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.

Last year, we did our family Christmas cards through Shutterfly and they turned out beautifully!  We got so many compliments on them and many of my family members have the card framed in their homes still. 

This is the one we used….  I still LOVE it!

Looking through their selection of  Holiday Cards, I know I am going to have a hard time choosing. For me, I love simplicity.  I love the folded cards and I love the cards that have one picture that take up the entire front of the card with a Christmas message overlay.  Here are my top pics, which of course will be narrowed down once we get our family photos taken.

This is a flat card, which isn’t my first choice, but I LOVE the words on it and it is easier on the pocketbook!!

This one is flat, too, but I LOVE it!!

Ok, so I guess I like a lot of the flat ones this year….

LOVE this one.

I love the bright colors on this one, too!

This is my front-runner right now, although I could look for hours and hours!!

Do you have a good sense of my style?  Check them out for yourself, though, there are lots of other options out there to suit YOUR style, too!

I can’t wait to get some photos taken up in the mountains for our Christmas cards and at the Santa’s workshop event we are going to for Thanksgiving weekend!

On the slim chance that we could get matched or placed between now and Christmas, I am going to order late and have my cards there the week of Christmas!!

I think my family is really getting tired of getting photo gifts from me, I this year I am going to be asking for some instead of giving some.  I LOVE photobooks, but do you know what?  I don’t even have ONE.  I always make them and give them away.  I really want a photo book of our trip to Disney last week (a post about that coming sooooon!) and would like one from last year’s trip to Michigan.

They also have TONS and TONS of potential Christmas gifts.  I am looking at the luggage tags for my traveling step-mom and I think R would go BONKERS over a Dora book with her picture and name in it.

Last sunday we were up all night with a high fever and tummy trouble.  Same for Monday and Tuesday.  Wednesday seemed pretty normal and Thursday all snot broke loose and everything went downhill from there.  Thursday, Friday and Saturday were full of boogie wipes, disney movies, hacking coughs, humidifiers and vicks.  THEN, Saturday night, the hives started.  Maybe I live under a rock, but I had never even heard of hives from being sick.  But hives we had.  And tons of them, everywhere.  So to urgent care we went.  Now, they finally under control and hopefully my girly will get to participate in the fall festivities tomorrow and friday at her school.

This was her worst arm, which was better than both legs and her belly.

Hives -

Sounds really cynical, huh?  I don’t feel that cynical, but it sure sounds it.  Ok, just pretent I didn’t write this and I promise to get back to blogging soon.

I spent the first year (or more… definitely more) of R’s life mourning the loss of my SAHMness.  I had always planned to be a SAHM and when that didn’t happen, it was devastating.  When I would drop R off at her sitter, some days I would be sick to my stomach.  I missed her, yes, that was a big part of it, but it wasn’t the majority of the issue.  It took me a really long time to figure out what the issue was.

You see, I learned pretty quickly that I am a great working mom.  I have so much patience with R.  I rarely lose my temper with her, I love to be with her more than anything, and, because our time together is limited, the time we spend is QUALITY.  When we are home and R is awake, I don’t clean, watch TV (unless it is with her), do laundry, read, get on the computer, talk on the phone or anything else that doesn’t have to do with spending time with her (with the exception of cooking, which usually R chooses to partake in).   I have ALWAYS felt good about the time we spend together and even though it wasn’t enough (is there ever ENOUGH time?), I didn’t feel like we fell short either.  That all being said, I still struggled daily with going to work and not being home with her. 

Until we switched to her new school.  I am not going to rave about her school again (although I could.  I could go on and on and on and on), but the change in our family and the change in ME in all areas of my life is amazing since we have found this place, a place where we ALL feel comfortable.

I don’t feel guilty anymore.  I feel like R is getting the best of both worlds now.  She is learning so much and thriving beyond words (this morning, on the way to school she pointed and said, “that red octagon sign says STOP” AND she can spell her name and find the letters to her name and put them in order) and I am the best mom I can be when we get home.  I feel so confident that while I am at work helping our family, she is learning, socializing, interacting, singing and generally loving every minute of it.  For me personally, I have been able to become the employee that I was before the mommy guilt set it.  I am more productive at work, more productive at home and just generally feeling better than I ever have.  I do know that I need a little better work/home balance, but for the time being, things are good.

The best part is, with my increased productivity at work, I have earned a ton of new roles in my career.  I am now, once again, heading up my department.  We are expanding and I am slotted to take the next step up when the time comes (even though I will pass up that opportunity, they don’t have to know that at this point).  I am training all of our new people and doing my regular job.  My boss is gone frequently now due to his personal issues and often leaves without any notice or direction with full confidence that I will take care of everything.  It is a pretty good feeling.  Most recently, I am heading up the workflow of our entire department… which is not only super interesting to me, but it gave me some pretty big bullets for when our next child comes along.  You see, my ultimate goal is to work part time.  In doing the scheduling, I’ve noticed we have some serious issues with our workflow in that we have to staff for our busiest days, which leaves us overstaffed on our slowest days.  So, guess who wants to take the slowest days off indefinitely when baby #2 comes along?  I have the info and they can’t say no.  I know they don’t want to lose me and although they are going to be really dissapointed when they offer me a promo and I counter offer with staying in my current possition and working fewer hours, we will all adjust.   My gun is loaded with knowledge and I am super excited!

This weekend, we had the wonderful opportunity to visit my friend and her two-week old son.  Despite the fact that there was a three-year old present for her to play with, she sat on my lap, directly in front of the baby and touched his little arm over and over again with just one finger.  Every 60 seconds, she would look back at me and almost whisper, “mama, loook…. a baby.”  And then proceed to stare at him lovingly.  She eventually touched him lots, kissed his feet and head, and patted him on the head.  Always gentle, always loving.  It warmed my heart like nobody’s business.  She did eventually run off to play, which is when I took advantage and held the wonderfully smelling, soundly sleeping little bundle of joy.  When she came back, she gasped, “Mama!!!  Can I hold your baby?”  I about died!  She then was insistent that he really wanted to dance with her, and his mama humored her by moving his arms and legs a little, which delighted her to no end!  She is so sweet and wonderful and I can’t wait to watch her be big sister!

Our next stop that day was to visit a friend that is pregnant.  I took the opportunity to talk to R about pregnancy, babies, and of course, which belly she grew in.   unfortunately, after I told her there was a baby in my friends belly, she didn’t hear much else.  She kept saying, “I want to get it out.  Please, Mama.  I want to get that baby out.”    She tried to get the baby out of MY belly, so I got to talk about how my belly was broken, to which she patted my belly and said, “I’m sorry, Mama.”  (how sweet is she??), and I got to tell her how NOT sorry I am that my belly is broken.  When I told her that she had grown in J’s belly, she laughed at me and said, “No, you’re silly. I’m not a baby.  I am a R___.”  Well, we will get there!

I am starting to feel much more comfortable with talking about adoption to R, although I think most of it is because she actually responds when I talk to her and it feels like a conversation.  I love that she can point out both J and C in photos, and even knows who they are based on the little stick figures in her book about HER (even though she really just wants to turn the page to see the next picture of the BABY).

My darling girl LOVES school.  Sometimes, she struggles a little at drop off on days that we don’t drop her off during recess (on recess days, she runs away and has to be reminded to say bye to Mommy), but other than that she is doing absolutely fantastic!!

She talks about her friends and her teachers at home all the time.  Most notably, she has embraced her love of singing.  She was really weird about singing prior to starting a preschool, but now she sings ALL THE TIME and I absolutely love it!!  This morning I woke to her singing, “Tinkerbell, Tinkerbell, Jump up and down!!!” 

The other day, she was singing the monkeys jumping on the bed song, so I joined in.  The look on her face when she realized that I ALSO knew the words to her song was hysterical!  Also, the “clean up” song is about my best friend in the world.

She LOVES to read and is really big on the Eric Carle books.  She insists on reading them herself and says, “hippopotamus, hippopotamus, what ‘cho doin’?  I see a LIIIIOOOOOONNNNN!”  It is just too cute and makes me want to just gobble her up!

She even knows her ABC’s perfectly (although sometimes after LMNOP comes “no more monkeys jumping on the bed!”), which makes me so proud.  She knows all her colors, all her shapes and can count to “waleven,” which is officially my favorite number (although she had a great grasp on these before she started).   She is a sponge and is soaking up every little thing!  It is wonderful and scary all at the same time!

Her imagination has gone hog-wild.  The other night, we played catch with an imaginary ball for about 15 minutes, and she LOVES that ball and breaks it out whenever the feeling arises.  And you wouldn’t believe the absolutely amazing things that come out of this girls pockets when she is naked (no idea why she imagines stuff in her pockets only when she is naked, but whatever!). 

I am so thrilled with this preschool and SO HAPPY!