On the Edge of a Cliff and Ready to Fly

It was hard not buying a ton of stuff this year for Christmas – little kids are so fun to buy for. I have asked for clothes for Joshua for Christmas and it sounds like he’s getting a lot, which is awesome, it’s been more expensive then I realized to keep him in clothes. Josh keeps trying to get at the Christmas tree, it seems terrible to me that we decorate something and put pretty lights on it and then tell Josh to “not touch!” I don’t think he’ll really hurt anything – I guess the worst that could happen is he may topple it over.

I wrapped all the presents we’ve bought so far and put them under the three – I love seeing wrapped presents and the glow of Christmas tree lights late at night when it’s dark. I think I am super into Christmas this year because it’s our first year as parents. The past few years have been sad because it’s accompanied by the reminder that we didn’t have children of our own. So, now that we have Joshua, it makes this year even more sweet and happy.

It’s weird right now – I have been thinking about how my nephew Jaxon will be a year in just over 2 more months and Joshua will be a year in less than 5 months. They are starting to “catch up” with on another – when Josh was born, the 10 weeks between the two of them was such a big gap in development. Now, they both stand and crawl and “talk” and eat solid foods – but the biggest difference is Jax’s fine motor skills when he eats crackers, he can pick it up and find his mouth and eat little bites at a time. I fed Joshua the same crackers, and he would “lose” the cracker in his palm, not be able to pick it up off the tray, or try to shove the whole cracker to the back of his mouth. So, I need to remember this when I watch Jaxon do something that Joshua may not be quite ready!

It’s neat that Josh & Jax get to spend so much time playing together (Drew told me Josh is a bully and takes Jaxon’s pacifier & toys from him, though). It’s made me not worry or be anxious about adopting a 2nd child so quickly since Josh has a playmate his own age with Jaxon. I think it’s really cool they have the same initials – by accident. When Drew & Andrea were pregnant they asked us what names we already had picked out for our kids, which I thought was sweet. We told them our boy’s name & girl’s name we’d decided on when we were dating & newly married. They picked Jaxon’s name & didn’t realize it was the same initials as Josh’s till after we adopted him.

I was thinking we would start on the adoption list again when Josh is a year old but we are still in debt from adopting Josh – I’d like to get that paid down before we start again. We’ve also still got our home depot credit card to pay off; we had to use the proceeds from our old house & roll it into our new home loan rather than paying off the credit card like we’d planned. I think now that we KNOW adoption can happen fast we need to research adoption loans & grants and get things in order. We make good money and I want to adopt as many kids as we can – but imagine if you had THREE new car payments to make – it just still puts a strain on your budget. I am praying God would make things clear to us, that I and Donald would get promoted in the next few years, and we could find some good financial assistance. We also will probably want to remodel the house (way in the future) to give us an extra bedroom. Well, that’s stuff to consider, but who knows!!

Sometimes the infertility monster comes out and still hurts…sometimes I wonder if Donald and I were able to have a biological child what that child would have looked like. Sometimes I think back to when we were first married and we would talk about the kids we would have some day, wondering if the children would look more than me or Donald.

These feelings of sadness are shortlived and fleeting. I am so glad the time period between 04 – 07 is over; that waiting and being depressed and feeling guilty about infertility was terrible. I am also glad, though, that our social worker warned us that even after we adopted the infertility monster would come back and haunt us. It’s more the fact that we’re different, than the fact we can’t have biological children. I threw down our American Baby magazine in disgust because there was a huge article on “Which one of you will your baby look like?” and how to pick which genes might be carried down. Yes, that is the way most people have babies, is by getting pregnant. But I hate when it’s always assumed that’s how you have your family. I guess it’s good that not everyone is infertile, I just wish there was more sensitivity.

It’s National Adoption Awareness Month, so our Diversity Club put up a bulletin board in our largest breakroom about me, Donald and Joshua.  I am very tickled by it – there are some photos of Joshua’s birthday, his “Gotcha” day, and a write up I did on our adoption story.

It struck me, though, thinking about the Diversity Club doing a bulletin board on adoption. The purpose of the Diversity Club is to educate and promote differences in the work place. I guess it just hit me that we are a different and a diverse family. It started hitting me as I looked back on Josh’s birthday photos. I wasn’t in a hospital gown, tired after just giving birth, like every other new mom photo.

Our new parent photos are Donald and I in chairs in the NICU unit, I am wearing a bright orange shirt and makeup so Josh could see me more clearly. The first time we saw Josh was after he was all cleaned up and in a diaper. We don’t have any sonograms (or 3-D sonograms!!) like some moms have in their scrapbooks. Josh has brown eyes, Donald and I both have blue. Josh was born with olivey skin and dark slightly curly hair, Donald and I were both very, very blonde when we were little. I didn’t buy maternity clothes, or have that panicked “Oh my gosh the pregnancy test is positive!” call to my husband.

What do we have?

On April 4, 2008, we got an email from our social worker that said simply, “Call me! I have good news!” Donald called her, spoke to her for about 45 minutes, then called me at work to tell me we’d be chosen to adopt a baby boy set to be induced April 16, 08. I got off the phone and hollared around at work to ANYONE around me that we were getting a baby! In 12 days, we converted our guest room to a nursery, bought clothes and bottles, figured out how FMLA worked, and had a family shower and a work shower.  On April 18, 2008, when we were leaving the hospital, Donald was in the backseat with Josh, and I was driving. Donald burst into tears and said, “I just can’t believe it, I just love him so much.” That’s the way it’s been, since that first night we took turns staying up all night with him, we knew he was ours because there was no one else. The nurses & our family gave us advice, but he was our responsibility, our child, our Joshua, and we loved him from the moment we saw him. Whenever I look at photos of him, or when I play with him or dance with him, I love him more.

This is so silly. Donald talks about the Three Amigos movie a lot (plus Donald is a huge Steve Martin fan). Well, the movie came on Friday night, and during the song “My little buttercup” Joshua was SQUEAKING and LAUGHING and JUMPING UP AND DOWN! It was hilarious! All I could say to Donald was, “He’s your kid!” It’s just funny little things like that, even though he doesn’t look like us, sometimes he’ll do things that I know God is telling us he’s our baby.

Josh is 19 pounds 5 oz. He is getting TOO BIG to carry in his car seat; I’ve started unbuckling him and leaving the seat in the car and carrying him around. Otherwise, he’s so heavy!

The past week he’s been standing on his own – pulling himself up on the couch, the playpen, the crib. He’s crawling around trying to get into everything – his newest fascinations are the remote, the computer, and my bags of embossing thread! My latest project is Joshua’s birth cross stitch I’ve done maybe 2 rows. I find it funny how quickly I got my nephew Jaxon’s cross stitch completed – I would come home from work & stitch for at least an hour.

Today I had to go to the dr. again – the Dr. thought I had pneumonia so I had a chest x-ray. Josh couldn’t be in there so the nurses held him – they were ooing and aaaing over how cute he is and how he patted them on the back while he was being held. He is a riot! He seems to be back to his cheerful self – his antibiotics seem to be kicking in.

He was cracking me up because he was putting his mouth on the side of his little tub and blowing raspberries. What a cutie!

Oh, and HE got 3rd place at work’s costume contest – his poor dad was chopped liver!!

On the food front: Josh has had carrots & some mashed grapes. I did some research online, and since he’s got a tooth he can have plain cheerios. Fun!

Donald, Josh, and I are all sick with some gunk. Sore throats, congestion. Josh seems to be the healthiest out of all of us; he got an antibiotic on Friday when we took him to the dr. His mucus had turned a fun shade of yellow/green, which the dr. confirmed was an infection. Donald is going to CVS today for their minute clinic before he goes to work. My fever is holding around 99.5; I am taking dayquill which is helping.

I had to push through and keep doing laundry and dishes; there is no other time to do it. I also had to grind up some carrots for baby food since we are almost out of squash and sweet potatoes. I guess I am whining here; but I wish I just had a few hours a week to do some deep cleaning on our house. I only have enough time every week to keep our house from totally sucuuming to deep chaos. I guess this is what every family goes through – especially when you have little ones.