allergies suck the life out of me

this last week paul was gone with his harley friends and i took the kids....let me rephrase that....tried to take the kids to a potluck our church did. i love our little church. there are SO many quirky people and we are even quirkier so we sort of blend in. it's refreshing. and bonus almost every family has someone adopted if not multiple someones. this was not why we chose that church, nor why we stay, it's just a bonus. i was exhausted. i picked up a couple bags of fruit because i did not even have the energy to open a bag of chips let alone MAKE something. no sooner did we get there that i remembered why i hate potlucks. peanuts. everything delicious has peanuts, or some for of nut, it in. salads. desserts. sides. desserts. and did i mention desserts? and if it doesn't have peanuts it's got eggs. damn that little hold-it-together-and-make-it-cakey ingredient of eggs. every time i turned around asher was drinking from someone else's cup. some one else who, in my allergy-mom mind, had just eaten one of the amazing looking peanut chocolate chip cookies. at one point he was hovering over someone's plate full of cakes and cookies (made with eggs) and about to put a fistful of straight up peanuts in his mouth when i leaped over 2 lawn chairs and a woman in a wheelchair only to realize he was just looking down into a pack-n-play at a baby. seriously. i couldn't take anymore. i packed up the kids with out much goodbyes because, frankly, i was on the verge of tears. i kept up appearances as long as possible and then walking to my car with a friend i burst into sobs. how much i would LOVE to flag down the ice cream man with out having to read the labels of every thing in his freezer only to pay $3 for the ice pop i already have inside. or to post a picture of my son eating the same gooey nutty ice cream treat with his cousins. or to go to the store and just buy a loaf of bread. just buy it. not check to see if it's got nuts in it, if it was processed in a facility that also processes nuts, if it was processed in a facility that also processes things that also process things that might have come in contact with something else that might process things that process nuts. *sigh* it scares the daylights out of me to think he's going to preschool this year and the school nurse knows (because i've already met her and become face to face friends with her) that i am to be the LAST person she calls if he even touches a peanut. she is to epipen him immediately, call 911 then the president, her husband for all i care, ANYONE that has medical training and me dead last. i was watching the little couple on tlc because aside from a&e it's the only channel i watch and jen/jenn/jennifer was buying a loaf of bread and she picked it up and said "this looks good. let's get this." and put it in her cart. just like that. she just put it. in. her. cart. ????!!!!???? who does that?! oh wait. EVERYONE ELSE BUT ME!!!!! ugh!!!!!! it's just not fair. a niece asked me "why does asher have allergies?" and i said "i don't know." seriously. i have NO idea why someone's immune system must strike them dead because they ate a natural food that came straight out of the ground. no preservatives. no chemicals. just a freaking nut. when we're in the grocery store he walks around pointing to everything that has nuts. except when his little 3 year old mouth says it it sounds more like this: "that has penis in it. that's got penis. i can't have penis mommy. i not eat that because it has penis." to which i reiterate for every stranger around who might mistake that i actually try to feed my kid penis that "nope, that's right...you don't eat that because it has PEANUTS in it. that's right buddy." we sound like some weird after school special. next month i have a referral to a national allergist because baby brother, who we refer to as coach, also has allergies. at 4 months. he's not even on rice freaking cereal and we're on our way to the allergist. i'm so scared. i hope he just has the same and not more or more intense allergies than asher. my poor bugs.

reality of open adoption

this week karyssa had testing for kindergarten placement and when the teacher gave me the form she said "ya know, it's no big deal but karyssa didn't know her last name..." and i said "oh, that's kind of on purpose...i sort of thought she understood her last name but i really haven't TAUGHT her that so she won't repeat it when we're with her birth family." and then the teacher went on to say "but she did know her address!" "CRAP! really?!" that's worse than knowing her last name!!!! *sigh* in other news: karyssa and asher have a baby brother! he joined us in mid-april. he's amazingly cute and has karyssa's toes and looks so much like asher. we love him more and more every day. i just kiss him and tell him how much i love him all the time. like all. the. time. peaknuckle's case continues to move in the direction of adoption so for mother's day i got a necklace with all 4 of their birthstones. my husband comes from a very name-it-claim-it kind of church and when we first met i had a hard time with it but i joke that i'm working on my name-it-claim-it. so, yes, i do have 4 kids, thank you very much. life is crazy and yet complete with all 4 of them here. it's funny having irish twins (two babies born in the same calendar year) until you have to run errands and have 7 complete strangers ask you for the dirty details in one day. i've tried everything from "i have a magic uterus" to "truth really is stranger than fiction" but nothing seems to curb the questions. so lately i've just started saying "we adopt." and try to leave it at that. life is good. the kids are better. we feel very very blessed and know that as high as our mountaintop is, getting to love on all these babies at once, is as far high as our birth parents low is right now having to make the tough decisions on what they want to do next. we'll keep you posted and hopefully get to post adoption pictures soon.

the beat goes on

peaknuckle has grown so much since my last post. she's so beautiful. with every new day or development comes the excitement of "i got to see this first!" with a twinge of "she's missing this!" i look at this beautiful baby and my heart dances and aches all at once. i'm honored that i get to be the person that gets to see her day in and day out and even through the night. we have little dates where she just looks at me and even though the lights are off and it's just the light of the moon from her bedroom window i can see she's looking up at me admiring ME. and even though i close my eyes and half way fall asleep, when i open them again, she's looking right at me. when we make eye contact she smiles, through her bottles, even at 2am. she seems to have no concept of time in that regard. all she knows is, she feels a pang of hunger, she cries, i come and feed her. sometimes on weekends daddy comes in, but for the majority, it's a date with me that she gets. she kicks her feet in the morning and her arms go straight as boards when i walk in the room. it's me she longs for. it's me she misses when i leave the room. it's me. i'm her mom. she knows nothing else. i want to hug her birth mom and say "it's alright. she's doing great." and at the same time i just want her to know someday she's going to know to miss you. she's going to want to know who you are and where she comes from. please take care of yourself. even though today she doesn't need you, she will someday. she will because we will want that for her. we will want her to want for you, and that's ok. she's not "chosing sides" or "picking teams." it takes a village, so they say. and it does. and that's ok that you can't be her entire village. but please! don't fall off the planet just yet. *sigh* it's strange this foster-birth-family relationship. it's sort of an arranged marriage. they don't know when they call you how long you are being asked to check in for duty. but we say yes (almost) every single time. but then the day comes when you realize you've forgotten what life was like before this tiny person came in. and then you realize, you can't imagine what it i will be like if this tiny person ever isn't in your daily life. i try not to think of that day. i try to imagine adoption day, or her graduation day, or the day that it finally clicks what adoption is. the other day karyssa was throwing a FIT because i asked her to clean her room and she said she was "so tired." and it hit me, i have just asked her to clean a space bigger than what her entire family lived in. she has a room. of her own! and it's a big room. and she has no idea what her fate would have been had she not been found by social services. had the nurses at the doctors office not realized her growth charts had taken a backwards turn and she had lost 4 pounds when she was between 10 and 13 months old. and if her birth mom hadn't made a snide remark to the nurses that they'd called the wrong county, giving them jurisdiction to call OUR county. where we were waiting! waiting for her! my mind spins thinking of the teeny tiny what-if's that happened as our lives flowed parallel and in opposite directions at once. as i trained for my third half marathon and ran right past the house that she would come home from the hospital in. as i ran down the creek, past her uncles house that would be on all the paperwork i would get for her 13 months after that half marathon. as my heart ached for a baby, as her mother's ached for her youth. i don't blame her mother. how could i hate the mother of my children? how could i hate this person who has given me everything doctors couldn't, and then gave me a brother to go along with karyssa. i don't know that i could ever find a cold place for her in my heart since i look in my babies faces and wonder what life was like before them. and then i realize i get that all over again. a third time. i get to wonder what life was like, in a good way, before this baby came home to us. and i hope and i pray she goes no where. although that's how it looks today, monday's coming and the tides could change. but for today, i will look in her adoring eyes and be thankful for the young lost birth mom who has given me one of the 3 greatest gifts life will give me. and i will hope someday i will not need a passenger van.