hold tight

it feels like there has been so much death and destruction this week.  sometimes i am so scared of what might happen in the future.  if i just sit here and hold you tight, nothing will happen, right?  or if i make you wear a helmet twenty four hours a day we will be safe, right?  oh how i love my children.  everything.  i love the way you both have no idea that we know three people that died this week from stroke complications. and then the whole boston marathon drama.  (not to mention that we are planning on running a marathon in two weeks.)  (it is in canada though and fortunately canada has no enemies)  i love the way they grab my legs every evening at 5p and ask for apples; the way they make each other laugh; the way they love feeding the ducks in our pond; the way they love being chased; the way they laugh; the way they always try to delay bedtime; the way Stimson loves ketchup; they way Merritt hates ketchup; the way Stimson tries to stick his toothbrush to his forehead; and the way Merritt makes a mess and Stimson cleans it up.  Can we fit one more in the middle of these?  it is so hard to imagine, but i think it can happen.
(i think we need a bigger car though...)

plus one decision

I have been meaning to write this for a long time.  My excuse....tax season...and yet I'm not the one that has been doing taxes.  That would be my wife who nearly four days removed is still working through the tax hangover.

Many have asked how we arrived at the decision to adopt.  To answer that question, we would have to go back to the pre-kid days....those days when sleep was easy to come by, eating meals slow was a common occurrence, road trips in the car involved naps and deep conversations with my wife, and sleeping-in was not  6:30a.  Like all couples, we had the conversation about kids - when, how many, what characteristics we hoped they would inherit from our genes, how perfect and obedient they would be, and how we would easily be better parents than those around us.  At that time, we tossed around the idea that we would like to adopt someday.  Honestly, I think it sounded like a noble idea that we would realistically never pursue.

Fast forward a few years....we were ready to have kids and be the best parents we could.  We assumed having kids was a matter of waiting 9 months.  After many months of trying to have kids, having doctors help us try to have kids, trying to smile when people would ask us when we were going to have kids, and reading an article in the paper everyday of another child being killed, abused, or left to fend for themselves....we were ready to give up.  In fact, we did give up only to find out the month we gave up, Katy was pregnant with Stimson.  It took us a couple of months to find out that we were pregnant.  I was out of town and Katy had that feeling that a woman only gets - a feeling that something is not normal.  About 5 pregnancy tests later and a doctor's appointment to validate the craziness, we were humbled to find out that we were going to have a biological child. Stimson came along and has blessed us ever since.

Two to three years later, we were ready to have a second child.  After experiencing the frustration of not being able to get pregnant again, Katy and I discussed how much longer we would continue to try.  We were not willing to go through everything we did with our first attempt to get pregnant.  We were also at a crossroads in our life...what should we do to give back to the world?  were we doing what we wanted to do?  was life about working, making money, and having stuff?  or was there something we could do to make sure we didn't continue on the treadmill of the American dream?  Around that same time, we heard a message from a speaker challenging us to do our part to make a difference in the world.  Living in America, it is easy to get lost and comfortable in the security and wealth of our country.  We like our comforts and frankly, we like us.  Coming home from hearing that speaker, Katy and I were already on the same page without talking.  We were ready to adopt....plus one.  That challenge was enough to push us over the edge to do for one what we wish we could do for a whole world.

We went all in, pursuing an adoption from Ethiopia.  In fact, we applied to an adoption agency and dropped a bunch of money to start the process.  Only one problem a week into this new process....Katy had one question for me.  What would we do if we found out she was pregnant.  "Well, I think we would figure it out and we would probably have another child", I said matter of factly.  Katy's response - "I'm pregnant."  We processed many emotions - humbled, happy, frustrated that we were having our own child while another child was stuck in an orphanage somewhere without parents.  Along came Merritt and a minimum of 6 months of waiting to re-start the adoption process.  We challenged the process, begging adoption agencies to grant us an exception....that we could continue to adopt without waiting 6 months.

After many sleepless nights the first 10 months of Merritt's life, we thought about nothing except trying to make it through that day.  We had many days of wondering if it was possible to function on an average of 4-5 hours of sleep a day for 10 months...whether it was even healthy for Merritt to sleep 30 minutes a day at the age of 6 months?  Adoption....became the furthest thing in our mind

This past year, we were ready to start the process again.  Now, we are continuing on our path of adoption.  We are excited to have a multi-cultural family.  We are anxious to rescue a child that will likely have no parents.  We are ready to share our love with another child...plus one.

milestones

first haircut! clearly she is quite thrilled.
hair stylist: "do you want to keep part of the hair"
no thanks. second child. not necessary.

do you have those weird milestones that help mark out your progress?  i.e. we will be leaving on our trip before the milk expires.  i'll be there in two sleeps. i just have one more mile. ten more miles. fifteen more miles. (training for a marathon right now) one more bite and then you can have some apple.  one more week and tax season will be over! one more book and then it is time for bed. one more hour and then i can go to bed!!

i wonder about which milestones or memories will come and go before we go to the congo.  maybe merritt will be sleeping through the night by then (unlikely).  maybe stimson will be in school.  maybe i will be working at a different job.  maybe i won't be working.  maybe merritt will eat ketchup.  maybe merritt will eat vegetables.  maybe ketchup will help merritt eat vegetables.  maybe stimson will be driving.  maybe we will won't eat sugar.  maybe we will won't eat wheat.  maybe we will won't eat dairy.  maybe merritt will be able to reason, just a little bit (hopefully).  maybe our neighbors will get a hot tub.  maybe we will get a new car.  maybe our neighbors will get a new car.  maybe our house will be cleaner. maybe our house will be worth more than it is now.  maybe we'll be richer.  maybe we'll be poorer.  maybe it's all relative.  and most importantly, maybe, just maybe, skinny jeans will finally be out of style!

rocks

so i honestly wonder what it is going to be like to have a kid that we did not make and carry and birth and feed every second of the kid's life.  i know that is natural to question but i do wonder how that will feel once we have all "adjusted" to being our family of four plus one.  (hopefully it will feel like a family of 5)  of course it will but still...  we (the two kids and i) walked down the block the other day to meet a new neighbor and say hi.  we did that and then we were going to go to the park down the street.  but, as it so often happens, we (thing 1 and thing 2 and i) got distracted by rocks. (fortunately they were both distracted by these rocks)  there was nothing special about the location or the type of these rocks.  it was just a pile of rocks near some new construction.  i started to tell them we should get going to the park.  but then i stopped myself.  i wanted to get them to the park so they could play but they were doing just fine playing with rocks.  so i sat down to watch and be the recipient of rock rain and rock soup and rock treasures.  i have been working so much lately and it was so nice to just sit there and watch and participate instead of rushing to go on to the next thing.  most likely i was just tired and i tend to be more emotional (we all do i'm sure) when i am tired, but i also tend to be more reflective when we have these little breaks from busyness.  it was so welcome and nice to just watch them.  but then i started to wonder if i will feel exactly the same watching an adopted kid play with plain old boring rocks as i do with my biological kids.  they were dumping rocks into my hands and my heart was exploding. will my heart explode when our adopted kid wants to be chased by us, when they want to hold our hand, when they dump rocks into a pile?  logically i know it will feel the same, or at least it will eventually feel the same and i will get the same heart strings tugged on by crooked smiles and silly questions.  but how long before it will feel like that?  and will i have to force it?  tell myself that it is the same?  i'm sure i won't, but i still know that my biological children are wonderful and beautiful and frustrating and discouraging.  they can break my heart and make my heart in the span of two seconds.  when our neighbor kids plays with rocks it doesn't seem quite as adorable or endearing- my kids are perfect to me (well, you know what i mean).  i guess i know deep down that my heart is just going to get bigger and i will love watching all three equally marvelous children make rock soup and rock rain.

good mom

i dropped merritt off at daycare this morning as i have done for the past three months.  she didn't cry.  she didn't start playing. she didn't wave. she didn't protest.  she has done all of those other days, but today she just stared at me.  i closed the door and started to leave and she kept staring through the window.  what is she thinking???? betrayal:  how could you leave me? confusion: why do i keep coming to this place? tolerance: i hate it here but i know you will come back in a few hours. disgust: i will be coming home in a few hours and i will be bringing home more germs with me, different than the ones I brought home on Monday.

i have so much work to do but some days i wonder if i should be working.  mom guilt is thick and heavy and it sticks to everything.  syrup.  this afternoon i stopped doing all the things that need to be done to play with my kids, but it never feels like enough- for me or for them.  and there is always so much other stuff to do.  and why do we have to eat every single day?  three times a day!!! there is always another meal to start working on.  should we stay at the park longer? of course; it is so nice out.  but then dinner will be late and the rest of the evening will disintegrate. i get annoyed at all "those" mom who can make dinner at eight in the morning.  there is something wrong about chopping onions while you are still drinking coffee.  but while we are playing at the park i was wishing i had something already cooking in the oven.  constant decisions and choices, and i always make the wrong one.  there is so much guilt and regret and should/could/would haves in hindsight.

i'm working on going to bed and getting up the next day with no regrets of what should have been done or could have been done differently the day before.  but how do you do that when you work from  home and your work is sitting there, undone and lying there just around the corner, calling my name in the darkness.  kaaaaaaaattttttttteeeeeeeeeeee, come get me.  you know this person is frustrated that their taxes aren't done yet. kaaaateeeeeeeeeeee, how could you be so selfish as to sleep when you haven't finished this yet?

working at home (and trying to act professional), i feel like i need to be on call 24 hours a day.  of course, i also feel like i need to be mom 24 hours a day.  being an accountant i know that equals 48 hours in one day. which doesn't work out so well on a daily basis.  i try to have boundaries and definition as to when it is work time and when it is mom time, but it is so blurred.  that's probably a discussion for another day...
three more weeks until april 15th!

Grants

The adoption process continues to move forward slowly.  A couple of days ago, we were able to check 'fingerprinting' off the list of tasks that move us one step closer to adopting.  We drove 3 hours in between my meetings and Katy's tax returns.  Why not...Katy's mom is in town and 3 hours without kids demanding food (app-le, app-le, app-le from a certain daughter of ours), a toy, or screaming simply because she has been in her car seat more than 5 minutes (Merritt) is very peaceful.  Not to mention, Katy figured out a way to do taxes in the car....talk about fun times.  Katy is now considering doing taxes in the garage with her taxes spread out on the dashboard.  It is very quiet in the car.  The whole process of fingerprinting took us about 10 minutes.  Five of those minutes were spent going through security (picture airport security) to make sure we....well, I'm not sure what the security check was for??  Another minute to use the restroom in our 10 minute pit stop.  Two minutes to fill out a form with two government employees watching us, mostly because they didn't have anything else to do and 1 minute each for us to both get fingerprinted.  We both left wondering if it would be possible for one person to do all of those tasks...probably another topic of discussion that each of you can ponder yourself regarding some government jobs.  Regardless, we finished the task and now get to wait until we have official approval for adoption....one step closer to being on a waiting list for our referral (child).

The next item on our list - applying for grants.  That would be a task that falls on me.....or maybe I could blog and put off applying for grants.  After all, I have been delinquent in maintaining our blog.  Heck, my wife posted 3 long blogs...and that is while I'm fulfilling my new domestic role of cleaning the house, doing dishes, washing clothes, etc...while she does taxes.  Or is she doing taxes?  Either way, it is probably time for me to blog more so my wife can focus on taxes and make time for eating and sleeping.  It is March Madness...what better to do during halftime of the madness than to blog.    

Adding a child from the Congo to our family still seems like a long way way.  The process still seems slow, but when I consider how long we have been thinking about making this happen, the recent events of submitting our dossier and now waiting to get on the waiting list makes it seem like we are on the brink.  I plan to tell more about the process we went through to get to the point of deciding to adopt.  That will come soon...but for now I better make sure my basketball bracket is still intact and I should start the grant process.

second chances

last week i brought stimson to the dentist.  it went well, his teeth were fine. blah blah blah.  but the dentist did ask him if he brushed his teeth at night and in the morning.  stimson, being the literal five-year old that he is (otherwise known as honest) said no.  my response would have been sometimes he brushes his teeth in the morning.  like most other people on the planet, mornings are usually pretty hectic trying to get out the door and there isn't a lot of time for non-essential tasks.  i am pretty picky about my own teeth and am literally (honestly?) terrified of the things that might go wrong inside my mouth.  i think i would rather pull off my fingernails watch a basketball game than have a root canal.  but stimson is five and has all his innocent, sparkling, white baby teeth.  bottom line- if we are really honest about this, he is going to get a second chance at keeping his teeth perfect.  my goal and intention is to brush morning and night every day, religiously, regularly, and routinely especially after the practice teeth are gone and the real set comes in.

but not stimson.  the next morning he got up, made his bed, and went straight into the bathroom to brush his teeth.  all before i even saw him that morning.  he didn't come downstairs boasting of his accomplishments either.  he just did it, matter-of-factly.  the dentist told him to brush his teeth; so that is what he did.  stimson listens and respects authority and doesn't question what those authorities tell him to do. obviously, this should have made me proud of him, and i was... but i immediately thought of merritt. she has never and will never operate like that.  if a dentist (or a parent or a doctor or her own mom) told her she should brush her teeth morning and night, she would not only not do it, she would probably stop altogether.  now, i realize she is only one and a half, but i can tell this about her already.  if i say go, merritt stops.  if i say right, merritt goes left.  she eats from her hand, not from my spoon.  i say you'll like it, she says yuck. stimson eagerly ate plain, pureed spinach.  merritt needs to have hers hidden in a smoothie and a bow tied around the glass.

so all of this has got me thinking that most likely our adopted child will fall into the middle of these two personalities, which is probably so far from reality and rather naive.  of course, the child could be similar to merritt or stimson in some ways.  however, since i have just two kids right now, i have just two categories.  in all actuality, this new-to-us child will be a third category that is yet undefined and unknown and it will be fun and exciting and challenging to find out.  i just hope they want to brush their teeth a lot and they like smoothies.