Learn More About Me

Monday, October 29, 2012

I Learned Something Today.

My entire life I had this feeling, or opinion if you will, that  parents could not love their adopted children as much as they could love their biological children. I didn't have any real basis for that, it is just what I thought.

I was raised an only child after my younger sister died. My parents discussed adoption from time to time, but never brought home another baby. I actually don't know their reasons for not adopting when I was younger, and it really doesn't matter. I think, that in my young mind I believed it would be too hard for them to love an adopted child after they had lost a biological child. Almost like a replacement.

When I was in my first week of my first year of college, I came home after a night class and my parents had a baby. Like a newborn was laying on a changing table in our spare bedroom. My mom quickly explained that we were becoming a foster family and were taking care of this tiny baby on an emergency placement. Here I had lived my 18 years as an only child and I come home to find a baby. Such a shock, to say the least.

We went through foster care training as a family, and William became integrated into our family. I learned how to take care of a baby and I fell so much in love with him.

Soon after William was born, his birth mom became pregnant again. And when William was six months old, a judge decided that his birth mom had shown enough improvement that she could have him back again. I remember looking at him laying on his changing table and just crying because I was so sad he was leaving us. It was awful. William went back to live with his birth family, and Dillian was born. Their birth parents were still involved in the court system and were being monitored. Eventually the boys were returned to my parents care.

The pain I felt when they didn't live with us is all the proof I needed to know that I was so wrong in thinking that adopted children can't be loved the same.

My brothers were adopted on September 5, which is the birthday of my sister who died.

We all went out to dinner on Friday night and I told the boys about our baby. I explained that Josh and I are adopting and that they are going to be uncles. They were so excited and immediately started giving their recommendations for baby names (Cobra, Bob, Bobby, Luke, Periwinkle, Maleena, Bobber, Sloppy Joe, among others). They told me that I should start thinking about buying a bigger house, because a baby needs its own room. They are so full of advice.

And they are the reason why I already know that our baby will never lack love. We already love our baby so much and we've never even met. So today I was walking to my car after work and I realized that if I never get pregnant, I will be fine. We are being given life, just by a different delivery method. I truly believe that our baby is worth the years of hurt we experienced at the hands of infertility. And I'm so excited to share this experience with my brothers so they can see just how amazing life is.



As a side note: our baby has a new name. I was saying "Baby T", but it has been changed to "SuperBaby". You know. It fits.

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Saturday, October 27, 2012

Baby T

I think it's kind of funny to call our baby "Baby T". You know, because it sounds like a small t-shirt. We aren't calling our baby that at home. We mostly call it "the baby". We do not know the gender, but that is simply because we don't want to know. Ever since we started talking about kids we decided we weren't going to find out the gender before birth. The birth mom knows, but we don't.

I (of course I do) think our story is pretty amazing. I mean, one day I'm all relaxed, basically done with the fertility doctor and ready to just be, and the next day we have a baby with a due date.

The family we tried to adopt from this summer has a person in common with the family we're adopting from now. If we hadn't gone through what we did before, this family wouldn't even know about us. Long story short, our baby found us. Through no intentional act of our own, we have a baby. I'm still in awe.

The birth mom invited me to feel free to call her and to go to doctor's appointments with her. We are going to meet her next week. 

Joshua was searching for nursery ideas the other day (it was so sweet). We are doing a superhero nursery. I don't know if you know or not, but quite a few of them were adopted. Either way, it is going to be pretty awesome. And if it is a girl, how many girls can say they had such an awesome nursery? Really.

I'm still holding myself back a little bit. I am so incredibly excited, and if anything does go wrong and the adoption doesn't go through, I will be devastated. However, I still feel like I can't do everything yet. I tried to look at cribs a few times and I just can't do it yet. I have recommendations written down for everything, but I can't commit to putting them on the registry. I will. In time.

Tonight I went to Barnes and Noble with my dad and brothers. I wandered around a little bit looking for adoption books. I knew they had them because I was with my mom when she bought some a few weeks ago. I finally found them and started reading "I Wished For You". I only got to this page before I started crying and had to put it back. I couldn't even finish the book.
So I'm definitely going to have to buy that.

Here is a fun fact about me. When I was five or so, my mom banned me from watching The Little Mermaid (it was my favorite movie) because at the end, every single time I would watch it, I would cry almost uncontrollably because I was so upset that Ariel would miss her dad when she went to live outside of the ocean. True story.

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Thursday, October 25, 2012

The New Us

My Photo
I had made a deal with myself that I was going to keep this a secret and have a giant huge reveal in February, but the more I thought about it, I couldn't think of why. 

Our family is growing. Josh and I are adopting a baby. Our baby is due February 1st. Our baby.

I didn't give a whole lot of detail about our first adoption experience, but I will tell you that this situation is completely different.

I made a registry today, and the only thing I have on it is books.

I tried to look at cribs last night and got panicky. I haven't tried again.

While things can still go wrong, and this may still not work out, I have the faith to believe that it will. 

I started journaling to our baby. I decided to share my first entry with you all.


Baby T,

I will never be able to express to you how long I have waited to write to you. I should say how long I have wanted to. I am still afraid that something won't work out and I will never meet you or get the chance to be your mom.

I suppose I should introduce myself to you. Hi. I'm your mom. I hope you call me mama. If you like you can call me mommy of course, but I hope you choose mama. I have loved you since the moment I knew of you, much like Jesus loves us before we are formed (Jeremiah 1:5).

Your dad and I (he is the big guy - you're going to love him!) have been waiting for you for years. We love each other so much and we can't wait to share it with you. Your dad and I met when we were slightly bigger than you are now. Okay, maybe a lot bigger than you are now (you should really see the size of him!) but in the grand scheme of things we really weren't that much older. To you, I'm sure it will feel like forever, but we have been together for ten years. That's a crazy long time isn't it?

A few more things you should know about me: I love to read, so be ready for lots of books! Your grandmas are crazy. They are going to lose their minds when you are born. They really are wonderful women and they love you as much as we do. Your grandpa is a quiet guy, but trust me, he is the best we could ever want. You are going to have so much fun with him. 

Another thing about me: I love to sing, and I am not good. I love old songs. You'll hear. I'm a pretty good cook, which you won't enjoy for the first few months, but you will.

One last thing. When you're born and we first meet, you will see me crying. A lot. I already cry tears of joy for you, Baby T. You have no idea how happy you make me.

I can't wait to meet you.

I love you,
Mama

I will now take your questions. One at a time, please.

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Sunday, October 21, 2012

The Casual Vacancy

I don't feel like sourcing a photo, so this is mine.
I used to be in the habit of reviewing books on here, but for one reason or another stopped. One reason or another being that all the books I read were basically the same (Josh calls them "Danger Dan" novels). Earlier this year I decided to change things up a bit and broaden my reading horizons.

I love to read. Almost as much as I love to read, I loved Harry Potter. I think that JK Rowling deserves much respect as an author, and as part of that I should probably not compare the HP books to The Casual Vacancy. They are however, entirely different. The Casual Vacancy is very much an adult book. I was expecting that to be kind of an overstatement, but once I got into the book I realized it wasn't.

Right here is the opportunity for you to stop reading this if you want to go into the book with no ideas or opinions clouding your judgment. I'm about to tell you how I feel about the book, but will not spoil the ending. You've been warned.

I can't help but feel that if JK Rowling had released this book under a pseudonym it would not have even been noteworthy. I will be the first to admit that I read this book because I loved HP and thought she was an amazing author for having come up with that. I still think she is amazing author. I went into this book knowing that it was not HP8. I knew there wasn't any magic in it. It is entirely possible that I just am not interested in the topic of The Casual Vacancy.

The Casual Vacancy begins with the death of Barry Fairbother. I'm not that interested in politics. I keep up with presidential and local elections, but I could care less about how government is run in Britain. So this Barry Fairbother fellow holds a political seat in the local government. Throughout the book I assumed he was like a city councilman. Even if I'm wrong, I don't really care. It isn't going to change the book at all. He was some sort of minor political figure. The entire small town it seems is concerned with replacing his seat and the issues mount.

I have to say, where HP was bright and mysterious, and Hogwarts was a place of wonder and amazement, the town of Pagford in The Casual Vacancy reminded me of Trailer Park Boys. But not funny.

Fair warning: The language in this video is rough. I don't know if any of you reading this care, but yeah. Trailer Park Boys is not known for intelligence.


I don't know what else I can say about it. I'm glad I read it, because if I hadn't I would wonder if it was good.

Instead of telling you whether it was good or bad, I'll just tell you some books that are better that you should read. Ok?

I joined a book club. We meet online and this is what we look like:
kjpugs photo
That sure is me right there at the left not looking at all. I swear I was paying attention. Next to me, left to right,  is Bailie, Jayme, Kelly, and Nikki.

The first book we read was Year of the Gadfly. Check out Nikki's post about it.
The second book (this month's book) is Gone Girl. This book freaked me out. It was so good.
A non-book club book that I heard of from the book club girls is Rules of Civility. Check out Kelly's post about it.
Another favorite of mine that is actually supposed to be a book we read in book club next year I think is Blackberry Winter. I couldn't wait for that month to come without reading it. Seriously. I'm not reviewing it now because this post has gotten too long, but it is good.

So that is it. Did you read The Casual Vacancy? What did you think of it?


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Monday, October 15, 2012

The Formerly Sad, Sad Infertile.

I have to say, things have changed for me. I'll start right now by telling you that no, I am not pregnant.

I had a lengthy discussion on Saturday with an old friend who started TTC (trying to conceive) at the same time we did. She is currently pregnant with their second child. We sat around and talked about everything men don't want to listen to. I explained basically how the entire reproductive system works (or doesn't work, in my case), and we talked about the emotional toll that comes with infertility. She mentioned that she doesn't think she would have been able to handle it if she had problems conceiving.

I certainly don't feel like I'm holier than thou, because I know I'm not. I will not preach either, because we are all different. Some people can't handle it, and for the past year or so I wasn't able to handle it. Whether it was the plain stress of waiting or if it was the medicine and crazy hormones I was experiencing, it was hard. It was hard to the point where I would cry when I would see a pregnancy announcement, and I hated myself for it. I hated that I couldn't be happy for other people just because they had something I wanted. I pushed friends away, stopped speaking to some, and completely cut ties with others. I stopped cleaning the house. I stopped cooking. I lost my funny. I gained weight (I blame the fertility medicine for that). I stopped running. I stopped lifting. I stopped being nice to people (I'm sorry, Mom).

I always thought the ''relax'' method was the dumbest thing I've ever heard. I truly couldn't fathom how anyone in our position could relax. I don't understand how anyone whose life is so consumed with wanting a baby could suddenly stop thinking about it around the clock and relax. What is relaxing anyway? I stopped doing everything that was relaxing to me (See the previous paragraph).

Source
After the adoption that wasn't I learned a lot about myself. I learned that having a baby isn't exactly all about us. I learned how to pray for something other than my own happiness. I learned to be grateful for what I do have, and not to dwell on what I don't have. In praying for the baby that should be in our arms right now, I pray that the arms he is in are loving and always will be.

I can't describe exactly what changed in me, but I swear, somehow, I relaxed.

I had a discussion with a friend a few weeks ago who also experienced infertility (over some delicious chocolate martinis). She, however, was never able to conceive, even after several rounds of IVF. The one thing that impacted me the most in our discussion is that she said she just started living five years ago (she is around my parents age), and it occurred to me that I haven't been living. I've been purposely sitting still waiting for a baby to happen to me. I've seen doctors to try to make it happen, but I put everything else on hold. I don't want to start living when I'm in my 40s. I want to start running, lifting, cleaning, cooking, and doing everything else I stopped doing again.

So this new me. She loves all babies, whether she can have them or not. She loves seeing the photos of your babies, and it is even better when she can see them in person. She loves hearing about them, and loves how happy they make you. She is genuinely excited for you when you're pregnant, and while she does dream of the day it will be her, she is content to be patient and trust in the Lord's perfect timing.

I'm still getting used to her, but I like it.


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