9 Months

According to our ticker at the bottom of the blog...we have been waiting 9 months and one day for our baby to come home.

What are we doing to prepare? Honestly...not a darn thing! The crib is currently being used for all of Vivi's birthday party supplies, the nursery houses Isaac's stack of Lego drawers, and J's clothes in the closet, and I haven't bought a baby item since the summer when we opened our preference to a boy or a girl. SO...pretty much we are just waiting!

In this past month of waiting, friends gave birth, people announced pregnancies, a couple brought their first son home as an adoptive placement, and another friend sends me emails of toddlers boys that she is submitting their homestudy on (that is SO fun!). So although nothing is going on for us on the adoption front, lots of new families are being formed around us. Does it feel like we have been waiting 9 months? No...not really. Nine more months would put us at November for a wait total of a year and a half. I am really, really okay with that. Even though I wonder where our baby is, will our baby be a he or she, and when will they come... on the other hand I feel like our cup is really full right now, and I enjoy the freedom to do things with my very active other 3 kids without being tied to the house with a newborn. And our agency is SO good about emailing often to keep everyone knowing they are advocating for their waiting families. We don't care to know if and how many times our profile is shown, or the reasons why we might be passed up, because we know that our baby will come in God's timing.

So off we go into month 10!

Wedding!

Billy and I had the privilege of attending a very special wedding today!

We were witness to Chris Utz marrying his bride Kathryn.

It was a beautiful wedding and reception.Chris and his sister, Stephanie (who was also a bridesmaid in our wedding at the age of 14) were the very first kids that I babysat for who were my favorite, beloved children. I was 12, Chris was 5, and Steph was 2 years old when I became their babysitter! So we kind of grew up with each other. I roadtripped to Disney World, Disney Land, and San Antonio with the kids and their Mom when I was around 14. One of my fav. memories is of the kids and I in a hotel in San Antonio watching OJ's white bronco being chased down L.A.'s highway, days before we were going to be in L.A. ourselves! We ran out to the balcony and shouted to their Mom in the hotel resteraunt, "They found OJ!!" Oh my, how we laughed about that one for years!

I cannot believe that Chris and Steph are no longer kids, but adults in their 20's!

And getting married now, too!!! Here are the bride and groom.

And here are the cakes.

Yes....cakes.

This is the coolest grooms cake I have EVER seen. And I have been to probably 25 plus weddings. An apple laptop computer, ipod, iphone, mouse, and cdRom ALL in fondant!

As you probably guessed, Chris' profession is with computers!

SO, SO fun!

This cake should have been entered into a contest, for sure!

Happy Wedding Day to Mr. and Mrs. Utz! :)

Date Night

Sometimes you have got to get creative about having a date night with your husband, when you don't have a regular babysitter to call upon. So last weekend, Billy picked up Olive Garden take out for the two of us after his guitar lessons and I had the kids bathed and laid out on a blanket on Vivi's bed, with boxed dinners (the containers their Six Flags meals came in) of corn dogs and popcorn...you know real healthy stuff! And Beverly Hills Chihuahua from Netflix on the portable DVD player. (Not exactly our choice of great movie entertainment!) The kids found this arrangement to be very exciting, since we always eat our dinners at the kitchen table as a family without TV.

There are just times when the rules have to go out the window and you do what you have to do to have a quiet evening. :)

On My Mind These Days...

There are two things that have been swimming around in my head since I read them recently. One is this little poem, you could call it, from a fellow blogging buddy who blogs at http://www.barrenwoman.blogspot.com/.

Rachel writes:

Today...

I am ovulating.

And

All I can think is...

Big deal.

What does it matter...

Its not like

Anything could come of it.

Sigh.

Oh infertility,

I hate you...

Today.

I love this. Love the rawness that it conveys. The heartache always hanging around sometimes unnoticable to the rest of the world, but to those of us barren... so very profound.

No matter what the journey to motherhood has been for each one of us, or how we have seen that journey as a blessing many times over, and have even thanked our Lord time and time again for His plan for our lives...these words ring out as our banner song when all in the world is quiet and we are alone and left with only our thoughts.

And the other thing that has clung to my thoughts is a comment left on a dear friend's blog after the amazing and wonderful story of her baby's birth. A friend of hers wrote, "just beautiful. birthing babies is definitely God’s grace to women…such an incredible experience."
I read this and actually said outloud, Ouch.

It stung in a way that I am embarrassed to admit. Embarrassed because I don't want anyone in the world to think that I am not perfectly content with my babies that were not birthed from my body. It is not other children I ever desire, but the experience. And the wonderment of it all. God's grace to women...

I will leave it at that.

Is That A Snack Or A Meal?

Some of my children are perfectly content with afternoon snacks of this nature, you know sugar and carbs...what we all want at 3:00 in the afternoon, right?

But one of my children requires a little more....shall I say, protein!
Hummus w/wheat pretzel sticks, sausages, olives and a dill pickle, cheddar cheese, horseradish spread on wheat thins, and sliced plum. Oh, and a yogurt drink.

This particular child goes through growth spurts where his pants become too short overnight, he sleeps 11 hours straight, and is constantly hungry...even after eating a full course dinner. This particular child is a head taller then every single child in his class at school. This child drools over burger commercials and dreams of pizza buffets....for the salad bar.

Have you guessed?

Yep...you were right.

Lord help us when he hits puberty...

My ENT appt.

I went to my ENT yesterday. He was very nice and thorough. The first thing he asked was if I had a high salt diet because that can bring on bouts of acute vertigo. The funny thing is, the weeks leading up to my first incident last Monday, I did! Remember, I had a period that was lasting more than a month and as is typical of "that time of the month" for me, I was craving salt in a big way. Only instead of the normal 4 -6 days of cravings, I had 50 days of cravings because of the extended cycle. So, he has me cutting WAY back on my salt intake. He prescribed steroids and a nasal spray. He did a hearing check and check of my middle ear and said my ears are clear, so the pressure I feel in my head is coming from my frontal lobe/sinuses. He wants me to try the medicine and the meclizine as needed, and come back in 6 weeks or less if the vertigo comes back. So we will see! I will be taking on some lifestyle changes that are long overdue. So, I feel a bit overwhelmed by it all. But I also feel hopeful that I will be able to change some things about my eating and exercise habits and thereby get myself off many or all of the medications for various illnesses I have had to get on this month. I think these changes could help my female organs to function more properly, hopefully clear my head and body from the vertigo and headaches, and help me to kick these bouts of depression that have set in since being sick for 2 months. So I will let ya'll know how it goes!! I know I will need the encouragement along the way, for sure. :)

I plan to get back to my regular blogging program around here and stop talking about sickness so much! Of course we will have J's posts next week when we go into the hospital to get his tonsils out. But after that...we are moving forward into the spring with positive thoughts and restored hope for the future!!