Reflections

I haven't even thought about writing on my blog until today, since the last time I posted which was a month ago!  Now that we have settled into our "post-adoption" life  (basically just life at this point!), I don't really feel the need to blog about much.  I started my other blog as an adoption blog while we were waiting to be matched, "pregnant on paper" if you will......I know a lot of people dislike that term.  That is a really hard time.....the waiting period is tough.  Because in adoption you never really know if you will end up adopting a baby.  Heck, even if adoption is not on the table, nobody can be guaranteed to have a baby.  There are a lot of bumps along the way in adoption.  The mad paper rush to get all those papers filled out and the home study and visit from the social worker and writing the Dear Birth Parent letter and making the profile book that is presented to expectant moms and the money....there always seem to be more costs that creep into the equation than initially expected, and then you finally get the certification to adopt from the judge, and then you wait. You wait for your phone to ring.  You wait for "the call" that you hear about so much from other hopeful adoptive parents.    That waiting period is enough to make you crazy...if you let it!  Thankfully,  I made a lot of other hopeful adoptive moms along the way and we gave each other support and advice.  It would have been a much harder process (harder than it already was) without my adoption friends.

I just talked to one of my favorite hopeful adoptive mom friends yesterday.  We used to talk several times a week for a couple years during the waiting process.  She lives somewhat near me (1.5 hours away).  It's so weird not to have adoption on the brain 24/7 anymore.   Now that my daughter will be 3 in two months, we have been out of the active adoption journey for quite a while now.  We are just.....living life.  

I remember thinking once we were matched, I could exhale again. Wrong!  Then you worry that the expectant mother will not like something you said and then back out of the match.   Then the baby is born and comes home with you (if she signs the TPR paperwork) and then you still hold your breath. You hold your breath waiting for the day that the judge signs the official adoption paperwork and it is finalized.  You worry that the birth parents will take the baby back.  Even after my daughter's adoption was finalized, I still worried for a while that the birth parents would find a way to take her back.  Even though neither her birth mother or birth father ever tried to take her back and never even said they wished they could take her back.  Her birth mother has told me several times that she does not regret her decision to place C with us.   Don't get me wrong- of course her birth mother wishes she was in a place to parent, and didn't have to make the decision to place her baby for adoption.  But based on her circumstances, she still felt like she made the right decision.

Someone posted something on FB today of an adoptive couple going to the hospital to meet the child they would adopt for the first time.  They sent it to A.B.C. news and the emotions and love they felt are palpable in the pictures.   They took along a photographer and have amazing pictures.  Love at first sight.  That is exactly how I felt.  Gosh, it brought back so many memories.  It is possible to love a baby you did not carry or create.  It happened immediately with me.

While we were waiting to be matched, my life was so consumed with adoption, with getting matched, etc.  I spent so much time researching, reading adoption blogs, etc.  Other stuff gets put on the back burner to a degree.

I am now back to my regular, previously scheduled life just enjoying the days with the kids.  I am not so focused on adoption anymore.  Which is probably why I don't blog much.  And then I created this family blog to document our days as a family of 6.   However, the people that are really involved in our lives either talk to us IRL (in real life), or follow me on FB or IG and know what we're up to.

I love adoption and the little girl it brought to our family.  I can't believe she will be 3 in a couple months!  3!  When did that happen?!  I started really seriously thinking about adoption in 2008.  We finally signed up with the first agency in November 2009.  C came to us in 2012.  It is now 2015.  That's a lot of years from the beginning stages of our adoption journey until now.

Anyways, just a bit of reflection on the whole process.  Seeing how happy that other adoptive couple was in the pictures when they met their new baby for the first time warmed my heart and took me back to NC and to the hospital where I met C for the first time.  Oh how smitten I was with her immediately when I walked into that hospital room.  And how terrified I was that her birth parents would change their minds and parent her (which was their right) after I had already started falling in love with her.   The human heart is an amazing thing....mine fell in love with this baby I just met who didn't share my DNA, and her birth mother's heart loved her enough to do what she thought was best for her.

As for my 4 kiddos....summer is winding down here.  How could this be the 10th week of summer vacation already?!  We went to Hawaii this month.  My oldest son was on the Little League All Stars team.  They won the district tournament for the 3rd year in a row, and they played at the State tournament!  So exciting!  I will have an 8th grader, 5th grader, 2nd grader and a preschooler!  How on earth are they this old already?!  My daughter is talking so much and is so funny and super smart.  I know most parents say their kids are smart, but she is really smart and intuitive.

I hope everybody is enjoying their summer!

Happy Father's Day!

I had to laugh today....my mom told me at Father's Day dinner, "You don't write too much on your blog anymore!"    She is probably one of the few people that actually reads my blog!  Lol!   We had a yummy nice Father's Day dinner with my parents and father-in-law and my hubby and the kids.

One of my adoption friends finally brought the baby she has been waiting years for home from the hospital recently!  I am so excited and happy for her and her family!  They have experienced more roadblocks and speed bumps in their adoption journey than anyone I know.  I will say this...because the irony is incredible....she is a mom of boys like me, and wanted a daughter as desperately as I did.  Well, her tune changed, and the baby I mentioned she brought home from the hospital?  Well, the baby is a BOY!!  And she is thrilled, over the moon happy!  I laugh because I always say that God knows what we really want & need long before we realize it!  She really just wanted another baby to love, the gender did not matter in the end.

Another one of my adoption friends who had a bad adoption fall-through after she brought the baby home from the hospital years ago (a couple weeks before my own adoption situation fell thru at the hospital 4 years ago) ....she is a foster parent now and is enjoying her new role.  I am so happy for her too.  Those were the last two adoption friends that still didn't get their happy ending to their adoption journeys.  I have been waiting and waiting to hear their good news.  It finally happened!

I messaged Cambria's birth father today and wished him a happy Father's Day.  He promptly replied back and thanked me.  I texted his mom  (Cambria's birth grandma) 2 cute videos yesterday of Cambria doing cute things like counting and reciting her colors and waving hi and bye and blowing a kiss to the camera.  She replied back "I love her so much".  It melts my heart how much her birth family cares about her.  I don't have any worries about them rejecting her when she is older if she chooses to seek them out.  If things continue the way they have been going in our open adoption, she will be warmly welcomed by them when she is old enough to contact them herself.

So today, on this Father's Day 2015, I am thinking of my own dad, my husband, my FIL, and my daughter's birth father with love and warm wishes for an amazing Father's Day.  I hope Cambria's birth father is enjoying his day with his son.   I appreciate him for allowing Dave & me to parent his daughter, and to help us make our dreams come true by having a daughter.

In Which I Brag For a Couple Minutes.....

Happy June!  Hope everyone is soaking up the sun and enjoying these summer days!
My boys all did amazing this school year.  Zack went to a new school that is notorious for being hard.  Very rigorous.  9 classes.  He went to the Ba.sis school here, and loved it.  I was a bit skeptical when he said he wanted to go there.  It's a lot of homework and studying and tests and quizzes.  He likes to play sports.  And video games.  Those damn video games!  And talk/skype/text with his friends.  Anyways, he got straight A's all year long in every class.  He made honor roll (top 15% of his class) 2 quarters this year.  His overall class average was 97% this last quarter!  Holy cow!  And they take pre-comps (mid-terms) and comp (cumulative final exams).  Talk about pressure!  He is notoriously disorganized and lets mommy save his bacon when he is irresponsible and forgetful and loses stuff.  This school's claim to fame in the middle school years is teaching them study and organizational skills.  And by God, it worked!   Listen to the classes he took this year:  Mandarin (and he went to his friend's grandpa's house who is Chinese for extra practice who talked to the teacher who told the grandpa that Zack is one of the best students in Mandarin class!  Did you catch that?!  Sorry long run-on sentence.)  After Mandarin is Biology, Chemistry (he was doing stuff I did in 11th grade!),  Physics, P.E., Algebra 1, English, Logic,  & US History.   He is an interesting kid.  Not totally nerdy...athletic too.  He was the strike out king in majors this  year in Little League!  (He pitched the most strike outs, not the most strike outs at bat!  lol!!)  Also, he was tied for the most home runs this season.  Totally on fire.  And he painted his little 2 year old sister's nails yesterday with her favorite Frozen nail polish.  Bam!   Don't get me wrong, he is still a typical teenage boy (almost a teenager in a couple weeks) and pushes my buttons and his brothers' buttons!

My middle son had a great year too.  Straight A's all year long in the honors program and had a great last year in minors baseball.  Was primarily the catcher or pitcher.  Did really well.  He is into roller hockey right now.  LOVES to rollerblade in my living room.  SIGH.....

My 7 year old is hilarious.  And smart.  And athletic.  Did I mention hilarious?  The other day, I was telling the boys they are getting haircuts this week.  Joshua said, "I only want the hair on my back cut."   Cue middle son:  "WHAT??  You have hair on your back??"  And I said, "No, he means that little piece of hair in the back of his head in the middle that grew longer around his neck."   Jacob asked if daddy had hair on his back.  I replied, "No."   Joshua, my son with that devilish 7 year old grin said, "Well, if I had hair on my back (as opposed to the hair on the back of his head), I would just go to that place and get it waxed!"   I almost spit out my drink!  I inquired how he even knew about those waxing places & he said he saw something about them on T.V.   What the what?!  On the Disney Channel?!   Oy.

Cambria is talking SO much and stringing more and more words together to form long sentences.  We are working on potty training.  It was all her idea.  She's been going on the potty a few times a day.  So proud!  She loves nail polish and loves to pick out her hair bows now.  And she loves to go swimming.

Even though some days are harder than others, I'm lucky and blessed.  And I know it.

Happy Mother's Day 2015!

Happy Mother's Day 2015!  I got to celebrate my first Mother's Day in 2003 and I still remember it!  Zack was almost 11 months old.  Gosh, time has flown by so fast.  We went to dinner with my parents today to celebrate.  I love this feeling of being content...like my family is complete.  I am so blessed.  Life may get crazy and overwhelming and busy at times, but it is so worth it.  I know down the road when the kids are all grown up and have moved out to go to college and have moved on to the next phase of their lives, that I will be sad.  Cambria is only 2, so that day won't be for quite a while!

I am also thinking of those women that are waiting and wanting to be moms, but aren't yet.  I am sure this day must be so hard for you.  For those women struggling with infertility, I hope you become a mother soon...either through pregnancy or the miracle of adoption.

Yesterday was birth mom's day.  I am so glad we have an open adoption with Cambria's birth mom and her birth family on both sides.  I am happy her birth family gets to watch her grow up across the country and they know that she is happy and healthy and they  can have some peace knowing she is doing great.  I think the not knowing would kill me in a closed adoption.

Despite the happiness and joy that Cambria has brought to my family, there is still loss in adoption...no matter how you slice it.   There is still loss on 2 sides of the adoption triad.  The birth mother experiences a loss of her child and the adoptee experiences the loss of having their birth family in their life everyday.   Even in a good adoption relationship, there is still a sense of loss unfortunately.  A birth mother breaks her own heart and sacrifices her own happiness to give her child the life she wants for them.  That, my friends, is motherhood.

Even if the road is bumpy now and then in open adoption, I love Cambria's birth mom and wish her nothing but the best!

Baseball, Baseball, Baseball.....

It is baseball season in my house.  3 boys playing in 3 different age divisions means a lot of time at the baseball fields for this mama and her family.   But it is so fun.  And we have made a lot of good friendships there.  Zack is on fire this year so far.  I'm so proud of him.  He hit a home run on opening day, and pitched and played shortstop, and his team won!  YAY!  (He is currently in the lead for quality at bats in his league in our town!)  He played catcher the second game, and they won again!  Now, let me give you some background information.  His team was in last place last year.  It was so sad.  They won one game and tied one game the whole season.  So even if they don't win another game this whole season, they are already doing better than they did last year!   Actually, at the end of the regular season, all the teams play in a tournament of champions against the other teams in their league.  Then the winner goes to the district championships.   Last year, his team beat the 1st place team in the league!  Unbelievable!  There were a lot of upset 12 year old boys last year! So anyways the team with the 2nd best record ended up winning the tournament of champions and district championships last year.   Zack's team played that TOC & district championship winning team the 1st two games of this season and beat them!  However, the other team lost a lot of their best players this year because they aged out of that age division, and they were replaced with young kids.
Did I mention Zack hit a home run?  Wowza!  And he hit another one at practice tonight.  This season is off to a fun start for him.  Jacob is in the younger division below Zack's.  Jacob has played catcher and pitcher (notice a pattern here?!) and he got 2 in-the-park home runs and a double!  So proud of him too.  And Joshua is in the younger division below Jacob's, which is coach pitch.  He has been doing well too.  :)

I'm taking photography classes at the local community college, which I love.

OK so back to baseball.....haha!  That's about all my time is filled up with these days.  When I'm not at the baseball fields, I'm home washing baseball uniforms!  And the D-Backs are on my TV.  They had an amazing win the other night in the 12th inning, BTW!  Did anyone catch the game?

We are having 3 families from Zack's baseball team over on Sunday for dinner......and I'm sure we'll talk about.... baseball!

I don't really have anything else to talk about.  Well, I do have updates on the situation with the BIL and also the people in our open adoption, but I don't feel this is the place to talk about it.   Wait, let me back up a few feet.  Things are going well between us and Cambria's birth mom and birth father and birth grandmas and aunts, etc.  But the details of their lives are private.  I texted a picture of Cambria to her birth sister's adoptive mom, and she texted me a picture back of Cambria's birth sister  wearing the same exact sweater on the same day...across the country!  What are the chances?!
And the details of the saga with the BIL and his daughter.... it's just so sad and frustrating and leaves a bad taste in my mouth.  :(
The family member with stage 4 cancer is doing better... finished with chemo and radiation and technically I think is in remission & has to go back in a couple months for a PET scan.
My grandma has Alzheimer's.  And it's pretty advanced- and it advanced pretty quickly.  It's so sad.  That disease robs people of their quality of life in so many ways.  I would just like a season in my family's life where nothing bad happens to anyone.

Anyways....my baby girl is 2.5 years old.  How did that happen?!  Wow, she is so smart and funny and spunky.  She knows what she wants and when she wants it (which is usually NOW!  Haha!)
I have been using essential oils when the kids or I have been sick.  So she has seen me apply them to the chest and/or the bottoms of the feet.  The other day we were driving in the car, and she stuck her foot in the air and said, "Mommy, oils on my feet!"   Oh my gosh I laughed so hard!  She takes in so much of the world around her!  And later that same day, my 7 year old son asked me if he looked good in skinny jeans!  Bahahaha!  I burst out laughing and told him yes and I asked him why he asked me that...did someone at school say he didn't look good in skinny jeans?  And he replied, "No, I just knew that I looked good in skinny jeans!"   That kid!  What a character!  And Cami tells me she loves me all the time now.    Makes all the hard moments of parenting sooooo worth it!

March Madness

And here is my March post.  What a bad blogger I have become.  Life has been busy (so what's new?) and filled of mostly good stuff, with a few bumps in the road.

Here are the highlights in no particular order:

* I am sick with a cold....I feel awful.  I was out somewhere and caught myself saying, "I can't wait to get home and put on my oils!"    Lol I've become one of those oil lovers!  Haha!  Hello On.Guard, oregano, Breathe, Lemon, etc.  Let's hope they work their magic like usual.
The best part?  Jacob my 10 year old was sitting next to me while I was putting them on, and he said, "Oh!  I have a cough....put those on me!"
And the hubs....well, he just rolled his eyes.
Usually I am sick January through March....I haven't been sick since like December, and that only lasted for 3 days instead of 3 weeks with the oils.

*We had Jacob's 10th birthday party bonanza bash yesterday after school.  (I started having that scratchy throat feeling yesterday, ugh!)  So much fun to watch him enjoying life with his friends- he has been blessed with a great group of friends.

*Baseball season is upon us.  Here we go....I've got my running shoes on!   From now until June my head will spin.  But it is so much fun, and the best part of living in a small town is that a lot of my friends have kids on the same team as my friends, so I get to see my friends at practices and games too.  It's a win-win!  Zack hit a home run at practice on Thursday night.  Awesome!  Today he was pitching at practice, and he did pretty good!  (He is a really good catcher, but we lost our awesome pitcher from last year because he moved up to the next age group.  So Zack will be spending some time on the mound.)  There is nothing scarier that a momma watching her baby boy (who is almost a teenager- lol!!) pitching!  As a mother, you spend a part of everyday helping and taking care of and doing things for your children.  When they are out on the field, you can't help them at all....all you can do is watch!

*My brother's wedding in San Diego last month was awesome.  It was REALLY fun!  I'm happy for him that he found someone to spend the rest of his life with.  It was so fun to see my relatives- my uncles and cousins, etc. that I hardly ever get to see.   It makes me even more excited for my kids to finally have some cousins!!  And we rounded out the trip with a trip to Disneyland.  And I got to see my BFF from med school.

*Zack and Jake have gotten straight A's all year long so far!  So proud of them!  (Josh is still graded on the E, S, I and N system.)  He is doing great too!

*The school district in our town has been hit with some huge budget cuts.  They are closing and re-structuring schools.  And then they just had another recent cut.  So sad and scary for the future of our kids.

*I am seriously considering getting braces!  I never had them as a kid, and am really envious of people with perfect, straight teeth.  I will probably get them on in August after our summer vacation and after the kids go back to school.  Then Zack and I can go to the orthodontist appts together- lol he will LOVE that!   HA!

*The relative with cancer I mentioned is doing pretty well, considering.  Chemo and radiation are done.  Now for healing and gaining back strength and hopefully eating again like normal.

*Cambria went to her 3rd birthday party in the past month today!  It was so cute!  It was at the craft store....they painted jewelry boxes, made bracelets and necklaces with beads, and colored a wooden fish- so cute!  I am loving having a daughter!

*Cambria will be 2.5 in a couple of days.  I cannot believe she is that old already.   I certainly don't feel 2.5 years older since bringing her home from the hospital.   (Oh wait, yes I do!  Who am I kidding!  haha!)  She already loves all things girly.....cute shoes, cute boots, she picks out her hair bows everyday, she loves Hello Kitty, Minnie Mouse, Ariel, Doc McStuffins, necklaces, bracelets, pushing her doll stroller and her purple sippy cups.

*Sophie has her 4th and final chemo for her cancer in her hind leg on Monday.  She was supposed to go a couple weeks ago, but her bloodworm showed her counts were too low for chemo so it was post-poned.   Even on chemo, she seems more active and lively and spunky and hungry than before this all began in September.  I hope she beats the odds and survives longer than the 11-12 months projected survival- (that is with chemo, it was 4-6 months expected survival without chemo.)

*We went to Vegas for spring break.  Vegas kid-style!  Lots of fun at the Man.dalay pool, Tournament of Kings jousting show, etc.

That about sums up our lives for the past month.  Never a dull moment!

February 2015

Here is my one post for this month~ I have gotten so bad about blogging!  Life is pretty good, not too much to report.   Well.....there are a few things.

My brother's wedding is next weekend!  YAY!  I can't believe my baby brother is finally getting married!  It will be in San Diego.  And I get to see 2 of my girlfriends that moved there!  I am doing a reading in the wedding.  I am wearing a red dress.  Which is very uncharacteristic of me!  I usually wear black dresses to everything!  Cami is wearing a mint green frilly dress with matching shoes.  I. DIE. OF. CUTENESS!   Mint green is one of my favorite colors.  Is that kind of odd that mint green is one of my favorite colors?!  ;)

Valentine's day weekend was fun with my hubby.  We had nice dinners and saw two movies.  American Sniper and yes, we saw 50 Shades.  No comments/scoldings  from other women, please, about how that is degrading to women and I should have more respect for myself and I should not have seen that movie.   Quite honestly (that is one of my husband's favorite sayings), we both liked American Sniper better!  Lol!  For reals.  We weren't too impressed with 50 Shades.  It was long and slow and did not live up to the hype.  I only read the first book and half of the second book and I was not interested in reading any more of it.  And I did not like the ending of the movie.   I'm glad I saw the movie so I would know what everyone else was talking about, but I don't plan on seeing it again.
American Sniper, on the other hand, was amazing.  At first I didn't want to see it, because I hate watching war movies.  Life is hard enough as it is, I don't want to watch a movie about a sad and depressing topic.  Dave really wanted to see it though.  OK so I loved it, and want to see it again!  And it helped that Brad.ley Coop.er was in it!  

Today Cambria went to her very first Princess Party!  She dressed up in a Frozen dress and had SO. MUCH. FUN!  Jacob came with us too, and had a fun time too!

I am trying and learning to let the issues go with my BIL, SIL and niece.   Which is not an easy thing.  Dave talked to his brother who finally admitted my SIL refused to accept my daughter into the family- one of the reasons being she thought we were too flippant when our previous adoption match fell thru the year before in San Francisco.  What the what?!?!  Is that the most ridiculous thing you've ever heard?  Anyone who knows me IRL or who read my old blog knows that was devastating to us and I cried my eyes out for a solid year and finally got over it when Cambria was born 17 months later.  Anyways, I am now starting to laugh at the ridiculous and hurtful things she did and said instead of letting it upset me.  She was the one with the problem, not me.  And my BIL finally admitted that I never did anything wrong to make my SIL dislike me.  There, he finally admitted it.  The sad thing is that it didn't really make me happy to hear him admit these things....it made me sad all over again that this person who was "so-called family"  (Lol my BIL hates it when I say "so-called family"!!)  totally rejected my daughter for some idiotic reason and never liked me for no reason at all.   I guess the take-away message is that sometimes people just don't like you and there's nothing you can do about it.  But I told my hubby he should be upset with his brother for allowing his wife to reject his niece.  It's his niece too, and he ignored her too for the most part.
Anyways, enough about them!

I put these pretzels in my 9 and 7 year old's lunches for school, and they were individually packaged for Valentine's day, and they had princesses on the package and my boys both scolded me and told me not to put them in their lunches anymore- that their friends made fun of them for bringing Princess pretzels to school!  Wow!

Cambria is talking so much.  She says the funniest things!  She is a sweet and sassy 2-year-old!  We are having so much fun at mommy and me dance class and mommy and me music classes.

Our 3 year old Golden Retriever (the one who had her leg amputated for osteosarcoma) has her last chemo treatment in 2 weeks.  I hope it worked, and that the cancer hasn't spread to her body.  So weird- the chemo actually makes her more hyper and hungry!

The boys all start baseball in a couple weeks.  My life will be spent at the baseball field 5-6 days a week.  (I secretly love it, though!)  Dave is at the batting cages with the boys now practicing batting, and Cambria is napping- the Princess party wore her out!  Then we will meet up for dinner, and do all the Sunday night prep stuff for the crazy week ahead.  I am hosting BUN.CO at my house tomorrow night.  Because I won't see my friends until June when baseball Little League season is over!  (Unless their kids are on the same team as my kids.)   Except for a few hiccups now and then, I love my life and the people in it.  I just wish I had more time for sleep!