Feelings

I can't be the only woman on the planet that struggles with guilt. Or am I? 

First of all, I love my husband and my son very much.  I am finding it very difficult to manage work, home and relationships.  I feel overwhelmed with guilt because I can't make it all work.  Do I want to work - yes, Do I want to have a strong marriage - yes, Do I want to have a beautiful well rounded child - yes.  I just don't seem to be able to do all three.  I have changed. I knew it was going to happen but I don't think others in my life did.  There are things I find important that Matt doesn't.  I worry about everything, he worries about nothing. It is hard to find a common ground right now.  I feel alone.   Like I am on a stranded island.  I don't feel depressed.  I feel misunderstood and most of all I am finding it hard to find the "right" words to express how I feel.  It seems that no matter how I word something it isn't understood.  And if I try to explain something, for some reason it is taken seriously until I am upset about it. I am barely treading water right now.  I have to remember so many things for so many people and I am about to break.  Oh, of course everyone can say "no you don't, stop feeling like you have to be perfect etc." but realistically, if I forget something or do something wrong the world will come to an end.  Think about it...my job is to monitor things for another person right?  so if I forget something there I am screwed.  I have to remember things for Kellen and if I don't then someone will be irritated, whether it is Matt or Daycare.  Then I have a very intelligent husband who is amazing at what he does but he is very forgetful (both Jason and Mom have witnessed this as they have lived with us and witnessed how many times he has left his wallet at home etc.) I have to constantly be on the watch for his "stuff" - papers, wallet, keys, medicine, eye drops, etc. he doesn't ask me to do this but if I don't he will spent tons of time trying to find this stuff.  Now, I am not complaining about it, I am just saying I have done it for 9 years and this year it is much more difficult because having a baby has made me scatter brained (I never thought this was going to happen to me but it did). I don't regret it - I just wish Matt understood that every woman goes through this.  It isn't just me.  I don't feel supported right now.  I also have absolutely no energy by 8 pm.  I have to stay up late to get laundry done or do what I couldn't get done before Kellen went to bed. For example, staying up until 5 am to put the Christmas tree up for Matt & Kellen.  I wasn't going to do it, but out of fear of being labeled a Grinch or stealing my sons first real Christmas away by not decorating - I felt compelled to do it.  Did I WANT to stay up that late?  Hell no.  I wanted to go to bed at 2.  I don't get much sleep and rarely get to sleep in.  But I did it.  I don't really know if it was appreciated or not I just know that I was told by several people I was crazy for doing it. But tell me, how I would have ever gotten it done while Kellen was awake?  It would have NEVER happened.  It took 8 hours to get all the crap out, go through it, decorate and put it back.

Here is another thing that bothers me - when Kellen gets hurt who ever is around says "get used to it, he is a boy" - I am sorry but I do not accept that.  As a parent it is MY JOB and YOUR JOB to watch your kid and prevent injuries, granted you cannot prevent them all but by God, if you are standing there and you see a possible hazard you better step to it and prevent it. Not doing so is NEGLIGENT. Also when you become a parent your thought process needs to change because everything could be a danger.  Every decision you make should be prefaced with - how can I be safe about this?  DO NOT EVER SAY TO ME - get used to it he is a boy.  That is pure BS.  Yes, they are rough, play harder than girls and seem to be very curious and daring but getting used to my Kid getting hurt is NEVER going to happen.  That is like saying - oh I saw little Johnny getting the crap beat out of them but it happens all the time so I am not going to do anything because I am used to seeing it.  Seriously....boys feel pain just like girls.  Little boys also need to know that they can trust their parents (DADS too) when something happens to them.  They need to know their parents care enough about them to keep them safe.  I do not believe I can keep him from ever getting hurt but he will know I care because when he does get hurt I will pick him up, tell him he is ok and that it will be ok.  I will also never tell my child, oh you got hurt that is what you deserve for not listening - because that is crap too.  If they put themselves in danger - your job is to protect them from getting hurt!!!  No wonder so many MEN in this country are jacked up.  Their parents just said "oh well you are a boy you just get to be hurt because boys get hurt more often than girls"  or treat them like their pain doesn't matter.  Good grief, a strong man is a man who can admit and be honest about his feelings without fear of being made fun of etc and I will go to hell and back to raise Kellen to be that kind of MAN!  His pain matters, his feelings matter and I want him to trust me to always make the best decision for him!  It is hard but I will.

I refuse to be a lazy parent!  I will keep doing the hard things because it is the right thing to do by my child.  I don't want him to ever have to feel the way I felt or the way my brothers felt when we were little kids.

The thing I love about daycare....

... walking in to pick Kellen up after a long day.  I pull up, walk in and walk down the hall to his classroom.  I peek through the window to see what he is doing before he sees me.  I watch him for about 5 minutes as he plays on the floor with various things; books, cups, blocks, etc. Lately he is crawling around to the different play stations trying to decide what he wants to do.  Once I have soaked up enough of his cuteness to make me feel like the luckiest person on the planet, I walk in very slowly.  I stand at the door for a few seconds and call his name "Kellen-ator!".  Everyday, he follows the same reaction routine in which he turns toward my voice, stops what he is doing, looks up at me for a couple seconds and then screams with the biggest smile on his face.  I used to walk over and pick him up but  now that he can crawl he speeds over to me and reaches for me to pick him up.  I look into his eyes and say "Hi Buddy- did you have a good day?" - and kiss him repeatedly on his cheeks until he screams again.  I then say "let's go see daddy" and he shakes his arms and screams "heyyyyyyyyy".

Love could not be more perfect than this.

My kid knows he is loved from the minute his daddy wakes him  up to get ready in the morning to the minute I lay him down to sleep at night.

Bliss.

The Best Video Ever

Puke!

I am going to talk about puke today. Puke is one of those things that up until now, I could never talk about. It is on a list of things I would plug my ears instantly if someone started to talk about it. In fact, if i was sick and I puked, I would whisper it to someone to tell them what was wrong with me, as if it was a "dirty" word! In my world...it was. Why? Because I have the gag reflex of an 8 month old apparently. At this point, you might be asking yourself why I decided to blog about it then?

Because in the words of Faith Hill "A Baby Changes EVERYTHING!"

Am I comfortable talking about it? Um, no. This is an exercise in "practice makes comfortable"...sort of. Ever seen "What About Bob?" Baby steps man, baby steps.

I am sure no one really cares but there are two things that I am really proud of myself for:

1 - I don't gag when K gags.
2 - I spent an entire night covered in K's 8 month old puke and didn't gag or puke myself.

Huge accomplishments for me.

K gags whenever you put something new in his mouth. He will gag once, eat it, gag a 2nd time, eat it and then...not gag again. It never fails. When we went to Reno to see my amazing Aunt Sharrie get married, he displayed this behavior more than once. Poor Uncle Jim was so graceful and helpful by attempting to come to the rescue with towels and napkins and was shocked to see that the child who made the loud barfing sound was smiling with a little frosting on his face, or a little rice puff in his mouth. We told everyone, don't worry he does that anytime you give him something new. Mixed veggies - gag, Blueberries & banana - Gag, Peaches - gag, you name it - gag!

A couple years ago, if I even heard someone else gag, I would puke. I have no idea why, but hearing someone else gag makes me hurl! My brother Jason has been reduced to tears of hysteria watching me get sick because of hearing/seeing someone else gag. Now...I just laugh and say "you are so cute". Warning - if I am friends with you and we are hanging out and you gag and my response is to bust out laughing, I am really really sorry! Hey - it's better than something like this pie eating scene in Stand By Me - happening.

On another note, I survived an entire night being puked on by the miracle baby. I don't know how, but I didn't get sick once. It has always been a fear of mine to have a child and not be able to take care of him/her when sick. I proved I can do it, I think. This time it was only puke. Not sure how or if I can handle it coming from both ends or not. That is an entirely different issue, but like I said "baby steps"!

Enough about puke - here are some adorable pictures of the baby, that will not make anyone gag:

Miracles Do Happen

You can see from my previous post that on April 8, Kellen was taken from us. We were devastated and were not sure how to continue living a normal life. We tried to hide our grief the best we could, mostly because we were tired of everyone feeling sorry for us and we sort of felt like a burden to everyone we know. As the weeks passed, it got easier but was immensely painful. The emotional pain manifested itself to physical pain that I could only manage by working out with a personal trainer. Little did I know what was in store.

K was returned to us on May 17th. Long story short - the birth dad didn't show up to 3 of 4 hearings and even though the DNA test was positive, he didn't establish paternity with the court. Once Kellen was returned to us the birth dad had 30 days to appeal, and he did not. We finalized our adoption on June 17!

Kellen is FOREVER ours!

I have been putting off updating my blog until the adoption was final. Once it was final I had a desire to update but wasn't sure what I wanted to start with. The conclusion I have come to is, first and foremost, I need to give credit to the God I believe in, and immeasurable thanks to those who prayed for, thought about and lifted us up during the most difficult time of our entire lives.

Two years ago I had a conversation with a dear friend & mentor of mine - this is a woman who I want to be like as a mother, a professional and a wife. The conversation was about having a testimony and how I began to pray for a testimony.

I have been a Christian my entire life. I believe in God, I believe in the trinity, and I believe in Jesus - as the savior. I have always believed because I have had personal experiences & circumstances throughout my entire life in which God has revealed himself to me. Over the years I have heard people just say I am spoiled or I am lucky because things just work out for me. Trust me - I am not lucky if you knew the circumstances in which I grew up and the things I endured as a child, you would never say I am lucky. What I do have though are many years of hand written journals that prove this - there is not a single prayer I have prayed that has not been answered. Those answered prayers are great for me - but those prayers never really had a profound impact on others. I prayed for wisdom to make better decisions and to have knowledge to be successful. I have prayed for circumstances in our friends, families and co-workers lives over the years and all those prayers have been answered so far. But - I still felt like something was missing and I could never put my finger on it.

One day I had a revelation: I was missing that thing that made my life itself a testimony worthy of such an amazing God. I have seen many people completely transformed by God - Hellions turned to Saints - working to show people the love of Christ, when all they used to do in the past was hurt people and commit crimes. These people had the "it" thing I was missing. Their conversion to Christianity profoundly changed them and they became a living example of what Christ can do. I just never felt like my life had a profound effect on others.

Kellen is my testimony. Kellen is Matt's testimony. Kellen is a miracle. There is no other explanation for how I made it through the last two years. I spent hours in the Bible, hours praying for strength, hours praying for patience, hours praying for clarity of mind, hours praying for my office and the people I work with, hours praying for my husband, hours praying for my unborn child, hours praying for God to cover our finances and keep us from harm, I devoted time to trying to learn the things I needed to change about me, I walked this valley with every possible weight on my shoulders that I could think of and there were times I just knew I couldn't go on any longer. I busted out the worship music, stomped on the devil's head and low and behold God held me up and I kept on going. I stumbled and I fell, God picked me up and we repeated this cycle many many times (sometimes it was God putting the right people in my life at the right times) but I never stopped believing something was going to happen and this would all end. When it did, God's glory would be revealed to a lot of people.

Once Kellen was taken from us, I didn't think we would get him back, but I thought something else would happen that would eventually lead to a bigger reveal. My left brain and right brain were fighting constantly - I was exhausted and was in a deep dark place that I believe may have lead to insanity. One day I felt like God spoke to my heart - just stop. Stop it all; stop trying, stop praying, stop reading your bible, stop journal-ing and try to just hear me. I quit cold turkey! It was hard because this went against everything I knew. Guess what - three days later, we got the call the Kellen was coming home. I continued this practice of stopping, which seems strange right?! Stop praying? Who does that, well - ME.

God was trying to tell me my relationship was not supposed to be based on working so hard. I should just have faith. I had all the knowledge a person needs to apply biblical principles to their life. What I lacked, just pure unadulterated faith. My faith was small - it just didn't seem Kellen would be returned, after every thing we went through it just did not seem like it was ever going to work out. Oh ye of little faith - that was me. But - the bible says in Mathew 7:7 "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you." the only stipulation is - YOU ACTUALLY HAVE TO HAVE FAITH IN GOD. Many people pray and say God "prove to me you exist by doing...(insert prayer here)." God is saying, "I don't have to prove to you I exist, I just do - let me answer your prayers - just believe that I can & will." Once I finally learned this...I reached my Gilgal, and God worked his miracle.

This is not a "how to get what you want from God instruction post" - it is just a testimony that God is there and when you believe him he does what he says he will do.

While I believe God made this happen, like I said earlier, I cannot thank everyone who prayed for us the numbers are far to large.

I do want to thank Milah for sending me a mothers day card - of all days this day was horrible for me. For years, the one thing I wanted more than anything was to be a mom and experience mothers day. Her card, probably saved my life. It may seem like lip service to say that, but the loss I felt was excruciating and as terrible as this is to admit, thoughts of taking my life occurred on more than one occasion. Until now, I felt too ashamed to admit it. But what I have learned is, with all things in life, someone, somewhere is experiencing their own difficulties but just maybe I can help that someone by telling my story.

Kellen was taken from us on April 8. He went back to his birthmother. We gave her everything we had that was his. He is our son, we wanted him to have his stuff. The car seat, the bases, the Pack n Play, ALL of his clothes, bottles, sippy cups, unopened boxes of diapers etc. Everything we had for our son, went. The birth mom picked him up that day at noon.

Matt and I are both trying to deal with this and he has been gone for almost a month. Kellen will be 6 months old on 5/11. It is heartbreaking coming home to an empty house every night. It is very dificult to grasp because one minute he is here and literally in 24 hours he was gone. After 5 months. Can you even imagine how you would feel if all of a sudden your child - whether new born or tween was all of a sudden gone. The closest thing we can relate it to is a kidnapping. Someone took our child and we don't know this person, we have no idea who is caring for him, what the families are like etc. We not only miss him terribly but we worry about if he is being cared for, abused neglected etc.

It is amazing the things people say to you when you experience a loss. Some people don't say anything at all and avoid you comletely, as if we need something else to worry about (why is this person mad at me, what did I do etc. etc.) Avoidance does not feel like support or like we are being given space. Avoidance feels like the person doesn't care at all. At times like this, you really find out who your friends truly are.

I am finding it very difficult to express myself. Part of it is one minute I am ok, the next I am not. I think I am going insane because I am so indecisive. I want to be ok, I want to "look on the bright sight" but come on, for 7 years I have waited for a child to come into my life and he finally did after an excrutiatingy painfu process. The amount of relief we felt when we finally brought our child home was euphoric. 1 month out of four we really got to enjoy our little man. Then we found out the birthdad was not dead and hell continued.

Kellen was starting to have distinct preferences. He reached for me, he would cry out for us, he would love being held, loved to cuddle and just play with our hands and faces. He was laughing and starting to become more than just a cute little new born. He didn't like being hot, he liked to lay on the floor and watch the fan, he liked watching Big Big World and Dragontails. He loved his jumperoo and would laugh and play for a long while and then fall asleep standing up. He is just GONE.

I miss his face, his sile, his tough, his smell. I miss feeling like i was protecting him from the harsh world, praying for him and just knowing God would never be so cruel as to take that away.

Mothers day is this weekend. This holiday has been hard for me over the last 7 years. I am pretty much the only person left in my entire circle of family and friends who now, does not have a baby. There is only 1 couple I know that is childless and they will, most likely have a baby in the next year. Most people aim for that 3-5 year range and in september it will be their 4th year. I am patiently waiting for the news that they are pregnant.

When you don't have a child, and you want one, there is a void that is just to unexplainable to describe. You can't relate it to much. You try but most people who have kids, get pregnant by accident or by planning it and it just happening. There is no frame of reference for most people. Most peole want to win the lottery. I could not care less about the lottery. I just want a child to raise. I want to raise them according to God's standards and teach him/her all the amazing things in life.

I realize I am rambling. I miss my son. I want my baby back and I want the pain to stop.

There just is not a bright side to this. It doesnt exist right now.

For Me and My Faith

"And I will do whatever you ask in my name so that the son may bring glory to the father. You may ask me for anything in my name and I will do it." John 13-14

"Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up." Galatians 6:9

"Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of Joy" Psalm 126:5

"Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer believe that you have received it and it will be yours." Mark 11:24

"...As you help us with our prayers. Then many will give thanks on our behalf for the gracious favor granted us in answer to the prayers of many." 2 Corinthians 1:11

"If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish and It will be given to you. This is to my father's glory, that you bear much fruit showing yourselves to be my disciples." John 15: 7-8

" I will give you the treasures of darkness, riches stored in secret places, so that you may know I am the Lord, God of Isreal, who summons you by name." Isaiah 45:3