Finally settling down

I have been a mommy for five months and in 6 weeks, I will officially be a mommy for the rest of my life.

We have an adoption date! September 2nd the boys will be permanent members of our family. This date is one we have been waiting for, and have been expecting but with this comes a lot of decisions. Do we change their names? Do we keep them in public preschool? Insurance? therapy? trips home? Just a lot to think about.

We already decided their names, so that's step one! Now on to the rest....

Life is Funny

Life is funny in that it never works out the way you think.

• First, we thought we would have a baby as soon as we so much as looked at each other.
• Then, we thought it would take us the average time to conceive of six months.
• Then there was the idea of magically losing weight and having a baby.
• After the weight didn't melt away we started thinking about bringing home a sweet baby from the hospital to adopt and love.
• With that came the idea that we would magically win the lottery we never entered so we could pay for it.
• After realizing no one was going to just give us the winning lottery ticket, we started to think we would take in children through the foster system. As soon as we were licensed they would hand us this perfect two year old with no history, no issues, and who would fall in love with us as mommy and daddy immediately.

Now, we see that this is not the life we are meant to have. Life is laughing at us and our "plans." Almost three weeks ago we became parents to two bouncing toddlers. Boys. These boys do not have clean slates. These boys call us mommy and daddy, but not because they see us as actual parents, but that they call anyone who even slightly fills the role, or in daddy's case, is tall. These boys have issues, they have things they need to work on, they have learned the wrong way how to view life. Sam and I have spent the last three weeks making and scheduling appts, getting developmental evals, driving to a preschool four days a week that is 30 minutes away. We are rationing food, listening to children crying in the night for no discernible reason, and dealt with melt downs and shut downs. It is HARD.

The thing about life is that we always expect the easy way. We live our lives with certain expectations. As a child we expect our parents to feed us, to love us and keep us safe. As we get older we expect to take care of ourselves. Then we start expecting to find someone to take care of and be taken care of by. We don't expect complications, we don't expect the hiccups and we don't expect things to be hard.

But it is.

My poor boys didn't have their expectations fulfilled. Now I have two children that need to learn to see us as real parents, parents that will fill the traditional role of feeding, loving, and protecting. We have wounds we need to heal before we can even start to create bonds. We have paper work we have to fill out anytime our adventurous boys even scratch their arms, much less bruise their heads when they fall. I am in weekly contact with no less than eleven professionals whose sole purpose in their lives is to help catch them up to where they should be physically and emotionally. It is going to be a long road, a long, hard, and painful one. Somewhere along the way they might actually become ours, but that doesn't even signify the half way point to them seeing us as their parents.

So, life isn't turning out the way I expected it. I have had to ask for help. I have had to overcome my shyness and call dozens of people I don't know in spite of my loathing the phone. I have had to admit defeat and go hide in the room while Sam handled something so I could get my emotions under control. There are a lot of new hurdles in my life.

I wouldn't change it for the world.

Big Step

Lately Sam and I have had a lot going on. I am Senior stylist at the salon I work at, which is a very stressful and crazy environment. Sam graduated college a couple weeks ago with a 4.0 GPA. My stepfather has been in and out of the hospital in the past two months which has required me to make two emergency trips home(he's better now).  Lots of stuff going on!

Sam also got orders to Korea unaccompanied next summer.

This interferes with our plans a lot. We were planning to start working to adoption next summer, so we had to put that idea aside. However, we came up with a new plan!

After looking at and considering all our options(especially the one saying we won't be here in the springs much longer) Sam and I have made a big decision to do foster care with the intent of adopting!!

Last night we met with a fostering agency and then spent the evening filling out our application. Once our application is turned in, we do a month of training, a month for the homestudy, and then DHS has to approve our licensure. After we are approved we can begin taking children in at any time! That's like  two months from now! WHOA!

We are so excited to add to our family, and are so happy we have supportive friends and family out there to be behind us in this decision. By no means is it going to be easy, it is going to be a huge adjustment. We are excited though. Very very excited.

Baptism

Sam was baptised today! His mom and her husband came out for it, and my mom and grandma were there as well! The room was standing room only and it was only him being baptised! Afterwards we had a chili dinner at our house with all our friends and family. We were in awe at the turn out and look forward to being sealed next spring.

Crazy

Do you ever have those days where you feel like you really might be insane and someone should probably take any and all contact with the world away from you?

 Anyone? No?

 Must be just me then.

 Some days I feel all mature and aged and like I finally have my life together. That's me most days. Every once in awhile I go crazy. My insecurities get the best of me and I get paranoid for some reason thinking no one likes me, or that my guests stopped coming to see me at the school because I did something wrong. All the little things in life that normally I can easily ignore.

 Heck, I'm having a hard night. It's been rough starting up work again. I seriously need to get some duct tape for my fingers(typing) and my mouth.

Yearly Goals

Yay! New year! This past week I finally passed my licensing to be a practicing cosmetologist here in Colorado. Yay I can finally get a job and make some money! I have two interviews tomorrow so with any luick I'll be working within a week! I'm in the process of decluttering and organizing our home. I switched offices with Sam the other week, and I still haven't finished cleaning up after that. I have also been purging unneccessary items, as with our condo there isn't as much storage space as I would like. I'm also keeping in mind that Sam and I are always hopeful that a little Brejcha will be joining us someday, and we'll need an empty room to put him/her in. We have a painted living room! It's a bright turqiouse. Sam was a little dubious at first but once it was finally painted he agreed its a wonderful color. We also bribed a friend into painting our hallway one night while he was watching our dogs so we could be in denver for my licensing test. It's a pretty soft gray and I'm looking forward to getting the rest of the house painted. Have I ever mentioned how much I really hate beige? Blech. Since it looks like Sam and I might be here another four years, I have many many plans on how to make my beautiful condo the perfect safe haven for us. Sam is in the midst of studying and waiting. He is studying for a promotion to Tech Sergewant, which he tests for in March. We are waiting to hear back about the position he applied for back in December. we're getting a little anxious to know about what's happening for our future. We should know one way or the other about the position by the end of next week. Today I was doing my usual blog surfing and came across the phrase: Be a wife your husband can't wait to rush home to. This is a wonderful phrase! I'm so sick of trying to be the perfect wife, let's face it, no one is perfect, least of all me. Besides, what may matter to one person doesn't matter to the other. So my one goal for this year is to become and remain the type of wife my husband can't wait to rush home to. I love that man, and he deserves it.

The next step

Its been awhile since I posted, my apologies! I have been keeping busy, though! Back in October I finally finished cosmetology school. I may not have been happy about having to attend, and thats a bitter struggle I fight daily. I am proud to have finally finished some sort of schooling so I can start to pay down my student loans. A week after I graduated I flew out to washington dc to see one of my best friends from college. Her and her husband are there with their newborn daughter while she gets treated for osteosarcoma, a type of bone cancer. It was great to see them and meet their brand new daughter. Soon after that sam and went down to galveston and took a disney cruise! It was amazing! Seven nights and eight days! We stopped at cozumel, costa maya and the grand cayman. We sailed, toured mayan ruins, and took a mexican cooking class. In spite of having no children, not once did we feel awkward for not having children on the cruise. We will Never cruise with anyone else again. Disneys service is second to none! In mid november my momsurprised meby flying out for the weekend to attend my graduation ceremony! It was wonderful to see Her, and I enjoyed spending time here with her in colorado. In between all these trips and visits ive been organizing and deep cleaning our house! I also painted our living room. Its a bold turquoise blue. I love it and it feels like home! Sam put in for a position at work, which will be a four year assignment here at Peterson, we wont hear about it until mid january, and were waiting impatiently. I take My state boards the day after christmas, so then I can finally get a job and go to work! Im definitely not waiting patiently for this one!