Crash course in parenting - Life as a foster mom

I did my update the other day on my phone, so didn't have much of a chance to say what I was wanting to say. I was a little bummed at first about it being a boy. Like I said, I in no way should have been surprised. In fact almost every night I was dreaming about opening a cupcake to find blue frosting inside.  Not to mention the other boy dreams I have had.  I've had only a very few handful of girl dreams my entire pregnancy. And it's so silly, I mean wow, I get to have a healthy baby boy! How many women never get to experience that in their lives?  And heck, up until about 4 months ago I never thought I'd get to experience it in my life!  I think I just wanted another girl because I'd like Miss M to have a sister, and boys can be a little bit, you know...crazy? Is that the word I'm looking for? We have WWF in our living room on basically a nightly basis. And sometimes it's exhausting.  The energy that they have is amazing. And a little girl could be jus...

Baby boy! Boys run in my husband's family...his mom has three sons, his two brothers have two sons each. Not a girl to be found! So I shouldn't be surprised. So looks like it will be just Miss M and I with 5 males in the house!

Let's say, hypothetically, that every night you set your wedding ring on the counter on the bathroom, far to the side where it won't accidentally get knocked anywhere.  And let's also say that you don't put it back on until you've taken a shower in the morning. And let's say your 13 year old is supposed to clean the bathroom once a week.  And he cleans the bathroom (which includes wiping down the counters, cleaning the sink, toilet, sweeping and mopping), and then after you take your shower your ring is not there. So you ask him to look for it, and he cannot find it. And you look for it, and your husband looks for it, and it is no where to be found.  You search for probably a good 30 minutes in every nook and cranny, and every possible place it could have been taken off just in case you deviated from your normal habit.  So you ask him which trash he dumped the stuff into when he swept the floor...and he says he didn't dump it into a trash can, he dumped it...

I've been getting kicked all day long. I think our baby must have done some serious growing and/or strength training the last day or two because the amount of kicking I am receiving is amazing! I can even feel it when I'm standing up which is a new development.  I don't think the baby has slept at all today.  Last night just as I would drift off to sleep I'd get a little kick. It doesn't hurt, it's just startling. I am still not 100% used to the idea that there is a child inside of me. It's just all so very odd.  My initial reaction after getting kicked is always "What the??...oh yeah. Baby." We find out the sex in 4 days!  And our adoption is next Saturday!  One of these days I'm going to sit down with the little ones and talk to them about it so they kind of know what is going on. I mean we've talked about it before, but I think they kind of need a refresher. I don't know if we should try to talk to D about it too.  Actually I shoul...

-If cleaning my house makes me out of breath, does that mean I don't have to do it anymore? Ha ha ha ha! -Wrestled with God this morning.  Sometimes you just have days that get started on the totally wrong foot and it takes some time with Him to get it back on track. Today was totally one of those days. -My sister is in town, and it is really fun that we are at basically the same point in our pregnancies.  I'm glad to not be the only one feeling rather awkward about now. I know, I know, the best is yet to come. :) -We are looking into putting an egress window in our basement, moving D down there, and then moving one of the three children (probably Miss M) into D's current room...or I guess, she will stay in whichever of the two rooms is smaller and the boys will share the other one. Then we will maybe rent an office space to work out of, since we currently work out of the basement. Maybe. It is just getting out of hand with her waking up and yelling/screaming, waking ...

Today I got our cupcakes ordered for our gender reveal, and finalized plans for our adoption party. We are having a balloon twister/face painter come for 2 hours, and a photographer is going to be taking family pics before the party and also come to the party for an hour to take pictures.  I am so excited!  When I ordered the cupcakes for the gender reveal I swear the lady taking my order was just as excited as I was. It was pretty sweet. :) I almost had a heart attack earlier when I called to confirm our reservation for the party venue, they told me that the room had been double-booked!  Then he put me on hold...and came back to say no, it was fine, the other party was in a different room. PHEW. Miss M had a fever of 103 at daycare yesterday, with no symptoms whatsoever. They called me to pick her up early, I was shocked because none of my kids have ever had a fever that high! Plus she had no symptoms so it is totally weird. So she has to stay home today of course. I...

Not much is more gross than watching your 2-year-old take alternating bites of ketchup and cake. Unless, of course, it is your 3-year-old dipping his cake frosting in ketchup...and eating it. *shudder* Kids are gross. On a side note, I am trying to get a clown to come to our adoption party and do face painting and balloon making. Exciting, right? And a photographer too, so I don't have to worry about getting pictures.  I feel like I have 8,000 thing to do all within the next week or so. Phew! I will be glad when this is over. Except then is Christmas and New Year's, then we start taking our birth classes and all that and really get ready for the baby, then the baby comes, then we pack up our entire house and move, then it will be summer and D will be home from school, then the C monster will start kindergarten and D will start high school (!!!!)...it's gonna be crazy.  Maybe a year or so from now things will settle down a bit. Maybe. :)

The baby is perfect. And there is just one, praise God. If there were two we'd be so thankful but it would be very, very hard.  So I am thankful for one baby! It was amazing. Our tech walked us through everything. We could see the hemispheres of the brain, chambers of the heart, the spine and individual ribs, the kidneys...I mean seriously.  First I think it's amazing that at 20 weeks (even earlier, really!) the baby has all those things, pees, swallows, heart pumps blood, etc., but also it is amazing that technology is able to let us see all of that! The tech said she got a very clear view of the sex, and had us look away from the screen while she was looking at that area to check bladder function and all that. She wrote it on a piece of paper, folded it up a million times, and stapled it shut so no one can peek. Exciting! But seriously, that is just so secondary to the fact that we have what appears to be a perfectly healthy baby.  The baby moved around a little bit...

Best vacation ever. Pretty sure that sums it up. The very absolutely worst part was that our plane left at 5:45 a.m. on Friday morning.  We had to drive an hour to get there, then park our car, wait for the shuttle to get to the air port, get checked in, get through security...you know the drill. Our plan was to wake up at 2:30 a.m. I of course woke up at 1:50 and couldn't get back to sleep.  I fell asleep during take-off of our first flight, no idea how that even happened.  Pretty much once they shut off the cabin lights I was out cold.  Once we were flying steady I woke up. Then we didn't sleep again until we got to our hotel in Florida that afternoon (after an almost 4 hour layover in Atlanta!), and we were able to nap for about an hour before having to get up to go see our friends. Well, Brian went and saw his friends, I went and hung out with a bunch of ladies I did not know who got progressively more drunk as the night went on. After an hour and a half I wa...

Tomorrow morning we are waking up at, oh, maybe 3:30 a.m. to leave for our vacation/friend's wedding! I do not want to work right now! At all! Friday night I am invited to a "girls night" with the bride & co.  It's at a restaurant, so no strippers or anything crazy like that.  I will know the mother of the groom, and that is it. And the bride of course.  Brian will be with the guys. I'm a little nervous at being alone with a bunch of strangers. Also the invite said they were going to be there in time for happy hour...yeah, this pregnant lady isn't going to be partaking in all of that nonsense!  I don't drink anymore pregnant or not though.  But definitely not now!  So the potential for awkwardness is fearfully high, but I will have our rental car so I can leave whenever. Also I told Brian, if we are there long enough then maybe I can order and eat TWO dinners...I do get awfully hungry these days! :) We were asked if the newspaper could do a story ...

Had our appointment today, and we got to hear the heartbeat. She kept kicking and so the sound kept getting muffled, and my husband said "She's farting in there!" and I started cracking up and then of course it was impossible to hear the heartbeat.  We also held a model of a 20 week old baby and it is huge! I'm not 20 weeks yet, I have about 10 more days. But still.  It's amazing that a tiny human almost that big is in there. Needless to say, there was no cat in there. I think we can all breathe a sigh of relief. ;)  Ultrasound is scheduled for the 13th! I've been in a lot of pain today and they are testing my urine to see if I might have a bladder infection.  I was actually in tears twice today and pretty much have been lying around all day trying not to move, because almost everything hurts to do besides lie still or sit still.  The Midwife said it very well could just be ligament pain from stretching...if so, then please help me God because it hurts so ...

I seriously thought about getting on the "Thankful" bandwagon for the month of November, but honestly I don't think I could remember to do something every day. I mean I FEEL thankful every single day, but I probably wouldn't remember to write it down. So here is something I am thankful for. I am thankful for being useful, to other people and (I hope) to God. I live a pretty sheltered life, I stay home most of the time since I work here, I don't interact with too many people outside of my family on a regular basis.  But just in the last couple of days I have made an impact on a stranger's life and an old friend's life and it is just very cool that God can still use me in these ways, right where I am. A person that read my blog said that because of my blog and God working in her heart she and her husband had decided to be open to foster care (rather than just adoption only).  I think that is really awesome. Foster care is putting your heart on the line e...

This first one might be TMI but it is really funny. Miss M said she needed to "potty", which almost always means she needs to poop.  So we went to the bathroom and I helped her get on the potty. She finally finished her business and was getting back off and I farted, I mean really really loud (I blame it on the baby).  She looked at me and said (with a concerned look on her face) "Need to go potty, Mommy?" I burst out laughing and I'm still laughing about it - so hilarious!  Nope, just gas...lots of it I'm sad to say! Brian was watching football and a commercial for a washing machine came on. The way they filmed the commercial made it look like two people were on their bed which was inside the washing machine. C was rather scandalized. "Why are those people in the washing machine?" Me: (one of those not-real-well-though-out answers): "Maybe they needed to get clean." Him: "They need to get clean in the shower!" Yes, that is ...