BETTER

I want to better my world in 2014.

A better mom.

A better wife.

A better counselor.

A better sister, daughter and friend.

A better human-being.

I want to do a better job.

I want to be a better leader and a better follower.

I want to focus my energy better in my life.

I want to do a better job at helping the world around me.

I want to feel better in 2014 by working to become healthy.

I simply want 2014 to be BETTER!!

Last year I chose the word SIMPLIFY.  Well....I am still working on that.  So this year I will do a BETTER job to SIMPLIFY!  How do you like that?  This way I feel like I haven't failed at 2013...simply going to be better at it than I was in 2014.

There are so many things that I want to do to make 2014 a better year for me and for my family....I just need to focus!  I tend to go in a thousand different directions that it is hard to focus on the true outcome.  I need to focus on being better at planning to be better.

And to top it all off, I want to work harder to keep a better account of our life and thoughts on this blog.  For crying out loud!  I only had 6 posts this year!!  (Including this one!!)  I certainly simplified the blog in 2013....barely took time to write.  (Perhaps that is what happens when you get a "gift baby" overnight and are still reeling from the surprise and wonderful change in our family.)  In the past I have felt that this blog helped up communicate with our family and friends.  In addition to the communication, it has been therapeutic and a great way to share our love of adoption.  In 2014, I will be better at keeping up with this because I know that if I don't, I will be disappointed in 2015.  I would hate for my word in 2015 to be "repeat".

2014 with be BETTER!!

If you want to join me and choose a word, check out http://oneword365.com.  Share your word with me, share it with your friends and family.  Let others help you on your journey as I hope you will help me to focus on making 2014 to be BETTER.

Hurricane Augustus

I used to believe that my little man was so sweet, well mannered and well behaved.  He would sit nicely.  Hew would listen.  He would smile at the camera when he was asked.  He was a gentle, silly little soul.

And now we have this....

He is like a hurricane at times.  I absolutely adore my little hurricane.  Even if he is a crazy, rowdy, rambunctious 4 year old full of energy and a little bit feisty.  We often have to remind him to use his listening ears and I feel like I am using his full name A LOT these days.  Very rarely does he just walk.  He can often be found running!  There are days that we get home and I let him out the slider to play in the backyard.  It is fenced in so I know that he is safe to run and run and run....and that is exactly what he does.

Yesterday at preschool, Gus got an "uh oh" face.  (They get smiley faces until they misbehave and then the card gets flipped to an "uh oh" face.)  As educators, my husband and I both feel strongly that our children should behave in school.  You can imagine how my heart broke thinking about how he misbehaved in school.  Turns out he, and two other students, were tackling kids!  When I got to thinking about it, I realized that maybe Gus has been around football practice too much!!

Gus can be quite a handful at times.  After yesterday's event, I started reflecting back on the past two years and the variety of events we have been at where I could have used my running shoes to chase after Gus.  I thought about the variety of comments others have made about my little hurricane.  The comments this past summer have started to bother me and the incident yesterday was the final straw.  I need to do something so I decided to start doing some research.  Over the course of the past 24 hours, I have read a bunch of articles, looked back in my files from my master's degree program in counseling and cried.  

I found a variety of great activities to help keep my little hurricane occupied.  I found a lot of "experts" who talked about discipline.  And of course, the ever present issue of attention deficit disorders and medicating children.  The best resource I found was on THIS BLOG.  (It is a great post and I strongly recommend it to anyone who has a high energy child in their life.  It is also good for those of you that have calm, well mannered children so that you can see why some of us are so crazy!)  As I read through the post, the tears flowed.  It sounded just like my life! It was like she was writing about my little hurricane.  And then she said something that hit straight to my core.  "It was in that moment I realized, he is not a bad kid, he is just an energetic one."  I needed to hear that!  My Gus-Gus is NOT a bad kid.  He is just very energetic.  

This mom also decided how to approach her son and his actions.  "I learned to embrace this energy of his and try to work with it rather than fight it."  From the moment I read that line, I knew that I needed to find a different approach or I would drive myself insane.  I am going to "tackle" Gus' energy in a different way and hopefully get some better results.  So next time you see me chasing after my little hurricane, please remember (and remind me, too!!) that it is a process and that learning to embrace this little boy and all of his energy will pay off in the long run!

Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

"It's not you....it's me."

Five years!  It has been 5 years since we turned in our first adoption application to Bethany Christian Services.  It has been a wonderful relationship with BCS.  We had a few rough spots that we worked through but most of all there has been pure joy during our five year relationship. 

It hit me today that we were breaking up.  I am a little bit heartbroken.  Our family is complete. We are perfectly content as a family of four. Now that Penny's adoption is finalized, we are done. We have no reason to visit the agency office any more. That is it.  That chapter is closed now. We are onto a new chapter of our life. I am excited about it. I love the fact that we will not be thinking about the adoption process any more. The stress and anxiety that I have will not be adoption related anymore. (Yes, I will always be an anxious mess...but not about adoption anymore.)

Today we went to visit BCS. We brought little thank you gifts for our social workers for all of their hard work and for putting up with me!! As you can imagine, I can be a little bit of a basket case and these ladies were able to handle it!  Faith was the social worker on our side. She helped us through some of our tough application steps. We hit quite a few roadblocks with the application for Penny and Faith was able to help us navigate through it. And she stayed all the way up to the end when we went to court to finalize her adoption. Dawn Baker was the social worker for both Gus and Penny's birth moms. Dawn was the one who called us when we were chosen.  She was the one who was right there to introduce us to our beautiful children. She was the one to take our first family pictures with our kids. Since we didn't have family with us at the hospital to celebrate with us, Dawn filled that role and hugged us and celebrated with us. And let me tell you, this woman is worth her weight in gold.  She does an outstanding job and is just truly a kind and wonderful woman.  If you have seen her on MTV's Sixteen & Pregnant reality show, then you have a small glimpse into just how great she is.  She was our STAR before she became the tv star!  We have been truly blessed to have her ad part of our journey for the past four years!!

I know that we will still see those at Bethany Christian Services throughout life. They do have a big family picnic and fun run that we will always attend if we are able. And we have been asked again by the agency to speak on their behalf as adoptive parents. We will always be more than willing to help them out and we are so honored that they would ask us.  What a great way for us to give back to an organization that had helped us so much!

On a side note- in 2009, when Gus was born, the agency facilitated 28 adoptions. So far in 2013, they have 31 adoptions as of today.  16 of those adoptions are "gift babies" like Penny was. How awesome that they are able to help so many kids find their forever families!!

So as far as the break-up goes....we will still be friends!

It's been a while...

WHOA!  Clearly life has gotten a little bit crazy. I haven't posted here in 3 months.  How nuts is that?  Life as a momma of two is crazy fantastic.  I am still in awe most days that Penny came into our life so quickly.  But she fits so perfectly into our family that it is easy to understand why God sent her into our life.

We are still waiting patiently for Penny's adoption to be finalized.  We have our final visit with our social worker at the end of this month.  I am very excited to think about the fact that this is it.  This is our LAST meeting.  In the past 5 years we have had many meetings for both adoption journeys.  To think that this is the last one....I am pumped!!  Hopefully I will be able to post again before the adoption is finalized...but if not, check back in June because you know that I will be celebrating!!!

Just a few shots of my crazy kids in the past few months...

Ever since Penny came into our life, I have taken up a new hobby making hair bows and headbands.  This one that she is modeling is a little over the top and clearly she is not a fan.  This is one of my favorite pictures of her even though she is not smiling.  I fully expect that I will see this expression many times in life as she looks at her crazy mom.

Oh how I love my silly boy!  He loves taking pictures on my phone.  I think he did pretty good here.  And I love his expression because it captures his silliness.  I could just squeeze on that little man all day long! 

Be still my heart!  I love these two so much!  And I love our morning snuggles.  Who wouldn't want to cuddle up with these two?!?

Penny's first field trip was to the Critter Barn in Zeeland, MI.  Gus LOVES animals so he was beyond excited!!  Lots of fun!!  If you are in west Michigan and have the chance to go to the Critter Barn, you definitely should.  It was fantastic....and free!!

Testing out Grammy's cookware!  What a silly girl!

Four years....wow!

Can you believe it?  Can you believe that it has been FOUR years since I received that amazing phone call that changed my world!  (Okay...it will be four years tomorrow but I know that I have a busy day ahead of me so I won't have a chance to write.)  If you want to hear more about that day, you can go back and check out this post.  Little did I know what life was about to bring me.  Joy!  Pure joy! Little did I know that it would come in the form of this beautiful little soul!

Now that our family is complete and we have been blessed to become parents to two beautiful babies, it is funny to look at how our family came to be.  I am such a planner and nothing about our story was planned by me.  I have no doubt that God had planned this and I believe that the way He brought Gus into our life was absolutely perfect!  I had  about four months to prepare for his arrival.  I had a chance to wrap my head around it.  I had a chance to create a beautiful nursery and to fill it with everything baby!  I had a chance to fill the dressers and closet with an excessive amount of clothing.  I had a chance to rearrange it and reorganized it a plethora of times.  I had a chance to go to the remainder of the doctors appointments with J.  I had the chance to be in the delivery room when Gus took his first breath!  I had a chance to be ready!

I had no idea that I would never be ready enough!  How do you get ready for a pair of beautiful eyes to stare back at you with all of the trust in the world?  How do you get ready to discover that this beautiful little one has a nose just like yours and their is no scientific reason as to why?  How do you get ready for your heartstrings to be yanked so hard that you can barely breathe?  How do you possibly get ready for the best adventure in the world?  I thought I was ready.  Ready or not....this little man captured my heart instantly and continues to do so over and over again every day of his little life!

I had no idea on that snowy day in January of 2009, that my whole world would be changed with a simple phone call....but I am so happy that it did!

One Week Old

5 months old

20 months old

2 years old

3 years old

SIMPLIFY

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

Clearly I am spending my NYE in the comfort of my own home.  Nice and cozy on the couch with my hubby.  My little man is exhausted and passed out in his bed after an evening of fun with friends.  My little lady is fast asleep in her swing next to me.  2013 is starting out great!!

I have decided that I am not declaring a new year's resolution that will be broken before school is back in session.  Nope.  Instead, I have chosen a word to drive what I do this year.

SIMPLIFY.

(Please stop laughing, mom!)  Anybody who knows me, knows that I tend to over-do things a little bit.  I have an office and a basement and a closet and a computer hard drive that all boarder on hoarding.  I simply can't make one hair piece for Penny...I have to make 15.  I have a lot of stuff in my house for the "what if's" and the "just in cases".  I save multiple drafts of documents I create on my computer.  I have enough linens to outfit a large bed and breakfast. (I really love sheets and pillows and towels!)

In an effort to regain some sanity and to focus on what is really important in life, I have decided that I need to simplify some things in my day to day life.  This will start on the morning of January 1st!  As I do every year, I will watch the Rose Parade (...if the kids allow it.  I am hoping to start instilling the love of this parade in Gus this year) and then during the Rose Bowl, while the kiddos nap, I will pull EVERYTHING out of every cupboard and drawer in the kitchen.  I will purge items that we no longer need and I will re-organize the kitchen to see if we find a better configuration.  I have done this every year since I moved to the east side of Michigan.  I look forward to it!  And even more so not this year because I plan to SIMPLIFY what we have going on in the kitchen this year.

I have heard this before..."Keep It Simple, Stupid" or "K.I.S.S".  I have my own version of that to help keep me focused this year since we don't say "stupid" in this household.  I printed it out to post on my mirror so I see it every day.  Hopefully at some point in 2013 I will be able to report back on how the simplified life is going!