we check the shower for syrup bottles

The kids are now 16 months and 8 months old. My daughter is very interested in stacking things; her favorites include wooden candlesticks and whatever food she can pull out of the pantry cupboard to relocate before we stop her.  My son is rolling all over the place and is pretty satisfied with this mode of transportation, however he often can be found in a push up position staring at a toy and in this way seems to be meditating on the idea of crawling. They are both cute and smart and I am very proud of them.

The complete exhaustion and regular bouts of crying (well, MY regular bouts anyway) have gone.  There are days that are difficult, obviously, but it isn't an all consuming see saw of bottles and diapers anymore, although there are still TONS of bottles and diapers, don't get me wrong.  There are just larger gaps between them and, where bottles are concerned, less of a need for my involvement in holding &/or picking it up repeatedly as it keeps slipping away.

At 16 months, my daughter has matured enough that I can trust her to stay in the same room with the baby if I go do something crazy like fix lunch or move the laundry around.  I often find my son with one of his cloth books, a sock, or something else random that his sister has given to him while I was gone which makes him super happy. He laughs. She laughs at his laugh, he laughs at her laugh... and we just have a house full of giggles until one of them pukes or drops something loud.

Everyone asks how they are together, and the simple answer is that I expect they will be great pals and loving siblings as they grow up because they make each other very happy even now.

So the flip side to all of this lovely joy is that I've been diagnosed with degenerative disc disease, which basically means a couple of the cushy discs between my vertebrae have gone south and it hurts a lot.  I'm in physical therapy in an attempt to train my back to use other parts of my spine more and the bum discs spot (in my lower thoracic area) less. This training also hurts, so all told, i'm in a lot of pain pretty much all of the time (as opposed to before I started PT, when I was mostly only in pain when I hadn't moved much like first thing in the morning).  I'm hoping this all works out soon because I'd love to play on the floor with my kids and you know... not cry when I have to unexpectedly lean over for a long time... like if there is a diaper explosion while my son sleeps and I have to try to clean him up while containing to poo AND not waking him up since it is, let's say, 4 am and he finally just went to sleep before his diaper suddenly stopped containing what he was putting in it. blink.

I'm so lucky my husband is so involved and willing to step in at night.  Really, he does essentially all of the post-midnight baby stuff before getting up super early and heading to work. Because our 8 month old still sleeps like a 3 month old- even requiring a few night time feedings- my husband is really remarkable to do this. Particularly because my back is most painful in the night and I get kind of cussy when I'm both sleepy and in pain...  as it turns out. :-/

Adoption Day! What happens at the adoption hearing.

We had our finalization hearing on Nov. 20th.  It only took about 15 minutes, but was amazing and perfect. Our daughter, now 5 and a half months old, slept through it, of course, since it was during nap time. First they basically introduced the case for the record and asked to see the baby (she was sleeping in her stroller).  Our lawyer joked that they'd have to come to see her because we weren't going to wake a sleeping baby, but I picked her up and held her.

They called my husband to the stand to testify first and had him spell his name for the record. They reminded us that she would not qualify for a stipend, since she was "practically perfect in every way" & asked him if we'd be financially able to handle the burden of raising this child.  They asked what sort of work my husband does, what type of dogs and cat we have, and how he would describe the baby.  His description was pretty much how every new dad would describe their 5 month old daughter, except in our case she really IS the most adorable, most clever, and most fun baby in the world!

I was called next, passing the baby to my husband on his way back. Aside from spelling my name, was spared a lot of the questions because the judge asked if I would have answered the same as my husband.  I was then asked to describe the baby, which I think is more for the parents than the courts.  It's really a chance to gush on about how much you love your baby in front of a court recorder, which is a chance I welcome, personally!  :) Let it be on the record that my baby is fantastic!   I told them we are honored and lucky to be her parents.

The judge ordered that we are officially her legal parents and said he would issue the decree!  Before we left, the official adoptive parents/kid/judge photos were taken and our family could come up and take some camera phone photos at the same time.  Actual cameras were not allowed through security! (IKR?!)  Our little one started waking up as picture time began so we have some photos of a very confused looking baby!

The court workers, including the judge told us how adorable she is and congratulated us ... and poof!  we were parents!   We were given a few copies of the decree a few minutes after leaving the courtroom.

Oh, Baby!

I am so very sorry for delay in updates since I announced rather shortly that we were chosen to parent the newborn girl!

First, I can't even begin to describe how wonderful this little girl is.  She is very self-structured and has slept through the night since the 4th day home as well as taking regular naps in the morning and afternoon.  According to her pediatrician, we should be prepared to parent a very intelligent child because she is far ahead of the curve on all of her milestones.  She loves being passed around at family functions, but when she's feeling sleepy, she wants her parents (that's US!).  She will be 4 months old in a couple of days & is just a joy.

All of that being said, the first couple of months were tough. I got to spend every day with this amazing newborn who was practically the dream child of everyone who has ever had a newborn.  And I could barely get off the couch.  It started just a few weeks after she came home & began to really worry about myself-  was I experiencing post-adoption depression? was I much less fit than I thought and a newborn, even a magically easy newborn, was just wiping me out?  I cried a lot and slept as much as she did. I hated eating anything and woke up in the middle of the night with a terrible nauseous headache that usually resulted in my throwing up or collapsed on the bathroom floor for an hour.

Finally, on the advice of my mother, I called the doctor and scheduled an appointment... which they lost due to a 'new system' error... twice. I asked them if they could just order a blood test, since I assumed that would be the result of the appointment anyway.  I was particularly interested in a thyroid screening since those sorts of issues run in my family and Dr. Google seemed to point me in that direction.  They did, and did a general panel as well.

A few days later, I got an after hours call  from the doctor himself (not an assistant or nurse!), which of course I missed.  His voicemail message asked me to call first thing in the morning if I didn't hear from the assistant first.  Naturally I assumed the worst about the results and started wondering if we could keep on with the adoption if, say, I had to go through chemo... or whatever.  The next morning, the phone rang at 7:45.  The assistant said:  Everything looks good- you are very healthy!  But... well, you know you are pregnant right?

UM... NO!??!

So, that is also going on now.  The adoption should be finalized, according to our lawyers, by the end of October, if all goes smoothly with some other dates coming up.  Then, in late February, we will have our second child.   It's ok, you can laugh. That's what we did for the first week after finding out!

Lots more to update, of course, but for now, the baby is sleeping and I would like to join her.

Match Interview & finished nursery!

On Friday, we went to our match interview.  I believe about 6 families were interviewed as prospective parents, but I'm not completely sure.  We got so see a couple of pictures of the little girl they are trying to place & she is beautiful.

There were ten people on the panel as interviewers, however the head of the department was the one who asked us almost all of the questions.  It was fairly painless, with questions about our hobbies, our financial status, and our expectations for a child.  To be clear, the financial questions were mostly just verifying some of the things written in the home study as well as making sure we understood that this child will not have a stipend or be covered by medicaid, like many kids adopted from DCS would.  Nothing we weren't expecting.  They asked us how we resolve conflicts and our ideas on discipline.  I feel like it went pretty well, but of course one never knows about the "competition".   We are strong candidates, I think, so if another family is chosen, I'm confident that they are also an amazing family.  Still though, they should obviously choose us.  :)

In the mean time we finished (mostly) our nursery! We began it as a room for foster babies, so it is more complete than we probably would have had it if we were not planning to foster- a room devoted to a baby that may never come is pretty discouraging, but we are fairly confident we'd get placed with a foster sib group that includes a little one... and very hopeful that we might put off the foster scenario for a bit because of a new baby...  I still need to hem the curtains and the fabric draped over the chair is a stand-in for a future rocker or glider, but other than that... yay! At least one room in the house is totally put together.  We have had so many overlapping projects, it has been difficult to keep any order.  THAT, however, is what I'm supposed to be working on now, so... I'll update with news when I have any to tell!  Fingers crossed!

What I want to say on Facebook:

Wow, looks like every last person on my news feed has a new baby in their lives these last two weeks. Congratulations every damn person but me!

I'm really glad you have had TWO kids in the time I've been trying to have one.  Four kids, four dads?  Lucky you for always hitting the fertility nail square on the head!  Yay you!

And, It's really great how YOU have made sure to share every ridiculous detail of your daughter-in-law's pregnancy with me as I was trying to recover from my miscarriage.  Now that the kid is born, oh YES I can't wait to see all 862 photos of your rather hideous grandchild!

And OH the nieces & nephews!  Babies for EVERYONE!

I'm going to check out the news sites now... oh, why lookie there, William and Kate.

...

Sigh.