Tag: Becoming Human

Very Belated Mother’s Day Post

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I had meant to write something in honor of my second Mother’s Day but I never got around to it. I’m feeling more relaxed at the moment so I thought I would give it another try and update you on my current state of Motherhood.

I never thought that I would end up being a Stay-At-Home Mom. I don’t have the personality for it. I didn’t think I would be good at it. You know the type of Mom’s who just instinctively know how to relate to children and genuinely enjoys their company; who is good at cooking and crafts and whose house is always clean. I am not that person. I never even really liked kids that much. I thought I would be bored at home. I like working outside the home and conversing with other adults. We had planned that Jon would be a Stay-At-Home Dad and I would work. Plans changed.

I’m glad to say that my ideas of me being a SAHM have dramatically changed too. I think I am a great mom and I love it. There is nothing better in life than the way your child looks at you. I love that I can give my daughter the stability and routine of being home with her. I love that I can play, teach, comfort and watch her learn on a daily basis. I love the way she lights up when I come in to the room and how she giggles at me.

I’m am truly one of the most blessed mothers in the world. I have a stable home to raise my children in, with a husband who is involved and has the same parenting style as me. During our Homestudy we were asked what we disagree on in parenting and we couldn’t think of anything… except for getting Livi’s ears pierced. I think I might have done that if Jon didn’t mind 🙂 That’s it! In two years we’ve only sort of disagreed on one thing when it comes to Livi! That is unheard of! Every once in a while my mom is struck in awe of how involved Jon is. She never had the support of a husband or father for her children. Jon puts Livi to bed nearly every night, feeds her, changes her diapers, holds her late at night if she’s had a nightmare and takes joy in family days! I don’t know what it is like to not have that support as a mother and I hope I never have to find out.

I am very thankful this Mother’s day. I am thankful for the fantastic child I have been blessed with. I am thankful for an involved, supportive, hard working husband who makes being a mother easy. I’m thankful for being able to stay at home with my daughter to give her stability and routine and not having to work outside the home. I’m thankful that being a good mom has come so naturally to me. I thought I’d have to work at it a lot harder. I’m thankful for my life not being what I expected it to be. I’m thankful for the opportunity to expand my family and the hope I have for our future.

Speaking of the future I don’t think it would be an appropriate Mother’s Day post with out updating you on my adventure in to becoming a Mom for a second time! The adoption is progressing well. Our Homestudy is finished… except for needing to hand in a two page mini-essay. Then the report will be sent to the agency office to be finalized and we have to sign it. While waiting for that I am gathering all the documents to send to Bulgaria in what is called the dossier. The dossier is basically us on paper, also called our Paper Baby 🙂

Typically, once our dossier is accepted by the country, then we begin waiting for a proposal. It happened a little backwards for us since we had had a proposal before we began our Homestudy. That was due to the fact that we are adopting a child with special needs. Since it was so early, we declined for the time being and are waiting for a proposal in the correct order now. I’m not entirely sure how long it takes for Bulgaria to accept our dossier. There are also some things changing in the Bulgarian government right now that will hopefully allow more children to be internationally adopted through a smoother, less confusing process. These changes are set to take effect in June. I doubt there are going to be many proposals before these changes take effect. I’m not expecting a proposal for a few months but it would be really nice! I am REALLY hoping for the proposal of our little girl in July or August though.

I’m ready to be a mom again… I think 🙂 I feel pregnant, in the sense that I am excited, planning, dreaming, and getting ready. I feel my heart jump when I talk about our adoption and my baby girls. I refer to my kids as “the girls” already and have begun talking to Livi about having a little sister. She looks at me like “okay, go get her now then!” I’m not a patient person so this waiting period is not the easiest on me. Hopefully this is the last Mother’s Day I celebrate as a mother of one!

Big News!

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I’ve been wanting to blog for a while now but I haven’t been sure what I should say or how much I should say. A lot of stuff is happening for the Bartels!

I’ll start with updating you on my recovery. I think I’m back to normal, although I do feel the odd twinge or pang where my gallbladder used to be. I’m back to exercising. I have been slowly building my workout back up through the last week. Last night I got to where I was before my surgery… although my arms are sore today!

The crappy thing about my recovery is how long it has taken for me to get back to eating normally. My appetite was completely gone for nearly ten days and different foods were affecting me negatively. I have not had the motivation to start my meal plan again yet. I am glad that I had started educating myself on nutrition before my surgery though. Even though I am not fully back on my meal plan I have been making much better choices with my food. I have not had any really “bad” junk food days except for a box of Mike and Ikes at the movie theater last night and Friday night when I was stress eating, along with the help of my mom and sister. We have no junk food in the house and I am so much more aware of the calories I am ingesting… but not obsessing about it! It is quite a liberating feeling 🙂 First weigh in is tomorrow!

My stress eating night was triggered by the issue with my sister. I’ve mentioned that her and her boyfriend got engaged, right? Well, we’ve been going to family counseling, when she can make it. (Do you sense the rolling of the eyes?) I do not feel that she is making us a priority. Her boyfriends mother was having an engagement party on Saturday night that we were invited to. Actually, she had invited over 50 family and friends to come, all of whom Liz has not talked to in over 18 months, and asked to bring money in lieu of presents. Aside from that just being tacky, I find it sad. It seems like she is in this imaginary world where getting engaged makes her alienation and abandonment okay and forgettable. That is not how relationships work and it is going to make for a very lonely existence.

She has also chosen bridesmaids and a maid of honor already. Her wedding is scheduled for a year and a half away, yet she has picked her bridesmaids already. Her boyfriend’s sister and some one no one knows… indicating she has probably only known her for a year or too and does not have a very deep relationship with. Not that I want to be a bridesmaid right now or support this wedding in any form, but I can’t help but be hopeful for our relationship. With us working on things and “apparently” wanting to be close again, her picking other people to be in her wedding that is so far away seems like a slap in the face. We’ve been each others bridesmaids in both weddings that have taken place so far. Plus, Vanessa is her twin sister and she was Vanessa’s MOH.  There was no need for her to pick so quickly. It, along with her attitude and how many sessions she has bailed on, shows me she is not really committed to re-engaging with us and still wanting to live in the fantasy world she is trying to maintain. That must be so exhausting. I wanted better for my sister.

I need to figure out how much of myself I am willing to open up to her and where my boundaries are. I haven’t figured out the answer to this and have, this far, been responding to her efforts. Keep in mind I reached out and was told to “fuck off” for six months straight, so I’m tired of it… I’m not just being a bitch. I did not go to the engagement party. It just seemed like a lose-lose situation. If I didn’t go I’d be judged. If I did go and seemed uncomfortable I’d be judged. I figured I’d save myself the stress of it.

On to more exciting news! Some of you may have been noticing my Facebook status updates about “big things” in our future. It is true that we are expecting this year to be great. We are hoping that Jon’s job turns in to a permanent position sooner than later, although we do need to be prepared for the unexpected. He is the bottom of the ladder and still only holds an auxiliary contract. With that there is a certain level of instability. He is still really enjoying it though and from all the feedback he has been getting, he has been doing his job well.

Despite the instability, we are moving ahead with our lives. We are making plans to move. Hopefully this summer but possibly a year from now. It just depends on when we can get a mortgage approval with Jon having just switched jobs. We need more room and more bedrooms 🙂 We would like to move in to our forever home. The home where we are going to raise our family. If that is going to happen, we need at least 4 bedrooms. It is possible in our budget. We’d like the 4th bedroom so that we can do Home Sharing with a special needs adult. My life was so blessed by Home Share and being a part of the lives of people with different abilities that I want my kids to grow up with that too. It would also help generate a bit of income so I wouldn’t have to work outside the home and could be home with my family completely full time.

The other, bigger news that has been going on for us is we are thinking of adopting! We have always had it in the plans to adopt a special needs child so that is not news, but it was more a five year plan. We were going to get pregnant at the end of this year and adopt in a few years. Now, we might be adopting at the end of this year instead! We are thinking of adopting a little girl about Livi’s age, hopefully a few months younger because we’d like to keep Livi as the oldest.

This feels like SUCH a big decision. There is so much to consider. We know we want to adopt internationally, from a country where people with special needs (Down Syndrome is our focus) are not given much hope. Many countries look at people with special needs as lesser than animals, to be hidden away from society, and stripped of all dignity and joy. You can find adults, the size of children, hidden away in institutions with their limbs twisted up because they have never been taken out of the cribs they were put in at birth. Okay, that is for another post. Jon and I strongly feel that we are able to save and be blessed by at least one of these children.

With international adoption comes a whole slough of other concerns. Can we afford it? Well, no. We can afford some of it but it will cost us upwards of $30,000. We would need the support of our family and friends. Reece’s Rainbow does not have their Canadian charity status yet so we can’t give tax receipts out to people who may want to donate to our adoption. This will probably greatly decrease the amount of money people are able to contribute. With Jon’s position still being technically auxiliary and us wanting to move, will that look like we are unstable to a home study? I think we are ready to expand our family and we have so much experience with Down Syndrome but how will it be to parent a child with DS? Actually, that last question isn’t really a worry for me. I know that Jon and I are the right parents for this. I think it will be hard at times, but really great for our family. I think I worry more about other peoples reactions to our child (people can be so ignorant and cruel) and the attachment of our family and friends to an adopted child with special needs. I trust that everyone will be excited and I will do my best to educate them when the time comes.

Money is the main factor. If $30,000 were to mysteriously appear in my bank account we would not hesitate in starting the process. But, as it stands we are trying to decide whether adopting before a second biological is the right thing for us (which I think we are both leaning towards right now :). If it is, do we take that leap of faith and begin a homestudy now or wait until after we’ve moved. The only thing with waiting is that it will still take probably over a year to bring our child home and we would be pushing it back, and a future pregnancy, that much longer. I really wish money wasn’t an issue!

New Year’s Weekend!

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The whirlwind is over. We are exhausted and very glad to be home and in our own beds tonight. Livi hasn’t made a peep since going to sleep and I will be following her soon.

Our New Year’s eve was very memorable. I’m glad I was able to relax and not worry about Livi so far away. She did great, by the way. She slept well and only woke up once. We went out for appetizers at our friends place before leaving with them for another party in Kitsalano. It was low key and relaxing. We visited and played a group game that was made a lot more interesting with a few intoxicated participants. I got to meet someone who just started working for L’Arche! I know, I’m such a geek. L’Arche is a community where people with disabilities can share their lives with typical people in an empowering environment. Jean Vanier is a big supporter of these communities and speaks often of them in his book “Becoming Human”, which this blog is named for.
We rang the New Year in on a roof top balcony, over looking the city lights. It was a beautiful,clear night. We could see everything. It was quite breathtaking. Following midnight our party of about ten decided to crash the UBC frat party two doors down. Us, near and just over thirty year old’s, dressed comfortably and maybe not-so stylishly, jumped confidently in to the center of the dance floor. The under twenty year old boys were sweaty and shirtless, while the stylin’ fashion minded girls danced up a storm in 3 inch heels! All the kids were good looking and fit so it was definitely a “cool” kid or jock party. We grossly stuck out. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so old. All I could think about was how badly the home stank and the poor real oak floors that were sticky and getting scratched.
We joined Livi and the rest of Jon’s extended family at the Chehalis Healing House at the base of Hemlock the next day. I was pretty eager to get to Livi. We made it there for lunch and she nearly jumped in to my arms! I don’t think you can fully understand how amazing that feeling is until you are a parent yourself. The rest of the weekend was fun but exhausting. Livi didn’t stop moving when she was awake… which meant we were chasing her around a lot! Thankfully there were a lot of other babysitters around to keep an eye on her as well. Her favorite thing to do was run up and down wheelchair ramp and climb up and down the stairs. We don’t have stairs in our home so they are a big novelty. She already knew how to climb and descend stairs but I had still been staying close. This weekend gave her and I both the confidence to know she can do it by herself.

 
She was a little extra whiny this weekend. Understandably though. She was overstimulated by all the people around her, plus they all jumped to her every whim… she didn’t have to talk! I hope getting her back in to a routine and boundaries won’t be too difficult. I really hope I can get her back on to a proper eating schedule quickly. She hasn’t been drinking her milk in the last few days. I figured it was just because of all the distractions at the lodge, but she wouldn’t drink any tonight when she was in her own home either! I’m not stressing about it yet… but if her refusing milk continues for much longer I will have to start finding alternative ways of getting the calories in her. And Yes, I did try putting it in her sippy cup and an adult cup.
Some exciting news about our next family reunion is that the family business will be taking us all some where warm! How exciting is that?! Discussions are still very much in the preliminary stages but we have plans for it  anyway! After my initial excitement my mind immediately added up the months and realized, if all things go according to plan, that we will have a very newborn baby. Hmmm… is it irrational to bump ahead or push back family planning for a trip to an all-inclusive? Okay, maybe not something I have to think about quite yet 🙂
So we are home, safe and sound, and ready for bed. Good night and I hope you had a fabulous New Years Eve! May you experience every blessing in 2010!