Tag Archives: family

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If Only I Were Taller

My husband is a sleeper. I don’t mean sleeper terrorist, I mean someone who enjoys sleep more than most other things in his life. He can sleep through almost anything, including crying babies to a small degree. I worried when he decided that we should expand our family that him giving up sleep wouldn’t happen. The first week home from the hospital I realized how wrong I was. He got up and was willing to help at any hour of the night. Then he went back to work, but would get up when he thought I needed help to jump right in. That man was born to be a father.

In our baby’s first six months, we’re lucky he only had one or two colds. Both only lasted a day or two without any incidence. He basically is his father’s baby and just slept right through the whole thing. The only fever he’s ever had was after he received his vaccines, and even then he just slept right through it. He’s a baby that tolerates most things well, even teething he had a few bad days, but it could have been a lot worse.

That all changed last night when I woke up to a cry I’ve never heard before. As soon as I picked up my little crying boy, I realized he was on fire, figuratively speaking of course. My husband was sleeping, and I went to get the Tylenol, only I couldn’t reach it in the cabinet, I couldn’t even see it. I didn’t want to have to wake up my husband, not just because he gets grumpy when he’s tired but because he’s a worrier. I love that about him; he’s the type of guy that when you get a nasty sunburn because you’re as pale as a ghost and thought that 35 SPF was enough, would buy out the entire section of burn care to fix you. I woke him up asking for him to get the Tylenol, and he wanted to hold the baby because he thought maybe I was wrong. As soon as our boy was in his arms, he handed him off and jumped out of bed and ran to get the medicine.

I was right about the worrying, every noise that came from the crib after that moment, he would immediate sit up and see if the baby was okay. He worried that we should have quarantined patient 0, our oldest son, to have prevented this. Either way, the baby was going to get sick because I was starting to get sick myself. It’s no fun when there are sick kids at home, and it really tests you. I’m lucky I have a partner in this that will make you take a nap while making us supper and making sure the boys are fed. I’m grateful he’s a great father and husband and I know not everyone is as fortunate to have someone to help you through even the simple things. I also learned a valuable lesson: I should move the medicines our kids use on shelves I can reach without climbing on countertops. Climbing isn’t easy with an infant in your arms.

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Dylanisms: Religion

As I learned from the first post about Dylanisms (see: www.bluishoblivion.com ), people like to hear funny “kids say the darndest things” stories. It’s true, children are a wealth of source of hilarious commentary. My life would be very boring if I didn’t have him. I laugh because he’s an adult in a miniature child’s body. As a fourth grader, he still gets mistaken as a kindergartener. He has learned to take this in stride and make up for his size by having a very large personality. And Dylan is nothing if not full of personality.

We’ve been watching The Bible, not because we’re a particularly religious family but as a family that enjoys “historical” miniseries. I use “historical” very very loosely here, because as I said we’re not a particularly religious family. Dylan opted to watch because Dylan  likes anything that most children don’t. Maybe he took an interest because of what he learns at CCD I thought. No, he just liked watching Samson “Hulk Smash” things.

This led my husband to start asking basic questions about religion, which Dylan couldn’t answer. My husband looked at me and said “well that’s $25 well spent. What do we send them there to learn if he doesn’t learn anything.” I laughed, and told him I sent him there because I had to, he has to. My husband glared at me, but realized there was no point in arguing. Eventually Bethlehem came up and I was hoping this would be our redeeming moment. Here’s what happened:

Me: “So who was born in Bethlehem?”

Dylan: “Um… I don’t know. Who?”

My husband chuckled and glared at me again. Me: “Seriously? Think Christmas”

Dylan: “Ooo I know this. Santa!”

My husband and I crack up laughing. Me: “I see your point about our wasted money”

Well if nothing else, I pay $25 a year for my son to be babysat for an hour a week. Moral of the story: For the price of cable and watching The Bible, I could save money from sending him to Catechism classes. One could state that God is sending our house a message, because this morning Dylan woke up with a bad cough, stuffy nose, and a fever. Well played.

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And We Lived!

Six months ago today, I remember my husband rushing to get the trash bucket because rather than feeling an extreme amount of pain, I felt nothing but nauseous. It seemed no sooner than when I was done vomiting, a baby appeared magically. That’s not exactly how it worked, but I’m sure that graphically tamed edition is much less graphic than the actual encounter. I didn’t yell at my husband for convincing me this was a good idea, I probably would’ve considered it if I wasn’t so tired and he didn’t look so sick after watching the whole thing go down.

We lived a whole half a year. Now my husband is in familiar territory because when we first met what seemed like ages ago, my elder son was six months old. Now we’ve got this, and the fun can really begin. And by “the fun can really begin”, I really mean “we get to run around the house saying ‘Georgie, NO!” Then it looks like a tornado ran through the house: toys over every inch of the living room carpet, dog food tossed on the floor with the dog bowls thrown across the kitchen. Luckily the stairs are already blocked off because of our rambunctious little puppies. He enjoys sitting on the kitchen floor, smacking the metal dog bowls against the ground making music. He especially enjoys this while I make his food, looking at me for samples of whatever I blended up for him. I always do, it’s like watching a kid take the mixer attachment while licking brownie or cookie batter off of it.

The best, and the new ability that makes me the most nervous, is his “walking”. He loves that he learned that if he holds onto things to walk, he moves faster than when he crawls. What he doesn’t love is that when he lets go to try to go solo, he falls on nice pleasantly padded behind. But like I said before, at least he’s getting good at falling. I’m afraid I’m going to fall asleep while he’s playing and wake up to him toddling about the house while I yell that he’s too young and too small to be doing it. My husband doesn’t, he laughs and says “that’s my boy” while telling anyone who’ll listen that his boy is too smart for his own good. It’s true; both the boys are too smart for their own good. I know that I need to savor every moment of this, because they do grow up so fast. If you blink, they’ll be married with kids of their own.

Six months ago, a perfect addition was added to my family. I can’t believe it’s been this long already, it seems too soon. Every time I hold him to feed him the bottle, I wonder when he got to be so big. Sorry, not big. Tall. He’s a scrawny little guy, but he’s a tall one. (Anyone who knows my husband, does this sound familiar?) Next will be his big one year, where I know the best and worst are still yet to come. Life is short and it moves so fast. And anything can happen in the blink of an eye. It helps to keep everything in perspective though. There’s a lot of bad in the world, but there’s a lot of precious moments in it too. It’s hard to remember this after 4 practically sleepless nights, but you can’t spend the day in bed wishing for things to get better. If you do need to do that, maybe you should consider making things better. If not, then you should enjoy every precious moment you have, because it’s hard to tell when you won’t have them anymore.

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I’ll Buy You A Corvette, Whatever You Want

A note before this post: Every year I plug the Jimmy Fund Telethon, a great local cause. Today, I am mentioning another cause that is soon going to personally affect me. Baystate Children’s Hospital is the place where my son will be having his surgery and the people I’ve met there are fantastic and make me a little less nervous about his surgery. No matter how routine a surgery, you know in the back of your mind that anything can happen. Check out this page: https://foundation.baystatehealth.org/netcommunity/sslpage.aspx?pid=533 for information on donating.

My little one drives me crazy. My oldest son is a master at this as well. Not all the time, but no mom can say honestly “I’m always 100% on the ball and sane”. We’re not, we do go a little crazy and we do spend an extra 5 minutes on the toilet wanting to cry but really just enjoying the peace. This doesn’t make us bad people, and this is definitely more common in stay at home moms than working moms. Though I remember some days staying in the shower an extra 5 minutes before work just because I could. We’re moms though, a resilient sort of person that is under appreciated and underestimated.

My baby might be popping his second set of teeth, which timing wise makes sense since he was supposed to pop his first set out around 6 months and he was 2 months ahead of that mark. It’s tiring, nothing turns a baby crankier than teething. My baby used to sleep through the night, now I’m lucky if he even sleeps. I say to him, “I’ll buy you a Corvette, a pony, whatever, just don’t cry”. I don’t know why I try to bribe me since a) he doesn’t know what a corvette or pony is and b) he doesn’t know what a bribe is. He eventually does stop crying, mostly to laugh at pulling my hair out for me. He’s not crying all the time, just when he gets on a “Mom, fix my teeth” fit, it lasts a while.

When he’s not crying, he’s learned that he can pull himself up and walk along furniture. He whizzes by and mastered falling on his butt, not his head. I told my husband, “eventually he’ll get tired of falling and learn” and unfortunately he has. Now he’s brave and let’s go like he can walk and lands right on his heavily padded bottom. His laugh is as infectious as his cry, and he smiles at you baring his 2 little bottom teeth that have almost finished growing completely in.

He’s growing too fast, and as he races out of the room or follows me around like my little duckling I realize that every cry is just precious. Life is too short to stress about not sleeping or all the fussy fits babies can have. It might not seem it at 4 a.m. on your third day of no sleep, but it’s a miracle and something we should be grateful for. Many people can’t have kids, many lose theirs too  young. I can’t get mad because when I open my eyes tiredly and I see him standing in the crib looking up over at me with a smile on his face, I smile back. Remember to always smile back, no matter how tired and stressed you are. You’ll feel better.

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Two Dogs and Three Kids

After coming up with the title, I realized that I’ll probably need to clarify: the third kid is not me expecting, it’s me counting my husband as a child. Sometimes I loving refer to him as my third child, as I’m sure a lot of wives also are guilty of. In my case it isn’t because I think my husband is juvenile or immature, in fact he’s basically the opposite of either scenario. He’s a great father because he’s able to tap into the minds of the boys and entertain them a lot better than I can. He knows what it’s like to be a child. I never really enjoyed cartoons or Disney movies. I liked books, art, and writing. I suppose not much has changed.

The long weekend started on around Thursday, when the baby decided to be incredibly fussy and tired. (Image borrowed from funnyasduck,net) Last time we played this lovely game of “how can I make you happy today?”, I ended up with a painful surprise of his first set of teeth. Our assumption is that we’re ready for round 2 of “To Teethe or Not To Teethe”. I was just getting used to my angel getting back to a proper sleeping schedule. Now, I get evil glares from over the crib saying “excuse me, I would like you to pay attention to me now” at all hours of the night. And when there isn’t that, I get kept up because he has his father’s and brother’s skill of “sleep talking”. And he’s loud. I want to be mad and tired and cranky, but he smiles his “two teeth” smile at me, and I can’t do anything but laugh. I also pretend to be awake the rest of the day, but if I keep one eye open I don’t doze off.

Then there are the sick puppies. Doggy number one comes down with mystery illness also on Friday, giving a fun weekend of “where is he going to get sick on now?” It was a thrilling game that I luckily didn’t have to play too much of, which was great because did I mention there might be a teething baby? He eats everything so we just assumed that he ate something that upset his stomach and he’ll work through it. Until doggy number two ended up sick as well this morning. Oh yes, always on my toes.

Then there is my husband. Let’s be honest: men are babies when they are sick. They whine, they whine some more, then they fall asleep. It’s ok though, at least in my case, I know he returns the favor. And by favor I mean ordering me to bed making me trust he’ll take care of everything. He does, in his sweet way of serving me tea and helping me feel better. He also makes sure the oldest son is kept in Slim Jims and Salt & Vinegar chips with a side of pepperoncinis, while they stay up late watching cartoons. Oh I love my boys.

Mothers thrive on this adrenaline of not sleeping. We want to sleep, but we keep going and we have the ability to not complain too much about it. The family is worth every sleepless night and every article of your clothing that ends up in the wash or trash due to something incredibly gross getting on it. We might end up with God knows what in our hair at the end of the day with a sick family and we can honestly say we’re too tired to care. (I admit it.) But like everything else in life, you have to just take the bad with the good. Because the good is worth every second of the bad.

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To Dote Like A Pro

My five month old has 2 teeth, sleeps a full adult night of sleep, sits up all by himself, and crawls like he’s been doing it forever. He’s a boss, or that’s what my oldest son calls him. It’s true, he is a champ. I’m fortunate I got to see his first crawl and tape his second for everyone to see, I missed all my oldest son’s firsts. Over the weekend, my son received his first “hair cut” from my husband. It was sad to see that he’s growing way too fast. It’s very exciting to watch though.

I thought previously that watching their children hit milestones were something only really mothers concerned themselves with. That was until I met my husband. He doted on my first son as if he were his own blood child every time he hit a milestone. (Fun fact: his first word was ‘Dada’ aimed towards him.) Now with the baby, I see the same excitement and glow in his eyes. He was meant for this, he really was. When he first saw the video of the baby crawling, he bragged to everyone who would listen. “Yeah I know they aren’t supposed to be doing it until their 6-8 months, you try to tell him that” I would over hear him say. He still brings the same enthusiasm to our oldest. “Top reading in his class, student council and he’s a star short-stop and second basemen”. He dotes like a pro.

I wonder every time I hear someone say “he’s such a doting dad”. What does that really mean? Is it one of those sarcastic comments meant to demean him or is it a compliment? He wears it like a badge of honor either way. He’s protective and wants to spend every second watching the boys grow. A friend of his would call and say “come hang out and have a boys night”, and though I tried to encourage him to have a night out, he chose us. He would always say, “they grow too fast, and we have to enjoy them while they still like us”. It’s true, at least I think so. I watch our 10-year-old already hate hugs and kisses in public, and show that preteen sass that makes you want to ground them until they are 18.

Our kids grow fast, I think any parent of any age can agree. At some point we just have to hope we did the best with them and that they down turn out to be jerks. If they make it out of the teens with only threatening their lives a few times, you probably didn’t do that bad of a job. Just enjoy the moment, because soon you’ll close your eyes and have little toddler grandchildren running around the house. Good news about grandchildren though, you can spoil them and leave the hard stuff to your kids.

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The New Mom Diaries

Now that it’s halfway through my baby’s 4th month alive on this planet, I think I have as coherent list of advice as anyone can who chases around an active infant. It’s always important to impart whatever wisdom you have on others, a nice way to pay it forward. Everyone is so willing to give advice, and let’s be honest, most of the time you never asked or wanted it. Sometimes you’re lucky and you think back to it and go “oh well that was great advice” in a non-sarcastic manner. I’ll be honest though, most of the time you won’t be that lucky. A lot of what I’m going to say here, I have written before. But I think that my advice was so awesome, that I should reshare it. That, and I’m way too tired/lazy to go back and see it as I’m sure you are. Or maybe you’re new here, and you’re in for a treat. A treat of some sort, anyways.

  1. A Deer in headlights looking at the parenting section. I can recall staring at the pregnancy section of Barnes & Noble, wondering which book on breast-feeding I wanted to get. Wanted? More like needed. (More on this topic later.) Books are terrible when it comes to pregnancy, breastfeeding, and child rearing. I actually think they’re scamming new parents half the time. Sure, they are great when it comes to the changes in your body or what to expect in scientific scenarios. They don’t capture the emotions or the possibility of other scenarios you’re going to need to adjust to. Any book on these topics are a fantastic starting point. I say starting point because they don’t discuss any variables, just the way things are in normal circumstances, but how many live through normal circumstances. None of my pregnancy books had the information to prepare me on an induction, but thank goodness for free information on the internet that seems it’s only there to make you more terrified about an already terrifying situation. So, books are good if you’re new to the game in general and great for tidbits of knowledge like the fetal development and such. Terrible on everything else.
  2. What To Expect When You’re Not Expecting It. My first pregnancy was perfectly storybook, well in terms of its progression, not anything else about it. I gave birth right down to my exact due date. The second one? Entirely different. I gained a lot of weight, I gained it quicker, and I was nearly 2 weeks past my due date. You can compile all the knowledge you think you need, then you can compile all the information on top of that you think you also should get. I’ll give you a great word of advice: All that knowledge can only go so far, because you really can’t prepare yourself fully for any of it. It’s like a crash course, only if you fail, you take little unknowing children down with you. This is one class you really can’t afford to fail. The best thing you can do is realize that you’re not going to get what you expect to. Plans change, and we need to adjust. And in this case, always prepare yourself for the worst case scenario. It can mentally prepare you in case you’re faced with it.
  3. Great Expectations and Failures. Never ever let someone make you feel guilty because your plans failed. You want to go in for natural child-birth, and 4 hours later you beg for an epidural after all. You plan and study on how to breastfeed, but for whatever reason things didn’t fall into place for this. People will probably judge you for this, I’m not going to lie. I’ve even experienced this as a second time mom. It’s your job to readjust your plans however you think you need to and be strong enough to stand up for that. I planned to breastfeed, and my son just couldn’t do it. He even had problems latching onto the bottle. It wasn’t in the cards for me to nurse, but my husband felt very strongly about his children getting the best. He bought me the best pump he could afford to buy me, and I learned to grow accustomed to feeling like a milk cow. People said “you just didn’t try hard enough” or made me feel like they thought that because I couldn’t nurse my son, that I couldn’t bond with them. (More on this topic later.) My adjustment made me no less of a mother than a person feeding their child formula or having an epidural. Everyone is different, and children are born into all of these scenarios and come out perfectly fine. Don’t let anyone make you feel guilty, life is all about changing plans and adapting to your situations.
  4. The Great Mother/Child Bond. People say that nursing and skin to skin contact is the best way to form a bond with your child that is everlasting. I think that’s a lie. You’re child will bond with you because it can sense your love and it trusts you to take care of it. Your family and friends mean well giving out this advice, but not everyone’s comfortable with the idea of putting a naked baby skin to skin with you. I wasn’t comfortable about this, and my children are doing very well. Babies know who loves them and knows who takes care of them. That’s all a baby really needs to bond with you. Every time you feed it, while you stare into each others eyes, you are bonding. Every time you smile at each other, you’re bonding.
  5. The Gut. My final piece of advice is simple: You know. As a mother, you might be completely lost your first time. People have asked me “how do you know if ___?” My answer is always the same: You know. Your instinct will be the #1 tool in your arsenal, followed only by patience and the ability to work under very stressful situations. You can sense when you’re child is in pain, you know when they’re hungry, and you’ll definitely know when they need to be changed. Babies are simple beings, but they know exactly how to tell you what they want. Likewise, you’ll get a nice gut feeling that you need to learn to follow. A mother always knows, sometimes even more than the doctors and other professionals do.

Keep all that in mind. All the books in the world won’t be able to help you, neither will all the advice. Sometimes you just have to accept that things won’t go as planned or as expected and you need to learn that it’s completely ok. All that matters is you raise your child to be a great person and an incredible addition to this world.

 

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A Little Rice Cereal is Better With Raspberries.

Last week I officially got the okay from the doctor to start solid foods. I didn’t tell him that we’ve already reached that hurdle, a mom always knows when even if Daddy fights it. I was ready for this moment. My freezer had banana and avocado purees waiting to be defrosted and served. I had the bowls and spoons washed, all the bibs ready to grab, and the high chair and walker ready to go for “nom time”. I wasn’t prepared for all the milestones that would hit me at once.

His feedings go better than the textbook says. He eats, but he decided that was boring. He needs to be entertained and what’s more entertaining than realizing that those raspberries he loves to blow makes all the food fly everywhere. He took his spoon, and place it in his mouth, and would blow raspberries until the spoon was empty then would cry wanting more. Since most of it was still getting in his mouth at least, I let him continue this game. The joke was on him when he blew cereal right into his eyes. While it startled him, he laughed and laughed and thought it was so great he wanted to flick cereal into my eyes. Joke was on me, that was funnier.

In making his food (not the rice cereal though I do have that ability with my Baby Bullet blender), I learned quite quickly that I save a fortune. To put this into perspective: one little jar = $1.05 for the “good brands”. For about $1.69 I spent on a sweet potato, I filled up 9 baby bullet servings of food. With the bullet servings being double the size of those little jars, I estimated I’d need about 18 jars for the same amount of food. That total equals about $18.90, versus the $1.69 for my sweet potato and it packs more vitamins, less preservatives, and from what I remember, tastes a lot better. The moral of the story? If you have the ability to make the baby food, do it. It’s cheaper if nothing else, and healthier at the risk of sounding like a hippie.

That wasn’t the only thing to happen in this week time frame.

I would say “I don’t mean to brag”, but every parent is proud of every achievement their child does whether it’s big or small. My scrawny little peanut of a baby impressed the doctor by being “developmentally advanced”, but worried him by being a skinny little guy. He’s not little though; he’s a tall bugger. He’s just his father’s son: taller and skinny with a flat skinny butt and even has the hairline my husband thinks he has. He’s hit milestones months ahead of him, and that made me happy thinking that maybe he’d wait a little and stop growing fast. Not my kid though, he’s his brother’s brother. He never slows down, and never misses a beat.

He has quickly learned that his rolling that he mastered a while ago is much more efficient than his attempts at crawling. To prove his point, he quickly rolls across the room until he reaches whatever destination he decides he want, which I quickly learned is the one that makes me run after him saying “baby come back!”. I think my chasing after him is more amusing to him than the action of rolling away from me. My oldest son was an early crawler and an early walker. The faster they learned to move meant they would always stay the closest to the action. Now it seems I blink and he’s across the room. I wasn’t ready for this, but like everything else with children, you adjust real quick.

Babies grow quickly without warning. They learn from every little movement you allow them to do. With freedom on the floor, my son learned that he could quickly move across it. Now with Boppy, he learned that sitting up and “playing catch” with a little football is more fun than anything else. You can’t blink because you might miss everything. Then before you can even believe it, they’re almost in middle school and full of independence. All you can hope is that you did everything the best you could.

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I Feel As Young As Ever

Yesterday was my birthday, the good ol’ 29. Not quite 30, and still another year to enjoy my 20’s. A friend on Facebook said “I hope you don’t feel almost 30, because I do”. My response: “Eff that, I feel as young as ever. Mostly because I’m too tired to feel”. He said he was going to steal it, but I just stole it first. To prove my point, when I originally read it, I thought he had said “I hope you don’t fear 30, because I do”. Which I had a response for that too: “I don’t fear 30, 30 should fear me”. It’s true, it should. I’m kinda a b-word.

I can’t complain, my 20’s were certainly a lot better than my teens, but being of legal drinking age probably helped that a lot. I don’t really feel older though. Maybe wiser, definitely more seasoned. I still feel like I’m young enough to take on the world. When I was 18, I was afraid of the big 3-0. When you’re young and stupid, you think your life ends when you’re married with kids. While your life as a person who can do whatever you want whenever you want is over, life is still full of fun and excitement. Though admittedly my idea of a thrill is the Russian Roulette I play while changing diapers. The minute I think I’m safe, I end up with a painting on my shirt washed off with urine. Luckily with age, you also gain a level of patience. And more of a sense of humor.

30 isn’t really old anymore. You’re still young enough to not have wrinkles and grey hair, but you’re too old to shop in the juniors department with any shred of respect. Now you’re the “old lady trying to look young”. In your 20’s, you easily get a pass on this. Not 30 though, now you have to figure out a whole new style of clothes. It’s also at this age that getting faceplanting drunk because it’s trashy and not cool. We’re definitely way too old for bar hopping. until 2 a.m. And this also means we’re too young to be unemployed without any attempt towards a goal, but way to young to sit around watching soap operas and eating loneliness as if we’ve given up in life.

I’m excited for what 29 will bring me. Hell, I’m even excited to see what happens at 30. I keep looking for wrinkles and passing off as someone in my early 20’s. I’m ok with it. I’m trying towards everything I want in life, and I realize that I won’t sell 100 novels in a day starting out. I’m even sure that I won’t sell 100 in 6 months starting off. (Don’t forget, the link on the side will allow you into my first long short story.) I feel accomplished though because I tried, and will keep trying towards this goal. I feel accomplished because I have 2 amazing sons that are growing up very well as smart and mostly healthy children. Not to mention, I have hands down the most amazing husband in the world. Don’t be afraid of getting older. If you embrace it, you’ll realize that every chapter of our life brings something exciting. Getting old and grey doesn’t mean you should be sad, you get to retire and enjoy your grandchildren. Life goes on, and you shouldn’t sit back and give up when you still have so much to go. Life’s too short to squander it.

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It’s Like Petfinder, But With Kids.

It was going to happen eventually, when the discussion would end up with a consideration of our future with kids. Are we done, do we want more, etc. I laugh when people ask me, “are you going to have more?” The last thing you think about when you can still close your eyes and remember and re-feel everything from the last birth, is another child. I made no secret that I wanted a girl this time around, since I already had one boy and I didn’t want to be overrun in a houseful of testosterone. No such luck, but I wouldn’t have it any other way because my baby is absolutely perfect.

I did know that a point would come when we had to have the talk. Do we try again in 2 years? 5 years? Are we done because we have 2 beautiful boys as is? We do want a girl, that much we absolutely agree on. How we get there though, that’s what we’re figuring out. What happens if we try again and we  are blessed with a 3rd little boy? We can’t afford the test tube baby for a guaranteed girl, and quite honestly I’m certain no one would be happy with us going that route. Then my husband researched adoption, and said that maybe we should just consider that. They need a home, we’d love a girl, why not?

I decided to research this myself. I’m on the fence, mostly because I like the idea of a baby with a clean slate. Adopting a baby girl is a lot more expensive and a lot longer of a wait. In researching, I discovered how sad it was. It was almost like when I look at Petfinder to look at all the puppies I’d love to adopt, only with children needing homes. It seemed so wrong to make that comparison. But I mean… how can you not? You chose from age and gender options and up comes pictures with descriptions. I’m not sure which saddens me more though: the fact that there are that many kids that need a home with a loving family or that we’ve resorted to picking them out like you pick out your future animals for their “forever home”.

It’s a lot to consider. I know that despite all my self-deprecating humor where I talk about how terrible of a mother I am, I’m actually pretty decent at it. Shocking considering I never really wanted kids, but it came pretty naturally. I’ll approach it like I do most everything in life: I’ll think about it in a mostly cold and logical manner until I just know what I’m going to do. I’ll admit it’s enticing to think about having a child without having to destroy my body further with another pregnancy for a guaranteed outcome. We’ll see, you never know where the road will take you until you follow it. Unless you have a map… which unfortunately life doesn’t come with.