Today was a long day. I had a meeting to attend, so I took the opportunity, while we were "in town", to cross a bunch of things off the homestudy checklist. Olivia and I went to the copy center to have our profile book copied, laminated and bound. We also stopped several places to get signatures for this and that. We are now finished with all paperwork that requires someone else's signature, and Olivia and I are both pretty exhausted. If we ever do this homestudy thing again, I'm definitely going to have to get a sitter while I go chasing down documents and signatures. My left arm is a bit sore from holding and restraining a squirmy 26 lb. toddler so that she wouldn't scatter colored paper all over the copy center floor.
Sheesh.
Also in the "I need a babysitter" category, Olivia came to my meeting with me. It was a meeting of a subcommittee for an organization whose board I sit on. There was cake for someone's birthday, so that kept Olivia occupied for about half the meeting, and then she proceeded to run around throwing pens on the floor and shouting at people around the table and trying to take stuff out of everyone's purse. It was probably pretty comical for everyone in the room who isn't her mother. Next month...getting a babysitter or skipping the meeting. The shouting is only cute for about two minutes. After that, it's just annoying.
Olivia only napped for spurts in the car, so she was pretty grumpy by the time we finally got home. I managed to get her to stop whining, but then she just started pulling things off the counter and throwing toys around. Early dinner and early bath were accomplished, and I planned for an early bedtime...maybe around 6:30.
At 6:05, Olivia looked at me and started saying, "Night-night" and walking toward her room, looking back at me after every few steps. It took me a minute to figure out what she was saying, but how sweet is it that I have a child who knows she's tired and tells me when she's ready for bed?
In other news, Olivia has a couple more days of antibiotics, and I think she will be sad to be finished. She apparently loves the chalky, bubble gum-flavored concoction because every time we say "medicine", she comes running to suck the pink stuff right out of the medicine syringe. No complaints at all...well, unless you count the times she's complained because she thinks she wants more. But I'll take that over having her spit medicine all over the place any day.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Monday, January 12, 2009
One, Two, Three
Olivia's new skill is counting. She can count to three. We start out by saying "One", and then she follows it by shouting, "TWO! FREE!". We've tried to get her to five, but she can't quite remember the four. She knows five, though, thanks to the Subway commercials. She can shout Five! and hold up her hand like she's giving a high five. I'm trying to get it all on video, but she wouldn't cooperate today.I spent most of yesterday creating our profile book which will be shown to birthparents who are choosing families for their babies. It includes a "Dear Birthparent" letter and photos of us, our house, Olivia and our family. Considering the thousands of pics I've taken over the past year, I'm pretty proud of how I was able to limit the photos of the book to about twenty and still, I think, create a pretty clear picture of who we are. We saw some samples of profile books at the agency last Wednesday, and some of them were so full of pictures that it was overwhelming. I didn't want ours to be like that.
We have a few more places to run and signatures to get, but we should be pretty close to finished with our homestudy paperwork by the end of the week. We'll have to wait a couple more weeks for references and fingerprints to come back before we can schedule the home visit, but we are definitely making progress.
Friday, January 9, 2009
(One of the) Problems with medical care
So, Olivia spiked a fever in excess of 102 degrees on Wednesday afternoon. I have NO IDEA why. It was getting late, so her doctor said we should visit a convenient care center immediately. We did, and it was the quickest medical-related trip ever, but it left me steaming. For one, the nurse couldn't get an accurate temp with her under-arm thermometer, so she was charted as having a 98.4 temp (WRONG). Then the doctor peeked in her ears and mouth, saying something about strep going around. She mentioned that there was "a little redness" in her ears, so let's put her on antibiotics.
WHAT?
For the record, yes, I think she likely had some sort of infection-y thing going on and probably did need antibiotics. But from an entirely objective point of view, if I were a bystander and watched a doctor prescribe antibiotics to a child who presented with no fever (supposedly) and slightly red ears, I'd be livid. DO A FREAKING TEST TO CONFIRM! Yeah, I know I'd have to pay for that, but it would be way cheaper than the consequences of antibiotic resistance that results from giving antibiotics where they aren't needed. Though Olivia may have needed them, there are many other kids with hypochondriac parents who probably don't. Please, don't give antibiotics just to placate parents. PLEASE.
We gave her the drugs anyway, mainly because she was still running a fever and didn't have any appetite. She was also doing this weird panting thing, which was scary. I just wanted her to feel better. By yesterday morning, her fever was gone and she was hungry again. So it must have been a teeny infection, but we still have to finish out the antibiotics for nine more days.
WHAT?
For the record, yes, I think she likely had some sort of infection-y thing going on and probably did need antibiotics. But from an entirely objective point of view, if I were a bystander and watched a doctor prescribe antibiotics to a child who presented with no fever (supposedly) and slightly red ears, I'd be livid. DO A FREAKING TEST TO CONFIRM! Yeah, I know I'd have to pay for that, but it would be way cheaper than the consequences of antibiotic resistance that results from giving antibiotics where they aren't needed. Though Olivia may have needed them, there are many other kids with hypochondriac parents who probably don't. Please, don't give antibiotics just to placate parents. PLEASE.
We gave her the drugs anyway, mainly because she was still running a fever and didn't have any appetite. She was also doing this weird panting thing, which was scary. I just wanted her to feel better. By yesterday morning, her fever was gone and she was hungry again. So it must have been a teeny infection, but we still have to finish out the antibiotics for nine more days.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
And we're off!
This morning, we met with the social worker at the adoption agency we have chosen to lead us through our next adoption. Olivia came along and attempted to rearrange the woman's desk. We managed to limit her contact with the desk by putting her in the rolling desk chair and giving her a book. It worked for two minutes, and then she decided to use the infant bouncer in the corner as a chair instead.
Whatever makes you happy, kid.
In truth, Olivia completely charmed the social worker (as she does with everyone), so it didn't matter how many cabinets she opened or how many times she interrupted the conversation. Since we were familiar with most of the process and documents, the planned 2-hour meeting only took about an hour even with the constant toddler interruptions.
I feel pretty good about this agency. The social worker was straightforward about their fees and their process, and I left feeling like we were in good hands and wouldn't get slapped with a bunch of unexpected expenses at the end. We also saw that they provide a lot of services for pregnant women (whether they parent or place for adoption), so I think any birthmoms they work with will be in good hands too.
Now we start the process of collecting all the paperwork. I like to have something concrete to do, so this will be easy for me. We also have to put a profile together (picture book, dear birthmom letter), and this is entirely new for us, but I think it may be the most fun part of all. After all, I love to show of pics of our family and especially of Olivia.
Because she's just so darn cute.
Whatever makes you happy, kid.
In truth, Olivia completely charmed the social worker (as she does with everyone), so it didn't matter how many cabinets she opened or how many times she interrupted the conversation. Since we were familiar with most of the process and documents, the planned 2-hour meeting only took about an hour even with the constant toddler interruptions.
I feel pretty good about this agency. The social worker was straightforward about their fees and their process, and I left feeling like we were in good hands and wouldn't get slapped with a bunch of unexpected expenses at the end. We also saw that they provide a lot of services for pregnant women (whether they parent or place for adoption), so I think any birthmoms they work with will be in good hands too.
Now we start the process of collecting all the paperwork. I like to have something concrete to do, so this will be easy for me. We also have to put a profile together (picture book, dear birthmom letter), and this is entirely new for us, but I think it may be the most fun part of all. After all, I love to show of pics of our family and especially of Olivia.
Because she's just so darn cute.Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Thoughts on the insanity of disturbing the comfortable state of things
After much obsessing and some discussion with my husband, we have decided that it's entirely OK if the next baby shares a room with the computer temporarily. It may mean that the baby has to nap in our room during the day and we sacrifice computer time at night, but it seems preferable to all the other options we have been exploring. We reserve the right to change our minds about this, but there it is.
Ultimately, we plan to have Olivia and the new baby share a room as soon as the new baby is reliably sleeping through the night. As long as we live in this house, that would absolutely be the best plan. We are also expecting the next baby to be a girl. It's just a feeling we have, and it could be entirely wrong, and we'd be happy either way, but that's the way our minds are bending when we think about two children.
I've been thinking a lot about adding kids after baby turns to toddler. We see a lot of this happening. We have several family members and friends who have kids Olivia's age and are either expecting the next baby or are planning for the next baby.
Every morning when I drag my drowsy self out of my oh-so-comfy bed, I think about how blessed I am to get 8-9 hours of uninterrupted sleep every night. My child knows when it's bedtime and goes to bed without fussing. She sleeps 11-12 hours every night. She can be temperamental and challenging during the day, but I am always well-rested enough to be relatively patient and joyful about the daily task of parenting.
I'm not so far removed from the infant days, though, that I don't remember how tough they were. Part of the problem was that we were completely new at this whole newborn thing. I didn't sleep as much as I could have because I was wracked with anxiety about whether she was hungry/wet/missing her pacifier/stuck in the crib bars. Every time she cried, I wondered if it would mean that I'd be up for the next 90 minutes or if she would fall back asleep on her own. I would lay awake after putting her down from a feeding, waiting for her breathing on the monitor to slow to a sleeping pace before relaxing enough to sleep myself. You can see why it didn't work for me to have her sleeping in our room next to me. I would have gone mad.
Eventually, I did settle down and developed the ability to sleep through any extraneous crying. I had a well-honed sense of whether her cry meant she needed something or whether it was just a tired cry and she would fall back asleep on her own. As a result, Olivia developed the ability to soothe herself back to sleep, to have a reliable bedtime and wake time, and to wake up happy and playing instead of fussy and whiny.
So, the point of all this is that we've reached a comfort zone with regard to sleep. We have also reached a comfort zone with regard to our daily routine, schedule, naps, space and what we can and cannot do with a toddler.
So why are we, and so many others like us, so eager to upset that balance and introduce another baby to the house?
That is the baffling question, and I don't have an answer other than to say that we want kids. Plural. Our intent was never to have an only child. We believe that one of the greatest gifts you can give your child is a sibling. They learn so much about love and sharing and getting along with others by living with a sibling.
A child changes the way you see the world. We have so much love to give, and we just have a feeling that there's a child out there who is "meant" to be a part of our family. I don't know if that's the politically correct way to express that in the adoption world, but we felt strongly that God led us to Olivia. I feel that He's leading us to open ourselves again to adoption.
Months before we finally decided to actively pursue adoption, I started playing the "what if" game in my mind. We had already determined that I had some significant fertility issues, and we decided to start researching adoption options. I started thinking, "What if there's a child in utero right now who might become our child? What if there's a baby already growing whose birthmom is looking for a couple just like us?" This kind of question kept popping into my prayers. When Olivia was born, I tried to remember when I started having these thoughts...not just the IDEA of adoption but the concrete thoughts that there could be a real, live gestating child waiting to become a part of our family.
My best guess was that those thoughts started in late February of 2007, when we started actively researching adoption possibilities. I was home recovering from foot surgery and searching adoption websites. A couple of weeks later, we attended our first adoption seminar. We started talking to friends who had adopted. We requested information packets. By the end of Spring, we had gathered all of our information and decided to sit on it for awhile. We didn't decide to actively pursue adoption until August, a week before we got a call about Olivia's birthmom.
These little "What ifs" were just little nagging thoughts at first, and slowly they became more real scenarios to me...something I could actually imagine happening. As time went on, the adoption "promptings" in my mind became more frequent and insistent. They eventually led to us saying "yes", and before we could do anything to get the process started, God stepped in and settled the question once and for all.
Olivia was born on November 12, 2007. Which means that she was conceived in...you've got it! February. Coincidence? I think it was God's prompting.
So, why do people give up all the comforts of life to add babies to their family? I think it has everything to do with God. What else could cause us to sign up for this insanity? This sleep-deprived, all-consuming, beautiful, amazing, crazy, wonderful insanity. Sign me up.
Ultimately, we plan to have Olivia and the new baby share a room as soon as the new baby is reliably sleeping through the night. As long as we live in this house, that would absolutely be the best plan. We are also expecting the next baby to be a girl. It's just a feeling we have, and it could be entirely wrong, and we'd be happy either way, but that's the way our minds are bending when we think about two children.
I've been thinking a lot about adding kids after baby turns to toddler. We see a lot of this happening. We have several family members and friends who have kids Olivia's age and are either expecting the next baby or are planning for the next baby.
Every morning when I drag my drowsy self out of my oh-so-comfy bed, I think about how blessed I am to get 8-9 hours of uninterrupted sleep every night. My child knows when it's bedtime and goes to bed without fussing. She sleeps 11-12 hours every night. She can be temperamental and challenging during the day, but I am always well-rested enough to be relatively patient and joyful about the daily task of parenting.
I'm not so far removed from the infant days, though, that I don't remember how tough they were. Part of the problem was that we were completely new at this whole newborn thing. I didn't sleep as much as I could have because I was wracked with anxiety about whether she was hungry/wet/missing her pacifier/stuck in the crib bars. Every time she cried, I wondered if it would mean that I'd be up for the next 90 minutes or if she would fall back asleep on her own. I would lay awake after putting her down from a feeding, waiting for her breathing on the monitor to slow to a sleeping pace before relaxing enough to sleep myself. You can see why it didn't work for me to have her sleeping in our room next to me. I would have gone mad.
Eventually, I did settle down and developed the ability to sleep through any extraneous crying. I had a well-honed sense of whether her cry meant she needed something or whether it was just a tired cry and she would fall back asleep on her own. As a result, Olivia developed the ability to soothe herself back to sleep, to have a reliable bedtime and wake time, and to wake up happy and playing instead of fussy and whiny.
So, the point of all this is that we've reached a comfort zone with regard to sleep. We have also reached a comfort zone with regard to our daily routine, schedule, naps, space and what we can and cannot do with a toddler.
So why are we, and so many others like us, so eager to upset that balance and introduce another baby to the house?
That is the baffling question, and I don't have an answer other than to say that we want kids. Plural. Our intent was never to have an only child. We believe that one of the greatest gifts you can give your child is a sibling. They learn so much about love and sharing and getting along with others by living with a sibling.
A child changes the way you see the world. We have so much love to give, and we just have a feeling that there's a child out there who is "meant" to be a part of our family. I don't know if that's the politically correct way to express that in the adoption world, but we felt strongly that God led us to Olivia. I feel that He's leading us to open ourselves again to adoption.
Months before we finally decided to actively pursue adoption, I started playing the "what if" game in my mind. We had already determined that I had some significant fertility issues, and we decided to start researching adoption options. I started thinking, "What if there's a child in utero right now who might become our child? What if there's a baby already growing whose birthmom is looking for a couple just like us?" This kind of question kept popping into my prayers. When Olivia was born, I tried to remember when I started having these thoughts...not just the IDEA of adoption but the concrete thoughts that there could be a real, live gestating child waiting to become a part of our family.
My best guess was that those thoughts started in late February of 2007, when we started actively researching adoption possibilities. I was home recovering from foot surgery and searching adoption websites. A couple of weeks later, we attended our first adoption seminar. We started talking to friends who had adopted. We requested information packets. By the end of Spring, we had gathered all of our information and decided to sit on it for awhile. We didn't decide to actively pursue adoption until August, a week before we got a call about Olivia's birthmom.
These little "What ifs" were just little nagging thoughts at first, and slowly they became more real scenarios to me...something I could actually imagine happening. As time went on, the adoption "promptings" in my mind became more frequent and insistent. They eventually led to us saying "yes", and before we could do anything to get the process started, God stepped in and settled the question once and for all.
Olivia was born on November 12, 2007. Which means that she was conceived in...you've got it! February. Coincidence? I think it was God's prompting.
So, why do people give up all the comforts of life to add babies to their family? I think it has everything to do with God. What else could cause us to sign up for this insanity? This sleep-deprived, all-consuming, beautiful, amazing, crazy, wonderful insanity. Sign me up.
Monday, January 5, 2009
I've checked two things off of a list of 3475 things to do
This week starts our countdown to baby #2. We meet with the social worker on Wednesday to begin our homestudy, and while we don't have a match or a timeline for a match or anything, I've got this feeling that we HAVE to start doing something about the clutter in our house. It's my form of nesting, I guess. And with our Christmas decorations already taken down and packed away, I have no more excuses and must get started.
So, today I moved our DVD tower from the office into our bedroom. This was step one of the declutter-the-office procedure. I've decided that I must declutter and organize before I can start moving furniture out and finding new homes for everything that lives in the office.
I also cleaned off the coffee table in our bedroom. It has been in our room collecting junk because we moved it there to keep Olivia from climbing on it, and I had decided that it was time to return it to the living room. It lasted for ten minutes. Olivia climbed up and sat on it, which was fine. Then she swung her legs back and forth, which caused her little rear to slide right off. She scraped her back and neck as she was falling to the floor and I decided that Olivia and the coffee table cannot occupy the same room anymore.
So I guess I've completed 1.5 things on my list. The cleaning of the coffee table led to cleaning/dusting of the entire bedroom, so that's something. This whole project is making me exhausted, and we haven't even really started yet.
In other news, my husband has house fever. He's been looking at houses online that are for sale in our Former City where we would like to move back someday. I've managed to fight off this house fever for almost two years using the argument that he needs to have a JOB in Former City and we need to sell our current house before we start looking, but now the market is pushing prices down, and there are these really big homes that are selling for about what our house is worth, and I can see why it's hard for him not to dream. Especially when we are talking about how to squeeze a baby into our office between the bookcases and the filing cabinet (KIDDING, although we may have to put the filing cabinet and half the office furniture in the garage to make this room back into a bedroom.)
Olivia has eleven teeth now. In the midst of the holidays, I managed to forget to report that two of Olivia's bottom molars came in around mid December, and now she has one popping through on top. She hasn't complained one bit either.
Now I must get back to my project while I still have the tiniest bit of momentum and motivation and Olivia is still snoozing.
So, today I moved our DVD tower from the office into our bedroom. This was step one of the declutter-the-office procedure. I've decided that I must declutter and organize before I can start moving furniture out and finding new homes for everything that lives in the office.
I also cleaned off the coffee table in our bedroom. It has been in our room collecting junk because we moved it there to keep Olivia from climbing on it, and I had decided that it was time to return it to the living room. It lasted for ten minutes. Olivia climbed up and sat on it, which was fine. Then she swung her legs back and forth, which caused her little rear to slide right off. She scraped her back and neck as she was falling to the floor and I decided that Olivia and the coffee table cannot occupy the same room anymore.
So I guess I've completed 1.5 things on my list. The cleaning of the coffee table led to cleaning/dusting of the entire bedroom, so that's something. This whole project is making me exhausted, and we haven't even really started yet.
In other news, my husband has house fever. He's been looking at houses online that are for sale in our Former City where we would like to move back someday. I've managed to fight off this house fever for almost two years using the argument that he needs to have a JOB in Former City and we need to sell our current house before we start looking, but now the market is pushing prices down, and there are these really big homes that are selling for about what our house is worth, and I can see why it's hard for him not to dream. Especially when we are talking about how to squeeze a baby into our office between the bookcases and the filing cabinet (KIDDING, although we may have to put the filing cabinet and half the office furniture in the garage to make this room back into a bedroom.)
Olivia has eleven teeth now. In the midst of the holidays, I managed to forget to report that two of Olivia's bottom molars came in around mid December, and now she has one popping through on top. She hasn't complained one bit either.
Now I must get back to my project while I still have the tiniest bit of momentum and motivation and Olivia is still snoozing.
Friday, January 2, 2009
2008: A year to remember
I hear that a lot of stuff happened in the world in 2008. There was something about Olympics and other athletic accomplishments, and then there was an historic election. Somewhere in the midst of that there came a domino effect of sorts with collapsing banks and businesses and markets. I hear that some really famous people died. And other stuff happened in other parts of the world.
And while I was there to witness all of this world news going on around me, it sort of takes me by surprise that any of that happened in 2008. I was rather preoccupied.
2008 will be remembered in our family as the year we settled into family life. Olivia was seven weeks old when we entered the new year, and we were still living in the fog of new-baby-no-sleep. I went back to work, which was a shock to my system, and became temporarily addicted to coffee. I left work in March and spent the next two months trying to figure out how to keep my brain from turning to mush while spending endless hours entertaining a pre-mobile baby. These were the days before Olivia could sit up on her own, but she loved to scoot around or lay on the floor and play. And she would scream endlessly if you dared to leave her sight for any reason. Not that she wanted us to play with her...she just wanted to be able to see us while she played. Mind-numbing.
By the beginning of the summer, we had settled into a routine, and I was finally truly enjoying my full-time-mommyhood. There's a learning curve and an adjustment period...it just takes a little time to learn to slow yourself down to the pace of what can be accomplished with a baby in tow. I was ecstatic when Olivia learned to crawl and then entertain herself without needing me to be within eyesight every second. But then she learned how to pull herself up and was constantly taking a tumble as a result. I had to watch her like a hawk.
By mid-September, Olivia had learned to walk. Then she began to run. And climb. Each stage of her development brought a new stage of learning for me, too. I had to learn which pieces of furniture were threatening her well being and how to rearrange the house so she would no longer encounter that furniture. I had to figure out creative ways to keep her from opening the curio cabinet and sticking her fingers into the VCR. I had to remember to close and lock all the doors to rooms that she can't play in because she got tall enough to open the doors on her own.
2008 was a challenging year for all of us as we learned how to live together and keep each other happy most of the time. Everything for us was a new experience...our first time taking Olivia to the park, or swimming, or her first trip to visit Great-Grampa.
And, somehow, it's hard to remember what life was like before we had a child. How did we ever keep ourselves entertained?
2008 was our first full year as a family of three. We are busier now, with a tighter budget and a greater need to discuss our family time and money priorities. But we are happy, and we wouldn't change it for the world.
Olivia's first bowling outing, New Year's Eve, 2008
And while I was there to witness all of this world news going on around me, it sort of takes me by surprise that any of that happened in 2008. I was rather preoccupied.
2008 will be remembered in our family as the year we settled into family life. Olivia was seven weeks old when we entered the new year, and we were still living in the fog of new-baby-no-sleep. I went back to work, which was a shock to my system, and became temporarily addicted to coffee. I left work in March and spent the next two months trying to figure out how to keep my brain from turning to mush while spending endless hours entertaining a pre-mobile baby. These were the days before Olivia could sit up on her own, but she loved to scoot around or lay on the floor and play. And she would scream endlessly if you dared to leave her sight for any reason. Not that she wanted us to play with her...she just wanted to be able to see us while she played. Mind-numbing.
By the beginning of the summer, we had settled into a routine, and I was finally truly enjoying my full-time-mommyhood. There's a learning curve and an adjustment period...it just takes a little time to learn to slow yourself down to the pace of what can be accomplished with a baby in tow. I was ecstatic when Olivia learned to crawl and then entertain herself without needing me to be within eyesight every second. But then she learned how to pull herself up and was constantly taking a tumble as a result. I had to watch her like a hawk.
By mid-September, Olivia had learned to walk. Then she began to run. And climb. Each stage of her development brought a new stage of learning for me, too. I had to learn which pieces of furniture were threatening her well being and how to rearrange the house so she would no longer encounter that furniture. I had to figure out creative ways to keep her from opening the curio cabinet and sticking her fingers into the VCR. I had to remember to close and lock all the doors to rooms that she can't play in because she got tall enough to open the doors on her own.
2008 was a challenging year for all of us as we learned how to live together and keep each other happy most of the time. Everything for us was a new experience...our first time taking Olivia to the park, or swimming, or her first trip to visit Great-Grampa.
And, somehow, it's hard to remember what life was like before we had a child. How did we ever keep ourselves entertained?
2008 was our first full year as a family of three. We are busier now, with a tighter budget and a greater need to discuss our family time and money priorities. But we are happy, and we wouldn't change it for the world.
Olivia's first bowling outing, New Year's Eve, 2008
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