Day +5: Adoption Day

A year ago today we finalized Lil Bit's adoption. It was a crazy day with having to drive all the way to San Antonio to be at court and realizing we forgot all our paperwork at home. Talk about panic!! But we made it in plenty of time to have lunch with some of our extended family, finalize the adoption and completed our little family.

While she is too little to remember today, I do want to start a tradition of celebrating her adoption day with something small every year. She got a fridge dj (a learning radio toy) as a present and we went out to dinner. She loved the alfredo shells and breadsticks at Olive Garden and was amazingly well behaved.

I let her have the crayons and the children's menu for the first time. She did attempt to color with them before she started trying to shove them down her throat. It was very cute. My favorite part of dinner was watching daddy watch her. He just looks at her with such amazement and wonder. I feel so good about the job I've done while he was gone when I see him appreciating her cuteness and intelligence.

She was feeding herself and drinking milk out of a straw all by herself. I gave her a breadstick. She didn't really understand how to take a bite, but figured out how to tear off pieces and eat it. We shared a cheesecake, which she loved. I finally couldn't eat another bite, but it was phenomenal. She was adorable and very good for her age. She was also entertaining the sweet elderly couple behind us. They were eating her up.

I have spent most  of the day feeling pretty rotten from the cold that Chad brought home from Iraq. Honestly, I feel so horrible that I can barely function. But I wanted to take some time to recognize that today was a special day. I am so happy that we got to spend it as a family. I just wish the boys could have been here with us. I didn't take any pictures, but we made it a point to do something special even though she won't remember it.

I worry about how she will process being adopted emotionally as she gets older. I worry that she won't consider us her "real" parents. I worry that she will feel like we love her less or she isn't really part of our family. I've made it a point to introduce the idea that she is adopted from day one. I don't want the fact that she is adopted to ever be a surprise. I want the truth to be something Lil Bit just knows.

I can't control how she feels about being adopted. Her feelings will be her own, but I can present her the facts in such a way that she knows how special her story is, how much God meant her to be a part of our family, how incredibly much she is loved. I want her to know that being adopted, chosen, makes her special. Hopefully today is just the first of many days we can celebrate making Lil Bit our forever daughter as a family.

Day 43: Mundane

Over the past couple of days, my husband and I haven't had any chance to chat, but have been exchanging emails about a very serious topic, new dishes.

When we got married, I had a nearly complete set of dishes. He had a few odds and ends. I've found that he is very hard on dishes. We're down to three salad bowls that match and have a variety of chipped and broken dishes.

I know it's vanity. We can eat on the hodgepodge of dishes we have, but it would be nice with his family planning on visiting for a welcome home ceremony and for the upcoming holidays to have a set of dishes that match, other than our good china, which we nearly never use.

So I sent him two patterns. Asked him which one do you like? He responded by telling me he spent hours dish shopping and sent me a pattern that I had already nixed. It is ok and close to what I wanted, but the more and more I shopped, the more I thought I might be wanting a bigger change, new colors, curtains, decor, etc.

The more I thought about wanting new decor, the more I realized that maybe we should wait to get a new set of dishes when we move and then can spend the money knowing what decor we have to work with.

He spent hours he should have been sleeping, shopping online for dishes so he could offer an opinion, which is very sweet, but I really just wanted a either or answer. So for those of you wondering how a deployment affects a marriage, even the mundane tasks of buying new dishes and deciding when to shop for a household that might not be yours in ten months is made much more complicated by the military.

I sent him emails Sunday, hoping to shop Monday. Tuesday I got an answer, but got food poisoning from a nearby taco place last night and didn't feel up to much today. So maybe I will feel better and get up and run around tomorrow, but not likely. I have too much to do around the house tomorrow if I can work up the energy to do that instead of play with the baby or ridiculous games on facebook.

I send an email that his misinterprets. He spends hours of time he doesn't have. I then feel badly that he wasted time on something that is important to me, but not really important in the grand scheme of things. I write him an email telling him I didn't need him to do all that and hope he understands that I appreciate his time and effort, but it wasn't worth his time instead of being hurt that I didn't like the dishes he liked.

Even the very basic questions and conversations are tougher. We decided to get another puppy as a gift for my husband who wants a hunting dog. Now, he is pushing getting rid of Maggie our dog of the past two years, just when we're getting her a friend, which she is going to love. He says he is worried that our dog who is a little nervous at times and howls sometimes is going to be a bad influence on his trained dog. I'm not interested in getting rid of Maggie. This new puppy is going to need training and he will learn more quickly from watch Maggie than any other training method. I know because I've done it with other dogs in the past. We had one dog professionally trained and two other dogs who learned from him. But it is hard for him to tell me how he feels and vice versa because we don't want to start an argument or cause hurt feelings.

He lives in the middle of a war zone. We haven't seen each other in months. Arguing over dogs and dishes isn't how we want our last conversation to go, should something terrible happen. We make a point not to argue over email and chat and have done a pretty spectacular job this deployment. It took us a while to learn what not to do, but once we got the hang of it, it was all good. But everything takes longer, is fraught with potential relationship landmines, etc.

Deployment even affects the dishes, the new mattress, the welcome home party, and the dog. The smallest things are harder, no matter how mundane.

Day 55: New Kind of Family

Today, we drove about 90 minutes north to visit my husband's mother's husband's son and his wife and two children. Essentially my step-brother-in-law and his family are who they are to me.

My MIL made her mother's chicken and noodles and chocolate chip cookies yesterday and we drove up. After lunch, the "boys" and I (SBIL and SFIL and stepsons and step-nephew) went to see Transformers 3 in 3D. The movie was a little weak on plot with too many long drawn out action sequences that could have been shortened without losing interest or intensity, but had a few plot twists and neat effects with the 3D. It was WAY too loud and very violent for a movie whose advertising primarily targets younger children. I didn't think the new girlfriend character was interesting or believable. I didn't trust the character and didn't feel like the actors had any chemistry. But the movie was certainly entertaining, even if half the movie I wasn't sure which transformer was doing what. I would recommend drinking very little the day of the movie and waiting to start drinking until at least half way through the movie. I had to pee the last 30 minutes and was FREEZING in the theater. Also, the 3D is pretty cool and makes a lot of the action sequences more interesting.

It was nice to take the boys to do something special with their grandpa and uncle and cousin. Later, the ladies (my MIL, my SBIL's wife, my SBIL's MIL and myself with Lil Bit) sat visiting on the porch while all the boys, littlest cousin included, went for a walk to the pond. We talked about kids, having kids, raising them, letting them go, marriages, weddings. We watched Lil Bit bonk herself on the head by falling off a chair, now that she learned to climb into them at my sister's house.

It was a nice day, although very long and late. I was struck, as we sat around and visited, how this is a very different type of family structure than people envisioned as ideal in the 50's, but it works. My step-sons have an adopted sister, a father Chad and a step-Uncle Chad who is the son of a grandpa who is their grandma's husband, but not biologically related. And we don't care. We are family. We are joined by marriage, love and friendship. We may not always agree or see eye to eye, but we're a family, mixed up and different, but in a world so full of negative things, why worry about labels for people who love you? Family is the only label that matters and it isn't always determined by blood. 

Day 59: Contact

My sister and I were pretty close as children, but argued a lot as we got into school age and high school. Then I went my way to college and she went her way. We've worked harder the past few years to build a better relationship, but it is hard surrounded by kids, mom, and the day to day sometimes to find ways to really talk.

Just once this week did we really talk. One afternoon, we drank basil lemonade and sat on the front porch for a few hours until we both couldn't wait to pee and needed to feed our children dinner. We talked about college and kids. We talked about what careers we could see our children choosing. Of course, her kids are five so it is easier for her to imagine them choosing careers. With Lil Bit being only a year old, it is hard still to imagine her choosing an adult career. We talked about IQ's and whether we would want to know our children's scores. We talked about growing up and who we were as people.

We had a nice chat, but somehow the close feeling of contact from that afternoon didn't last. Our private little bubble ended when we came back inside. Somehow the realities of being mothers invaded the moment and we haven't been able to find private time again to chat.

I leave tomorrow and the morning won't be conducive to any more conversation. I just feel so left out between my mom and sister sometimes who have always been so close and now share nearly everyday together. They don't try to make me feel left out, but we just don't seem to really talk. I wish I could just find a way to get to know my sister better.

We can spend a week in the same house, but somehow don't quite manage to make contact. I love her and she loves me, but our relationship has always been just short of true and easy friendship. I hope that changes someday. I would even like to meet her somewhere someday for a just us weekend or maybe make a date once or twice a month to call and talk but no kids talk, just us.

One of the things I've struggled with as an army wife is the distance it puts between us and our families. It isn't easy to maintain close contact when you can't just pop in for dinner or hang out in the backyard like friends do. Maybe our next move will bring us closer? or force us to work harder at it. 

Day 92: Grandma and Dad

This morning, I got a Facebook message from my cousin. She and I keep vaguely in touch on Facebook, but haven't talked in years. She and I were never really close. I was older than she was and I was closer with my aunt who was more like a good older girl friend to me during my high school and college years.

I opened the message wondering what she had to say. It said to call her ASAP. I was instantly worried my aunt had died. She isn't sick or anything and isn't very old, but that was the only reason I could think of that she would need me to call her. I didn't even think about Grandma.

Until my cousin said that she had died. She was my last grandparent. My mom's parents both died when I was very young. I only have the vaguest of memories of my mom's mom from my early childhood and remember a picture of my mom's father holding me before he died when I was still just an infant. My dad's dad died when I was in college. I remember my dad telling me about my his death. We didn't have much to do with them, but it was hard emotionally for the same reasons hearing about Grandma is hard today. If hell is a real place, I worry that they are both there.

My dad's parents were the type of parents that makes me sick when I see it in my students' lives. They were abusive to the extreme to my dad and his sisters. They abused everyone they came into contact with. We were very protected from them as children. While my dad wanted us to have family, he kept us sheltered from them.

We visited with them from time to time. I think we visited my aunts and them around every four or five years. They came to see us a few times. But we were never allowed to be alone in a room with them and if my dad felt they were acting poorly, he would protect us from them. I have no negative memories of them personally, but I know they damaged my dad and aunts beyond healing.

While God can heal us because He can do all things, the depth of the wounds were such that evidence remains forever. My dad's personality and behavior still exhibit the scars of his childhood. He never became an abuser like so many abused children do, but he has issues that seem to stem from his childhood.

I have so many deep emotions about losing a family member, even one I am not close to, because it reminds me how fragile our lives are. Part of my dad's issues has led him to become extremely religious to the point that almost no one can satisfy what he believes are God's requirements for being a true Christian. He hasn't spoken to me in about a year and a half. And less than ten times in eight years.

I tried to call him tonight to see how he was doing after his mother's passing. He wouldn't talk to me. I know he called my aunt today, but he wouldn't speak to me. My sister answered the phone, probably two feet from him. She said she would pass on the message, but he knew I was on the phone and couldn't summon ten minutes to have even a casual conversation with his oldest daughter.

I know I am going to lose him. I've really already lost my father. He wasn't happy with me because my ex-husband had an affair and I didn't make him leave. I made him sleep on the couch, but did everything I could to repair our marriage and protect his already damaged children. He quit talking to me before the divorce was even final. I really don't understand what I did. But somehow I didn't measure up.

The last time I spoke with him was because of the shooting at Fort Hood. He answered the phone that day to make sure we were all OK. We talked a few times that week. We've exchanged five or six emails since, usually at the holidays. I've invited him to visit. I've called. I've emailed.

But I guess I just don't get to have a father. Nothing I do is good enough. Nothing I say seems to make him understand underneath all my poise, confidence, knowledge that I am inside just a little girl who wants her daddy to love her.

He would say that he does love me and prays for me daily, but you can't hug that kind of love. And I can't even count the number of issues I have with self-esteem in part because my dad's love is and hasn't been tangible for much of my adult life.

I'm a sinner. I've done things I regret. I have never killed anyone or cheated on a spouse, but I've been full of pride, I've gossiped, been cruel, drank too much, etc. etc. But if God can love me and forgive me, why can't my dad?

I don't know and I always feel so incredibly lost when I think about it. It hurts so much. So today when I heard my grandmother died who was always this crazy figure from my childhood, full of life and laughter, but dark underneath the surface, I teared up not for the grandma I lost, but for the grandma I never had. And then for the dad I will lose/have lost. My heart aches in sadness.



I even looked at buying a plane ticket to go visit him, a man who won't even take my phone call. I want him to hold his granddaughter, to hold me. I realized my daughter lost her great grandmother today, even if she would never have met her, I don't want her to lose her grandfather without ever meeting him. I'm really close to just driving to the house (yes, all the 25 hour drive) and ambushing him.

Why do the people we love the most hurt us the most? Why do we hurt the people we love the most? Family is a double-edged sword. And I just seem to keep getting sliced. 

Day 143: Too soon

Today, I was trying to make some inroads into clearing out Lil Bit's drawers of things she has outgrown. I have a friend who is pregnant with a girl and I was starting to sort through items that I could give to her, everything from brand new items my daughter never got to wear (or even got washed to wear) and lightly worn items.

Babies grow so fast that their clothes barely get much wear. Especially my Lil Bit has been given so many clothes, she wasn't even able to wear most things twice in her first few months. I've already sorted and passed on boxes to my step-daughter who had a baby in November and my babysitter who had a baby this winter. I kept a few items because I couldn't bear to part with, but I can't keep just boxes and boxes of baby clothes.

My husband and I haven't talked at length, but we're on different sides of this conversation. Lil Bit's first year has gone too fast. I have been tired, frustrated, beat on my feet, but have grown more and more in love with this tiny person every day. I am getting teary eyed thinking about her turning one because I don't want her to stop being a baby just yet. I am loving this baby stage despite the difficult first three months.

This afternoon she started getting cranky, and I realized it was her nap time. I thought about taking her into her crib, but wanted to savor these all too preciously few moments, so I held her until she fell asleep and rocked her for awhile. I kissed her cheek and sang to her. I guess I just realize that this may be my only baby and it is almost over all too soon. I almost teared up just watching her sleep, my angelic, little, sweet baby face.

I know my husband has two older children and has been doing this for awhile. He isn't really a baby person anyways. I certainly don't want another child if he is truly opposed to the idea, but I'm not sure that I am ready to let go of the possibility of another baby.

Parenting is a long commitment, and we both have to be in agreement to welcome another child into our family. God certainly blessed us beyond what we deserve with our sweet Lil Bit, but I would like to remain open to the idea of another child coming into our family. I know this is a long conversation and we got really lucky with what a great baby she is. There is no guarantee that we'd get just as lucky a second time around or be in a position to parent another child at our ages. I am not even sure that I can't be happy with just one itty bitty around the house.

I just don't feel done. I would really like to consider another baby. I don't know that my husband feels the same. Right now, I just want to pray about it. If it is meant to be, God is gonna have to drop this one almost at the door stork style. Please, dear reader, take a second and send up prayers for God to answer a prayer for discernment and wisdom regarding another child, prayers that if He has another baby in our future, that he bashes us over the head with His intentions.

We've talked about Foster to Adopt, but that is a complicated issue. Some friends of ours adopted this sweet little boy several years ago and he has become the bane of their existence. I know they love him deeply, but he ended up having ADHD to an extreme I've never seen after 16 years of teaching and other psychological issues. While having children is always a lottery whether they are genetically yours or someone else's, people who have had their children removed from their home, tend to have issues, probably didn't take care of a pregnancy ideally, if at all.

Life is very complicated and children are messy, time consuming, expensive, frustrating, beautiful, curious, amazing, fantastic. Sigh, what to do? Pray, pray, pray. God certainly answered quickly in spades when he brought us Lil Bit. But I will save all the drama of that story for her birthday. 

Day 163: Family date

Friday night was our couple date night, but today was our family date. We took the kids to a family fun park called Austin's Park about an hour south of us. They have video games, air hockey, pool, go karts, bumper boats, a rock wall, laser tag, tea cups, toddler train, batting cages, putt putt golf, swing set, and a pizza buffet.

It is kiddie heaven. The boys love it. We try to take them a few times a year. Today was one of the few days we got a chance to take them. It was a long day. My everything hurts. The baby had some fun too. She swung on the baby swing for the first time. She LOVED it. She went down the slide a few times, with me taking her to the top and daddy holding her the whole way down. Lil Bit even road the Rio Grande Ole Time train twice. I couldn't tell what she thought of it.  She was paying attention to everything and everyone so her senses were overloaded, but she seemed to like it.

The boys ran themselves ragged. They played every game twice at least. They got hot and sweaty playing laser tag. They ate their weight in pizza, pudding and Mug root beer. They shot and killed zombies, aliens and "bad' guys.

It was a little harder with the baby for daddy and I to run and play, so we took turns running around with the boys. She did get to sample pudding and real macaroni and cheese. Since she was the only one who napped and spent most of the day in her stroller, she is the only one still going. She is crawling all over the living room and laughing like crazy. We're all about to drop, but need some time to unwind.

Daddy and I did stop at a gourmet food/wine warehouse on the way home. We are enjoying a few after dinner chocolates with a few well deserved glasses of wine. The boys enjoyed a nice bottle of gourmet root beer and the baby ate an arrowroot cookie, smearing most of it on her head and pants. A great family date, which apparently is dissolving into a tickling fight. Lil Bit thinks watching Nathan get tickled to the point of shrieking is hilarious. 

Day 164: Easy like Sunday morning

Many families woke up this morning to pajama clad children rubbing the sleep from their eyes as mommies and daddies, took turns scooping up babies and starting breakfast. They brewed coffee and passed the syrup, poured orange juice and cajoled oatmeal into tiny people. They refereed bickering over the last chocolate chip pancake and washed dishes.

For most families, this type of Sunday morning is just the usual or a little more hurried if they're heading to church. For our family, it was a rare occasion. We all woke pretty much together and made pancakes and eggs. We drank coffee and sat at the table like a real family.

Later today, we ate dinner at the table too. We talked and laughed. Then daddy gave the baby a bath. We all took turns with hot baths while daddy created his dessert. We had spiced poached pears with cinnamon sugar almond coated ice cream and watched a family movie.

The movie is almost over now and it occurred to me that today was a pretty special day for us. While most people can have this kind of Sunday every week, we probably get one of these a few times a year during deployments, maybe two. During the summers Chad is home, which is the most we ever get the boys, we might have 7 of these kind of Sundays at the most.

It is hard not to take the people we love for granted, but when you can actually count the days, it sometimes makes it easier, easy like Sunday mornings together, to remember how special they really are. 

Day 190: Focus on the family

During previous deployments, the year was a year I got to focus on me. I worked out like crazy, dieted, ran, wrote, socialized, made new friends. This deployment has been very different. Many of the changes would have changed with or without the deployment because this year my focus is on my family.

Many TV sitcoms portray marriage as the death of all premarital friendships. They hype and hyperbole the situation to death, but it is funny because it contains a grain of truth. While not a consistent fact, in many cases those friendships change or are diminished especially if the friend is single. Being married is such a commitment that it forces a different focus. A marriage is a living breathing creature that needs a different nourishment than any other relationship and thus often draws people away from their single friends who don't understand or may mock the new responsibilities. It isn't deliberate, but I didn't go out as often, and if I did it was as a couple more often than not. While now most of my friends are married or engaged, it took a few years for some of those single, "party" friends to really drop into the background.

Such is life as a new parent as well. For one, as a single mom, even temporarily, I don't have someone to quickly watch her if I want to see a movie or have a girls' night out. My current friends are mostly childless or have spouses to watch the children so it is logistically easier for them to go out. Secondly, as this year has gone for me with being sick almost all the time (yay! daycare germs), I am too tired to go out and any night I do have energy, I have such a litany of tasks than need doing that I can't really justify going out.

And my beautiful daughter, whom I never thought I would have, is my heart. I spend 9 hours a day away from her, dropping her off around 7:45 to pick her up at 4:45. Of the hours left before I put her to bed, how many do I want to spend away from her or want her to spend away from me? I know she can't be my entire life and I need to take time for myself, but I don't remember my parents going out very often when I was little. I remember more babysitters as we got older, but my parents were home when we got home. We ate dinner together. We talked about our days. We played games and watched TV as a family. If we couldn't watch it as a family, my parents didn't watch it until after we went to bed. Oh, the forbidden fruit of Fantasy Island and Love Boat! My parents may not have had the recipe perfect, but they focused on our family, not just us kids, but our family.

I miss adult conversation sometimes. I miss just hanging out with friends. I do feel a little left out sometimes, but I want my friends to know that my home with my Lil Bit is where I am. If they want me, then come on over. I am playing on the floor with my little girl.

As I was married and then single again, I got used to being single and carefree. I had spent six years being a mom and all of a sudden had no one to worry about but me again. After I went through the grief, it was nice being able to do whatever I wanted whenever I wanted, and when my husband deploys I get to let go of a lot of the stresses of married life such as balancing his needs and wants, organizing schedules taking into account his sons and extended family, my extended family, etc.

This time though, it isn't just me. I have this little person who needs my best attention not the scraps left from my day. I have a precious Lil Bit who lights up when she sees me and giggles when we play. How could I not race to her and gobble up every second of the evening with her. She needs routine and schedule to help her make sense of the world. One tiny change in our day is monumental for her. If I go out to dinner, it changes her evening. She eats earlier or later or doesn't get the nap she is used to or misses out on an extra bath night, or won't go to bed, as she cries from her crib now because she had an extra seven p.m. nap because she is still out of whack from being sick.

I don't have to put her first all the time. I have to take care of myself so I can take care of her, but right now taking care of her is what I need. I finally have this beautiful baby I waited so long for. I don't want to miss a minute. I don't have to put her needs above mine forever, but for awhile my focus has to be on my family.

Day 198: Always mom

Tonight my step-son from my previous marriage called. He is 22 now, but stills needs a mom. He calls and just says he called to say hello, but once I let him ramble for a few minutes it comes out that he is struggling with some pretty rough emotions. I can't imagine feeling so lost and alone, let down and ignored by the people who are supposed to support and love you, your family.

He recently found out a pretty harsh truth about his parents. He hasn't been very close to either of them in years. But he feels really disconnected from his whole family. His mother abused drugs his whole childhood, which in retrospect I think I knew something wasn't right. He lived with me most of the time, but her household was always an unstable environment. Her husband abused her in front of the kids and was at best absent or hostile to the children. A lot of this didn't come out until after I had been divorced from their father for awhile, but I hated sending them to her house even though I know she loved them. She kept choosing (and still does) the abusive husband over her own children and has convinced herself she was a good mom. On top of all that, she lied to my step-son his whole life about his father.

Her sister got drunk over the holidays and told him the truth, blow by blow. He then confirmed it with his mother.

He now knows that his father, my ex, was never his biological father. He is afraid to tell his dad this recently shared secret because he worries he will lose the only father he has ever known. Knowing how hurt he is makes me furious because his dad never treated him like a father should treat a son, like I see my husband now treat his boys. His dad always pushed him to be more manly, more like him, less into video games and Harry Potter and more into football. He never felt like his dad approved of him and sometimes if he even ever loved him. Plenty of times, I heard the ex say awful terrible things. I spent a lot of nights not knowing what to do. If I left, where did that leave the kids? But staying cost me too. (another entry for another night)

Other than his late grandmother, my step-son feels like I am the one person who will always take time to listen. I just wish he wasn't hurting so much. He said he doesn't remember being happy for a very long time. I told him he needs to find a way to be happy in himself, with himself and forget the ways his family has let him down, cut him out and hurt him. I tried to encourage him that he can make his own life and find his own friends and love and family however he defines that term.

I raised him 80% of the time for six years, until 2003. Eight years later, we spent Thanksgiving together and talk about once a month or so. But I feel I let him down. I worked so hard to give him a stable family while I was part of it, but failed in many ways especially since my marriage to his father ended with his infidelity and a complete loss for the children of another mother, home and life.

Now I am relegated to phone calls from states away and prayers that he will find the peace he needs to walk away from the hurts his family has inflicted on him and move on to create his own place in this world. I just hope that he really knows, even when he couldn't talk to me after the divorce, that I was always his mom in my heart, that I stuck it out with his dad because of him and his siblings, that when he needs a family who loves him, I am always mom, ready to listen, offer advice, smother just a little and love him. And he has a heavenly Father who loves him more than I can, and maybe I was around just long enough to let him know those two loves will never let him down. 

Day 272: Thankful

I have mentioned this before, but to catch up any new or hit and miss readers -I saw an idea on a friend's Facebook to do a gratefulness challenge everyday up through Thanksgiving. I thought it was a good idea for me to spend this November, a rough month for me with Chad gone for our anniversary and the holiday, focusing on all the wonderful things in my life.

I know I get sappy during the holidays, but doing this has helped me spend at least a few minutes a day focusing on being grateful. I also have tried to not write a lot of complaining status updates. I think focusing on the positive has helped me be more positive, something I kind of forgot for awhile.

The first couple of months of this deployment, I was so overwhelmed that I literally had days when I thought I was going to have to quit my job because I wasn't holding my stuff together very well. I feel like I at least have gotten a handle on much of the daily things which helps me deal when stuff goes awry.

I think being grateful once a day has made me more aware of the blessings that abound in my life all the time. In America, we have a day where we are supposed to focus on these blessings and give thanks. In a nation where we are so rich, I wish more people focused on giving thanks.

We are so focused on consumerism and finding the best deals on Black Friday that we don't really realize how much most of us have. Most people in this country live better than so much of the world. Even some of the poorest people here live so much better than the average citizen of many countries. We have such an abundance of wealth. The more I pay attention to being grateful, the more the expression "an embarrassment of riches" makes sense.

I look around my house and see warm cozy furniture, two rooms I don't even use most of the time, a pantry full of food, plus a chest freezer full of meats and meals, a closet stuffed with clothes, a baby who has everything a baby might need, more clothes than she can wear, two vehicles that are relatively new and in good condition, three computers, iPods, iPhones, cable television with DVR, and the list goes on . . . I really have to ask myself how much of what I have is even necessary.

Plus I have money to travel to see family, buy whatever we need or want most of the time. I know that God has truly blessed me with a healthy family, beautiful children and so much more than I can ever use. While I may not have as much "stuff" next year if we decide I can stay home with the baby, I will still be tremendously wealthy in all the ways that matter.

I hope  this blog finds you as blessed and grateful this year. Happy Thanksgiving.

Day 340: Prettiest Girl in the world

Today I woke up ready to take care of business. There are stacks of papers everywhere. I have stuff to shred, stuff that needs filing and just stuff. Plus in the mix are things I have just been meaning to do. One of those things was to email pictures to the attorney who helped up finalize our adoption early. I can't tell you how much it meant to me and Chad to have the adoption finalized before he left. While according to the attorney, only one of us had to be there and the baby didn't even have to come, we were so disappointed to have missed her physical birth due to the fact that she was so impatient to be here, neither of us wanted to miss her second "birthday."It was a special day for us to welcome the prettiest girl in the world into our family.

While I was thinking about how special this little bundle of joy is to my heart, how words fail to describe how laughter bubbles up inside of me when her face lights up in a smile, I thought about writing a letter to the adoption agency to thank them for helping us add Lil Bit to our family. I went to their website and thought I would just take a peek at the waiting families. I knew we were extremely blessed to get chosen this quickly, but it made me understand exactly how blessed when I saw that over half of the families who were waiting when we joined the agency were still waiting.

For those of you who are not familiar with the process of adoption these days, you are not really on a list like they used to have. You used to wait on a list and when your "turn" came up, you received the next available child. Today's adoption agencies are more focused on the birth mother's choosing the right family for her baby. She comes into the agency and looks at books prepared by the agency's waiting families. She chooses a family for her child, then the family can decide if they like the match based on the mother's background and prenatal information. We were accepted by the agency on March 1. We got a phone call March 25 that a birth mother had chosen us. While she needed a little more financial support than we had planned for, we were so excited that we chose accept the placement. We had been crossing our fingers for a little girl to add to her two brothers. This birth mother was far enough along that we knew the baby was a girl and healthy 26 weeks  already! It felt like a dream.

We had been praying that it would either happen almost immediately or take a year or so to get chosen. With Chad leaving I wanted him to be able to be here and bond with the baby before he left for Iraq or not to get selected for a baby until he was almost home. With the current army climate, it is so hard to plan a life. He has been on the luckier side of the army. He has been home 15-18 months between deployments, but has been deploying every other year or so since 2003. That is a topic for another blog - but it made planning an adoption and the process really scary for us. We knew he would be going back at some point, but this time he knew he would have orders again pretty much before he came home the last time.

God's hand was in this process and we were given the most beautiful little girl. I keep asking her for her secret, how she gets prettier every day, but she isn't talking. I knew I would love her and she would change my life. I didn't know how I would just hold her and be moved to tears by that love. I didn't know she would change how I see the world and my life.

While 9 families still wait to be chosen from the list, I held my daughter for hours today while she snuggled, giggled, slept. How blessed we were to become a forever family this summer. God was watching over us. As a new mother, I now realize the responsibility that comes with loving her. I just pray that God continues to protect her daddy and keep our family safe for a long time even if we can't always be together. Lil Bit deserves all the best. She was a game changer for me. No matter how tired I am from taking care of her, house, dog, school and sometimes even myself, I wouldn't trade a second with my beautiful girl. There are no words to describe how it feels to love this hard and I am just getting started - all you Momma's out there know what I mean. What a godsend to survive missing her daddy!!!

Day 341

Technically, it is after midnight so I missed today, but I am still awake so I will try to get in a quick one. Today I was more tired than I have been in my entire life when I wasn't recovering from major surgery. I am not sure how I am still awake now, but definitely running on fumes.

Chad's dad's birthday is Monday and his present isn't finished. He is having a hard time remembering things and is not well. We don't get down there to visit much between having to travel 3 hours north to pick up the boys from their mother and having to do something with the dog. It isn't as easy to get away as it used to be pre-dog and baby.

I don't really know what to get him, if he even needs anything. So I decided to get a bunch of pictures printed from the past four years and make an album for him. I bought the album Tuesday and haven't had the energy or time to start on it. Tonight I went through as many of our photos as I could, sent them electronically to Walgreens to have them printed, and started putting them in the photo album and labelling them.

I thought that while he is sitting at dialysis or having a rough day at home, he could flip through the book and see pictures of Chad and I, the boys, and Chad's sister and of course the newest addition, Lil Bit! That way he can remember fun times we all had together and see pictures of his son being a fantastic father to his grandsons and granddaughter. I hope he will enjoy it.

I knew this would take a few hours to sit down and do, but I had no idea how long. I have to finish labelling about 40 pictures tomorrow and pack a box of things for the boys from Chad. He set somethings aside before he left for them to get a few weeks into his deployment.

I feel like I am trying to take care of all the people Chad loves while he is gone and that is a really important part of being a soldier's wife. I am the one who calls his mom and lets her know he is ok when he can't email everyone or when they are on a blackout for OPSEC reasons (operational security). I talk to his father when I can to keep in touch with him and his sister who is struggling with caring for her sick father who is losing his battle with his kidneys and mental illness. I try to call his sons every week or so. I hope talking to me makes them feel better connected to their father because I can't even imagine how scary and saddening this deployment must be for them. Even when they don't have the words or the maturity to express it in obvious ways, the weight of it must always be there. I know these people Chad loves are my job now too. They have been since we first made a commitment, but when he is gone, I have to take over the more tangible aspects of that love.

It is just an extra weight on my heart right now, but flipping through this album and watching the boys and Lil Bit grow up before my eyes and seeing Chad with his arm slung around his father's shoulders, makes me realize that the joy of being able to flip through real photographs, not digital images might just make his dad's day, even if it gets there late.

So tomorrow, hopefully Turkey pants will let me sleep in and finish all my packages and the housework will wait. Because there is more of me than I would like, but not always enough to go around.