On the Edge of a Cliff and Ready to Fly

Man, we are broke right now. All our money we got from our house selling we need to put into our new loan. (which, should close next week.)

I forgot about the $350 that the appraiser on the loan that DIDN’T go through charged us. Yuck.

So, we’re scraping the bottom of the barrel until we get paid again. Adopting a baby is worth it, but it is SO expensive…..we have got to do better next time and SAVE more! And, not buy a house the same time we adopt! Silly us.

Pray for us if you get a chance, this whole house buying thing has been a little stressful. (I am lying, it’s been pretty darn stressful.) Work for us right now has been busy; tis the season for tornadoes, hail, and lots of insurance claims (O my!)

On another note, our 1983 Chevrolet Silverado died and needs a $3800 overhaul. Needless to say, we are not going to fix it. We’re going to see if a family friend wants it for free. If he doesn’t want it, we’re taking it to a scrap yard. On a positive note, we should get a refund from canceling the insurance on it

We are trying to find someone to take our cats. Joshua’s biological family has a history of asthma and allergies and we think it’s best if we don’t have the cats, which is making me sad. I think it’s for the best. They are wonderful cats, so please pray that we can find someone.

Wasn’t sure how much I blogged about his….basically, our home SALE went off without a hitch, there was only the SNAFU with the date the guy could move in, but that worked out.

Since our home appraised low with our lender and they wouldn’t budge, we had to go to plan b. Plan b is we are renting our house until we can get financing. (which is GREAT that the sellers are being so nice about this.) We met with another mortgage broker today, and he’s confident he can get us a Rural Development Loan through USDA (Gardner is still considered rural believe it or not) or an FHA loan. The appraisal this person had done came out way higher, so it should work out. We imagine we’ll be able to close within a month or so….

This will be quick as I am tired….yesterday we got EVERYTHING out of our house and we moved into our house in Gardner. It was a huge blessing to have hired movers and Donald’s brother Drew helped us a lot with last minute items. Tomorrow the boys (Donald, Drew, and a friend of ours, Dave) are going to clear out the storage unit and put the stuff in the garage. Awesome!

It’s been tough being so tired and then basically being up all night with a baby…I wouldn’t trade it for anything, but today I hit my cracking point. We have made 4 trips to the cable place to get the cable put in our name. They kept stating that we needed various documentation to show we owned the house and/or the prior owners had to cancel the account. In the middle of FINALLY getting them to give us cable, Joshua was crying. I went out to the car to change his diaper; I laid him on the seat with the back door open. Some man was super impatient and was sarcastically saying “Oh, no, take your time, I don’t have anywhere to go.” What a jerk!

So, I scooped Joshua up quickly to take him to the other side of the car, a diaper loosely around his waist. Well, Joshua decided right then would be a good time to soak me, himself, the blanket, and then the seat of the car. I got him cleaned up as best I could and sat down to give him a bottle because he was hungry. In the middle of taking the cap off to put the nipple on, Joshua’s legs flailed and he dumped the formula all over me. So, I was sitting in the back seat of my Impala, covered in pee and formula, I had just been yelled at, and I burst into tears. I just kept thinking “I just want to take a shower, I haven’t showered since Monday….”

When Donald came out to the car after taking care of the cable business, he was sympathetic but I could tell he thought it was funny. I thought  “Well, it will BE funny in the future, but it’s not funny now.” My hubby took care of Joshua so I could change and take a good shower, and then we met with our social worker Susan for the last time. After this coming Wednesday, he is officially ours FOREVER!

We wrote the birthmom a letter…I’m not sure if she’ll read it, but I wanted to let her know how much we love Joshua and what a brave decision she made. It was good for us to write it.

Well, it’s 8:18 and the baby is sleeping…I’m going to bed!!!

Friends and family came over to help us pack yesterday…what a HUGE blessing. Everything is in boxes except everything we absolutely need – the baby stuff, our medicine, some clothes, and the pet stuff. I called the movers and they said they could take whatever boxes that we need – so we’re just going to let them take them for us!

We get the keys to our new house tomorrow…probably what we’ll do is get our bed frame and headboard set up and get some clothes and stuff moved over into the house. It seems so weird…it’s awesome that we’re finally getting into a bigger house!

I am so excited about our yard and having more than one bathroom…you have no idea!!!

Joshua is at Aunt Delaina’s this weekend….it was nice getting a full night sleep (I went to bed at 8pm and woke up at 8am…it was awesome!). I miss him SO MUCH. I never thought I could love anyone so much. We’re seeing Wicked this afternoon – can’t wait to get him back after the show is over!

Joshua is doing better; no more explosive spit ups. We did soy formula for a day, then switched back to regular, he seems okay. Last night was a fussy night so I didn’t get hardly any sleep, going to crash here in a minute.

We got our hospital bill for Joshua for the two days he was there…guess what our out of pocket was?

$38.00! Awesome!

The OBGYN that delivered Joshua and gave his Birthmom her prenatal care charged us only $1500 for ALL the prenatal care AND the delivery, which is just awesome! I guess that’s a pretty sizable discount, I had in my mind that it should have cost around $3000. I guess this OBGYN does a lot of adoption deliveries and we feel so blessed he gave a discount like that – some things work out!

The appraisal on our house is getting closer, they’ve worked the guy up to a more reasonable amount, so we may be able to get the ends to meet and get our loan to go through. Our realtor and the seller’s realtor have been working their tails off presenting more information to the lender to advise why his appraisal is unreasonable. What a crazy situation! I am glad I don’t buy or sell houses very often, I think it’s given me an ulcer.

I was sitting at work today and my hair was driving me nuts. All last night when Joshua was fussy he would GRAB and yank on my hair. I decided, on a whim, to get my hair cut over lunch.

It is VERY short, but I think it’s cute. Actually, it could look crappy and I really wouldn’t care, I was tired of my son yanking on my hair and trying to stick it into his mouth. I took some photos, need to have help from the hubby to get them on here so you can see.
I showed my hair off to Jennie at work and she said, “Yep, it’s a new mommy haircut, you just had to get one.” Fun!

Oh Lord, I of little faith. What good news has been coming in lately.

1 week till we move!

2 weeks till the adoption is finalized! We haven’t heard anything about a biological dad coming forward from the newspaper advertisements….please pray with me that it stays that way!

We sent the birthmom’s best friend another set of photos and a quick update, that way, she’ll have them to look at whenever she’s ready. I want to write her a letter to tell her how blessed we feel to be Joshua’s parents, but I haven’t been able to come up with the right words…hopefully, they will come to me when the time is right.

I have no words.

We found out within 24 hours 2 pieces of bad news:

Our new Gardner house appraisal came back low, which means our loan on our new house may not go through.

The guy buying our house somehow thought that he could have possession of our house on May 21st rather than May 31st. So, we need to get out of our current house and into our new house in less than 24 hours.

Luckily, the people in our new house are moving out this weekend, so they are GRACIOUSLY letting us start moving in early.

Our loan, however, is still up in the air. We may need to “rent” the house in Gardner for a while until we can find a loan, but it’s awesome that the people will buy the house from are even allowing us to do that. Not the ideal situation, but doable.
We were pretty angry and upset this morning, but we’ve calmed down. This was just nuts that things on both sides of our house selling and house buying experience were one big ________ (fill in the blank.)

Bleh. Thanks to everyone who is helping us with babysitting, packing, cleaning, etc. What a mess.

Joshua has been gassy and spitting up the past week. However, last night he spit up so much I had to change him and his bassinett 3 times – one of those times was PROJECTILE spit up – it woke me up!

Our social worker mentioned African American babies have a greater tendency to be lactose intolerant. So, I have some lactose free formula. I just fed him 2.5 ounces of it, and he didn’t seem to mind it. I will have to see if this decreases the spit up, gassiness, and overall unhappiness. I have got to remember to talk to the doctor on Friday.

Joshua was with Donald’s Aunt Delaina all day yesterday! They said that he was good and they had fun babysitting him. Aunt Delaina offered to take him the WHOLE next weekend (even overnight on Saturday) so we can pack and get ready for our move on May 21st! What a BIG blessing! Also, Donald’s friend Becky offered to still take Josh on Thursday even though Donald doesn’t have class, so that should help as well. I didn’t get as much done yesterday as I wanted…except, I took a HUGE nap. I packed probably half of the nursery stuff that we aren’t really using (big clothes, the crib stuff, and decorations). I am not sure why we set up the crib since he’d be little enough to use the bassinett until we moved. I guess we set it up so we could feel like it was really happening.

Oh, yea! It’s mother’s day! Donald got me 2 charms for my italian charm bracelet, one says “Joshua”, the other says “Arden”. Mother’s day the past few years has been so hard for me.

Now that I’m a mom, it just feels like a normal day. I have been praying off and on for everyone going through infertility today; it’s a rough day to go through. Looking back, infertility is such a dark and cavernous pain. What makes it worse is that people don’t understand how bad it is, people seem to try and talk you out of how bad you’re feeling. They say things like “Just relax” or “Other people have too many kids that they can’t afford” or “You’re lucky you haven’t had a bunch of miscarriages” or “Well, you just have a lot more money without kids.” I guess people that have cancer or difficult life circumstances go through the same barrage of ignorant comments, it just seems more poignant when you’re in the middle of the infertility roller coaster.

I think the best thing to say is, “I’m so sorry, is there anything I can do?” That will keep you out of trouble in a lot of hurtful life cases.

On the adoption front, our social worker came over on Wednesday. We have 1 more meeting with her on May 23rd in our new house. She said that one other couple that she works with is having their finalization on May 28th as well, a little bi-racial African American girl named Emre. I think that is a cool name! It will be fun to have another couple there. Our social worker mentioned that the other family is in the middle of moving as well; they’re even putting off their move by a couple weeks until the adoption is finalized. Everybody has been paid, the “advertisements” for the biodad are in the paper, the only thing to do is show up on May 28th and get it finalized.

Keep checking Joshua’s Flickr page (there is a link on the upper right hand corner) We will put all the pictures there. It’s in order of most recent to oldest.

I worked from home yesterday and today…AWESOME! And I am going to work from home about 1-2 a week for the next few weeks!!!

Our house passed inspection, so the move is a go!

Joshua’s adoption finalization is May 28th! That evening, (starting at 4:00 ish)  we’re having an  open house/ adoption finalization party at our NEW house in Gardner. Email me at watermelonjessie at yahoo dot com if you didn’t get an invite, as I’ve been forgetful lately.

My friend Katharine called today and said she and some other church folks could help me pack!

This has been an AWESOME day!!!!!

And, my blog hit 10,000 visitors!! Woo hoo!

Here are some photos of our new house:

I am happy and freaked out at the same time. I was just realizing tonight that we move in LESS THAN 1 month…our movers are set to come to our Lawrence house at 1pm on Wed. May 21st and move all the furniture and heavy stuff to our Gardner house. We are set to close the paperwork at 10:00 am on Wednesday May 21st. I think I’ll have to find a babysitter that day..

I still have a lot to pack. Donald’s aunt is going to watch Joshua for a couple weekends so I can pack and clean, which I am very grateful for, but I just am stressed by everything that’s going on. I’ve been trying to stay in good spirits even though I’m going back to work earlier than I would like, but it’s what has to be done. Part of loving Joshua is making sure we have enough money to pay for his adoption, our new house, food and clothing for him, etc.

I’ve been trying to work on things around the house, but my days (and nights) have been filled with feeding, rocking, making formula, burping, changing diapers, changing clothes. I just get him settled and it’s time to restart it over again. I am happy to do it, but I’m concerned  as to how I’m going to do everything and care for him at the same time. Monday morning we have OUR house inspection, so I need to get our house cleaned up for that. *Another sigh.*

Thanks for listening to me vent.