectives.  In short, now that I stay at home, my days are much harder but life is much easier.

I love being at home with my girls.  I love getting to spend most of my days with them, I love coming up with new things to do, and I even love cleaning my own home again (sometimes, anyway.  I do miss it all being clean at one time, though).

There are so many moments where I stop and revel in a sweet moment with my girls (or between them) and think that I am so blessed to be able to be here for it.  And even on the days when I think I am going to lose it and I can’t take another second, I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

I am a better mom to Big Sister than I have ever been.  I have always had a lot of patience, but I didn’t have a lot of time.  Since Big Sis is a very spirited little girl, I often times would let her run the show so she didn’t have  a melt-down.  I didn’t want the time we spent together to be stressful or filled with conflict.  Now, however, I am ok if an entire afternoon is filled up with a giant tantrum because I know that it will benefit us all in the long run.  When I get stressed out, I use my sister’s mantra, “It’s just one afternoon (or hour, or day or week)” and we get through it.  And we are so much better for it.  I feel like we are all in much better control.  In the past four months, I have learned so much about how to parent my super intelligent, hilarious, spirited girl.

One of my favorite parts is how I am not “obsessed” with spending time with my kids.  We have gotten back to having dates and I love sharing my babies with their grandparents.  I love to hang out with our families and friends and don’t feel  like I am losing my time with them to “share” them.  I am so much more relaxed and easy-going than I have been in a long time.

The hardest part for me has been socialization.  There have been many points during the past four months that I have felt bad about myself because I don’t have a lot of SAHMs to hang out with during the day.  The truth is, I have always kind of struggled with creating new relationships.  The majority of my good friends were formed in situations where I spent a lot of time with someone before becoming friends with them (i.e. school or work) and most of those relationships are over a decade old. I think the biggest reason is that I don’t mind being alone and I never get bored.  I don’t mind cleaning, I love playing with my kids, I love TV and books, and I have the whole internet at my disposal.  I’m working on being more social and putting in effort to keep in contact with people I have things in common with.

Big Sis is in preschool 2 mornings a week.  I love that she loves it and I love the socialization and social skills she is learning (which to me is the most important thing at this age).  She comes home every day to show off her new knowledge and am super impressed.  She is also in dance class once a week (which she looks forward to and LOVES) and we are playing soccer.  I am coaching her team that is full of her buddies, so we have practice once a week and games once a week and I am having a lot of fun.  She is such a little competitive superstar!

Little Sis is my little angel baby.  She is so happy and easy-going.  She fights sleep like it’ll kill her, but she would be too good to be true if that weren’t the case. She is walking and almost running and blowing kisses and saying a handful of words. She is cuddly and loves  hugs and kisses and meal times and mickey mouse.

I did it!

Today is my last day at my job.  I am so excited to start this new journey with my family.  I am excited for the new challenges.  I am excited to live a life where missing my kids isn’t a constant state of being. I’m excited to live more simply, enjoy my time with my kids, enjoy my time away from my kids (something I haven’t been willing to do up to this point) and have more time with my husband (there is a slim possibility that I could go to a gym or do some other form of exercise one of these days). 

I know it isn’t going to be easy.  I know this isn’ a vacation (although its going to seem like one for a bit!!).  But, as my manager said when I gave him my notice, “you will never regret this decision.”

I don’t like Mother’s Day

There.  I said it.  And it’s true.  But, I also don’t like Valentine’s Day or Father’s Day.  I don’t like “hallmark” holidays, or holidays that make you feel like crap if you aren’t on the inside.  Don’t get me wrong, I loved it yesterday when my husband let me sleep in, cooked me breakfast and my girl greeted me several times with “Happysmothers Day!” (I’m not sure if it was supposed to be Happys Mother’s day or Happy Smothers Day).  But I didn’t love when my mom opened her ipad and then my husband had to apologize because his gift was something small (and I would have been angry if he had spent that kind of money on me and I LOVED my thoughtful gift).  I didn’t like the constant posts on facebook “Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms,” because it makes me heart hurt to remember the time when that would have made my heart hurt.  I struggle to think of my friends that are still waiting, or waiting again.  It makes me sad to think of the pain that my friends that have lost their moms felt yesterday.  It makes me so sad that yesterday brought pain to by daughters’ birth mothers.  I don’t like the build up of the holiday, thinking it has to be perfect and that how much my children/husband love me will be measured in the cards/gifts I get (I don’t feel that at home, just from outside sources)  So, its not my favorite holiday, even though I do enjoy celebrating my motherhood with my family.  I don’t need it.  I pretty regularly celebrate that with them.

My favorite holiday is Thanksgiving because all you have to do is just enjoy each other, cook and eat.  My next favorite is 4^th of July.  Notice a trend?  Family time, no gifts, no pressure, just food and fun.

Well, hello there!

I have had great visions for this blog.  The reality is, I’m never going to be a great blogger.  Mostly because I am lazy and prefer to stare at facebook than actually come up with my own thoughts.  A little because I have another blog, strictly for my children’s’ birth families that satisfies a lot of my desire to blog. And some because I am really busy and can’t seem to make it a priority.  Currently, I have about 5 half written posts about our journey to Little Sis and things since then.  There are so many things that I want to shout from the rooftops in regards to her.  But I probably won’t have time. 🙂

I go back to work on Monday.  I have really, really enjoyed my maternity leave.  I have had fun days, lazy days, sick days, completely frazzled and crazy days… but I have enjoyed my two girls so much on every single day.  I have enjoyed my mother living less than a mile away with the ability to come over in a moments notice.  Quite frankly, I am pretty depressed about having to go back to work.  I requested to go part time a few weeks ago and it was all but laughed at.  So, back to work I go… for now.  I’m going to quit.  I am going to be a stay at home mom.  And I want to jump up and down like a crazy person because I am so excited and I also want to cry because I am so nervous and intimidated about being my children’s only caregiver during the day.  How silly is that?  Anyway, I have to go back until we finalize little sis’ adoption.  Or at least, that is what I thought.  I realized yesterday that any money that my company gives us as a reimbursement will be subtracted from our adoption tax credit.  So… we will get it eventually, just not right NOW when we are trying to figure out how to make this work on one income.  So, back to work I go until hopefully May.  I am hoping we finalize in May and Hubbs gets his raise that we are anticipating in May and we are able to refinance our house this month… if everything falls into place, this transition should be pretty easy.  If it doesn’t, it will just be a little harder.

Even short term, however, I am pretty sad about leaving my girls.  Little Sis will be at home where my wonderful family has divided up the days so she can stay out of daycare.  Big Sis will be back at her preschool that she loves so much.  And I will be sitting in a cubicle missing my sweet angels, resenting my boss for not accommodating me after being his right hand (underpaid) man for 7 years, and waiting on pins and needles until I can hand over that paper that outlines my resignation.

 

A little catch up….

-Our first doctor visit for Little Sis was the worst day of my life.  My version is that the doctor heard “Adoption” and immediately went to special needs.  She was throwing around diagnoses like CP and some other scary things that I had never heard of.  She wanted to admit her to the hospital for tests…  Crack head.  Anyway, all is fine (just some minor things that we have pretty much already taken care of)and I hate that lady for rocking my world (not my regular doctor and I hope to never see her again.  I am not angry, I just never want to feel that way again).

-Big sis has had a hard time staying well.  Most recently, she had a febrile seizure due to a 3* fever spike in 6 minutes, I kid you not.  104.4*, seizure, ER, double ear infection, YUCK.  My poor girl.

-Little Sis has some pretty rough acid reflux and while Zantac sure helps, we have had some pretty rough days.  I have tried really hard to not be so schedule oriented this time around (so people stop making fun of me), but a good medicine, feeding, nap schedule keeps this kiddos tummy trouble under control.  So whatever, my world revolves around my kids’ nap schedules.  Sue me.

-I’m feeling happy and blessed beyond belief.  Every day.  My girls are so amazing and I am so fortunate to be their mama.

-just a quick note about having two… I feel like the adoption talk had gotten so much easier now that we have two.  I feel like it is so much easier for me to talk to Big Sis about her adoption story when I can also talk about Little Sis’ with her.  I guess I just feel like it about how our family came to be rather just her and she isn’t so singled out and different (even though I totally know SHE never felt like that).

-we are talking about adoption #3.  Not as a certainty, but if there will be an adoption #3.  I always planned on 4 kids.  Together we decided on three.  Now, I don’t know.  I am happy, but I also want to decide NOW because if we are done, I want to put family planning behind us.  Is it just me, or does family planning through adoption seem to just constantly loom?

-other than that, my house is messy, my bank account is empty and my heart is oh so full!

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Protected: Placement

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A family of four

I have so much to say about the past few weeks in my house, but I am struggling to find the right words and I am struggling to decide how much to share.

The basics…

We got a call from our agency on Tuesday the 13th telling us we had been chosen by the parents of a 7 week old baby girl.  We met them the following day and we officially matched with them, planning a placement ceremony for Saturday, the 17th.

Ensue panick.

I effectively got ready for a baby, registered, and finished Christmas shopping/baking/wrapping in two days (two days longer than we had last time!!).  Then on Saturday, we brought home a baby girl!

She an absolutely amazing baby.  I don’t dare call her easy, but she is certainly easy-going!! Big sis (baby sis’ name also starts with an R, so big sis can’t be R) is doing SO good and I am feeling overwhelmingly blessed and honored and humbled and in awe.

I have so much to write about.

1.  Placement – rocked me to my core.

2. The circumstances in Little Sis’ adoption plan and where that leaves us now.

3. Adopting a 7-week-old versus a newborn.

4.  Surprise adoptions… the good and bad of it all.

5. Christmas as a family of four.

Most of these posts will be password protected and probably not in that order.

 

 

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