Birthday Party: Take One

Well, our first party was a smashing success. I managed to avoid getting too emotional, but I really can't believe my baby girl is nearly one. I'm process tons of emotions right now about Autumn - I can't get her out of my mind. I'm sure she's thinking about us right now, too, and even though she's still not in touch with us, I feel connected to her very much right now. More on that in a later post; I don't know how to express how I feel yet. SO...onto what I know you're in this for, pictures of the party and a beautiful baby in a pink tutu:)

Performing for all her loyal subjects! :)


Her cousin took one of her new toys. Total tragedy.

This is her new "belly laugh" reserved for occasions when something is particularly hilarious.

My mom made this princess highchair cover. I love it and may never take it off :)

We were all very happy to get into our jammies after the day was over!

It's very surreal to think that exactly one year ago today, I was sitting in a hotel room in Utah wishing and hoping for this miracle baby to be my daughter. And today, she looks up at me and says "mamama" (well, let's be honest, half the time she says "dadada" or blows raspberries in my face, but whatever.) It's amazing, truly beyond what I can convey in words. Hope you're having a happy weekend.!

I have a RAVE! "Naptime Is The New Happy Hour"

The title alone was enough to make me read! :)For all you moms out there who have been right here with me during my "pull my own hair out" moments this past year, have I got a book for you. I'm reviewing Stephanie Wilder-Taylor's new book, "Naptime Is The New Happy Hour," and I can not rave about it enough. It's snarky and silly and a little naughty, and I so wish Stephanie Wilder-Taylor lived next door to me. I am embarassed to admit that I had to email her immediately after reading because I loved the book so much. I felt like a groupie:) I laughed out loud SO many times while reading, and I literally read it cover to cover in less than two days. Poor Lil took a backseat, I'm afraid, but hey, it was mommy's time. :)

The book is hilarious. In the intro, I knew I was hooked when I read, "For the first year your main job is to keep the little suckers alive. Now that's not nearly enough. A mom of a toddler has a whole new set of concerns, worries, and questions, like 'Who the h*ll is this Dora chick? And why does my child need to own everything with her picture on it? Is it wrong to have a cocktail at two in the afternoon...You're shaping little minds, imparting valuable lessons like, 'Just because your mom eats food off the floor, doesn't mean you can do it."

What struck me most, though, is the idea of letting go of the guilt of not feeling like Mommy of the Year because your baby loves to watch tv (guilty!) or because you don't do playdates or fit in well with the super mommies at the gym or you like to read US Weekly while your baby plays on the floor (guilty again). I got this book at the perfect time for me because I am far too hard on myself (aren't we all?) It is so important to me to do this well that I often forget about taking care of myself. At the same time, the book is a fantastic reminder of how quickly these years go and instead of worrying so much about the stupid things we need to just LET our houses be dirty and hug on our babies. :) She tells so many personal stories using hysterical pop culture references about her experiences and what helped her through them that you feel like you've just made a new friend who finally GETS you after you've read it.

I highly, highly recommend this book for any mom who has a great sense of humor about motherhood. And if you need one more reason to buy, the front cover shows a diaper bag with two wine bottles in it. Don't tell me I'm the only one who has considered doing that. :)

I've linked Stephanie Wilder-Taylor's blog in my side bar, but I'm going to add it HERE, as well. Trust me, it's worth a click!

Good news all around! :)

In the mail today: a check for $400.97 from the hospital in Salt Lake City. Nearly a year later, but still cash in our pocket all the same. I'll again praise our fantastic agency for their support, not only during our adoption and post placement, but in this situation a year after their duties are technically over. I'll also say again to anyone reading who is considering adoption and isn't sure which agency to choose, leave your email address in a comment because I can't say enough about our agency.

Second, I got news about Baby L whom I wrote about last week. He has successfully undergone two surgeries at Johns Hopkins and is doing very well. His amazing parents are doing very well, too, and are very optimistic about his prognosis. Thank you for your prayers and support for him.

Third, it is GORGEOUS here today. Lily and I just spent an hour sitting on a blanket in our front yard watching the cars go by. That may not have seemed too exciting to me a year ago, but now just being outside sitting on a blanket with my baby was one of the most peaceful yet energizing things I could've spend an afternoon doing. We have tulips coming up in our yard and all is right with the world:)

Gambling babies and other Easter happenings

We had the best weekend visiting our family up north. Lily has so much fun when she gets to play with her cousin, and I really feel like she learns like crazy from him. We got some of the cutest pictures of her over the weekend:

In her little Easter dress before church

This is the pouty face I get when she's told "no" about anything. Can you believe all this sass?

Gambling babies. Nothing says Easter like a baby with a poker chip. :) I hope you all had a nice Easter if you celebrate it and a lovely weekend no matter what. I'm deep in the trenches of planning the first birthday party. Our first one (yes, we're having two - our families are too far apart to do one together) is this Sat. and I'm nowhere near ready. It's the whole denial thing again. :)

Num Num...Num Num

This is what Lily says every single time she sees anyone eating anything. She is turning into a little baby bird -always the mouth open sitting at my feet. :) Last night, I was eating some yogurt and you would've thought it was chocolate cake the way she ate it up. It may be strange, but I love, love, love sharing my food with her. I love that she snuggles up to me (even though she's using me for my food) and looks up saying "num num" while raising her eyebrows up and down. It is the funniest thing!

No news yet on Baby L. Thanks for your continued prayers.

In other news, as Lily's first birthday gets closer and closer, I find myself feeling SO sentimental. I can't believe it's been nearly a year. I really get emotional just thinking about where we were even a year ago today. One year ago today, we hadn't even matched yet. We hadn't talked to Autumn and we had no clue what was about to happen to us. We had no idea our beautiful girl was only two weeks away. It's a reminder on this crazy adoption roller coaster - things can change out of nowhere. Hope comes from the most unlikely sources and a baby could be right around the corner. It's nuts! I'm getting ready for the party, though. I have the cutest little princess party invites and some cutesy decor, but WAIT until you see Lily's outfit. We got her an "I'm 1" onesie and a big poofy pink tutu to wear with it. You can bet there will be pictures posted! :) But, I'm still in denial as of right now. :)

Perspective

An acquaintance of mine brought a bit closer through a mutual understanding of the grief of infertility is dealing with a huge heartbreak right now. She gave birth to her son, baby "L" conceived via invitro last week. He was full term, but he was born with very serious complications. She is fine, but he is being transferred to a leading research hospital. They believe this is the only possibility for his recovery. I'm vague, I know, but I want to be careful to protect their privacy.
It puts everything in perspective. Motherhood can be so difficult, but it's the best difficult there is. And if you have a healthy baby, regardless of what it took to get him or her here, then you have everything in the world. My heart truly breaks for her tonight, and I'd love it if you'd send some prayers or thoughts or hope for healing baby "L's" way. I'll be saying a special prayer of gratitude and praise for all of our beautiful babies either here or still on their way.

Bad, bad mommy!!

So, we're all sick again. It's like the three of us are just passing the same cold around and around. It's nuts and I am so sick of sick! I had a terrible bad mommy moment yesterday. I was laying on the floor in Lily's room trying to maintain semi-consciousness while Lily played with her blocks and climbed all over me. Well, I had my eyes shut and she crawled over to her dresser, pulled the drawer open and then slammed it WITH her little thumb inside. I felt so terrible. It pinched the skin on her thumb, but not the nail, and she cried but only for a second. Our trick to stopping her crying is to show her herself in the mirror. She smiles and giggles immediately. I swear, this girl can pick herself out of a picture of fifty people. She LOVES to look at herself. Anyway, her thumb is fine - there's barely a mark today, but man, I still feel bad. It's so hard to keep up with her when all I want to do is crawl into bed and be sick. Where's Mary Poppins when you need her?

Hospital Woes

You may recall way back when after Lily's birth how difficult our experience was with the hospital where she was born. We were treated very badly by the hospital staff (they wouldn't let us see her because we weren't her "parents" even though the papers had been signed, they didn't give us any of the freebies they give other moms, they wouldn't dismiss Lily from the hospital until all of their "mothers" had been checked out...so many things happened that I don't even want to get started again because it makes me crazy to even think of it again) and a month or two after her birth, we were double charged for her birth. Now, our agency requires that you pay every single bit of the medical bills before you leave the state. I have receipts. Everything was paid for. Our insurance company was also billed and they ended up picking up Lily's portion of the hospital bill, so EIGHT months ago, we should've gotten nearly $450 back from the hospital. We weren't told that. Instead, in November, the hospital called us telling us we were about to be turned over to a collection agency because we hadn't paid our bill. WHAT? Um...you mean all the receipts I have in my possession appeared out of thin air? So, we've been in touch with the agency and with the hospital. The hospital emailed me in Jan. telling me they had everything figured out and that our check would be arriving. It's now mid March. I've emailed and called until I'm blue in the face and our contact says her hands are tied. As a credit to our fantastic agency, they are furious and are doing all they can to help us. How can this happen? If they have admitted, in writing, that they owe us money, how do we not have the check yet? We're considering contacting a lawyer, but that would probably cost nearly what we're owed. And it's really not about the money. Heaven knows, that's a drop in the bucket after what the adoption ended up costing, but it's the principle of the thing. We had to pay every single cent before we were cleared to return home. We were treated horribly and this is just the icing on the cake. Truly there's a part of me that wants to sue the pants off of them for this. Maybe they could pick up the entire tab for our next adoption. :) Excuse the vent, but after speaking yet again to our agency contact, I'm beyond frustrated with this. THIS is why our health care system needs overhauled!!! ***stepping off soap box now***

Daylight Savings wears me out

Man, just when we get back to our regularly scheduled events in our household...it comes. Daylight Savings Time!!! So, what's the policy here? Do we still put Lily down at the "regular" times? Or will her bedtime be 8 now since it was 7 before? I've read that babies' schedules are based on circadian rhythms because obviously they don't understand clock time, so that makes me think I stick to the physical time and ignore the clock. Or is that making it harder? What are you doing to cope with DST?

Also, I have so loved hearing about all of your trips! I think I might add a section here for travel blog links. I love living vicariously through everyone else's photos, and like I said, the planning is half the fun for me. We still have no clue what we'll do, when we'll do it, and if we can even swing it financially, but we have so many great ideas now. AND, I have the most fantastic link for you. If you're having a bad day for any reason at all: dealing with treatments, struggling with decisions, dealing with stinky people at work, fighting with your husband, sister, friends, whatever, well, then take a visit HERE. Click through some photos of people's trips to Tahiti, my dream vacation and run away spot. How gorgeous!! I just love those over water bungalows...and maybe someday when we're financially caught up and we don't owe anyone anything and we aren't saving for a child or paying off an adoption and when hell freezes over:), we'll put money aside and GO :)

I can't believe I've forgotten to blog about this until now, but Miss Lil is saying WORDS. Only like three, but it's the best! She says, "HI!!" in a very excited voice whenever she sees someone come in the room. Literally, I'll step out for two seconds, but that two seconds is long enough to warrant another HI when I come back. :) And she says something like "dee dee" whenever she sees our cat. We take that to mean "kitty" in our house. :) And as of this morning, the ducks says, "gak gak" and the lion says, "grrrrrr." The lion sound is more of a grunt, but we'll take it! It's so cute; she has always been a really verbal baby, and it's funny to see her really try to mimic what we say. It never fails to blow me away how much they learn and how quickly! She's a little sponge! I told my husband SOME of us need to watch what they say around the house a bit more carefully:) Not me, of course! :)

Calling All Travelers!!

(This is my 150th post - that's exciting! :)

So, our 5th wedding anniversary is this Oct. I know that is months and months away, but for me, part of the fun of travel is the planning. I love to go on trip advisor's website and read hotel reviews and check out travelers' photos. Here's where I'm stumped: Where in the world should we go? We honeymooned and have vacationed in Mexico and absolutely LOVED it and aren't necessarily opposed to going back. But, I'm not sure we can swing the cost. If we could find a great deal -maybe. Do you have a favorite vacation spot you can recommend? Somewhere relaxing where we can celebrate 5 years of wedded bliss :) I'm seriously open to ANYTHING: cities, beaches, international locales - anything. We can't spend a ridiculous amount of money or believe me, we'd be in Tahiti!!

So, suggest away!!! And if you have a blog with travel photos or a snapfish account or something with travel photos that you'd let me peek at, you'd be my best friend for life. :)

Divine Intervention

Truly, God must have known I was hitting a serious breaking point because yesterday, it was 70 degrees here. It's back in the high 30s today, but yesterday was like a bit of heaven. So, we got the heck out of the house and took Lily to the zoo for the first time. It was so renewing just to be outside and to be enjoying something new with my daughter. She loved it so much! She was more interested in watching the other kids than checking out the animals, but it was so exciting to see her get to excited:) It sounds so cheesy, but feeling the warm sunshine was so theraputic!

And speaking of therapy, I can't thank you enough for your support. I was SURE I'd get at least one or two scoldings about the way I was feeling. And I had no doubt at all that there was something wrong with me because of how I felt. Reading that so many of you said you could've written that exact post at any point in motherhood made me feel so great. Just not feeling alone makes all the difference. And I love what many of you said about these being REAL mom feelings. Because I'm a real mom. Not an adoptive mom only - but a real mom. One who loves with a fierce love but who also needs time for herself before she goes totally nuts-o. :) Truly, thank you with all that I have for being so awesome and so supportive. I got very teary eyed every time a new comment came to my inbox. Thank you. :)

I'm going to leave you with the sunshine that I got to experience yesterday. Just look at this girl. What a face! :) I love her big cheesy smile in the third one and her little, ladylike crossed feet in the last one. Silly Lil.:)

The Joys of Parenting

I have been very MIA lately. To be honest, I'm having a bit of a tough time lately. I don't know if it's Lily's quickly approaching 1st birthday or what, but mommyhood is seriously stressing me out. To be fair, she's been sick for nearly two weeks now, which leads (in her case) to very little sleep and all-around crankiness. She goes days without napping and is turning into a chronically tired girl. I'm having some really tough days. And I feel like I'm not allowed to have tough days because of what we went through to finally have her. I feel like because I prayed for her so hard and wanted her so badly that I'm held to a higher standard of parenting than other moms. Maybe I'm the only one holding myself to those standards, but I feel the pressure of them nevertheless. I feel like it's okay for some of my friends to complain about how hard it is to be a stay at home mom some days, but that it's not okay for me to do it because of how hard it was to get here. I feel like I'm supposed to be happy 100% of the time, and honestly, I resent it. I love staying home with Lily, but my husband works as an adjunct professor which means he works constantly and some days from 9:00am to 10:00pm with only a few hours break in between classes. Starting now, he's teaching classes every night of the week but Friday. He is amazingly helpful when he's home, but when he works so much, I'm doing all of this on my own. And I'm exhausted. But, the catch is that to be able to have me home, he has to work as much as he can. And full time university positions, especially in this economy, are few and far between though believe me, we're looking.

Part of the problem, too, I know is my fault. I feel so much pressure to constantly be a super mom. I feel like if she's awake, I have to be playing with her or teaching her something. And heaven knows, you can only read "Goodnight Moon" and play with the stackable blocks for so long until you're ready to pull your hair out. If I'm completely honest, I have days where I long to sleep late and go out for dinner and have adult conversation. That doesn't mean I want to go back to life before her, of course. I really hope nobody rips me for this because I know how lucky I am to have Lily. And I love her with my whole heart. This is, again, the sort of "survivors guilt" problem of parenting after infertility. We aren't allowed to be unhappy or struggle with any aspect of parenting because it was so hard to get here. And because we know there are women who would do anything to be where we are. But, for the love, I'm human. And being a mom is really hard work sometimes. And I feel how I feel, and I need to be able to talk about it somewhere - so this is my chosen outlet. I hate that I feel like I have to qualify this yet again by saying how much I love my daughter. I feel like anyone who didn't struggle with infertility wouldn't have to do that. They could just vent and it would be understood how much they love their child.

Sorry for this crazy, bummer of a post, but like I said, I'm having a hard time right now, and I needed to vent. I'm not even going to go back and reread what I've typed because I typed it as it was coming to me, and it's been a sort of therapy, so I'm just going to hit publish and move the heck on. :)