Doing fine

We are doing fine. Violet is growing and growing. She is smiling and laughing and is no longer a newborn blob. She is definitely a baby. She sleeps well and she just loves her big brother. She stares and stares at him.

Her big brother also loves his little sister. He is more of a helper than I ever imagined. He continues to have his own issues and we have been working on them vigorously. We have a special school he will start in the summer and continue in the fall for Kindergarten. We are going to start him on some medication to help him be a little more under control.

So, things are going. They are a bit crazy, but they are going. Finalization is scheduled for mid June.

Here

Went to the Dr with N & B this morning. Heard the baby's heartbeat. Felt her move. Saw N's belly move as the baby moved inside her. Amazing. I have never seen that before. 

N is going to the hospital tonight to begin the induction proceedings. She should be born before the weekend is over. 

It's sunny & warm. 

Leaving in the morning

I am so nervous. I feel like barfing.

Everything's going to be ok.

Breathe.

Doing better

Hormones are horrible things. They make you go crazy. My hormones have settled a bit and now I am doing better.

I am still nervous like crazy. We fly down tomorrow morning. I spoke with N yesterday and she is ready. She talks about signing the paperwork as if it's nothing. It's strange to me. We do plan on spending time together while we wait for the paperwork so we can go home.

I am hoping for the best.

Almost panicked

N called this morning saying the midwife were sending her to the hospital for an ultrasound. She thought the baby wasn't moving as much as she should be. N assured me that the baby was up all night (keeping her up) and the morning was her quiet time and she was sure everything was fine.

Of course, she doesn't live in infertility and baby loss world where I live, so I panicked. And there is a snow storm today and there is no way we could get a flight until Friday night at the earliest and more realistically, Saturday.

She called after the ultrasound. We are not in go mode. She is only 1 1/2cm dilated. The baby looks great. They still want to keep her in utero for a couple more weeks, if possible.

So I panicked, but now I've calmed down. We have a little more time.

Breathe.

Ultrasounds

N mailed us some ultrasounds and a lovely letter. So now we have pictures of this baby in utero. I feel so lucky that this woman is willing to share so much of herself with us for the benefit of this child.

So much

My father had to have some oral surgery. The night of his surgery (it was day surgery, so he was home) my mother fell down the stairs and broke her pelvis. She didn't call an ambulance until the morning and had to go into a rehab center. She is coming home today. My brothers and I had to go care for my recovering dad while my mom was away. Now we will have to help take care of my mom, though luckily my dad is well enough to help too.

This was last Tuesday. Needless to say, it's been a crazy week.

I hadn't heard from N for a couple weeks, but she finally texted me today. She said the baby is dropping, so it's definitely coming soon. We are basically ready here, except for T at work and Henry having some therapies that don't finish until the 17th. I'm hoping we can wait until after the 17th, but the baby will come when she comes.

So I'm completely freaked out and not relaxed. I'm having a difficult time getting things done.

Two weeks.

Thanks

Thank you for your reassuring comments. I gave notice to PN and Henry seems excited about it. I made a calendar to show him how many more days he has there and when I pointed to his last day he said, "Yeah! Because I don't like PN!" So I guess he will not suffer any trauma over this.

Meanwhile, we have one month to go until the baby is born.


Edited to add:

Also, I'm scared!

I forget what it's like to have a baby. Diaper blowouts and feeding every couple of hours. Not being able to sit in traffic because it's feeding time.

Henry was an incredibly easy baby. He never cried, he slept all the time. He only woke up once per night after about 8 weeks and by 14 weeks he was sleeping through the night.

I'm 41 years old.

How are we going to do this?!?!

I'm excited too. But this waiting is hard. I just want to be figuring this out already. The anticipation is killing me!

One week

There is one week left until the baby's due date.

I just spoke with the social worker. K is still committed to the adoption. But she knows how difficult it is going to be. My heart is breaking for her already. She doesn't want to meet us or see us in the hospital or anything. She wants to have the baby, see him once and then leave the hospital and try to move on.

I am in a very sad place around all of this. I know adoption is difficult, and I remember clearly how difficult it was to leave the hospital with Henry and watch CC and O. drive off without him. My heart broke in that moment and I do carry that around with me. My heart is already breaking for K.

So, even though the baby is due in a week, we probably won't fly down to go to him until after the consent forms are signed.

Most likely he will go in the NICU because of the meth@d0ne, though it isn't guaranteed. We have no idea how long he might be in there.

I just wish I could plan around this. Things are crazy at T's work and I don't know how to deal with a very active almost 4 year old while waiting around for his newborn brother. My parents want to come down with us, but I don't want them to know about the meth@d0ne.

I am feeling stressed and ready and sad.

Waiting game commence.

Plugging along

We definitely have the winter sickness thing going around this house. H had a stomach bug around Thanksgiving and then we all got head colds. I seem to have got the head cold the worst, which is odd since I'm usually never sick.

Thanksgiving was good. Lots of cousins were around. H wasn't the youngest as we met his 6 month old cousin for the first time. A lovely time was had by all.

Hanukkah is happening now, so we're doing the exchange of gifts on Sunday. I'm only like 66% finished, but hopefully I can do what I want to do tomorrow. Though we have our adoption group tomorrow and things will be busy. Things are always busy. Good busy, though.

We're doing a re-fi on our mortgage and that's almost done so I have to face the fact that we need to complete our home study for #2. I'm actually getting outside pressure to do this. I need a deadline, so it's going to be Jan 1. We're going to have all our paperwork for kid #2 complete by Jan 1. We've got to do it. I expect the wait to be a longish one, and even if it's not, it's time for us. At this point I feel like everyone I know either has 2 kids or has one with another one on the way, so I guess I have to get in that line.

This decision feels really different this time. Less monumental, I guess. Being a mom I guess changes my perspective on things. I'm not nearly an anxious about it.

H is awesome as ever. He's getting really strong willed and opinionated. He's still only saying, "Nononono!" but he understands everything we say. I sent off an email to CC and O. after his 15 month checkup (25 lbs! 16 teeth!) but didn't hear anything back.

A family friend at Thanksgiving told me that she thinks her son and his wife are considering adoption and were asking about me and T and H. I again said something about how adoptive parenting is different than bio parenting and felt like I was being judged... like I was saying my son is less than or something. This bothers me. I need to figure out how to better express what I mean when I'm saying this. How do you say "not the same" but not mean "less than"? I need a better choice of words or something. I'm finding this frustrating.

Here is my little man sleeping in the car with his balloon. He loves balloons. He was clutching it and staring at it with so much love as he fell asleep.

Strangers

Today, at the play area at the mall, someone told me how much my son looks like me.

I simply said, "Thanks."

It was weird.

Burst

I've been reading my blog posts from a year ago. It's weird to relive that time. I'm glad I have a record of it here.

Sometimes when I think about Henry I feel like my heart might just burst because it is so filled with love for him.


We're moving the day after tomorrow. It's kinda freaking me out

Cake!

One year

Still, even after all this time, I still can't believe that I'm actually a mom. It still feels so unreal to me.

I am so grateful for the privilege of being this little boy's mom. He is the greatest. I hope CC and O. know this. I've told them, but I want them to know.

Happy Birthday, baby boy. Mama loves you.

600

So, apparently I've had 600 posts. That's lot of posts. I've been blogging for a really long time now. I guess I'm bad at it now, and I know barely any people even read this any more. I mean, I don't blame people for not reading it. I only look at a few blogs myself these days. But I really don't want to retire this blog forever.

Our move is getting closer and we're closing in less than two weeks. It's scary. We haven't sold our house yet which is really depressing. We're going to lose so much money on this transaction that it frightens us a little. However, we feel really strongly that we couldn't stay in this house any longer. I love this house, but I can't say I don't regret buying it at all. I mean, I was really unhappy renting where we were renting before we bought this house. We needed to move. This house is really lovely and served us well. It just was the peak of the market and we put so much work into it. I don't know what I'm trying to say. I guess I wish I knew how iffy this neighborhood actually was. I knew it was the "city" but there are lots of streets nearby that are much, much quieter than our street. It's those two neighbors that ruin it, and I guess there was no way to know when we bought the house. If it weren't for those neighbors, we wouldn't be moving at all. So, basically we can blame those neighbors for losing us so much money. Oy. I have to talk about something else. This is sounding so "woe is me" and I don't like it. We do okay and it's "only" money. That's what I keep telling myself.

So, on to Henry, I guess.


He is turning into such a little boy. He is very busy all the time. He is so mobile now -- he can do everything but stand and walk by himself. But he pulls himself up, cruises around, sits down, crawls somewhere else and then pulls himself up. He's started moving around with his toys to bring them different places. He really won't let me feed him that much as he must do everything himself. He's got quite the independent and stubborn streak. Because he was such an easy baby, this takes us aback a little. He is, however, still a charmer and smiles all the time. He laughs easily and will pretty much always smile when I smile and laugh when I laugh.

I think, though I'm not sure, that he's started to say "Mama." But it's so difficult to tell. I was changing his diaper the other day and he looked right in my eyes and said, "Mama" as clear as day. But he does a lot of babbling, so I'm not sure if he was labeling me or if he just made that sound.

July is going to be a busy month. Really, I just hope, hope, hope that our house sells and we can forget all this bull$h1t and put this whole old house thing behind us. We need to move on.

Oh yeah. And one more thing.

Henry and I went to a party at T's office the other day. We saw one of T's co-workers who immediately cooed all over Henry. He has seen Henry before and has expressed his amazement at how much Henry looks like T. (Everyone tells us how much Henry looks like T. I understand where it comes from.) Anyway in his enthusiasm about how much they look alike this man said something to the extent of, "I mean, he looks as if he could actually be your son!"

To which I replied, "He is T's son."

But I don't think he got it.

Still here

Still here. Still haven't sold the house. We're having open houses every week -- this is the third one in a row.

Henry is now cruising around the house non-stop! He is one very mobile baby. It's crazy that just one month ago he couldn't even really crawl!

Henry had his circumcision revised on Wednesday. He's doing really well. He slept pretty much the whole day on Wednesday and after that he's just acted pretty normal. He was a little extra cranky for a day, but his teeth were coming in too so that has definitely been a part of it.

So, so much is new, but nothing is new. 10 months is such a great age!

And on and on.

No offers on the house yet. There was one family that came really, really close to an offer but decided one of the bedrooms was too small and so it didn't happen. It is so difficult when you can just taste things going well and then they just slip away. (Sound familiar? Seriously.)

We need to sell this house within two months or so, and we need to sell it reasonably close to the current asking price. I am so nervous.

Today was the first day I have been home with Henry by myself in over 3 weeks! I was really nervous about it because he's become quite mobile with the crawling since then, but things were pretty normal. We're definitely going to have to go out more because now that he's mobile he's got a bit of shpilkes and we definitely need to get out of the house. We went for a few walks today and I put him in the exersaucer on the porch.

He really likes to swing.

Lots

So, this has been a busy week. We've been prepping, prepping, prepping and we're very close to having a house ready for the market. We'll have to be MUCH neater than we usually are which will be a challenge, but hopefully we can do it.

Henry has changed so much this past week. In a week he has:

• Learned to sit up by himself from lying down
• Become much more mobile
• Stand up by himself while holding on to furniture
  
• Done the army crawl
• Started to really, actually crawl
• Had his 7th tooth break through
  

Seriously! It's been a crazy week.

Now I'm just hoping, hoping, hoping we will get enough money for our house to cover the mortgage, the realtor and then have maybe $5-$10K left over. I'm really nervous about this and I honestly don't think it will happen. I think we'll cover the mortgage and some of the realtor's fees, but I don't think we'll have anything left over. I'm very skeptical of how this is going to go.

"It gets easier!"

Parents of older babies/toddlers are always telling parents of newborns, "Hang in there! It gets easier!" I don't get this. Is this a breastfeeding thing? A lack of sleep thing?

I know I have an exceptionally easy baby. He was just as happy to be held as not held. He slept through the night at about 14 weeks, and had only 1 wake-up per night starting around 8-10 weeks. He doesn't really fuss or complain. He's happy to play by himself.

However, now that he's much more aware of what's going on and he's becoming mobile, he is demanding much more attention. I can't just plop him in a bouncy seat and make dinner. To me, it's getting HARDER. (Not that it's hard, really. It just takes a little more energy now.)

Yes, the feedings are less frequent now. But he used to nap ANYWHERE in the infant bucket seat. I could just carry it in the house and he'd continue to sleep. That doesn't happen any more. I can still transfer him from the car seat to the crib and he'll go back to sleep sometimes, but not every time. And as time goes on, this will happen less and less. That's not easier.

I don't get it. What's this "It gets easier!" thing about?

Busy

Life is busy. Henry's schedule really fills the day and I find it difficult to do too much. We're working on getting a mortgage and whipping our current house into shape so that we can get it on the market.

After our home inspection we found some issues with the house. Then we found some more. We're currently at an impasse with these negotiations and I'm not sure what's going to happen. We may come to an agreement and we may have to walk away.

I'll be okay if this falls through. I find this terribly nerve wracking. I think T will have a much harder time with it, but I told him that if this doesn't happen then it just wasn't meant to be. We've decided to still put our house on the market even if this falls through. I might secretly hope that it does fall through, or at least that things get pushed out even further. But if they don't, I guess that's okay too.

Henry is getting more and more mobile every day. He had his 9 month appointment and he weighs 20 lbs 9 oz! I can't believe it! He's eating all sorts of food and he's getting very independent. He is learning to drink from a sippy cup, which I'm pleased about.

I wrote an email to CC and O. and sent them some pictures and a link to some videos. I told them we'd love to hear from them. So far I haven't heard anything. I hope they're still online enough to receive the email. I can't imagine them not online, but I guess you never know what can happen.

I feel like so much is going on that I haven't been able to hang out with my other mom friends much lately. I feel bad as I was just forming some new friendships and suddenly I haven't seen anybody in a few weeks. Henry has been taking long naps in the morning making it difficult to get out of the house. He just seems to nap a lot right now. But I still like being home and I don't think I feel particularly bored, so I guess things are going okay.

Tomorrow my parents are coming over to watch Henry while T and I clean like the dickens.