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.

'tis better to have loved and lost....so they say

we have had all kinds of kids live with us in these last few years and it's been amazing. and challenging. some kids come and we can't WAIT for them to go home (teasing...sort of) and we've had others that left too soon. we've had some come when we just couldn't ride the roller coaster of foster care and i felt we couldn't advocate for them the way they needed to be. that was right after we finalized adoptions for karyssa and asher. and we've even had some come that we know will be for a very short time and every time we love them more than we expected and then when they go there's a hole left in our hearts for a while. although the hole never fully disappears it heals up somewhat and we're ready for another go around. but 3 weeks ago today a beautiful baby came into this world. she came to a mother who loves her very much but isn't prepared just yet to do this. i don't know if she will be ready in time or if we will get to keep this little peaknuckle forever. we hope for mom. hope that she is able to overcome what life has dealt her and be the mom peaknuckle needs. but man my heart is breaking because although one side of my heart is pulling for mom, the other side is desperately hoping she lets us do this for her. that's a big request and if it weren't for having our 2 and understanding the connection that is there, yet lost. it IS better to have loved and lost than to get to adopt her down the road and wish i would have loved her more when she was newborn. but it makes everything in me shake with fear that i'm allowing myself to do this once again. i have said over and over for the last couple years "2 is a glorious number. i'm perfectly happy if we never have another." and now i'm faced with this teeny tiny face and she looks at me with such adoration and trust and i don't know how i'm going to make it if she goes home. but i know i would regret it more if i didn't love her with everything i have for the time i get to love her.

big dude

can't say much. as usual. but last week we started getting all these calls. homeless sisters. a 3 year old girl. we said yes to some, we said no to some. the ones we said yes to ended up going to a family they'd lived with before. and then in the middle of monday night crafty night we got a call that went like this "ok, you're going to think i'm crazy but just listen." long story short, we agreed to take a 15 year old boy. he got here, and of course had a different name than we were told. when he walked in with the case worker we said (with dogs jumping all over him) i hope you like dogs! to which the case worker replied "want a 3rd?" turns out our 15 year old has a 17 year old dog that has gone everywhere with him. so...we also have a new dog. right now she's living at our next door neighbors house. they are college kids with no kids and love dogs, so they were awesome to do it until saturday when we can get her vaccinated and move her in with us. but in the meantime she's safe and big dude can see her whenever he wants. turns out, no matter how old boys get they're still tender 5 year old boys on the inside. and he's a lefty just like asher.

a post from karyssa

samy etwymtjywyjtjwytywejmwqmeqwytweyyetywwemmweqjweyejyqeeeeeeeeq77mqqwtmjyjwjwejuekwjhje jhwjjeh dbfhe44hgf4hf g 5 hty45h5tyt3gdgfgnhttmuyuytmyjytm not sure how she got in here and did this in the time it took me to wipe asher's poopy bottom and get him a celebratory marshmellow (potty training treat)...but she did so i had to post.