This past weekend we went to a wedding in my hometown. My brother and his wife still live there. She is due in 2 weeks to have their second child- a little girl. My sister in law is one of those impossibly nauseating pregnant people. You know the ones that I am talking about. She looks amazing and about 6 months pregnant, not due-soon pregnant. The kind where she will probably walk home in her pre-pregnancy jeans. I have to admit that I am slightly jealous. I was the huge kind of pregnancy where I waddled along and puffed up with so much water I was almost unrecognizable! Anyway, we got to see the nursery for our niece. So adorable. Then we got to see the little outfits for her to come home in. Oh my goodness. They were impossibly tiny! Itty bitty pants and a onesie with flowers on them. Have you recently looked at a size 1 diaper? It could fit a doll! I am so excited for my niece to get here!

I have to admit though, seeing all of the little things make my heart long for our own babies. It was a bittersweet moment. I am beyond the moon for my brother and his wife, but it also made the ache inside of me for our kids worse. We will not be able to see our children so tiny and new. We may not know what their circumstances are. Their mom's do not have beautiful nurseries all ready with adorable baby things laid out for them, just waiting for them to come into this world. Something horrible is going to happen to them, and to their family. That is the thing about adoption that we don't think about enough. We will be blessed by them, but somebody has more hurt than we can possibly imagine that will lead them to give up their child.

Being "next" on the list has been very hard. I have all the questions of why it has been so long and we have not had our referrals. I know there are so many children in need, so why is it taking so long? Everyday is a day with anticipation and hoping to receive our referral. Every night that passes ends with a little bit of sadness that we didn't recieve them yet. People continue to move forward with adoptions from our country. I get the updates on those who have just finished their homestudy, or filed some govt. papework of some sort. And still we stay in a holding position. I think that my level of anxiety would be way less if we knew that we were on the list but not next. Next carries so much weight with it. I follow other blogs where people post the number they are as they move down through the waiting list. We have no where to move. I know people may say for me to quit whining, that next isn't bad, it is where everyone wants to be. And you are so right. But the pressure is a lot. Next means that the very next babies are ours if we so choose. And yet, they have not come. I don't know the reason. And that is hard too. It makes my mind have all sorts of questions. I wonder if the country is going to shut down (there is NO evidence for this at all, but I panic anyways), maybe God doesn't want us to adopt and so we are not receiving our referrals- Although, we really felt the call to adopt.

It does help to see families still moving forward in our program. To see their excitement helps me remember that this should be an exciting time. That I cannot let fear and worry overcome my life. I am fighting it. Most of the time I do fairly well. But seeing all of the brand new baby things got me thinking, and that can be a dangerous thing! I don't know how other families cope with the wait and all of the questions. But they must do it too. Just like I must do it, and I will.

Three and a half months

The title pretty much sums it up- three and half months waiting. Sigh.

Craziness

Here is a look into the next week or so in my life:

Yesterday I helped a friend get ready for a garage sale. Today I was helping at the garage sale. Tonight we have to drive 1 1/2 hours to meet with our financial advisor for our yearly check-up. I am not thrilled about going for several reasons. 1. the distance 2. the stock market tanked this week 3. they are preaching gloom and doom because more people have asked for unemployment this month than any other time in the past 6 months. Fun. We should get home about 10 tonight. Tomorrow the kids and I get to go into work with Chris because his company party is tomorrow afternoon, so we have to spend half a day in the metro killing time, after which we have to drive 4 hours to go to a wedding and a school reunion on Saturday. Sunday we drive 4 hours back. Monday I have a meeting at 10. In the afternoon I have to go and get all my garage sale stuff that didn't sell. Wednesday I have a kick off meeting for our community mother's group. Thursday I have two Bead for Life Parties. Friday I am going to IKEA with a friend. Saturday we have to drive to Iowa for a wedding. Sunday we drive back. Monday I have to go and get my kids from their grandparents. Just when I thought August would be relaxing, I am looking at quite possibly, the two busiest weeks of summer. Wouldn't it be amazing if amongst all the craziness our referrals came in?

Mac n' Cheese forever

Why is it that no matter how good of a cook you are, or all the options of food in this world, my kids will enevitably ask for mac n' cheese? I consider myself a decent cook. I try to find new recipes and make yummy things and go out on a limb. I can't really create things from scratch very well, but I can follow a recipe like an expert. With all of the different things I have made, and believe me, there have been a lot, my children's favorite food is mac n' cheese. You know when you go to the well child checkups and your kids are old enough to answer for themselves so the doctors ask them the questions? I am half in dread of what they are going to say, and half in awe of the things they come up with. Both my daughter and my son responded that they love mac n' cheese more than anything. Of course it makes me think that the doctor thinks I am the worst mom in the world because my kids love overprocessed, orange food, loaded with butter and calories. I always feel the need to have my kids say the other thing they like too so the doctor can see that I, in fact, do serve them well-balanced meals. My kids think that our babies are going to love mac n' cheese. They are trying to decide if they will like the regular mac n' cheese better, or the kind that is shaped like sea shells. I told them that they probably will be too young for mac n' cheese when they come home, but when they got bigger it would be okay. I can't even imagine what they are going to think about it. Or most of our foods for that matter. They are probably eating cornmeal mush and beans. That is what the kids in the Ugandan orphanage mostly ate. Our American food options are going to rock their world. What an adjustment to make. When we were at the orphanage we brought jolly ranchers for the kids. They kept taking it out of their mouth and looking at it in wonder and then putting it back in. They even let the younger children have some. The mother in me panicked to see 18 month olds with hard jolly ranchers. It will be interesting to see how our children respond to the meals we have; especially if our children are older and used to eating solid foods already. If I am totally honest, I like mac n' cheese too. Definitely not as much as my children do. When I was little my mom made it without the butter and we loved it. Then I grew up, and because we never put the butter in when I was young, by golly, I was going to put the butter in as an adult. Oh man, it became totally different. Different in that delicious-but-way-worse-for-you kind of way. If you haven't put the butter in yet, DON'T! You will never go back to cooking it without butter!

Baby Clothes

I have done so well with my resolution to not buy anything for our children until we received our referrals and knew about how big they are. Then my friend decided to have a garage sale. This particular friend has twin little girls, and the cutest dressed boy you ever saw. Talk about double trouble. Can you imagine the most adorable outfits ever, then double it and have two in different colors? That's what I am talking about. I guess I technically didn't break my resolution because she was wonderful and gave them all to me. What a blessing. I have a range of sizes from 6-9 months up to 2 years. I figure there is a good chance that they will fit somewhere in that spectrum. I brought them home and showed my hubby, who oohed and aahed over them almost as much as I did. Super fun to see him react like that.

Still no news about our referrals. I really do feel like my patience has gotten better waiting though. I think that I had to move through the stages of waiting. The first month I obsessively checked my email a million times a day. Even into the second month. The third month came and went. I have to admit I did deal with feelings of despair that it was never going to happen. And I occasionally feel that way now. However, I seem to be managing it much better. I am not sure what happened to make me change in my thinking. But, I am going to roll with it. It has to happen at some time (God willing), and when it does I will be ready. The kids are still very impatient. They keep saying the cutest things like, when I grow out of these shoes my brother can have them. And talking about how there will be 6 of us at the supper table. And how we won't be able to take the little car anywhere because we can't all fit in it together once they are home. They are very excited for their brother and sister to come home. They pretty much talk about them on and off throughout the day. Ava understands that it could be a very long time, but Owen is having a little more trouble with it. He doesn't understand why we just don't go over now and get them. When we traveled to Africa this past January he thought we were going to get them then. Cute, but so hard to explain to a three year old. Once they are home they will be two of the most loved kids ever. I can't wait to see how Ava and Owen love up on them.

So the Bead for Life party ROCKED! I was thrilled with all of the women that showed up and supported this organization. We had an awesome night trying on the paper jewelry and just hanging out. Perfect girl time, which every girl needs, especially this girl because it helps me focus on something not adoption related. My hand-mopped floor looked amazing until someone spilled juice on it. I probably should have known that this was going to happen and not mopped in the first place. Oh well. Live and learn. (Plus it really needed it.)

One of my friends that stopped by made the comment that her daughter wants to redo her room. My crazy decorating internal alarm went off. Funny that her daughter was thinking hot pink or perhaps lime green. Hmmmm. Exactly the colors of my daughter's room. The Dilemma: Ava's room is downstairs. Which doesn't really sound like a dilemma until I admit that we are less OCD with the organization down there. So. Do I take her downstairs so she can see that the illusion of cleanliness upstairs is false, or show her anyways because she needs inspiration? I opted for taking her, along with 4 others downstairs. Perhaps you are not like me, perhaps you are uber organized and have everything in its place at all times. God bless you. (And I really do mean that.) Deep down inside of me I want to be that person. Problem is, I don't know how to get that person out. Hubby keeps saying that part of the process of getting ready for the babies is thoroughly cleaning and sorting out all the things (read junk) downstairs. Of course, a huge part of the problem downstairs is Hubby's fault. We have tools and camping equipment and hunting gear up the wazoo. What I probably should do is just buy a bunch of those organizing shelves and drawers and sing like Mary Poppens and everything will go back into place. Wouldn't that be amazing?! The problem with that scenario, aside from items magically moving, is that organization stuff is expensive. Prohibitively expensive given the quantities needed to make our downstairs look organized. Plus, where all of the aforementioned gear is stored is where we need to build another bedroom. So it doesn't really make sense to make it all spiffy, just to have to take it out again and knock out part of a wall to put a window in and all the other stuff that goes along with building things.

The good news is my friend is having a garage sale this weekend, where hopefully I will be able to unload a bunch of stuff that we once thought necessary but now is just taking up space and collecting dust. This should be freeing. I have already started this process with both of my kids to pair down all of the things we own that are unnecessary, and that has gone okay with them. Of course, it is always much harder to do this with yourself. I never really thought of myself as attached to things or clothes, but I am finding it a little bit harder then I thought it would be to get rid of things that we don't use/need.

Would absolutely love it if anyone out there has any great ideas for organizing/cleaning/facing all of the "stuff". It really has been so much easier just to ignore it every time we go down there. Now it's time to buck up and deal with it. I know I will feel better afterwards. It's just that the process in getting to the end is so painful!

Cleaning

Tonight is my first bead party for the non-profit Bead for Life. So yesterday, I spent almost all day cleaning. The kind of cleaning where you could then eat off the floor. Normally I would not go to such great lengths of that kind. However, the local priest saw my Ugandan bead fundraiser when a friend posted it on her facebook site. He then wondered if I would be willing to have it posted in their bulletin. I was super pumped. It is exciting to see a community get excited over something like this! Especially considering I do not attend that church, but he was willing to cross through denominations and post something in their bulletin. That I am excited about even more. Anyway, considering that I have the potential for complete strangers coming to my home, I thought perhaps I should up the anty. Of course, I can't remember the last time I mopped my floor with an actual mop and not the swiffer I normally use. The swiffer almost feels like cheating, because I don't think it gets it as clean as a regular mop. Well, I couldn't find the mop, and my swiffer cleaning juice was all gone. So I got a bucket and a rag and got down on my knees and mopped the kitchen AND the bathroom floor. Does anybody do that anymore? I didn't even clean my floor that well when we had our home study and I was certain that we would be denied for something that I overlooked! I woke up this morning with a fairly sore back. Apparently mopping=good workout. (Mopping like that is not for the faint of heart. You will see things on that floor that you would not imagine!) For the rest of today, I have to figure out what to do with my kids so they don't make the house a disaster. Normally I would put them outside, but the humidity is crazy here lately, and the mosquitoes will drive you bonkers. Usually they start to die down around this time of the year, but it has been so wet our grass hasn't even turned brown, so we grow fresh mosquito crops weekly. Good thing we have a couple of "Go Diego Go" movies. Even my daughter will watch them if that is the only choice. We haven't watched tv in 7 years, but the kids do get to watch movies. It is the perfect day for that.