Seven thoughts, just because it worked out that way

1. It's Friday again, and super warm outside but, unfortunately, also raining. ON FRIDAY!! So, as you can imagine, it is very loud and crazy in my house. I am coping by ignoring the loud children and blogging. Don't judge.

2. This week I did my taxes, paid some taxes, and paid a whopping bill from Olivia's tonsillectomy. And even though we are still financially tight, I feel like we are caught up. Like I can pay bills when they come in instead of waiting for pay day. Which is a good feeling.

3. We got our March newsletter from the Agency today, which basically indicated that the tables have completely turned there. When we signed on late last Summer, they were requiring adoptive families to be open to a whole lot of things that some families aren't necessarily open to...open adoption, more racial diversity, drug exposure, etc. This was because they were trying to limit their adoptive families because they were heavy on families and light on birthparents. Now it is opposite. They are easing up on requirements of adoptive parent openness and allowing them to be more specific about their preferences just to get more families to sign on. They are now heavy on birthparents and light on adoptive parents. We would be pretty open about birthparent situations and racial mixes regardless of the rules. And yet, we still don't have a single match. I am baffled by this. I'm wondering if we are secretly ugly and no one is bothering to tell us.

4. Olivia fell on the playground on Monday and busted her chin open. She is sporting a chin full of surgical glue and a waterproof band-aid. She says it itches (and I'm sure it does) but so far she has been healing well and hasn't messed with it much. She had to miss swimming lessons this week because of it. Luckily, the warm weather and DST have made evenings more fun even without lessons to occupy our time.

5. We inherited a basketball goal from some neighbors who moved and didn't want to take it along. It's one of those rolling things that we move out onto the center of the driveway in the evening so Joe and Olivia can play. I took a walk the other night while they played on the driveway and caught a glimpse of them enjoying themselves as I was walking back home. It seemed a perfect tableau of suburban America...father and child shooting some hoops on the driveway. Or maybe that's just Indiana. Anyway, it made for a sweet portrait of our life right now.

6. March has been super busy. We are involved in some ministries that are...intense right now. Meetings and recruitments and motivating people and such. It's a lot of work, but we keep plugging on. When we are NOT busy with ministries, we are busy with the house. Spring projects kind of snuck up on us, what with the weather turning warm a full six weeks early. Need to think about painting our outside doors soon...before it gets hot.

7. This weekend, my family is gathering for a local niece's first birthday. I am very excited to hang out with my far-away family...especially the young cousins Olivia loves so much. I have birthday gifts to give to the twins, who had their far-away party last week, and an advance first-communion gift to give to our goddaughter. The boys' gifts were hand-made by me...tool belts with their initials. Molly is getting some hand-made (but not by me) first-communion jewelry. I love giving gifts!

House thoughts...

Joe has this annoying habit of scouring the local listings of houses for sale. We are not in the market for a new house, but he likes to look.

In the past few weeks, he has uncovered a couple of houses that I could envision living in...to the point of daydreaming about how nice it would be to have wood-paneled walls or built-in bookcases (I am a sucker for built-in bookcases). But then I think of all the ramifications. Aside from selling OUR house, we'd be taking on more debt, needing to rethink schools and my babysitting income because we'd no longer be convenient to the families I work for now. And then there would be the additional gas for Joe's commute, because the other houses are significantly further away from his job. Etc.

Yesterday, he came upon a listing for a house I've always admired when driving by it. From the road, it is HUGE. Apparently, inside it is even larger. It has wood or laminate floors and MASSIVE living spaces and all these bedrooms and an entire extra living space (in-law suite? I don't know) above the detached garage (in addition to the attached garage space). It's just big. And, as it is apparently on a short-sale, EXTREMELY underpriced. Like, five times the space of our house, plus a couple of acres, for roughly $15K more than our house is worth. Yeah.

And the first thought I had was...how on earth would I ever find time to clean all of that? I can't find time to clean all of THIS!

Now that we have this new sunroom, our house seems...well, just right. I know the storage still sucks and we have things constantly collecting on the counter and the garage is always cluttered. But the reality is that, unless there is some great revelation from God in our future to guide us in a different direction, this next adoption will likely be our last, and our house can accommodate us and two kids quite nicely. Comfortably, even. When I think about my parents raising five kids in roughly the same space, I think...it is totally do-able with two. TOTALLY.

It's not that I don't WANT more space. I'd absolutely love a basement. I don't want to give up my sunroom, and I do like our backyard. I just don't necessarily feel like we are hurting for space.

Yes, if we had a bigger house it would be easier to consider things like foster care and, you know, having guests once in awhile. I just don't feel like it is anything urgent. I'm comfortable in our little space. Maybe it's partly because we are definitely heading into Spring and I'm not feeling so confined by our tight quarters. It's probably largely due to the fact that I just found out that we should have our mortgage paid off in 10 years. TEN YEARS. And then it will be OURS. That's kind of a big motivator, you know.

I should probably go dust something. I'm way behind, you know.

Perspective

This has been a weird week. Olivia has been croupy and randomly asking for the barf bucket (but not using it) because her tummy muscles hurt from coughing. Other than that, she's fine. But the kids I watch came down with something and stayed home, so my house was pretty empty here for a couple of days. This morning, Olivia woke up with sore tummy muscles but bounced back from it in time to go to school and then insisted she stay home because the kids were going to be back today and she missed them. Not a good reason to skip school, kid. "But I'm sick! I want to stay home!" But if you are sick, the kids can't come. It was a real catch-22 for her.

So, we had to deal with that little tantrum. It was irritating, and more than irritating for my husband who felt like she was manipulating him. And perhaps she was. But after she left for school, I checked facebook and saw a friend post this:

"The pathologist that read Isaac's spinal tap results found cancer cells in the fluid, meaning that his lymphoma has returned."

And, well, that put things into perspective.

Isaac and his parents are friends of ours. He is a couple of weeks older than Olivia. Just days before his third birthday (about 13 months ago), he was diagnosed with a rare type of lymphoma and their family was thrown into a scary world of doctors and needles and tests and treatments. His tests have indicated no cancer cells for the last few months, and I think they were just finishing out the 12-month treatment protocol before declaring him in remission. I'm not sure how that works, but I got the sense from their updates that they were getting ready to put a very scary and challenging year behind them and look forward to a healthy future. And then cancer rears its ugly head once again.

Isaac is four years old. He is their only child. I cannot even imagine how devastating and terrifying this news must be for them.

Olivia has had a lot of colds recently, and when she doesn't have a cold, she sounds like she does. She doesn't sleep well and is often grumpy and unreasonably demanding by the afternoon. We had her evaluated by an ENT and discovered that she needs her tonsils and adenoids removed. Surgery is in a few weeks. I don't think I've mentioned it here yet, but I'm both relieved and freaked out. Relieved because we deal daily with the fallout of her obstructive apnea and inability to sleep all night and we are hoping this will be the cure (as it often is for kids with this problem). Freaked out because my BABY is having SURGERY. Ack! And I have to take care of her sorry sick self during her days of recovery. Which makes me feel a little sorry for myself.

And then I remember Isaac, a sweet little trooper who is handling things WAY above his comprehension level with a grace I can't even imagine. And I remember his Mommy, who has spent more time this year inside of hospitals holding her child's hand than most people spend in their entire lives. Isaac has had to miss out on a lot of the experiences that Olivia has enjoyed this year. You can't send an immuno-compromised kid to preschool. You have to miss birthday parties and trips to the zoo and playdates and any number of kid (and Mom) socializing opportunities. And I complain of cabin fever! I cannot even imagine...

So, when Olivia throws her tantrums and melts down, I will try to be patient and offer up my frustration for Isaac and his family. When she gets her annual post-holiday illness (which she will inevitably pick up from one of her cousins), I will remember Isaac's parents, who will probably have to miss a good number of family gatherings this holiday season because Isaac's immune system won't allow for exposure to lots of people. I will say a prayer for strength and healing for them, and I will thank God for the blessings of health in our own family.

Blog? What blog?

I've been busy. That seems to be a running theme here.

This past weekend, Joe and I and another couple led another Engaged Encounter weekend here, and it was fabulous. There's this whole new outline, and while it was a pain in the arse to re-write EVERYTHING and re-work the schedule, props, visual aids, etc, it did seem to flow better and relate better to the couples. Plus, a whole weekend away with my sweetie, who really steps up to the challenge and shows his brilliance on these weekends. I am blessed beyond measure.

So. That's finally over. Great weekend, lots of prep work. Good to be finished with that. Time to move on...

My house is a wreck. I may have ignored certain (all) housekeeping duties for the past, oh, four weeks or more. Time to start a list of projects. Having a list not only keeps me focused, but it helps the time move more quickly as we anticipate...

THE CRUISE! Joe and I are taking a cruise - sort of a work thing for him - in October. Olivia is staying home with grandparents. I am a little bit excited about this. We haven't been on a vacation alone for a good long while. It is time. I am looking forward to a week of relaxing, sleeping, eating, sunning, and generally not worrying about small, loud, messy, needy people. Oh yes. I am looking forward to this.

An anniversary, of sorts

On Tuesday, Joe asked me if I remembered where I was a year ago. I answered, "Omaha, surgery" without even needing to think about it. Last year, the Summer bookend holidays of Memorial and Labor Day were both spent in Omaha or en route to that place where I went under the knife in an effort to erradicate the disease that threatened my reproductive organs and caused all kinds of life-altering symptoms. The surgery on August 30th was the biggie...the one that left me with a c-section-like scar and permanent numbness in my midsection. It was the long surgery in which the doctor basically cleaned up my whole reproductive system and did a little reconstruction. Endometriosis, in my case, had tied up my insides in a bad way.

August 30th also marked the beginning of the longest two weeks of my life, waiting out the healing between surgeries in Omaha while my little girl spent her time with grandparents, ten hours away. The first few days after surgery were painful, and the lack of energy after that was frustrating. But what was most difficult was being away from Olivia for such a long time.

Even though it was a hard wait and the second surgery turned out to cause me more recovery problems than the first (though it was supposed to be outpatient), and I wouldn't want to revisit that time or do it over, I am glad we did it. I feel better, all the time. There are things we discovered through this whole process that have led to treatments and diets and lifestyle changes that make me a happier, healthier person. I think this next two weeks, though, I will be most thankful just to be spending this time at home!

Learning, here and there

I had a bit of a freak-out yesterday. Olivia has a hard time getting up for school. I can't blame her. It is at least an hour earlier than she normally wakes up. And she starts out the day with a freaking long bus ride, which is kind of boring.

But after dealing with her morning ritual of whining about the bus and how she'd rather stay home and play with the kids than go to school...well, something just snapped in me. I started researching preschool curricula for home, which led me to a bunch of research about starting organized learning too soon versus keeping kids in exploratory learning, which led me to wondering if she needed to go to school at all and are we ruining her love for learning by torturing her at an early age with a bus ride and will she end up hating school and therefore hating learning and GAH! It was too much for me.

So I messaged my husband, who talked me down from my freak-out. I was feeling better about it through the afternoon, but still a little concerned. I know this whole first semester is a bit of an experiment. Although she looks much older, she's still just three. But she's so social and loves being around other kids...it just seemed like the right step to start her in school a couple days a week. But was it?

Of course, the jury is still out, and probably will be until November-ish. But Olivia stepped off the bus talking about the fun day she had, and most of the rest of my anxieties disappeared. I know she hates being on the bus so long, but I can meet the bus in the afternoon in town (2 miles away) and cut a half-hour off her ride home. That might make a big difference in her least-favorite part of the day (she's almost the last kid off the bus). So. Give it some time, right?

I'm thinking about blogging about some of the things we are doing/learning at home too. She's so bright and inquisitive right now. I'm thinking we can learn at school AND at home. I like the school's approach to preschool...very hands-on, experiential learning. Very few worksheets/organized learning, which is good for that age. And we can certainly build on that at home.

For example, last night we were working on yet another landscape area that we are filling in with rock. Olivia climbed into the truck to fill up the rock bucket and found a "broken" rock that she asked about. It turned out to be a rock with a bunch of fossils in it. So after her bath, we looked up fossils and some youtube videos, which she watched closely. Then we looked at the fossils we had and thought about what they might have been...a fish, a lizard spine and a plant were our conclusions. It doesn't matter if we are right. The point is that we are thinking and imagining and understanding the world around us.

I just love how her brain works at this stage. She's such a bright kid. And she's so excited to go to school on Thursday because it's cowboy/cowgirl day and she gets to wear her boots and cowboy hat. So, freak-out over. For this week, anyway.

Just a taste...

Today was another one of those picture-perfect days where Spring feels enough like Summer to stir some excitement about the upcoming season, but still enough like Spring to be wonderfully comfortable.

The kids, they played some sort of creative pretend game in which they each starred as a Disney character. Olivia was Rapunzel. The rest were assigned characters including Snow White, Flynn Ryder, and two Agent Osos. I, apparently, was assigned to be Tiana. I'm not sure how these characters are supposed to fit together, but it didn't seem to matter to the kids.

The wee one got restless and kept wandering into other people's yards, so I decided to let him have his turn at the sandbox. It didn't take two seconds for the rest of the kids to join him.

(Also, I've been experimenting with photo editing and effects. Makes it easier to disguise the fact that Albert Pujols is sitting there in my sandbox. Oops...forget I said that...)

This is what Summer looks like in my memory of my youth...a bunch of kids lying around outside in sepia tone. Exchange Olivia and her pals with me and my siblings, and this could very well have been taken in 1980. Except it wasn't. It was taken this morning while Rapunzel, Snow White and Flynn Ryder were going to the castle to sleep before getting up to "drive the castle to work".

Told ya they were a creative bunch.

Catching up

There's something about this time of year...we aren't actually busier, but it FEELS like we are. As a result, I've been neglecting my blog. So here's a quick and rather random update.

1. Since my last post, it rained about a dozen inches, which is something like a quarter of our total rainfall average for the whole year. As a result, we were stuck in the house forever...first because of the rain, and then because the lawn was too wet to play on. And then it stopped raining for a few days in a row and everything came to life! Just in time for Mother's Day.

2. Mother's Day was pretty good. It was sunny and beautiful. Olivia slept in until 9:00 a.m! Then she behaved herself in Church. That itself would have counted for a lot, but we weren't finished with the fun. After lunch, we popped on over to Local Theme Park (which opened on Saturday) for a little park fun. Because it was SO warm and sunny (and because I remembered to pack her a change of clothes) we let Olivia run through the spray park in her clothes.

She was quite excited about that.

All in all, a great day was had. We are quite ready for Summer to commence.

3. In April, we re-worked most of our landscaping, splitting and moving plants and putting in rock. There is one bed that we haven't touched yet and intend to re-work in the Fall, but every time I'm outside I think about what to do with it. Every Spring, I think I'm unhappy with this bed because it is SO lopsided when it starts coming up. All the tall irises are on one side. Random plants are scattered along the other side. It sits on a slope, so it's kind of weird anyway. But my original idea was that it be a dimension bed with lots of tall plants behind small plants so it looks very full and makes a pleasing display.

Today, I looked at the blooms and I realized that it kind of already does that.
See, this is the view from my kitchen window (weeds and all, I know, I know), which is how I oriented the bed in the first place...so I'd have something pleasing to look at while I did the dishes. The problem, however, is that it looks weird from all other angles. So, what do I do? Move plants around to even it out so it looks normal from outside? Or leave it like it is?

3. My life is awash in primary colors.
Very soon, several of the wee ones wearing the primary colors will stop coming to visit me on a daily basis, and then it will just be me and my primary gal.
And that just says it all, doesn't it? Dear Summer, we are ready for you!

The royals

I have the royal wedding on DVR. My husband said, "Why do you care?" I said, "It's history, and having it on DVR means I can watch the actual wedding stuff and skip all the crap where reporters are watching the parade and making irritatingly stupid comments." Because that's pretty much all the reporters do. It would have been more fun to watch c-span-like coverage where you see everything but no one comments on anything.

Anyway, by the time we woke up this morning, they were parading around in a carriage and all there was to hear on any channel was reporters making stupid comments. So, this is on while I'm getting dressed, and I hear a reporter say something like, "As future heir to the throne, it is William's duty to marry and produce an heir." And my first thought was, "Gee, I hope they aren't infertile." Actually, that was my second thought. My first thought was, "Duh. Way to make the whole wedding sound completely unromantic by stating an obvious, yet unnecessary, fact."

(And yes, I know there are rumors that she's already pregnant, but I won't actually believe that until the Crown releases a statement to that effect. They have enough people speculating about their lives as it is.)

I wondered how that infertility scenario would play out. I know Angelina Jolie can adopt a dozen kids from wherever she wants because, you know, she's got the resources to do that. And yes, those kids become heirs to her estate, etc. But can you adopt an heir to a THRONE? I'm thinking, probably not.

It must suck to be royal. Like being an animal in a very large, very extravagant zoo. Lots of wealth and resources, but still caged in with the whole world watching your every move.

I wasn't aware

Apparently, this week is Infertility Awareness Week. Somehow, this escaped my radar until Jen Fulwiler pointed it out here. Of course, it's not as if we are ever UNaware of our infertility here, so I guess it wasn't something that required special attention on our part.

Still, I had a conversation with a friend this week that plays into this theme. My friend has two small children, and for awhile thought she was "done". But we were talking about kids and adoption and foster care, and she said, "You know, I thought it would be nice to become a foster parent, but I really don't think I'm done having kids yet."

I was thinking, 'If I had normal fertility, I'm pretty sure I'd have a very difficult time ever deciding that I was "done" having kids.' How do you get to that point, exactly? I know there are couples with abundant fertility who get a little overburdened and weary worrying about whether they can navigate the NFP waters to successfully avoid further pregnancy. I just don't know what that looks like. It's not our experience and I can't adequately envision it. I'm sure it's just as big a cross as infertility is...just in a different way.

As it is, we are actively working the diet angle at improving fertility while also researching a new adoption agency and looking into the possibility of becoming foster parents. We are working very, very hard just to find a way to grow our family by one. This is what we know. It is our experience. And, since we are not made of money (and adoption is expensive), we realize that our family might be complete with two children. That foster care idea keeps popping up, so that might very likely be a way to grow our family someday, if we discern that we are truly called to it. No matter what happens, our family will look like nothing we ever envisioned. But God knows what our family picture looks like. And if we put our trust in Him, that's really all that matters.

Lent and my landscaping

Daylight savings time is here!!! When I was a kid, I used to like "Fall back" better than "Spring forward" because of the *extra* hour of sleep. Now, it's the other way around...I'd MUCH rather have that extra hour of daylight at the end of the day. So much. And I made use of every hour until dark yesterday.

This weekend was beautiful, so we spent nearly every possible moment in the landscaping. We have a rather ambitious project going on this year. We are replacing all of our mulch with rock. This requires removal of old mulch and, often, removal and replacement of weed blanket. Since a good number of our plants (irises and hostas) really needed to be split, I just took them all out before re-blanketing and then re-planted the split plants. We are about 30% finished with bed preparation (for rock) after this weekend. My muscles hurt and my head is screaming...an unfortunate side effect from all the work in the dirt. But I can't tell you how much I LOVE working in the dirt and seeing the beginning promises of Spring popping up out of the ground as they do every year.

I love how this season of the Church reflects this season of nature. Lent is a time of repentance and renewal...rooting out some things in our lives that separate us from Christ in order that we might have a deeper experience of new life in Him. I like to think about that as I pull out all the dead leaves and branches to make way for the new greenery just starting to grow beneath. As I'm pruning and splitting plants, I am reminded that it is this cutting off and breaking apart that allows the plants to grow bigger, healthier and more beautiful. It's a nice image for reflection during Lent.

FOUR posts in one week! Can you believe it?

I managed to post nearly every day this week. Wow. Must be coming out of the winter funk. Maybe it's the fact that we've gone a whole week without a snow day and I'm finally feeling like we are on something of a regular routine again. At any rate, here are four random thoughts to celebrate my four posts this week...

1. I have this friend who has a son who was deathly afraid of getting a flu shot. She searched high and low for a book to help him through his fears. Not finding one, she decided to write one herself. It was just published! Go here to buy it. Go! Now!

2. When our cell phone contract was up with our old provider, we switched to a pay-as-you-go option. We got free phones online and pay $30/month for 1000 minutes and 1000 texts (if you research plans, you'll know what we got). I COULD NOT BE HAPPIER WITH THIS PLAN. There are no hidden fees! No accidentally-incurred charges (if you don't subscribe to it, you can't access it...awesome)! And we get MORE talk time AND text (which wasn't on our old plan). I can't figure out why more people aren't doing this.

3. We are giving a presentation on the Sacrament of Marriage at an RCIA program this weekend. I wrote the talk and my husband put together the awesome powerpoint presentation. I hope it goes well. It was rather difficult to motivate my brain to think in terms of writing a presentation...and I used to do this with some frequency. I think that part of my brain has started to atrophy.

4. Today is day 3 of no paci. I'll dedicate a post to that sometime. (I know the suspense is killing you...ha!) But for now, exhaustion is the key. And chocolate treats from the paci fairy, who is acting as a daily cheerleader with her notes and little bits of chocolately goodness. Let's just say that after two days with no nap, Olivia fell asleep last night in under a half-hour (good on any day) and slept ELEVEN HOURS, uninterrupted, without paci. There was minimal sadness and whining. I'm not sure how we will reintroduce nap (which she does sometimes need), but we'll deal with that when we must.

My cold-weather daydream

The nice thing about watching school teachers' kids is that we have a built-in week off in March. The unfortunate thing is that this week is commonly mis-named "Spring" break. I don't know about the rest of you, but whatever week in March is chosen as break is, inevitably, the coldest week in the whole month of March. Last year we "vacationed" locally. It was, well, uninspiring.

So my thoughts are traveling South...specifically, to Phoenix. My husband searched the web a couple of weeks ago to price ideas for a beach getaway to NC or FL. We would opt to drive to either of those locations, and I don't relish the idea of a dozen hours in the car with Olivia. She starts whining after 45 minutes...90 if we are REALLY lucky. Spending more than four hours in the car with her at a time is physically painful. For all of us.

Phoenix is FAR. It's a bit of a plane ride, but google maps measures the driving time in terms of days, not hours (as in, one day and some hours in the car...continuously). So we'd have no choice but to fly. Which, honestly, is fine with me. I'd rather spend half a day in travel than a whole day on the road. That's the kind of thing that requires an extra day of recovery, and who wants to spend their vacation recovering from their travel?

Plus, the environment of Phoenix doesn't seem to make my head want to explode. I love Spring, but honestly it's so hard on my head when things start to bloom. I hate allergies.

We vacationed in Phoenix in early March not long after we were married...maybe a year. It was sunny and warm and everything that home was NOT. Of course, we were childless at the time, but I kept thinking, "This would be a good place to bring kids."

So I did a quick google search today and found that I was right. First of all, there's Spring Training baseball. We took in a game last time we were there. Major league teams in tiny local ballparks. Inexpensive! Fun! Warm! What more could you want?

Then there are these places. Some educational. Some beautiful. Some things just meant for kids. Plenty to fill a week, right? And then, of course, there is the pool. Wherever we stay, there is bound to be a pool.

So, anyone have a couple thousand extra dollars for plane and rental car? We've spent a good deal of dough on medical travel in the last year, and while a week-long getaway in a warm and sunny locale sounds DIVINE, I figure out how to justify the expense. Especially when Summer is just around the corner. The very long, interminable corner.

I'm suffering some serious Spring fever. And cabin fever. Does it show?

Some random thoughts

1. I do not know how people functioned before Google. If I don't know the words to a song... If I need to know the hours of a store in a town two hours away because we'll be passing through and I want something from there... If I need to throw together a dinner party and need a recipe using just the items I have... Google. It's all right there. Seriously. How did we ever find anything out before?

2. Our area has a leaf vacuum that picks up all the leaves that you drag to the edge of your property. They've been in vacuum mode since November 1, and every day Olivia looks out at our huge line of leaves (covering and hiding from light the only grass that grows WELL on our whole property) and says, "Mommy, are they going to vacuum up our leaves today?" She was looking forward to watching.

It is naptime. All the kids are asleep. And the leaf vacuum just took our leaves. *Sigh* Oh, the timing.

3. Every night, we say prayers with Olivia before bed. After our formal prayers, we hand her the crucifix to kiss, and she holds it out and talks to Jesus...usually in a run-on sentence and about whatever happens to come to mind. Last night, after coming home from practicing for our parish's Christmas pageant, in which she is a sheep, this was her prayer. "Jesus, please help the sheep to come in slowly and stay on their spot so everyone is in their own spot and sitting still while we sing songs away in a manger." There was some other nonsensical stuff after that. Another example of an Olivia bedtime prayer: "Jesus, can you send me a brother or sister and make us all a family so we can have fun and live together and maybe go camping with Grandma and help me behave so I can not be bad and goof off so we can go to sleep but only after Mommy reads books and make us better so we don't be sick so we can sleep and not cough. Amen."

Some prayers are a little more succinct than others.

Home, healing, happy

Wow, what a blog hiatus! I have an excuse, of course. I've been healing. And then having more surgery. Which went kind of haywire and required hospital stay. Yeah.

So surgery #2 on Friday, the "easy" scope to remove the protective film from my organs? Hmmm. Well, it took longer than expected because something got knicked and started bleeding and then they took forever getting it to stop. The rest went well. But then in recovery I got all swollen and couldn't, uh, void (a prerequisite to discharge from hospital). And then the CO2 gas they pump into you during surgery (to keep the organs floating or something) didn't get all sucked back out...probably because surgery was longer than expected and it escaped and hid all over my chest cavity. And then the gas attacked my right shoulder. I hear this is common. Not so common, however, is that it then attacked my whole chest cavity and gave my lungs just a very tiny bit of room to move. I was panting. And panicking. It was not fun. The powers-that-be decided really quickly that I would not be leaving the hospital that day, and they started to run all kinds of tests to find out how to help me.

When the tests came back, they found out that my kidneys were going haywire. Whoa. Good thing my lungs started freaking out so we could find this out. Because this kidney thing was pretty important (not related to the breathing thing, but important for overall wellness, you know). The trigger? Several causes were debated, but almost certainly the problem was exacerbated by the nurse who gave me a mega-dose of Ibuprofen in post-op for pain control. I asked for Tylenol. Non-narcotic. She said they only had regular strength. I said my doctor told me not to use Ibuprofen. She talked me into it. (I was just out of surgery, post-anesthesia, and a little bit in pain, people.) Yeah. Turns out there's a reason that ibuprofen is not recommended for patients with kidney disease (me).

So I ended up staying ANOTHER night waiting for my kidneys to adjust and begin behaving normally. They did. Meanwhile I had a whole new team of doctors checking on me (nephrology). I barely slept the whole time (have you TRIED to get a good night of sleep in a hospital? While a bunch of people keep poking you for one reason or another?). Someone is going to end up paying for another two nights of hospital stay and a billion blood tests and another team of doctors because of all of this mess.

And this was supposed to be outpatient.

*Sigh*

We saw my doctor on Monday (I was finally discharged on Sunday), who showed us the video of my second surgery, which ended in pictures of textbook-like anatomy, which I have NEVER EVER SEEN...with my name on it, anyway. So, overall, the surgeries did exactly what they were intended to do. Success. Just with some HUGE stumbling blocks along the way.

We drove forever and finally met Olivia and her grandparents on Tuesday at a restaurant, where we were going to have lunch and then make the transfer of kid and kid's stuff so we could go HOME. As they pulled up to the restaurant, we walked outside to greet them. Olivia had the car door open almost before they stopped the car. She screamed and ran to me with arms outstretched. I broke down into a sobbing pile of goo.

Did I mention the sleep deprivation? Combine that with missing your child for more than two weeks and I'm not sure I had any chance to react any other way.

Olivia was happy to give us lots of hugs and kisses all day. I noticed in certain instances that she seemed to be dealing with her own set of confusing emotions about Mommy and Daddy being gone so long. I hope we can work through those in the next few weeks, when we aren't going to be doing much but staying home and playing together (doctor's orders...take it VERY easy for a few weeks).

I'm just happy we're all home, and all together again.

Chez Grammy

So, Olivia and I went to Joe's parents' house last night to drop off some of the larger "supplies" for Olivia's stay with them while we are gone. Grammy and Grampy get the bouncy house and Liv's bike for the week, and I also went ahead and packed her clothes and shoes. (Surprisingly, or not so, packing so many clothes up did not at all affect my ability to clothe the child for the rest of the week. She has more changes of clothes than Vanna. I kid you not. All hand-me-down. Yay, cousins!)

On the hour-long drive to their house, Olivia kept asking me why her bike and bouncy house were in the back of the van. I decided it was time to explain her impending visit with Grammy and Grampy so she could prepare herself for the extended stay.

Me: "You are going to go stay with Grammy & Grampy for awhile, starting next week."

Liv: "Why?"

Me: "Because Mommy has a pain in her tummy, and she has to go to the hospital so the doctor can fix it."

Liv: "Why?"

Me: "Well, honey, there's something inside Mommy's tummy that hurts her and the doctor is going to make it all better. Isn't that nice?"

Liv: "Is Daddy going to the doctor too?"

Me: "Yes, Daddy has to drive Mommy."

Liv: "Why?"

Me: "Because Mommy will be taking medicine and won't be able to drive."

Liv: "Oh. Why?"

It was a bit circular from there. A lot of "Why". Welcome to the "Why" stage of childhood.

But, ultimately, she got it. I think. Because when we were at Grammy and Grampy's last night, after Olivia showed off her mad bike-riding skills (declaring, "Look, Mommy! I'm super awesome!"), Grammy was asking her if she was excited to come visit them next week. And Olivia said, "Yeah, I'm going to stay here with you and Grampy! Mommy has to go to the doctor because she has a pain in her tummy. The doctor's going to take the pain out at the hospital. Grammy, can I run in the sprinkler?"

Hmmm...doesn't appear that she is dwelling on Mommy's surgery too much, does it?

So, I think it will all be OK. I think she'll be fine. The separation will probably be harder on me than it is on her. They have all these plans for outings and fun stuff to do. She probably won't want to come home with us when we get back.

Maybe that's what worries me.

Two weeks and other things

Gah! Two weeks from today, my husband and I will deposit our daughter at the grandparents and leave for more than two weeks for surgery and more surgery. I'm trying not to think about it. I have a few anxieties about this surgery. I have A LOT of anxieties about leaving Olivia for so long.

I am sad because I read a bunch of you bloggers who are going to The Blathering, which is within driving distance for me this year, and I can't go. I mean, I guess I technically could. But it's my anniversary weekend, and it comes on the heels of surgery recovery and just a month back into "normal" and, I don't know...it's just overwhelming to think about adding something ELSE into the schedule. But I am still sad.

Go here and support my friends, Troy and Amber, as they prepare to adopt their second child from Ethiopia. And make sure to look at some of the photos of their little Silas. He's a cutie!

Happy Birthday to my husband, Joe, tomorrow. I am ever grateful for his presence in my life.

That's all for today.

Here and there

This has been a weird week. My husband has a big event and has to work late a lot this week and next. And although Olivia and I don't have much of anything on the calendar, we've been running around a lot.

My panic gene has kicked in and reminded me that we have two weeks left of summer vacation. In that amount of time, I need to get all three vehicles serviced, prepare the spare room for nap occupants again (as it is nothing but a storage space for junk at the moment) and try to get Olivia back on some sort of schedule. As if.

In the meantime, there are some other things eating up my brain power...most of them dealing with Olivia's birthmother. She is going through some stuff right now that I can't even begin to imagine going through and...well, I guess I worry about her. So I've been praying for her a lot.

Hope your Thursday is less scattered than mine...

Broken and fixed

My husband and I served on a panel for a presentation on vocations today at a youth program (representing the vocation to marriage, of course). We always weave the vocation to adoption into our presentations, as adoption is definitely a calling and not for everyone. Olivia was there to introduce herself by speaking into the microphone..."I'm Olivia!"...and then she ran off to play with one of the youth leaders assigned to keep her busy elsewhere. (She's a bit of a distraction to the whole listening process!)

This is the umpteenth time we've been on this panel, and we rarely get questions. We fit into the "duh" category of vocations since such a large percentage of the population is married and, well, people don't have a lot of questions about that.

Today, though, we got a really good question about adoption. The question was "How did you come to the adoption decision and did you both reach the same conclusion at the same time?"

Interesting thing about being called...in retrospect, all the steps make so much sense and the end point seems to be so logical. In real time, though, the path wasn't always so clear. First there were concerns about the expense. Then there were concerns about age (ours, not the baby's). Then about race. And health. A homestudy process makes you check off what "kind" of baby you would accept. As if you are shopping for a newborn in that section of the department store. "I'd like one in white, please, with good health and a birthmother who is a model patient who has never smoked or taken drugs and eats all her vegetables and never misses her folic acid supplement." And, like all scared and newly prospective adoptive parents, we agonized over what categories to check off.

That is, until we got the call about Olivia's birthmother. Suddenly all those concerns melted away. Because it struck us, in that moment, that we'd asked for what we wanted, and God was answering by giving us what we needed. It didn't matter how much we spent or how old we were or whether the baby would look like us. All that mattered was that she was ours and we were hers, and we'd trust God with the rest. He made this happen...and He knows what He's doing.

So I guess the answer to the question is that we were led to it. Through prayer and research, yes, but God was pulling us along the whole time. And yes, we both reached the decision to submit to the will of God at the same time...when we got that call.

This life is a mystery. The fact that adoption exists at all means that something else is very broken...in this case our fertility and birthmom's life situation. But God can take our brokenness and create something beautiful if we open our hearts to Him.

Olivia was/is what we needed...I can't count the number of ways we've grown personally and spiritually through the challenges this child has thrown at us. God constantly uses her to help us grow closer to Him. God can fix what's broken in birthmom's life, too, and I pray every day for that.

In the land of "what if"

Olivia's birthmother is going to court this week to try to get her (other) kids back...the ones who have been in foster care. She has been doing everything she can think of in the past several months to better herself and her situation so that she could satisfy the state. And yet, recently, just before the court date, her life began to fall apart again.

We tried twice last week to meet up with her...to talk to her, support her, let her spend time with Olivia and have at least that bright spot in her week. Both times our plans fell through on her end. I have been thinking about her a lot, knowing that she is depressed and feels like she has no control over the bad things happening in her life....wondering how I can help her recognize her unique value and encourage her to continue to work toward making better choices and improving her circumstances.

I don't know what is best for those kids. I really don't. But a few days ago I had a thought of "what if" that gave me pause.

What if Olivia hadn't been placed for adoption?

What if she had spent these precious early years in the same environment as her biological half-sisters. This beautiful, happy, secure child who feels everything so deeply and dramatically...what would her life look like in the land of "what if"?

I picture a beautiful, scared little child who wears her emotions on her face and clings to her sisters...all of them just as confused. I imagine this boisterous little girl becoming trapped in a shell of fear, her extrovert-nature never emerging in the midst of the chaos. Or the on the flip side, she becomes vocal and violent, not knowing what to do with the anger and confusion she feels. So young, so trapped. And in this unstable world, unable to soak up information from the world around her, learning (as she does best) from her senses and absorbing things that barely register on others' radar screens. Her learning delayed, her emotional and psychological development stunted and possibly scarred for life.

I wonder how those girls have fared in foster care. Are they happier? More secure? Do they feel stable in their foster home? Or do they miss their Mommy so much that they can't fully settle in?

Please don't misread this as an argument for adoption vs. parenting, because that's not what it is at all. All expecting mothers have the right to decide for themselves whether they are ready to parent a child. If they choose to do so, we (society, individuals, family, friends, neighbors) should do everything we can to support their decision and help them become the best parents they can be. If every single parent was empowered to make good decisions, her children would be much more secure.

I wish so much that circumstances were different...that Olivia's birthmother had made better choices and that those kids could have grown up in her loving, secure home. I wish she could make a good example of her life...for her kids and for mine. I would love her to be a shining example for Olivia of what happens when you take charge of your own life and make good decisions. Whether or not that happens remains to be seen. But we still pray for it.

In the meantime, I will hug my daughter and recognize the gift that she is to us, and we to her. I will rest in the knowledge that at least this child knows love and stability and is thriving in the midst of it.