Year in review...sort of

This past year has been completely, totally insane.  A year ago I could never ever have imagined my life to be where it is right now.

One year ago we were pretty sure the boys would be going home. Miss M was living with her old foster mother and spending 3 nights per week with bio mom, D was spending 3 nights per week with bio mom, and we were told the little boys would begin over nights at any time.  They all 4 spent the night with their bio mom on Christmas Eve.  The plan was that the kids would most likely be home by March or shortly after.

Needless to say, things changed and the case rapidly deteriorated.  In March the state filed for termination but the judge allowed a delay in the hearing, so it was delayed ...and delayed again and then again. In April Miss M began transitioning to living here with us, and in May she moved in with us as an adoptive placement.  In May also bio mom abruptly decided to stop all visits; the children have not seen her since that time.  In June she relinquished, in July bio dad was terminated on.

In January I set a new PR for the 1/2 marathon, in May I broke it again by 8 minutes with my best 1/2 marathon time ever (2:04:11 I think).  I set a goal to complete a 50K (31 miles) in October, and to try again to break 2 hours for the half marathon in September.  Brian completed a 1/2 Ironman.  At some point over the summer we hired our first employee for our business, and I also decided to go back to school.  I was running hard and working out like a crazy lady, getting up by 5 a.m. most mornings to run and/or do boot camp, until in July I started to feel bad.  I pushed through it, and finally August 1 I took a pregnancy test. It was positive, my first positive test ever in my life.  Needless to say our worlds were completely rocked.

In November we found out we were expecting a baby boy. December 1 the four children were adopted.

I began the year as a mother to none; I have ended the year as a mother to 4 and one on the way.  I figured an adoption would happen....at some point in our lives.  We were not expecting it this year at all, we were CERTAINLY never expecting to get pregnant.  So very, very strange the way things work out sometimes!

Looking forward to the new year there are a lot of changes coming down the pike.  Of course we are expecting our baby boy to make an appearance sometime in early April, which will change our lives dramatically as we learn how to parent a newborn.  Sometime over the summer we plan to move about an hour away from where we live now, D will start high school in August in a new school district, C will start kindergarten, and I will most likely be staying home with all the little ones after we move too.  Pray for my sanity.  My brother's first day working for us is Monday and he will take over some of my duties for our business.  Also we are going to rent an office, so no more office in our house (yay!).

I have fallen off the Bible-reading bandwagon since I got pregnant. Not gonna lie. I am having a hard time getting up early, I am just so tired.  But honestly that should be no excuse, it's not like I can't find 20 minutes at some point in the day to do that, right? So I am going to try to do better this year.

Another thing that I sort of blame on my pregnancy is that everything and everyone is making me crazy. Seriously.  My children especially are driving me nutso!  It's terrible.  I need much, much more patience and I need to work on being kind.  I am already sleep deprived, I still have 3 more months to go (Lord willing) and then when the baby is born I don't anticipate getting much more sleep than I do now, at least not for a while. I just can't fall back asleep when I wake up to pee, which I do at least 3 times a night most nights.  If I take a nap during the day then it's even worse.  Baby likes to wake up with me and do summersaults while I try to fall back asleep.  So anyway, it's not anybody's fault really, and I need to do better at dealing with it.  And see, this attitude problem I have might be related to the lack of Bible reading, so perhaps the two will take care of themselves. Wouldn't that be convenient!

So that is that, I suppose. A crazy and very blessed year gone by, a crazy year coming up...maybe 2014 will be a little more calm. I know, fat chance, but a girl can hope!

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  2. I feel like my life has so many things that are mirroring yours. We took two pre-adoptive kids and two days later we found out we were pregnant.

    Right now I struggle so much because when I pick them up from daycare is the time of the day that I get morning sickness. So I associate the sick feeling with the two kids. It is awful, but that is what my heart does when I see them.

    I would love to know how you told your four kids about the new baby. Did you wait until after the adoption went through? How did they react to the news?

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    1. We told our oldest once we found out that we were expecting. He wasn't too thrilled, but he just doesn't like little kids that much and he is kind of overrun by little kids as it is so I couldn't really blame him for that.

      We had told the little ones that we were going to Disney World in November (before we knew I was pregnant), and at one point they started asking questions about it. We had decided not to go because I couldn't ride rides and plus not being sure how I'd be feeling, traipsing around the park with 4 kids might not be very much fun. So at any rate, when they started asking about "When are we going to go on the airplane" and stuff we told them. We wanted to wait to make sure I wasn't going to miscarry before we told them since they wouldn't have been able to understand.

      I feel like the little ones are excited, at least the boys are. I'm not sure how much Miss M understands. The boys rub my tummy and sometimes ask questions about the baby, or talk about how they are going to play with the baby or teach him things. They know he will be their brother. I'm afraid when they see him they might be confused since he will be white, so there might be lots of questions come April. But all we can do is take it a day at a time I guess!

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  3. It might be more calm just because you shouldn't have too many unexpected life-changing events. The adoption is finalized, boy is on the way, and hopefully, a little larger home will lessen the craziness of the daily routine? Really proud of you--just hope you can get some rest.

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