Jack's Journey

Jack arrived December 6th.

I am having such a hard time writing this, but it has been on my mind for a few weeks.  First and foremost I would like to state that I am completely, over the moon in love with my new son. I would never change him or want to give him back. He is a complete miracle and a wonder.  This is my vent and thoughts on a difficult situation, and want no flames.

I am having a few people that seem determined to remind me and everyone else that Jack is A.D.O.P.T.E.D.  It seems to be that people think since he was wanted and adopted, he should be a perfect baby, or maybe I should not get frustrated or ever complain.  Honestly, I am not that strong. Infants are hard. They wake up a lot.  They want to be held constantly. (I don't mind, but it is hard to do homework, cook dinner, work and hold a baby at the same time) They cry and don't tell you why.  And there is always the mommy guilt and worry.  Should I have been more patient last night at 4 AM, going on 4 hours of sleep during the last 2 days.  He shakes his arms a lot.. is that a sign of some obscure illness?

I have a friend that was trying desperately to conceive a few years ago.  She was really angry that she was not able to conceive easily like other women around her.  She wrote once that if she had a baby, she would never complain or get frustrated with her baby because she wanted him so much, so much more than the rest of us who take our fertility for granted.  I was kind of upset at the time.  I had 3 children.  Did that make me less worthy of another child?

I was already infertile at that time and ached for the 4th child.  I was MEANT to have a 4th and there was a big gaping hole in my heart where #4 should be. I felt guilty, like she thought that I did not not need another because I already had 3.  And I did.  3 beautiful, healthy, perfect children. It wasn't enough.  I had another baby out there somewhere.  But I knew that she was thinking that it was selfish of me to want another when I had 3 and she had 0.  Eventually, she did get her baby. He is a fantastic, super cute boy. And she has never complained. to me anyway.

There is someone I have met recently that seems to feel the same way.  She seems to think that I should not have any frustrations or complaints about Jack.  Maybe even that i don't have a right to complain.  He is ADOPTED.  He must be perfect, or i must be super happy and grateful since I had to work hard to get him.  I recently posted on facebook that I had a crappy day and wanted it to end.  Her response was that I should look to my children and be happy.  I love my children, i really do.  But my baby doesn't poop rainbows and spit up butterflies.  He cries.  He poops out his diaper and up his back while we are out.  He pretends to sleep until I lay down my head.  Newborns are hard work.

She mentioned a few days later that she is struggling with jealousy.  She did not specifically say she was jealous of me, but she mentioned heartache, and trying to be happy for others.  I know she is struggling with trying to conceive.  I want to have compassion for her and her situation, but sometimes I am too wrapped up in just struggling through my days. My situation is hard. newborn, no husband.  Sometimes whining makes me feel better. It upsets me that someone should imply that I have no right to a bad day or that Jack should make every problem seem miniscule.

Jack's journey to me was really long.  I waited 7 years for him.  7 years ago, October 2003, I had a baby.  A cute cuddly girl baby named Lucy.  4 days later, i had an ovary-ectomy.  No more eggs = no more babies.  I was already heart broken. It was a really dark time for me. I had a hard time mothering Lucy.  This was the baby that wasn't supposed to be the last baby.  I was going through menopause, and had 3 young children.

Eventually, i stopped feeling so black.  The kids and I moved a couple times, and Adan came home and left and came home again.  We decided to look into adoption and immediately realized that was a pipe dream.  We are a military family who moves on average every 9 months.  There was no way we could afford 15,000+ dollars to grow our family. That idea went to the back of the mind.  Every time it popped up, i would dismiss it and push it to the back.

I felt that jealousy.  It wasn't fair. I KNEW i had another baby, and now i would never get to meet him. All my friends were having kids and I had to sit around them and know that i would never get to do that again.   I had my children so much earlier than all my school friends... I had an 8 yo, and 6 yo and a 3 yo when my bff started having kids. I had to suffer through baby showers and cuddles with a black hole in my heart.  

A couple years later we moved again.  I had mostly gotten past my burning envy and settled in.  I had new friends and they were my age with children that matched the ages of my children.  We decided to try and adopt through the foster care system.  We went through the classes and finished our home study.  Due to a stupid loophole, we could not foster adopt and live on post.  We could adopt or foster, but not both.  We fostered for 9 months, but we quickly realized that this was not going to work.  The only children free for adoption were teens or severely medically challenged.

I had considered donated eggs, but without ovaries it would be nearly impossible to sustain a pregnancy.  We thought about surrogacy, but it was just as expensive as adoption.  We realized finally that a baby wasn't going to happen.  Adan and I finally came to a decision that we would shelve all the baby stuff come December 2010.  There was no use getting ourselves all worked up all the time when it never seemed to pan out.  In December we were moving on.

God works in his own time though.  2 1/2 years ago, I opened a family child care home.  The first family that I interviewed did not meet the criteria that I had set out.  I wanted only before and after school care children. No youngsters.  this family had a kindergartner, a 4th grader and a 2 year old.  I wanted to say no, but something in me said yes.  So I started watching them.  I was caring for them as we went through that foster care class, and as we fostered a child.  A year later I decided to go back to school and closed my daycare.  My family bugged me to keep watching the children, and I decided to continue watching them through the Army's respite care program.

I met the children's grandparents, and aunt in the course of the time and I felt almost like they were my second kiddos.

June 2010, their aunt decided to give her baby up for adoption.  She chose us to take Jack.

We visited the lawyers, and did all the necessary shopping, but it did not feel real at all.  I never felt like I would really be having a baby in my arms. Momma was great. She let me be at all the ultrasound appointments and at the birth.  I was with Jack from the time he was born until he came home.  Jack is mine. Sometimes it still doesn't feel real.  But it is.

And I am still human. Even after hoping and wishing and crying for the last 7 years.  He still cries in the middle of the night or wants to be held when i need to go to the bathroom or cook.  But I would not give him back for anything in the world.

Menu Board

I found this coolio menu board tute. I used a frame I already had. I bought a metal sheet at Lowes and some cute little cutters. Adan cut it down to size for me. We primed it and painted it with spray paint primer and spray paint chalkboard paint (found at Michaels). I popped it into the frame, and woila! Handy Dandy menu board. Of course since I have made it, I can't find chalkboard chalk ANYWHERE!!!!

Scary Spider Wreath

This cutey pie wreath was just in time for Halloween. It was all dollar store items. I got a wreath that was like sticks intertwined.. not sure how to explain that, spanish moss, and plastic spider rings. I found the sign there, or maybe at Michaels.

I did a few things differently from the tutorial. i did not paint the spiders. I just got various colors and some skeletons and centipedes, and just glued them right on.

WARNING - The moss is helllllla messy. Put newspaper down on your work station.

Another warning - I actually found real spiders crawling on it at one point and was afraid to bring it back in the house. Realism, baby. We don't play around in this house.

Tute found here.

Hang up Laundry Separators

We have a tension shower curtain rod in our laundry room. As things come out of the dryer, I hang them up as needed. It was becoming a pain in the ass to figure out which was whose, and whose was which. So i got a nifty idea. At the store they have those round separators that divide the size 12 from the size 10 and so on. I needed some. So i made some.

Excuse the craptastic pictures. I guess I was shakey that day!

I made circles on a piece of cardboard.

I used a jumbo coffee cup for the big and a little bead container for the middle.

I cut out the circles and made a slit from the outer edge into the inner edge. Then, I wrote names on each circle

And then I slipped the circles onto the shower curtain rod. Taaaa daaaaa! Fancy and organized. (Oh, and I did turn the white one around so they all show brown.)

The summer of the butterfly

This is the summer of the butterfly.  Butterflies seem to represent a new beginnings.  They come from leaf-eating wormy things and turn into beauteous nectar sipping creatures.  I want to sip nectar.

I have thrown off the base relationships.  I am coming out of the mires and mud related to them.  Wiping my feet and moving on!  Just walking away from that was like putting on wings.

I have lost weight!  I joined a biggest loser challenge club locally and I lost about 14 lbs.  I went down 2 pants sizes which is always a win!  New clothes!  Less picture phobia!  I saw a picture of myself today, and i wasn't completely horrified.  The last couple of years I have begged to be erased from pictures.  i still felt a twinge, but it wasn't the horrified, tear-welling feeling i have previously had.

Kentucky is the most BEAUTIFUL place I have ever lived. This summer there has been a multitude of butterflies.  Every place I turn I see another butterfly. They are in the road, and I always worry I am going to hit them with my car.  bright yellow and black, dark blue and black, orange and tons of other butterflies.  Butterflies always remind me of home.  I can remember being in elementary school and going to see the migration of the monarchs.  It was so fantastic to see the butterflies flitting from tree to tree.  About 2 1/2 years ago, we went home for a visit and were able to take the kids to see the monarchs.

Jack is coming.  In June we heard that our baby was coming.  Jack is due in December and we can't wait to take him home from the hospital.  It is such a wonderful thing that I can't even express how I feel.  The butterflies from this summer will forever be connected in my mind with Jack.

There is nothing more wonderful than a butterfly. To think that such a wonderful thing can come from such an icky caterpillar gives me hope for everything.  No matter how horrible things seem, soon they will change into wonderful. It's like the ugly duckling for bugs.

I want this tattoo. Minus the butt crack.

Project-a-week club

For a couple years I have been wanting to finish up my unfinished objects and make all the things that are bouncing around in my nugget.  I decided it was time for a commitment *gasp* *shudder* Yes, a commitment.  My commitment is going to be to finish one project each week.  I will list all the finished projects in the side bar.  Check back each Thursday for the recap.

More of me whining about friends

Sooo... Okay....

I knew this girl at Ft. Carson. (we will call her J)  She became a pretty good friend, but I quickly realized she was a "taker". I felt like I always had to give, and do, and support but I got very little in return. Not long after we met, she found out she was pregnant with her first child.  I was her doula for her first baby.  After she had her babe, she got 1000 times worse.  She could not go out of her house, because she had her baby. She needed someone to bring her stuff from the store so she would not have to leave.  She quickly wore out the people around her.  For some reason, I never took a hike. Her house was always a dang mess.  Horrible.  You would walk into her house, and be slapped in the face with the smell of cat box and filth.  I spent quite a few Saturdays helping her clean because she was not able to take care of her child, and clean the house. Eventually, someone called CPS on her, and she genuinely did not know why.  For some reason, I never said anything to her about the state of things.  Maybe I was trying to save her feelings.

2 years later she had her second child.  Everything intensified.  It got to a point where I felt completely taken advantage of.  She never cared about what was going on in my life, and completely dismissed me when I was going through a really tough time.  I had enough, but I still did not want to be mean.  I basically stopped talking to her or going out of my way for her.  A few months later, we got transferred to our new duty station.

A year later, she was transferred to the same duty station.  I had only spoken to her a couple times in that preceding year, but she called when she found out they would be again in our neighborhood.  I was pretty stressed out about it, but thought maybe she had changed.  Things became much worse though.  Here she knew no one. She had left all her friends in Colorado, and I was pretty much her only friend.  She began calling me 6 times a day.  Every issue she had before was completely intensified.  She was hardly the person I had first become friends with.  Her kids were always "sick".  She had every disease imaginable, from Bopolar to Anxiety, from fibromyalgia to rheumatoid arthritis to random shooting electrical shocks in her body. Nothing was ever her fault.  There was mold in her house, or her parents beat her, or, or, or. She made new friends, but I again felt dismissed and taken advantage of.  I was again cleaning her house and helping her with her kids.  I stopped watching her children after a while.  She had not enforced any rules for her children.  Because of this, her oldest was mean to my daughter, and her youngest was a tornado of destruction.  Her house was again sick and disgusting.  I helped her clean again.  One time, I helped her clean her room. Her floor was a disgusting mix of dirty laundery, cat litter and cat shit.  Another time, I helped her fold her laundry, and she sat on her couch and watched me work.

A bit over a year passed and I was really at my limit of her self-centered attitude. (I found this link and it describes her completely.  I really think this is what is wrong with her. Scroll down to Cluster B Personality.)  I started setting more boundaries for her, and stopped doing everything she asked.  This of course upset her. I set a special ring tone on my phone to say her name so I could avoid her calls. My tolerance for bullshit became really low.  When she told my dumb things I had a hard time biting my tounge.  At one point she told me she had fed her sick 2 yo skittles because that's all he wanted.  Really?  How about some soup or applesauce.  Another time she told me that she yelled at her daughter so much that she actually crapped her pants.  She was not upset about this, and in fact laughed a bit.  I was appalled.  How can you joke about scaring the crap out of your kid??  I would have been so upset if that was me. She did not concern herself with anything that was going on in my life.  Did not even congratulate me on our pending adoption of our new baby.  Did not care about the autoimmune disease I am dealing with.  Never once a care or concern about my visits to the hematologist. I felt so unimportant.

This summer, I was just beyond frustrated with her.  I guess she could tell.  As a sign of how far facebook as crept into our lives, she "broke up" with me and 2 others over facebook.  She blocked me so I could not see anything she says at all.  Did not call, did not text, just blocked me.  I actually find it kind of funny, that you feel the need to virtually erase someone from your life.  Blocking a person on facebook does not make them disappear.  I honestly don't care about the break in friendship.  Once it was done, I seriously felt a huge weight disappear from my shoulders.  The knot in my stomach relaxed.

She felt determined to keep all the mutual friends we had made.  I knew that she probably told them all kinds of horrible things about me.  I suppose if they believe all the crap, then she can have them.  2 other friends got the boot too.  As we have been hanging out together, they have told me things that she had told them about me. She had been telling ALL of our mutual friends random bullshit about me for the whole past year.  How can she even think she was my friend?? I spent my time cleaning her house, and running errands for her, and bringing her cigarettes, and lending her money. (She still owes me $20, but it's not even worth it to try and collect.)  I am sure she told all those other people that i talked shit about them.  I am sure I made the random comment, but she was a big complainer.  She complained how Amanda told her that her house was a mess, and how Amanda looked at her bills and made comments about them, and how she did not want Amanda to do her laundry at her house and use all her soap. Certain people she did not say anything about, other than the fact that they were as pure as the virgin Mary.  I did complain about some people.  I said that Amanda talks about stupid shit too much.  That her eyeliner is scary. I said Amber is way loud.  I complained about Jackie every other minute, but it was generally to my husband or one other person.  BUT NO.. she was apparently talking mad shit about me to everyone I had met, and probably people I hadn't.

Now I am paranoid.  Am I really those things she said? Are other people saying or thinking them too?  I am afraid to talk or be around my other friends for fear that I am a horrible person that people can't stand.  I have been hanging out with 2 friends. One (S) I have been friends with for about 7 months... I have really enjoyed her company, and am glad for her friendship.  The other (B) is a new friend.  She was J's friend.  J always talked about how they were best friends and how wonderful she was.  I had been afraid to talk to her.  Any best friend of J was not someone I wanted to be close to.  When J decided she did not want to be her friend either, I thought maybe we have more in common than previously thought.

So my friend S and I have been hanging out with B too.  And now I feel like I don't fit in. I feel like the third wheel, constantly behind and struggling to catch up.  The nerdy girl that the cool girls allow to follow them around. I am constantly worrying about what they are saying and thinking about me.  Their children get along very well, and I feel like my children get left out.  I feel like my kids are whiny, contrary and bad, and I wonder what they are saying about my kids.  I feel sad. I feel like I am being pushed out.  Adan says not to worry about it.  If it happens that I get pushed out, then so be it.  I guess I would get more done around my house, and have way less heart ache if there was no one around to break it.  BUT I would be so sad. I like having friends, and coffee dates, and BBQ's and movie nights and all that. I don't want to be super lonely during the deployment.  I am going to need adult time... I will be all alone with 4 kids, one a brand new babe, and no husband.

Also, because we have all 3 been hanging out, I feel obligated to invite B to everything I have had planned with S.  I don't want her to feel left out, but I don't want to feel left out either.  I feel stuck again.

Makes a girl just want to go to bed for a week or two.