i wanted you more than you will ever know...

ugh. you're not gonna believe this.
my cousin has recently announced that she's pregnant for the 4th time and it's actually pretty exciting for me. she told me last year that her oldest son, who was moments from making his arrival at the alter at my wedding, told her "you're going to have a girl and you're going to name her cara, with a "c"." so i wasn't surprised to hear they were pregnant again this year.
and she had mentioned that she is already showing, but let's face it. it's her 4th. not THAT big of a surprise. but then yesterday they went to the doctor and the tech said "you're going to have two!" then my cousin said "and what's this spot down here?" uuuummmm....that would be the 3rd!!!
that means she is going to go from 3 kids to 6 kids. SIX KIDS! SIX! 1-2-3-4-5-6!!!!!!!!!
how in the heck is she pregnant with triplets? no drugs. not really trying trying. like charting trying. i guess when i think about "trying" it involves pee sticks and timing and charts and temperatures and doing it just right on the right day and holding your breath and your legs together for the next two weeks so to my knowledge they weren't "trying" and yet....triplets are on their way?! i'm happy for her but HOW is this humanly possible for this to just hApPeN????
*sigh* stupid ovaries. or eggs. or cysts. or gene mutation. or whatever it is exactly that keeps me from conceiving. not that we're "trying" anymore...i'm still way too tired for all that business!

congrats merry & sammy!! i don't say that lightly. love you guys!

and as i waited for the picture on this post to load i heard a *clunk* come from above me. the room karyssa is supposed to be sleeping in. i ran up there to see what mischief she had found and she's laying in bed. huffing and puffing. no sign of mischief other than a drawer pulled out and all the contents crumpled around. so i kissed her good night and went to pull away and she hugged me so tight. we do this thing where i don't pull away and i let her hug me as long as she wants or needs to. then after she had been hugging me for so long i was crying and wondering if someone was going to come looking for me i whispered my favorite line from my favorite children's book: "i wanted you more than you will ever know." she poked at my tears for a while then rolled over to milk the love for all it was worth by lifting her jammies for a back scratch. *snicker* i love that little girl more than she will ever know, no matter how she came to become my daughter.

WHO left me in charge?

today i called my sister on the brink. since we have decided to buy the flip-flop house and not the fix-up house karyssa has been asking to wear underpants again. but she still choses to poop in her pants instead of on the potty even if she's given the opportunity to use the potty 5 minutes before pooping in her pants. it makes me so angry. and i'm not doing well hiding it anymore. so today with poop in her swimsuit i had to drag her into the bathroom and then try to salvage her swimsuit. when it's underpants i throw them away. her brand new swimsuit-i can't do it. this is when i decided i needed to talk to someone who's been down this road before and come out with a potty trained child, girl preferably. we got to talking about when karyssa decided to go back into pants and it really was when we took her to the flip-flop house and told her we were going to buy that house instead of the "blue house". and missy (my sister) said "well, didn't they smoke pot in the blue house?"


"........um. yes. yes they did." with out sharing too much information on karyssa's case, trying to think how to say this tactfully, ........she has smelled pot smoke before and it wasn't in a happy time in her life. there. that's the best way i can think of saying it. and smell is the strongest sense for memories. so everytime we went in that house karyssa's insides froze. and now i feel like the biggest doof for not putting the pieces together quicker. there's no WAY we could have bought that house and had karyssa have any sense of security. i told paul what me and missy put together...ok...what missy put together and we both felt awful that we didn't think of it.

somehow we forget she has a past. in our minds she's ours and she always has been. and i think because so many people tell us "she doesn't remember" or "she was too young" or "it's been too long" that we believe them. but what we have to remember is WE are her parents and WE know she does remember, she's not too young, and forever won't be long enough for her to forget where she comes from. the other night when i was putting her to bed i gave her a hug and whispered "you're my best friend." and she hugged me extra EXTRA long. it's times like that i realize she does get it and she does know where she's come from and what we mean.

and a little part of me gets a little mad at her birth parents for not taking better care of my baby before she came to us.

We HaVe A dAtE!!!!!

i've had a lot on my mind the last couple days since wednesday we decided to put an offer in on the flip-flop house and yesterday we came to agreement and are offically under contract. i am so excited and i'm a bit surprised at myself because we so weren't fans of that house the first time we looked at it. i think it's because i had my heart SO set on the fix-up house. but then with the sewer backing up and going back in there and feeling it's delapidatedness and thinking of all that work and all of our savings depleted the math just didn't add up no matter how hard we tried to force it.
we started questioning ourselves the other night after seeing both houses and i said "if we got the flip-flop house, would we ever look at the fix-up house and wonder what could have been?" we both like the idea of the sweat equity but both firmly answered ourselves with "no." and if we got the fix-up house i think we always would have said "i wonder how much money we would have now if we had bought the flip-flop house." and the math only ends up to be about $150 more. which is odd and amazing considering what we would be giving up for that $150 savings a month.
this morning asher woke up with a tiny cry at 5:30 and then paul's alarm went off and i woke up thinking "what color should we paint asher's room?" heehee. right now it's bright red. santa red. and it has closet rods all the way around the 12' x 12' room. and the closet is all shelves, which is actually pretty usable since he has about 3 things that i hang up and no dresser. BUT the red has got to go. we love that color-our kitchen in florida is currently that color but for a baby's bedroom it's a bit angry. we'll need to take down the clothes rods and patch in the holes and primer it and then....green? vibrant green or calm green? or brown? khaki or chocolate? or blue? slate or baby? but then the foster bedroom is a slate blue color and i LOVE it. our friends brian & christina have a slate blue kitchen and it is the most beautiful color of blue. seriously both paul and i have loved that color since we saw their kitchen and it's the closest i've ever seen to that color since. so it will not change one iota. and karyssa's room is already a pale lavender color which is exactly what we wanted. purple means royalty. which she is. and green means healing, blue means peace and brown means stabilizing but also a lazy person and repressed personality. um...i think brown is out.
and the best part is we don't have to wait months and months for a bank to decide our fate. i am so excited.

in cute kid news: they have been doing the cutest things lately i just have to share. on wednesday i took karyssa to see "how to train your dragon" and numerous times i had to remind karyssa we weren't the only ones in the theater as she was standing in her chair with both fists in the air screaming "WOOHOO!" or "THEY'RE FLYING!! MOMMY!! THEY'RE FLYING!!" and "HE DID IT!!" each at the top of her lungs. but seriously how do you not find joy in that. adorable. love that baby girl. she had so much fun she cried all the way home. last night we went to sears to return a microwave that we had gotten in preparation for the fix-up house and karyssa saw the theater door again. she has a CRAZY memory map in her head. and she began to sob all over again. we went in, did our business and came out and again she recognized where we were and started crying all over again. she is so funny!! here she is in her seat at the theater.

asher is getting so smart. when paul puts his shoes on asher goes to the shoe basket and picks out his shoes. not any random shoes-HIS shoes-and takes them to paul to put on him so he can go with him. aaaaaawweee! he LOVES his daddy. and i mean LOVES him. he's been squealing lately and it is so loud it makes my ears ring. i have sensitive ears anyway but with him squealing all afternoon OMG! i can't handle it. he gets a finger thump on the head but i'm not sure he's connecting "every time i squeal i get thumped on the head" because it's not enough to hurt him, just enough to surprise him out of squealing. love those babies.

and here's just a cute one of the little man doing what the little man does:

craptastic!!

the plot thickens with this dang house issue.
our realtor called and said the other realtor called her and told her to do an amend/extend changing the sales price and submit it to the bank. aaaaaaaaand...fyi...the kids (adult kids) went back to the house to get some of the last few items left and the sewer had backed up into the basement.
ok-there are a lot of puns for this but my automatic first response was "are you $h!++!ng me?!" seriously what else can go wrong with this house? and do we want to stick around and find out?
so we scheduled a 2nd showing for the flip-flop house for 5:30 and decided to go look at the sewer damage afterwards since the houses are 2 streets apart.
at 4:40 i'm doing the dishes and asher walks in from playing in the kiddie pool on the front porch with sand in his armpit. or is it dirt..wait...what's on his hand? then it hit me. oh gawd please be dirt! oh no, you guessed it. poop! and not his own poop! i've mentioned we gave up on potty training...well poop still happens and now that she knows what it feels like when it's coming she can target practice better than before when she wore diapers. UGH! UGH! UGH!
into the tub they went at 4:45!!!!! at 5:10 when i'm lotioning and potioning them up and drying their hair and trying to wash all the baby oil out of their hair AGAIN (i have to add tons of baby oil to their baths because of asher's eczema) it hit me: i've gotta have dinner ready for the minute we get back or the kids will go bonkers hungry! or we could pick up carry out. ugh! but the dining budget is so tight i can't stand having to cook over the weekend. so down to the kitchen i went and put empenadas in the oven with the timer thing. man that timer thing saves my life at least once a week. then out the door we hussled with snack cups and sippy cups and baby oil slicked hair. who cares? i figured she could just go with the fresh-out-of-the-tub look this time.
somehow we made it at 5:22.
and somehow this time i liked the house. i don't know. it may be because i've had months, literally 3 at this point, to get used to the first house that maybe i just couldn't make the house flip-flop in my head. paul met us there and looked again to see what our harley options are and he feels like we have a little more hope than he felt the other day when we looked at it. and the whole house radio was still playing, and still makes me giggle, but hey-i could listen to slacker and steve every afternoon while i make dinner. that's not all bad. maybe we could upgrade it someday. soooooo all this to say after a total crap filled day maybe we have found our future home. time will tell. i'm in no hurry to do anything tonight, er, uh, this morning, but clearly i can't sleep. it's 12:19am and i'm watching the videos i took of the house and looking at maps and over analyzing as only i do best. well, my friend jill is the best over analyzer i've ever met but i'm coming a close 2nd on all this house shopping business.

the house situation. the foster world. and other misc crap on my mind.

sooooo the house saga continues. we went to look at this other house that is the EXACT same house as the one we love and want to buy. it's just the flip-flopped version of it.
it's a really nice house. she's done some nice upgrades.
and then there's other parts about it that are.....well....just not things we would do. they aren't bad things. there's a whole house radio that she had set to light jazz while we where there. and it's the old 70's kind. i have no idea how it's still working but it is. like standing in an elevator for 30-45 minutes. there are speakers ALL over the house. the front porch, the back porch, every bathroom, the hallway, her bedroom...i mean all the heck over the house. and the wood floors that she laid down are pergo-ish kind of floors. very nice. wilsonart i think the listing called them. but we are more real hardwood kind of people. the kitchen is impeccable. spotless. clean white cabinets. we like a little bit of color. and the thing is everything is very nice-no point in replacing any of it. it's gonna be perfect. for someone else. and it may still be perfect for us. the only problem is we have a harley, a pick up truck and now the volvo wagon. (say volvo in a snobby voice.) and there's a cement pad in the back corner of the yard, on the opposite side from the garage, so it's not like we could pull the harley around the garage...we'd have to pull it around the other side of the house...it just doesn't work. and it's not on a corner lot so we would lose a lot of yard. a LOT of yard. and we need that space to make the harley work since the garage is too tight.
so...going back to the first house...there are a couple different loan options, neither of which lend themselves to making the fixes and the payment reasonable enough to justify it.
and i just keep thinking i want to be excited about it. why spend all of our savings and buy a house we're not excited about? this is the only time in our lives that we are gonna have this big of a wad of cash to put towards a house. i want it to be right!!!
anyway-enough about things in life that don't matter.
the foster world is sucking mud. they say it's "in the best interest of the child" but the need a caveat of "if the budget allows."
all the decisions in boulder county are being made based on the almighty dollar. and you would be hard pressed to find a foster mom that wouldn't give up the monthly stipend, the whole whopping $300 to spend willy nilly however you need {roll eyes}, if it meant their foster child could stay with them and be safe than to go to a birth parent or family member who has no idea or abilities to care for them. i don't care how thick they sayings say blood is. the love of a foster parent is far stronger than that blood. the same blood that allowed that child to get in harms way. they cannot take a child away from birth family unless they are in danger of death. which means the people these kids are coming from have put them so far out into harms way that they could have died. it is illegal for them to take them for anything less. and yet they are the same people the county fights to put the kids back with.
the boys we had in february are being split up. i've been sick to my stomach when i think about it ever since i got the email. apparently they have different birth dads. so instead of leaving them together in the loving foster home that they have with all the stability and therapies in place that they need to be successful in life they are going to rip one boy out and leave the other boy in the foster home. unless they can find some deadbeat that's blood related and then by god they might as well rip him out of his security too. they don't even split up dogs at the humane society when they are "brothers" how can they do this to real live human children? how are they not a package deal. and i just think back when they transitioned from our house to their new foster home and how i promised, the case worker for the boys promised, the case worker for me promised that they would always stay together because they are brothers and nobody would ever split them up.
oh except for the same people that made that promise because we found your sperm donor. give me a fucking break. i'm so pissed i just want to stand up and scream but who would listen? who can i scream at? he's the biological dad-he's blood. that must make him qualified. right? nevermind the fact that he has so many other children that this will be overwhelming to even the most educated, level-headed parent.
and then there's my friend who has been watching her foster daughter for months even though she went back to her #1 birth mom over a year ago. social services decided to close the case and the other day lovebug's mom called and said she was taking her to stay with her sister for the summer. hours away where she'll have no other support, not that she has any here, but at least lovebug has somewhere to go when her mom is unable to function for months at a time.
how can it be that all of these babies are left to fend for themselves in their best interest. that's what WE are here for. that's why there ARE foster parents out there. and i get it, there are some crappy foster parents. there are some real scary people out there. but the foster parents i have met are not those people. and maybe somewhere in boulder county there is a deadbeat foster parent, but they don't come to support groups. they aren't in my circle or any of my foster-friends circles because none of us have met them. i know fostering pays good money. when i left my real estate career i bumped into a woman from my old office. and either she thought i made pennies for pay or she thinks fostering is a lucrative business but she said "and it's about the same pay right?" i was so shocked. my mind said "or an eighth of it...something like that." but i really said "oh no! fostering doesn't pay that much."
anyway-i've derailed.
all of this to say if you pray please pray for miracles for lovebug and our foster boys.
i do realize how blessed we are that we were able to go all the way through to adoption with both of our children. it brings tears to my eyes in 2 ways...one: that we are so blessed and i do not, even for a day, take that for granted. and two: for my foster friends still in the roller coaster. my thoughts are with you continually.

work with me or shove it!

overnight a house came into our price range that is the EXACT same house but flip flopped in the EXACT same neighborhood with nice siding, yard, flooring, kitchen, etc etc etc just quiiiiite a bit more. it's still in our price range, technically but it's at the VERY top.
after talking to the lender and looking at pics and mulling it over last night paul and i are ready to move on.
i think blogging about it helped me sort out exactly the facts. it's not that we're throwing in the towel completely on the first house, but heck, if there's another option out there in our price range why not consider it.
i know i won't get back the inspection money or the appraisal money but i'd rather lose $1,000 to find out it's the wrong house than $200,000 and still have all those problems on my plate.
i'm biting my nails and waiting for our realtor to call us back to see how quickly we can see this 2nd house.
i've fallen in love before, i can fall in love again.

dammit! studies show cussing is good for your heart.

so i mentioned that we're buying a house. aaaaaaaand we hit a snag. it's not that the house reeks so bad of pot that i have to keep the kids in the back yard, or the fact that the front porch has a crack in it 4 inches deep that runs the entire length of the porch, or the fact that the radon came in just over what is acceptable, or the fact that the basement bedroom seems to be inhabited by an amazon woman with a fetish for cfm heels and finds no need to put away the jug of vaseline she seems to store on her bed, or the fact that the carpet in the entire house has to be replaced because of nasty cats. i hate cats. i don't mind other people's cats but as far as i'm concerned i will never say "my cat" in this lifetime. or the fact that the hvac needs a total upgrade, or the fact that the kitchen is on its last leg. seriously-i'm starting to wonder what, exactly, it is about this house that makes us want to move in tomorrow.
but the real reason why we've hit a snag is because it says on the sellers property disclosure that there was something with the sewer in 2010 so when the inspector suggested we get a separate sewer inspection we did it. but they couldn't get through the pipe. hmmm. curious. the sellers have to have the pipe cleaned out so we can do it again. that means $215 for the first scope, $130 for the cleanout, and $165 for the first guy to come back and rescope it. grrrrr! now i'm pissed. if nothing else, at least take care of your own poop for crying out loud.
i found someone else to clean it out for $125 AND scope it for $125. way cheaper than the other option. today he came and cleaned it out and got a little further than the first guy buuut still can't get through.
ps-the pipes are the old clay pipes. which means where the sidewalk has been marked to replace this week because of sinking is probably exactly where the pipes seem to have a blockage. aka-crushed. so the water, i think, is still following the cavity where the pipe used to be. it's still getting out to the street but not the right way.
that made us go inside and ask the grown son who lives there what happened to that sewer thing on the disclosure? this is what we were told: "we had this huge party and the next morning we woke up and a cast iron pipe had burst in the basement and there was sewage spewing into the basement." seriously?? so i clarified home owner's insurance covered it? "no...we had to have these people come in and chemically wash it down and replace the carpet and everything."
i have all kinds of theories of what's happened between there and here but that's a whole 'nother blog post.
needless to say our closing for next friday is off. i've called everyone to notify them to hold off until we know further. but this is almost a deal breaker for me. i'm fine with it. i'm bummed. i'm hoping it's still gonna come together...but the light that was at the end of my tunnel for getting into the house and having all the extra space etc is now sooooooooo much further away i can hardly think about it. and my new neighbor, whom i lovingly call foghorn, gets louder by the day.

rounding the corner....d'oh!

this morning karyssa came running past me "potty...mom...potty!" i said "great! let me know when you're done and you can have some candy." then she went into the bathroom and i heard a tinkle tinkle tinkle. i walked in to help her wipe only to find her dora seat on the toilet and her standing next to it tinkling on the floor. and it was her first morning pee-let me tell you that tiny thing can hold some pee!!! *sigh* good thing i'm taking my new stance of potty-training-can-wait.
neither one of us have said anything about the candy but i'm letting her enjoy a cup of coffee with me. i put about a tablespoon of decaf in her little toy mug.

the familiar feeling of loss

i know what some of you are thinking. where did she go? she was blogging every day and now she's gone again!
well...i've been busy.
we are buying a house. after 3 years of living in the same place (longer than we've lived anywhere in our married life) we're ready to buy a house and put down, *gasp* dare i say it, roots!
after looking and looking for months we found a house we loved. we put an offer in and it's a short sale. we waited FOREVER for the lender to sign off. they finally came back and so began our inspection and appraisal and paperwork and then another inspection for the sewer. i farmed the kids out to friends and spent 3 hours at the inspection but it went longer than we planned. i decided to go pick up karyssa to let her spend some time in the house to help her get used to the idea and understand what all the packing and boxes meant. um. turns out that was a mistake. she's been potty trained since we had the boys here this february...until...friday when i took her over to the house and showed her what room will be hers and explained. we thought she understood because she asks to drive "by house" or "buy house" every time we're on that side of town but now i'm wondering if she truly understood what we meant.
to karyssa, this place is home. it's safe. it's what she knows. and i kind of suspect she still remembers where she lived before she came here. and i'm not sure if she's in a panic about what the new house means. i explain to her that mommy and daddy and asher are coming too. and she adds "patuh?" (tatum, the dog.) yes, tatum is coming too. i pack boxes where she can see me. i've taken down our pictures. i talk about when we're in the new house and we can get a wading pool and a swing set....but i think for her moving into the new house is a loss of everything familiar all over again. when she came to us, even though our house was "better" than what she'd been in it was a new place, new bed, new room, new parents, new rules, new foods, new smells, and in all that new was a loss for her. much like people who lose everything in a fire, for her it was a loss of her place, a loss of her bed, a loss of her room, a loss of her parents, a loss of the rules she knew, a loss of smells she knew. *sigh* needless to say she's been peeing and pooping in her pants consistently since friday. poor baby. asher couldn't care less. if he thinks all 4 of us are together at taco bell we're home. not karyssa. she gets it. she's older and she's experienced this kind of major change before.
we've had talks about potty training, where to go, what the move will mean etc but i am going to just put her back into diapers and let her know it's ok to take a break from potty training. it's not forever, we'll get back to task after we get into the house and get unpacked and it's our new familiar. in the meantime i have to remember that for karyssa this feeling is not a new one but it doesn't make it any less scary to expect the feeling of loss.