ICLW and catch up kind of stuff

ICLW + haven't blogged in forever = catch up post time.

Let's see.  I used to be an infertility blogger discussing IVF protocols along with my malfunctioning lady bits (aka the ovaries of destruction and uterus of doom).  All of that stuff didn't work out so well.  I then mostly blogged about depression, anger, and all the ugliness that infertility bestowed.  It was a hot mess and there was not a lick of grace to be found.  Be grateful if you didn't read my writing in those days.  Next up was wanting to adopt with a hubby who did not.  That lasted a couple years.  I mostly didn't blog about it, but spent my time adventuring and living and coming to terms with not parenting by a whole lot of avoidance and alcohol (good party social kind of alcohol).  Hubby changed his mind about adoption somewhere along the way and I started up this blog to document the process...except I didn't.

Just a couple months after turning in our profiles, we were chosen by our daughter's birth mom to parent and our daughter arrived 2-weeks later.  She is now 16-months old and because I basically suck as a blogger, I haven't even given her a name here yet.  I guess now is as good a time as any.  Her personality is filled with over-the-top-social butterfly tendencies mixed with a need to study and dismantle EVERYTHING.  She has 2 gears which consist of "GO. GO FASTER. WOO HOO!! GO! EXPLORE! GO! GO! GO!" and "Near comatose exhaustion".  She has 1 sound level and on a loudness scale of 1 to 10, I'd rank her as a 14. In a nutshell, she is a little firecracker.  So Firecracker it is.

Our adoption started off closed.  It was not by our choice.  The only part of our profile that was in larger, bold font was a statement about wanting an open adoption.  We understood Firecracker's birth mom's reasoning for not wanting contact and told her in no uncertain terms that we would ALWAYS welcome her into our lives with open arms...2-hours, 2-weeks, or 12 years from now.  When Firecracker was almost 6-months old, her birth mom contacted us.  Our relationship has grown quite a bit over the past (almost) year and while it is not without its bumps and bruises, we are family.  We love her fiercely and unconditionally and over-protectively.  We're still navigating the open adoption waters and trying to figure out how it all works, but we hope whatever we are doing benefits both her and Firecracker in the long run.  We are simply the vessels of contact between the 2 of them for now until they can establish a relationship of their own.  I'm sure I'll have lots more to say about all of this stuff in posts to come.

Hmmm, what else???

I think I used to go somewhere every weekday and do something while I was there.  I might have even been something (not important, mind you, but rather something with a career type title).  I tossed it all to the wayside and joined the ranks of stay-at-home-momdom.  I'm sure I'll discuss some more of this at some juncture, but for now let's just say it is working out for our family and I'm pretty happy to say the least.  MJ changed jobs too, but his still involves a monetary compensation.

Oh, and we still have all 3 of our dogs.  The German Shorthaired Pointer is now over 15.  According to this dog age calculator, she was equivalent to 96 years old when she was 13.  The calculator doesn't work for either 14 or 15 for her breed.  I think they call that dead dog walking syndrome.  She is still just as much a pain in the ass as she was the day we rescued her from the pound.  The mastiffs grew.  A. LOT.  Moose is a 181-lb 3.5 year old.  He is obsessed with balloons and would still crawl inside our skin to get just a little bit closer to us if he could.  Paris is a petite 179-lb almost 3-year old.  She is much shorter than Moose and is on a vet recommended diet.  I'm pretty sure she thinks we are torturing her.  She is in love with Firecracker and is the most gentle of giants with her.  Moose is too, but we think it is the shared social butterfly nature that connects the 2 of them.

Of course, there is more to catch up on, but this is a start.  One of my final big projects at that place I used to go every day consisted of authoring over 700 pages of text and detail documented diagrams and photos on a billion+ dollar piece of equipment.   I've blocked most of it out to ward off the leftover anxiety it left behind, but I think I accomplished it in around a 4-month time frame.  And now 2 posts in the same month makes me feel like an overachiever.  Movin' on up, my friends.  Movin' on up.