Top 10 Reasons to Adopt

10) You won't sob hysterically after the baby is born because your raging hormones are insisting that your mom loves her other grandchild more.

9) You will be able to stand up on your own, pain free when your baby needs you for something (additionally, you can leave the inflatable donut in the basement as your "area" will not need protection from any and all sitting surfaces).

8) Your son won't find any additional "Blues Clues" paw prints on your abdomen.

7) You won't have to try to hide the granola bar in your mouth while the nurse tells you how much weight you've gained so far (and you won't have to hear her say "Oh my, you have quite a long way to go" at your first postpartum visit).

6) You won't have to sleep sitting up for several months for fear that if you lay flat you will vomit on yourself and/or your partner.

5) You don't have to make this choice: go through the agony of natural childbirth or get an epidural knowing you could potentially stay paralyzed.

4) You can enjoy hot tubs, roller coasters, water slides, alcohol, caffeine, hay rides, etc. without fear that your baby will be injured or fall out.

3) You can enjoy a full nights sleep right up until you get your baby, rather than getting up to pee literally ten times or more a night.

2) You can buy formula guilt-free.

1) You won't have to pee yourself mid-vomit. At work. Or ever (this, ladies and gents, is really the number one reason).

I could also make a list that would be the "Top 10 Reasons to Have A Biological Child," but this one is much more fun for me at this juncture :)

Calm

One year old boy starts crying. Three year old big sister, E, looks a little guilty. Their mom takes action:

Mom: "E, what happened?"
E: "I pushed him down."

Mom: "That wasn't a very good choice, you need to take a break."
E: "Okay." E walks to the stairs to take her break. She is quiet and immobilized until she gets permission to get up again.

Mom puts baby down for a nap and E is still waiting patiently to be released. Several minutes later Mom tells her she can come out and they have a nice calm discussion about what happened.

Meanwhile, I'm watching my friend and her children in disbelief. This (and by "this" I mean Simon peacefully accepting a time out) would NEVER happen in my house....but maybe it could if I changed my approach? Since witnessing this scene I have made a conscious effort to discipline Simon pretty much the same as always, but without ever raising my voice.

The results thus far? I feel great about reacting calmly to his shenanigans, but Simon's response to discipline has proven to be the same whether it's handed out loudly or quietly. Ultimately his personality is just not one to admit fault and sit on that naughty chair without a fight, and that's okay. I'll keep staying calm and maybe, just maybe, one day he will sit there and quietly reflect on why throwing a rock at someone was not a good choice.

Thanks, JS :)

Nesting

I didn't realize what I was doing until well after I started, but I think I'm in "nesting mode." You can nest when you're adopting right? It seems that nesting isn't necessarily a hormonal drive to prepare for a baby, it's just a common sense drive. I fully accept acknowledge that my nesting may be a bit premature, but here we are anyways and I'm glad to have the motivation.


Notice anything?

That's right....I've reorganized my kitchen to make room for bottles. I can't be sure whether looking at them every day will be exciting or painful after a while. So far so good (after a whole 36 hours).

I've also started painting the baby room. I got about 3/4 done and will hopefully find time to finish soon (for those interested we decided to go with a deep lavender of sorts, but according to the eye doc I'm color "deficient" so who knows what it really is).

Also, while having no idea when this is all going to transpire, a few people have already given us lil' baby girl gifts and I'm just collecting them until I have a spot for everything (I'm sure my nesting will find a place soon). Adopting this unknown baby at an unknown time feels so impossible and so far away, but these things remind me that it is most likely going to happen....

Yes, the bib says "star of mommy's blog" and yes, that is a little teeny tiny baby tutu :) Damn that tutu....I want that phone call, like NOW!

Blessings in disguise

It might sound crazy, but I think having infertility has been a blessing in disguise. Days like today remind me of that and I'm actually grateful for how things turned out so far. Despite the countless tears and days spent dwelling on my pathetic uterine skills, I think it was meant to be.

I'm positive I will have love having two as well, but right now I love how easy it is to do things with just a three and a half year old. Today we went to a park with a splash pad and for a while it was literally just the two of us. The water was like crack in this heat...I was in my regular clothes but kept needing more fixes so I wound up soaked. Simon helped in this by repeatedly dumping buckets of water on me (I may have asked him to do this). It was one of those days that reminded me that sometimes life is what you make it.

Nothing particularly exciting going on here, just a little boy finding joy with water...

Surprises

So far, one of the best parts about parenting has been hearing what Simon has to say and simply watching him learn new things.

Once kids start talking they surprise you every single day - sometimes many times a day - with brand new words. Eventually they have a word for everything. Then they put a couple of words together. Then a few more. Then you think they talk in sentences. Then they actually start talking in sentences. Then they start talking in correct sentences and putting stories together. You don't even realize what they're not saying until they start saying it.

Then there are other surprises, like when you realize they know things but you don't quite know how. Today - as with most days - we had one of those moments, but this one I want to remember. It makes sense that he knew it, but I still freaked out a little.

We were looking at the microwave and I pointed to the stop button and asked him what that word was.

"S...stop!"

I don't know why this surprised me like it did as there are stop signs everywhere, but those are big and red and all caps. This was completely out of context. He read that word. He's surprised me before with a few other words here and there, but not for a long while. I can only assume reading will be like talking...they'll read words, then small sentences, then easy readers and eventually novels. Somewhere in there I will lose track, but I don't have to just yet...

This is just to show that what was once a turtle shell has become a boat :)

What to expect when you're "expecting"

On Friday night we had a family over who went through our agency to adopt their two little boys (one is just a few months old and the other will be two in October). I went to bed that night feeling like I had a better handle on what to expect....sort of.

With both of their boys, they did not find out that they were picked until after they were born. Then they had to haul ass to Houston as soon as possible with all the things one needs to care for a newborn in a hotel room for a week or more. That's how much notice there really is. Hours.

Today we had a pretty normal Sunday, but my baby could be navigating through some stranger's birth canal RIGHT. NOW. And we could be on a plane tomorrow. This is the thought that I need to push out of my brain for an undetermined number of days. I assume as time passes, I will think about it less and less.

My friend told me I should get a special ring for our agency (her suggestion? "Baby, baby, baby, OH" by Justin Bieber) and said she is going to jump every time I call her. I told her that I didn't have that urge to jump every time my phone rang and therefore did not require a special ring. No more than an hour later I got a call from a 608 number. I jumped. It was unrelated business.

Maybe a special ring isn't a bad idea...

And we wait.

Hi Theresa,

Yes, we did get your portfolios and have sent them out to the agencies you checked on your form.

I hope you won't have to wait too long for a baby!

Lynn

Just a day in the life

We started our day with "potty training." I guess I have a lazy little bugger on my hands as he prefers me to de-pants him, put him on the potty, take him off the potty and re-pants him. Knowing he is off to preschool soon, I figured I should try to get myself out of that equation (why I let it go on for so long I don't know). So it was back to the bribes, just like when he started potty training. I told him he could have fruit snacks if he went completely by himself, and wouldn't you know it...he can de-pants himself, get on the potty himself, get off the potty himself and re-pants himself without so much as a look from me if fruit snacks are on the line. Fruit snacks = Power.

--

Simon recently learned how to use Netflix, which can be good and bad for reasons I probably don't need to specifically address. This morning after I turned the TV off he turned it back on when I was in the other room. I told him to turn it off and he replied, "but I don't know how." Right.

--

Later in the morning he was playing in his toy room and came out yelling "Super Hero!" He had a pillow case tucked in the back of his shirt like a cape and had on knee high red and white striped Christmas socks. Holiday Hero?

--

We went to the grocery store and after he dropped his box of "mac-in-roni" a woman stopped to pick it up for him. He responded with "Thank you!" then turned to me and said, "Mommy, that was so nice of that lady!"

--

We were on a walk and at his usual spot he got out of the stroller to walk over the bridge. He wiped out...pretty bad. Both knees, his arm and his head got scraped up. He clung to me like a sad spider monkey for the next quarter mile or so. Seeing baby ducks got him to stop crying, trickery got him back in the stroller. The rest of the evening was spent worried about those scraped knees all the way until he went to bed.

--

Bryan and Simon accompanied me to work tonight. At the store I work at we have energy chews that are kind of like fruit snacks (we know how much he loves his fruit snacks). Bryan said no. I said no. Next thing I know he's eating them and it looks like someone cut open the top for him. I asked Bryan if he gave them to him. My co-worker overheard and said, "Oh, he just came up to me and asked me to open it for him and acted like they were his." Smart and sneaky that boy is.

--

My day :)

Is it a book or is it magic?

This morning the boy was throwing a little fit over this and that and I offered to read him a book to try calming him down.

"NO! I don't want to read a book! I. Want. To. Watch. A. SHOW!"

I ignored his request to watch a show and picked up a book. He continued to protest and was further enraged when I had the gall to actually open the book.

I said it was fine if he didn't want to read it, but I was going to read it to myself. I started reading it very quietly and he stopped crying almost immediately...if he was crying, he realized, he couldn't hear me. After the book was over he came by me and started paging through it himself for awhile.

He's been in a great mood ever since and this is one trick I will be trying again. Just thought I'd pass it along :)

Ativan please?

Yesterday marked another significant trip to the post office. It wasn't too long ago when I was headed there with my adoption application, but this time was a much bigger deal.

When a birth family decides it's time to pick an adoptive family, their social worker will match what they are looking for with what adoptive families are looking for. The birth family will be given X number of portfolios to browse through and will narrow down their decision from there. Hence, there is a lot riding on having a nice, catching portfolio. Thanks to the talents and skills my older sister beholds, I am very happy with our final product. I of course don't know if a birth family will like it, but it's a pretty good representation of who we are and that's the best we can do.

Yesterday I sent out 9 copies to my social worker, who will then forward them on to the 9 agencies we've decided to work with across the country. Once they arrive at their final destinations, we are live. So I think it's safe to assume that by July 15th The Wait will have officially begun.

While of course I'm over-the-moon excited, I'm also over-the-moon anxious. We have to paint. Get clothes. Get a nuk. Set up the crib. Pick a name. Etc. Etc. Etc.

The part that creates so much anxiety isn't so much all of the above as much as simply not knowing when I need to have it all ready by. We could have a baby before the end of the month. By Thanksgiving. By Christmas. By Valentine's Day. By next Christmas. WHO KNOWS.

How do you prepare for such a serious unknown? You don't sleep. At least that's the very effective route I've been taking....

Simon and a Box

I've watched this several times now and every time I get a good chuckle out of it...hope you do too :)