Hives

Nothing makes a long wait longer than a case of hives.  I have now had hives for 6 weeks.  Not only do they look gross, they won't go away and itch to boot.

After finally going to the doctor on Friday it appears I am severely allergic to dust, mold, and grass. As I am awaiting a referral to the allergist I guess I will just go out and dig a hole in the ground since that is the only place I can think of that does not contain dust, mold or grass.

I don't get allergies.  For 36 years, I had no allergies then poof all of the sudden while driving up I-81 I am now allergic to three different sources of which I have been exposed to virtually all day, everyday since forever.  How does that happen?!?

Be Still

Breath in, breath out

To go or not to go?

Well yesterday turned around almost as soon as I finished my post!  My wonderful husband called to let me know he was on his way home having used a floating holiday to spend the rest of the day with me.

We went to AAA to price out and begin the preliminary planning for a trip to England this spring. Now, we have been together for almost 11 years and I feel like we have talked about traveling to Europe for about 10 of them!  But financially something always came up...grad school for me...getting married...buying a house...second degree for him...adoption.   We have been a single income family for 3 of the last four years while JT was in school and have become budgeting ninjas. So now we have the money; however, time is now in limbo.

What if we plan our trip and get a match between now and then?  We asked the agent about travel insurance and after some digging, including calling the actual insurers, discovered that our situation would not be covered.  After researching some more it appears that even air travel specifically for international adoption is not insured.   Which certainly provides perspective for our little optional vacation plan!

The hotel accommodations and tours can be canceled up through April 1 (we are currently looking at a trip that would take place over my spring break), but we would be out the cost of the flight--yikes! But if you think about it we have done so much the "right way" when it comes to building our family and we continue to wait day after day with no end in sight.  Who knows, maybe, it's time to throw caution to the wind and just go for it!

Winter Doldrums

Blue Monday is allegedly the most depressing day of the year and it happens to fall on the third Monday of January...yep, that would be today.  This date is apparently based on a mathematical algorithm that has no research to back it up.  But you got to admit--January kind of sucks.  The days are short and cold.  Last week we didn't see the sun for days on end (ok like 4 days, but it felt like longer).  I am currently suffering from chronic hives (have been since before Christmas) and for the first time in my life feel like I don't have a sense of direction.

Now on this Blue Monday I am off from school, the sun is shining, and the weather is 63 and sunny.

Let's think of things I could have done on this beautiful day:

• Could have started toward my goal of running 300 miles in 2015
• Could have cleaned our house
• Could have done the laundry
• Could have done one of the DIY Pins I have on Pinterest
• Could have finished the book I started reading a while ago
• Could have delivered some of the adoption cards we had made
• Could have called a friend to go have lunch
• Could have given the dogs a bath

However, instead I did nothing.  To celebrate this blue Monday it is almost 2:00 in the afternoon and I am wearing my blue nightgown, blue sweat pants and blue bathrobe telling myself "I am going to watch just one more episode of Friends" before I take a shower.  

You know what though, I am doing my best not to feel guilty about it.  I spent the first 35 years of my life working toward goal after goal (career, marriage, personal goals, etc.) and if things go the way we hope, I will get to spend at least the next 18 years being someone's mom.  So instead of feeling guilty about my day of slacker, maybe I just need to revel in it, because maybe (hopefully) my days of selfish indulgence are coming to an end.

Water Breaks

I posted my lamenting yesterday on two of the message boards I visit. This response from Ruth74 really struck a chord with me:

"One of my the things that helped me was giving myself permission to NOT be patient. Sometimes, I think patience is actually overrated. Internal temper tantrums are okay. I had my share of external temper tantrums as well - the key is figuring out when, where, and with whom to have them. I did all sorts of different, and sometimes contradictory, things to get me through. I nested: set up a nursery, bought baby stuff on clearance, read books. I reveled in child free living: went to Israel with my synagogue, took long walks by myself, ate nachos for dinner. I hid away all the baby stuff I’d collected: took down the crib, boxed up clothes, moved things out of the house. I did everything people suggested and everything people told me I shouldn’t, and both were helpful at some times and hurt me at others. I talked to my rabbi, talked to my mom, prayed, reached out to friends, and asked people not to talk about it. There were times I enjoyed other people’s kids and times I avoided them.

Give yourself permission to do whatever you need to at any given time, even if other people don’t get it. Remember that this is more like a distance race than a sprint, and your water stops may look different than others’, but it’s you who they will sustain."

elizmusicmaker chimed in with another value nugget of perspective:

"Faith is really important to me, too, and I think God would rather us come to Him honestly with all the hurt we feel, than stay away until our emotions are “pretty.” Throw that tantrum, and be real."

Between supportive responses such as these, prayer, some meditation on a Pinterest search entitled "patience", and day of being a slug at home with my best friend (who I am lucky enough to be married to!) I am feeling infinitely better today. This water break was just what I needed to move onto the next leg of the journey.

Impatience

I posted this on the adoption message board:

We got our fourth monthly status update from our agency yesterday. The purpose is to check to make sure our info and preferences are the same and to let us know whether or not they need more profiles (we had sent 50 initially-they have yet to need more).

We have friends gong through the same agency who are getting their 14th month status update so I feel terrible on days like this when I am impatient for OUR turn when they have been waiting so much longer. In fact, the wife and I had been doing about monthly dinners to commiserate about IF/waiting to become parents and even though it's my turn to try to schedule one I have been putting it off because I will feel bad griping when they have been waiting so much longer.

We have our list of things to do which is something to keep myself occupied to a degree. My faith has actually strengthened through our IF and now adoption journey so prayer and bible study help too. Most of the time I am at peace, but there are days like today that I throw an internal temper tantrum wanting to know why everyone gets to be a mama but me (which my brain knows is NOT true).

That is all.

Seeking Support

This past summer our school leadership team was asked to take the Myers Briggs Personality Test as a part of a set of team building exercises.  If you have never done this it can be pretty interesting as all of the members of the leadership team (as well as the handful of friends and family I conned into taking it as well) could absolutely relate with their results.  What I found most intriguing about my results was that I was 1% more extroverted than I was introverted...I'm an ambivert.  Yep, it's a real thing (even if spell check doesn't recognize it, YouTube does--see above).

So when I'm seeking support on this (seemingly never ending) journey, sometimes I want to reach out to others and other times I just want time to myself to scour the internet for some form of a sign reflect.

As I mentioned before I have some friends who are dealing with their own IF battles.  Some of them are on a break and are focusing on other aspects of their life.  One is playing the adoption waiting game too. With everyone just kind of hanging out for the moment, there's not a whole lot of fodder for conversation on this front.

As a result, at this point when I am in the mood to seek out others, blogs and message boards are a great source of support.  I had been on theBump (stage three of The Knot trilogy) when we first began TTC and then had trouble TTC so it seemed natural that when we began the adoption process I jumped on over to their adoption board.

Adoptive Families is another great resource that has various message boards including one for those of us waiting for a domestic infant adoption.  Both boards are full of supportive, informative women who are happy to share information on any topic, be a shoulder to "cry" on, or a sounding board when you need to vent.

Both boards have a good number of members, but neither board is hugely active as I assume, like us, when you're waiting there's not a whole of new things to share each day.

I am avid reader, so blogs have been another great source of support.  What I love about these is that you know right when there's a happy ending right from the start.  These are the ones I will spend hours going back in time and reading the journey from beginning to end (football season has provided great background noise for this new found past time:).  My current favorite is:

http://rebekahpinchback.blogspot.com/

Living in a metropolitan area there are support groups for each of the stages of our journey, but I have yet to take that step.  There is a church in the south part of town that has an adoption ministry and a women's group that meets once a month.  So far my list of excuses reasons for not attending to this point is that  the October topic was on parenting a foster child, I forgot about the November meeting until after it passed, December was December, and tonight it is too cold.  Maybe next month:).