on a more serious note....

sorry to all my bloggie friends for not updating more. i'll just be painfully honest in this post and those that get offended can get over it because it's my blog and it was meant to be my therapy.

i've gotten more pregnancy announcements than i can handle lately. i know. you're thinking "you've got two kids. get over it." shut up. you've clearly never dealt with infertility to the point of adoption so you can just shove it or open your mind to what i might be going through. even though "i've got two kids" doesn't mean i won't mourn the loss of the kids that have paul's genes. or never fearing the dreaded 18th birthday when birth families can come back into the picture. i don't know what to expect with our birth family so it's hard not to think as soon as the kids turn 18 they are moving back in with their birth families never to be heard from again. it's totally their choice. and it's a hard fact to face day after day knowing that if they chose that we're left, once again, childless. not that i know anyone who was adopted that did that...it's just my imagination going wild.

that being said, we are beyond humbled that we get to adopt these children and raise them as our own. they are more like us than their birth families sometimes. we got to meet with our birth dad last week. he told us he's not such a fan of camping. which made me giggle a little bit inside because normally people that like to camp have kids that hate to camp and then their grandkids love to camp. it seems the love of camping skips a generation. so i'm thrilled to know our birth dad doesn't like it. because let me tell you, his kids do. when i pull out the camping gear sweet pea SQUEALS with delight. this last weekend we went camping with our extended family and both kids smiled the whole time.

so...i kinda glossed over that little part where we met with our birth dad. *sigh* it was the most intense hour of my life. i cried. he cried. i cried some more. he cried again. paul just sat real quiet. (that's his version of crying.) but we explained a little bit more about ourselves. i explained that we can't have kids of our own so his kids are it for us. and he said shockingly "why?!" and i just explained "they don't really know. a little of this...a little of that. not real sure." it was interesting to me that he can't imagine why anyone CAN'T get pregnant since it seems to happen when he breathes in the general direction of our birth mom. let's hope he stops breathing on her because we have a little house.

there are days where i have a REALLY good attitude about infertility. but there's days where it still kicks me when i'm down and i can barely pretend to be nice. i'm sure pregnant friends expect a huge congratulations, and i'm terribly sorry i don't have it in me. but i don't. so please don't expect it. also don't expect that i don't want to be friends anymore. that's not the case. but for the next 9 months i won't be looking at your stomach. for some reason i'm still really excited when the babies come and they are out. but i just can't rejoice at the pregnant part. maybe i know too many people with emotionally painful pregnancies that it's hard to rejoice when it's just a pregnancy and not a real live baby. i've known women to lose pregnancies in the 40th week. so to be excited before it's a real live baby is hard for me. i don't know.

this post is sort of a heart-barfing post. there's just so much to update you on and they are so intertwined it's hard to post about adoption without the infertility.

as far as our case goes...it seems like it's all happening so fast i can hardly post fast enough. it feels like all these months of visits and documenting and doctor appointments and court dates and all of a sudden there's no more. no more visits, no more court dates, no more documentation of behaviors. there are still evaluations and therapies but that's a drop in the bucket compared to all the other appointments we've been up against. and then the emotional *whew* of it all being over with. our hearts ache for our birth dad and at this point we will not get to keep contact with him and that's very hard for me and paul. we understand the kids need separation but it doesn't make it any easier for us to know they will have that separation.

i guess there's no good way to wrap up this post. it's so random. but there's what's on my heart. sorry if you're offended. well, honestly, no i'm not.