Half way over?

It dawned on me this morning that today marks the official end of the first half of 2011. Really??? Where did the time go????? I've been really hard on myself lately...feeling like I should have all the boxes unpacked, walls decorated, floors scrubbed and house perfect by now. Oh, and of course, all the laundry should be done and perfectly balanced home-cooked meals should be on the table 3 times a day. RIGHT??? Um, no!!!

Honestly, I feel like the first half of this year has been one giant marathon. In January we started the nearly 3 month process of doctor appointments and tests that eventually led to several diagnoses for our Noah. February was full of doctor appointments and March was one long parade of family coming to visit which was a lot of fun. April was busy with all kinds of stuff for the new house, John traveling and kids being sick. May was more of the same, combined with a crazy amount of stress at work and then at the end of the month we finally moved! It's no wonder I'm tired! Moving with 2 little boys while working and doing all the little things that need to be done when you move has been exhausting, to say the least.

Needless to say, all of this has taken a toll on our family and we desperately want for the second half of the year to be a little less strenuous than the first! But, for now, there are a few positives that I need to focus on:

• We loooooove our house even though it feels like the project list will never end
• Noah qualified for the regional center 0-3 program for speech therapy which  will take a big financial burden! In order to qualify when you're under 2 (which is in August), you have to have a 33% delay in one area of development. His speech is 33.5% delayed!!! We will start within the next few weeks.
• I am escaping with a girlfriend and spending a "24-hour kid/family free" day tomorrow night and Saturday which will be very good for both of us!
• The kids are healthy!!!!

Here's to a less stressful second half of 2011!

My children's daddy

In our house he answers to Papa (German for Dad) and his boys absolutely adore him. The sun pretty much rises and sets over him as far as they are concerned. They run to the door when he comes home. They fight over who gets more attention from him. It's truly amazing. Seeing them play together, wrestle and do all kinds of boy things together just melts my heart. Listening to the way they talk to each other and the things that he is teaching our boys is a true joy.

I fully believe that when the Lord created John, he intended for him to be the daddy of two boys some day. He has endless energy for them. He is so creative with coming up with new activities and games. And he knows exactly what makes a little boy's heart tick. He takes my breath away when he challenges one of them to do something scary...I just want to rescue whoever it is but he waits patiently and gives all the right kind of encouragement until they succeed.

I certainly could not have hoped for a better partner in the parenting journey.  Our tears over the possibility of not having children of our own have given way to tears of joy, and sometimes, let's be honest, of frustration over our beautiful boys.  We have been blessed beyond measure with our boys and they have certainly been blessed with their daddy!

I love you, babe. Thank you for being such an awesome daddy for our boys!

Mi Viejo

Mi Viejo: literally, means my old man.  In Uruguay, where I live almost all of my formative years, it is most often used as a term of endearment for ones dad. And that, of course, is how I use it. 

On Father's day, there are two amazing men that I want to blog about: my dad and, of course, the father of my children. But, this one is for my dad. I should probably start by saying that I am still a bit of a daddy's girl, even at the ripe age of 34! I've actually even mastered the art of the puppy dog eyes as an adult and they work even better now than they did when I was young!

My dad has done some pretty incredible things with his life. He's worked with youth in one capacity or another for nearly all of his adult life...everything from running Campus Life Clubs to youth pastoring at a Mennonite Bretheren church to running a camp at the beach in Uruguay to working with incarcerated kids here in Fresno and, for the past 10 years, in Chicago.

He's inspiring to many, especially since he did not have the ideal childhood, came from a broken home without a lot of the guidance and parenting a boy needs. But, he certainly determined early on that he was going to do things differently with his family. Some of my earliest childhood memories are of wrestling, playing dog pile and reading with my dad. One of my favorite childhood rituals with my dad was playing "answer man" with him at bed time. Since my daddy was an all-knowing fountain of knowledge, I figured he'd know the answer to anything. He'd let me ask him 2 or 3 questions every night. No topic was off limits. I know many of them were random, silly things, but I also remember many of them being about matters of the heart. Even as I got older and my defiant, ugly attitude reared it's head, I always knew my dad would be there for any pressing matter than may be on my mind. And now that I am a grown woman, he's still there for me, even though from afar. Even recently as we have pondered and prayed about another significant change in our family, he has committed to not only praying for us, but learning how he can better support us through the process. Pretty amazing, if you ask me.

My dad is also a passionate man. He's passionate about his faith, his family, and his work. Even though there were times I wished he was a little less passionate about some things, I was always secure in knowing he would always, always protect me. I never really appreciated that as a young girl because it never occurred to me that not every girl was as blessed as I am, but as I have gotten older and have seen some pretty awful things happen at the hands of some fathers, I realize how incredibly fortunate I am to have a dad who would literally give his life for mine. Every little girl should have that, don't you think?

You know what I love most about my dad? He'll cry when he reads this. Because he's just that kind of man. I love you, Daddy, and wish I could be closer to you today!

Walking the walk

This afternoon after picking Caleb up from day camp, I had a very convicting moment in the car. We were about ready to drive through a green light when 2 teenage boys came flying across the street in front of us, and of course with no helmet. Being a pediatric PT as well someone who is related to several cyclists that have been saved by helmets, I'm kinda neurotic about my kids and their helmets. Never mind that it's ILLEGAL in CA for anyone under 18 to ride a bike without one. But, I digress. Back to my conviction.

"Wow!!!" I exclaimed when I saw them. "What Mama?" Caleb asked (who apparently was staring off into space the other direction). I explained what I saw and very quickly pointed out what a bad choice it was for them to not obey the red light but also to not wear helmets. He proceeds to say, "Ya, Mama, those guys are dummies!" I reply with, "Caleb, that is not kind and we don't call people that even if they made a bad choice." And then I felt the conviction....when I saw them and said "Wow" out loud, what I didn't say was the "What idiots those kids are!" that was running through my head. And less than a minute later I'm chastising my 6 year old for calling them dummies. Good work, mama.

I so easily jump to conclusions about people. What I should have thought was, "Wow, how sad that maybe those kids can't afford helmets" or "How sad that no one has taught them how important helmets are". No, instead I chalk them up as idiots and then tell my son not to call them dummies!

Oh, the things you learn as you parent and aspire to shape a child's heart and character!

EOB Shock!

You may recall my rant about Caleb's illness about a month ago and all the inconsistencies and conflicting information we got. I had commented throughout the post about not even wanting to think about the pretty penny the whole deal was going to end up costing. Ya. REALLY didn't want to think about it.  May I just say that it's never, ever, ever good news when your EOB (explanation of benefits) statements come in a giant manila envelope. When the mail came today, John handed it to me and said, "Um, have we ever gotten THAT kind of envelope from the insurance before? That can't be good!". Well, no, as a matter of fact, we haven't ever gotten that kind of envelope from the insurance.  Usually, we get one or two at a time folded up in a regular envelope. Every now and then 3 or 4 pages will be involved. Today we got FIFTEEN!!! Oh, yes, count them: FIFTEEN!!

Let's just say that it's a really good thing that I can do payroll deduction over as many pay periods as I want because it's going to take a while to pay that all off!!! And to think that we have "good" insurance! Most of what we will have to pay is our deductible and a little more on top of that. I can't imagine having a $5000 deductible or, even worse, having no insurance at all! Wanna know the grand total of 6 hours in the ER for testing and IV fluids? Brace yourself. $3615!!!!! That combined with the $800 hearing test Noah had a couple months ago is gonna hit the pocket book hard! Oh, well.

Now I need to go do yoga or something relaxing so I don't have the heart attack I felt coming on after opening THAT envelope! We can't afford any more hospital bills for a while!

Growing Pains

We've been in our new home for 2 weeks now and fully out of the old house for a week. We all LOVE our new place. Caleb still regularly runs down the hall and exclaims, "I can't believe we get to live here!". It cracks me up, because, although our little duplex was very cramped, it wasn't exactly a dump either! I'm feeling the itch to get everything put away and get to work on decorating my "blank canvas". I have a girlfriend at work who is a self proclaimed "blog stalker" and loves to read design blogs.  She gave me the name of a great blog to start reading and finding inspiration. I'm really excited to get going on all of that and add some of my new-found flair to this place.

On the other hand, I've been feeling the pains of growing and changing. I am SUCH a creature of habit.  Always have been. And probably always will be. I enjoy driving the same streets, same way to get places, and so on. Even though we're not that far from where we used to live, the way I go to work and just about everywhere else is different. I don't like it. Silly, I know, but I don't like it at all.  I find myself thinking a lot about all the memories in our old place and forgetting that we are just getting started on making new memories here. We've got a whole lifetime ahead of us!

I think once I'm able to transition from unpacking to decorating and getting things situated the way I want, some of the growing pains will subside and new memories will start to form!!

It is done!

This day has been a long time coming, but we are finally, 100% out of our old house tonight! John's meeting with our landlady in the morning and then it will be a thing of the past! That home was the small, 2 bedroom, 2 bath with a nice yard and garage that was a great starting place for a young, newlywed college couple. Never did we imagine that almost ten years and 2 children later, we'd still be there. The interesting thing is that for almost all of those years, I was content. It was a cozy, cute place that was just enough for us.  And it financially allowed me to work part time after we started our family. It's only been in the past year, once the second little monkey became very mobile that I started to feel a burning need to get out of there! In thinking back through all the time we lived there, I truly believe the Lord allowed me to be content right where we were. I'm thankful for that.  But, I'm also thankful that we finally moved!!!

As I walked through the house one last time tonight, a lot of emotion cut loose. You may remember my blog on me and change....I don't do well with it. I've managed to keep it together surprisingly well over the past few weeks, but I was struck by a ton of emotion when I left. It was in those walls that my new husband I figured out how to co-habitate without driving each other crazy, survived the end of graduate school for both of us.  It was in those walls that I found out I had passed my licensing exam to become a physical therapist, celebrated my first job at the only place I've ever wanted to work and joined the ranks of the working world.  It was also there that we struggled with the heartbreak of what seemed to be insurmountable infertility and then the joy of conceiving our baby boy.  It was there we brought both our babies home, it was there they both learned to walk and run. A lot happened in that home and I will hold those memories dear.

One of the many times I was bemoaning all the change to my mom, she pointed out to me that although we are leaving behind many memories in our old house, we will form many new memories here in our new home.  Our boys will continue to learn new things, celebrate victories and grow into young men.  It will most likely be to this home that we will bring home our daughters. Life as a family of 6 will have plenty of new memories! And, yes, that is not something I have mentioned here yet and will be the source of many new posts, I'm sure! 

So, for now, we keep working on getting settled and forming new memories here. We still have a lot to do and a lot of adjusting to do, but we are so happy and feeling very blessed!