On the Edge of a Cliff and Ready to Fly

Joshua’s first birthday party was a blast! It was fun to pack the house full of family and friends. Josh wasn’t really into opening presents, but he kept clapping and wandering around the living room. He knew it was his special day. One of his favorite gifts is a plastic, rubber ball that he loves to kick and bounce on (I didn’t even realize he knew how to kick a ball!) He got some cute clothes and lots of toys.

It’s been so slow, yet so fast, how this year has gone by. Sometimes, when I was up at 2, 4, and 6 in the morning and had to go to work the next day, it felt very long and slow. I have felt strangely about this – I am happy that Josh is growing up: eating more and more on his own, talking, responding to us, giving hugs to us and his cousin, smiling and jumping up and down when daddy comes home, smiling and trying to climb into the computer when we skype with Grandma and Grandpa. He knows people, and I just love that he knows that Donald and I are mom and dad, and how much he responds whenever kids come onto the scene.

I loved him as a little bundle of baby – but I am loving getting to know him more and more. He’s a sweet child and loves to meet new people. When we went on a walk tonight (Josh was in his stroller) he was pointing to things and talking. He noticed a group of kids playing with a ball and was saying “UP” (unsure why.) I took him to a small park by our house and held him while he went down the slide. He was grinning so big and laughing when he slid down it, and he jumped up and down to get me to pick him up and slide down again. He saw some dogs barking in back yards as we walked around the neighborhood “Dog.” When I called Donald to let him know we were on the way home, I told Joshua “that was daddy on the phone.” He replied “daddy.”

On the stroller there is a little “window” That you can see through the cover of the stroller to the baby inside. Joshua kept turning around, grinning, and waving at me as I was walking him along. He would tap the tray in front of him and continue to bounce up and down, turn around, smile at me, and continue.

I know he’s going to keep getting bigger and older every day, and I do miss him being a baby sometimes. Most times, I am so happy that he knows who I am and he talks (small words) to us. I love him so very much I can’t believe it. So many times Donald and I will just, even still, start to cry thinking about how much we love him.

We had talked about starting the adoption process for our second one when Josh turned a year, but I think we’re going to wait a little bit. I am starting training for a new job (I will still be a supervisor) but in a different department. I am hopeful that I’ll be able to move up a little quicker since I have some more expertise in that new department. My goal is to move up and make enough someday so Donald can stay home with the kids and work on websites from home.

I love Facebook. I am afraid I have neglected my little blog here because I spend my free time trolling around seeing what old and new friends are doing in Facebook world…

…everything is the same here. Josh took a few steps tonight! (It was probably more like a shuffle, but Donald and I were both here to watch him, so we’re calling it his first step!) He is so much fun and he’s so happy…most of the time. He just cracks us both up and makes up laugh.

My friend at work is having a hard time because one of the manager’s wives is pregnant, so all the time he and the office staff are talking about pregnancy and babies in front of her…she had to leave a meeting today because of it. It’s hard watching someone else go through the same struggles. Infertility just hurts, and you feel alone, especially when other people have happy news they keep talking about in front of you.

Just two more sleeps until my sister Julie gets here! We can’t wait. I think Josh is going to have a ton of fun with her. She loves coffee as much as I do…it will be fun to have someone to have coffee with!

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.

When we were still in the process of adopting Joshua & he was only about a month old, a co worker of mine, we’ll call her H, was asking me lots of nosy, (almost borderline rude) questions about the adoption process, the birth mother, & the cost. She didn’t ask me as if she really wanted to know, but she would throw judgemental comments and didn’t seem very supportive of the whole idea. She kept saying, “I don’t know how you can love a baby that isn’t yours” and “Wow, I can’t believe someone would give up their baby, that’s crazy” and “I bet it cost you tons and tons of money.” It really took a lot of prayer and a lot of patience whenever I would see her walking towards my desk. When she would open her mouth, I would have to take a deep breath and just think, “How do I respond? What do I say?” I always made sure to talk about how wonderful Joshua’s birth mother was for loving him enough to give him two parents that have the means to support and love him, I made sure to explain that even though Joshua isn’t our flesh and blood we love him so much it hurts, and I tried to explain that adoption is wonderful and scary but so very worth it.

Two weeks ago, after I hadn’t talked to her in a while, another friend of mine from work, J, came up to my desk. She asked, “Has H talked to you? She’s really upset and needed someone to talk to about what she’s going through, and I gave her your name.” A day later, H came to my desk in tears. She had just found out that she had a myriad of problems and wouldn’t be able to have any more children. They have a 4 year old girl and just assumed they would be able to have another, but she had some medical conditions, and she couldn’t get pregnant. Ironically, she’s been seeing the same infertility specialist Donald and I saw. She had begun reading books on adoption, wanted to know more about the process, and get referrals to our attorney and our adoption agency. She didn’t know who else to turn to, because she didn’t know anyone else who had been through infertility or adoption, and wanted to talk to someone who had walked that path and been successful in it. Over the past two weeks, we’ve talked off and on, and I’ve told her to talk to me any time she’s feeling sad or upset, or just wants to vent.

Today, she came over to my desk. She was so excited! She said, “Jessie, did you see in the new benefit program, if you adopt, you get TWO WEEKS paid leave and $4000 adoption credit? AND They pay for your attorneys?? No more attorney fees!” I hadn’t had a chance to read through the 09 benefit package, so this was AWESOME – especially since I’d been talking with HR and management about how the adoption benefits at our job could be better. I felt SO GREAT – like somebody LISTENED to me, and changes happened, which will make it easier for others from our company to adopt! (It probably had nothing to do with me, but it still felt awesome!!!) We were like high school kids, giggling at her desk, thinking about how great it would be to not have to shoulder attorney fees and get $4000 in credit! It would make the costs for Donald and I to adopt again so minimal compared to the costs we paid this year!!

Suddenly, she looked at me in the middle of our jubilee, ” I am just so glad to give you good news! You’ve given me such good news and brightened my days these past few weeks. Thank you.”

I was floored. I just smiled and thanked her, but I felt so happy the rest of the day. Later that afternoon, I just suddenly remembered all those probing questions she asked me right when we were in the middle of adopting Joshua. If I hadn’t paused and really thought about how to answer her questions, or if I had been rude, or harsh, or not treated her questions compassionately or kindly, it would have shut the door to us talking now. This is a great lesson for us as adoptive parents. We are ambassadors for the whole process, and we don’t know why people ask the questions they do. I was very humbled, and have learned a great lesson.

Not too much going on, just trying to get back on a schedule with Joshua. I think it was hard on him when we were working so much overtime.

I am so grateful he’s been sleeping through the night, I am remembering when I first went back to work on such little sleep. So difficult, I don’t know how we made it through all of that. Still can’t believe we packed, moved, and worked in our jobs while being up all night caring for Joshua. I feel like I’m just starting to get back to feeling normal again.

I’m able to use my weekends to do laundry, dishes, and cook food (now, I am cooking and freezing food for Josh and for Donald and I), but I don’t have enough time to do any real deep cleaning. That is stressing me out a little bit, but it is what it is. I can’t wait until Donald is done with his schooling (and I’m sure he can’t wait, either.) There is just too much to do.

At work, I dropped out of some committees and some “extra curricular” things until November just to have more time to help out the people on my team. I think it was a good decision. It’s hard for me to say no to things but it’s something that needed to be done.

Since becoming a “working mom,” my life certainly has changed. I have a mentor at work, M., with whom I go to lunch 1 a month to talk about work and home life things. She is in a good place to mentor me because she is the main breadwinner of her family as well and she’s worked on balancing home and life.

Since Joshua, work isn’t as consuming for me as it was. I think I threw myself into work a lot more to keep my mind off of the infertility battle. It actually turned out to be a good thing, because I worked my way up to make enough so we could afford to adopt and raise our family. My life used to be either 1) Working, 2) Studying for some exam for work 3) Doing some type of extra activity for work to add to my resume. Now, I am trying to get things back into balance, and put more home into my life. Having a baby and having to pay for babysitting doesn’t lend itself well to working lots of extra hours. I’ve had to really prioritize what is important and I’ve said “no” to a lot of activities and committees that I normally would have jumped on. I am just focusing on the Bilingual Committee and Toastmasters at work, in addition to getting my team to where they need to be.

I’ve started a new routine. Mornings are so hectic trying to get Joshua up and ready to go to his uncle’s (or just get him ready for the day), so I’ve started showering every night rather than in the morning. We are not eating out as much (due to cost and it’s actually more inconvenient sometimes with a little one) so I am doing a lot of the cooking. Every weekend I pick a meal (last week it was dirty rice, this week it was meatloaf and mashed taters) and I put it into individual containers and freeze. It’s something I did occasionally before Joshua, but now it is a must. I don’t have time to cook during the week. I come home (sometimes carrying a baby, diaper bag, purse, & laptop bag), tired already from a long day, trying to get Joshua fed, there is just no way that I have time to cook dinner.

Additionally, Donald and I each take turns being a “single parent” it feels like. The one time I usually have Donald here to help watch Josh while I cook is Saturday mornings, so I have Donald watch Joshua while I get up early Saturday and get things cooked and the kitchen cleaned afterwards. I’ve done this for about a month, and it’s working well. I understand now why parents of young children really crave schedules and don’t want to go out of town as much. If my only time to prep food is Saturday morning, it’s such a pain to reschedule that to do something else! Isn’t that strange?
If I have to do something different one weekend, it can throw the whole schedule off.

I was on the phone for work today, arguing with someone about a decision we had made.

This man on the phone said to me, “No, sweetie, you just don’t get it, you don’t understand.”

SWEETIE?!?! Excuse me! I just about flipped out. That is TERRIBLY sexist. Would you EVER call a guy you’re arguing with “Sweetie?” Like I am some child that doesn’t know what I’m talking about.

I haven’t had any sexist comments thrown at me in a while, so this just threw me for a loop.

Work has been a little frustrating lately. It’s a pretty competitive place, and my team isn’t doing as well as they should. So, I need to determine what the issues are and fix them. It’s strange when you supervisor people and their results: you can’t DO the work for them, but if you have to teach them, coach them, and mentor them to do the work. Quite a different experience.

Tomorrow I’m going out to lunch with my mentor, someone who is a working mom whose supervised longer than I have. It will be nice to pick her brain on how she manages her family and work life. Tomorrow is FRIDAY! I can’t believe how fast this week has gone.

Went to Illinois this past weekend…Joshua met his Aunt Julie, his Uncle John, his Great Aunt Joann and Great Uncle Skip, and my cousins. It’s all on the Flickr pages….of course, they all thought he was adorable! Joshua did great for such a long car ride there and back. It was kinda rough on mom, though. I don’t think I’m going to drive that far with a baby by myself!

In the Lutheran Church we’ve been attending the small group coordinator called me to see if I’d like to arrange a small group of parents of young children…I agreed to do it. I think it will be good for us to be involved in a group again. We had to bow out of the small group at Grace just because the Infertility trial was so difficult…I think it’s time we got back into a small group!

While Joshua has been napping, I’ve been trying to unpack. Our adoption finalization party/open house is Wednesday from 4pm – 9pm. Email me at watermelonjessie at yahoo dot com if you didn’t get an evite.

I warned people that our house was still going to be a disaster for the open house, but I really wanted to do a little something to celebrate his finalization on the DAY his adoption was finalized. It is going to be awesome! I am so happy that we’ve had him with us since he was an HOUR old…definitely a big blessing! Some adoptive parents don’t get their kids until they are much older.

I have been a little nervous taking a full week off work unpaid, but it had to be done. There was no other way to get out of our old house and into our new house without taking off work. Donald has been working this weekend and will work tomorrow. He’s also going to work on 4th of July, so those hours should give us some good holiday pay. I’m on a bilingual committee at work so I have some things to do for that, but after that I will work on a proposal to make our company more friendly to adoptive families. I will keep you all updated as I work on that.

Still no word from the biological father, so we are all hopeful that everything will go ahead without a hitch on Wednesday!

Tuesday is the first day Uncle Drew is going to watch Joshua, and his own son Jaxon, at the same time! I watched them both on Friday and it was a challenge. Jaxon was great; he was in a good mood and laid down right away and took a GREAT nap. My son, however, just started becoming “clingy” with me. He wanted me to hold him the whole day. Well, when Jaxon needed something Joshua was just really unhappy, so for a couple hours there I was trying my best to fit two crying babies on my lap. It’s been fun, though, that Joshua knows I am mommy and the only thing that settles him down is me holding him, so that was a nice feeling. I just really wanted to do some laundry and get the kitchen unpacked.

Oh well, holding a baby is more fun than laundry or unpacking, wouldn’t you agree?

Our leave is unpaid. That’s what our company has done with other adoptive families. Our H.R. rep even called home office, and that is the procedure. Sick time is only available to an employee that has an illness or cannot work; adoption doesn’t qualify to be paid for sick time. Under FMLA, we do have our 12 weeks leave, but it is unpaid.

So…I emailed my boss to see if it would be worth it to research all the different companies that pay their employees for their adoption leave out of their sick time. The point may be moot because in 2009 they’re starting a much better “Paid Time off” system that rolls sick, vacation, and personal time together. If that new system had been in place, I would have had almost a month of paid time off to use with our baby. I’ll go with what my boss says. If he thinks it would be like beating a dead horse, I’ll just not worry about it. I would like to see if I can try and get it changed as there are at least 2 people from work that I know of that are wanting to adopt this year.

I’ll have to figure out how to do my research to see what companies pay for adoption leave out of an employee’s sick time bank…

On the baby front, he is doing well! Our doctor, who is the sweetest guy EVER, said that Joshua is “perfect.” Well, we knew that! He gained 9 ounces and 1/2 inch since his birthday! Wow! I think he gets annoyed with me sometimes because I keep kissing him…his cheeks are just TOO cute!

Check out on the top right…there is a flickr link to photos of Joshua. I am not the most computer savvy, so I don’t add photos to my blog as much as my hubby does. At least you can get your Joshua fix through Flickr!