Our Family Beginnings

I’ll admit, I’ve always been a sleepy person.  If I had to choose between being a morning person or a night person, I’d be a morning person.  More accurately, I’m a sleepy person.  I still remember my grandfather sweetly mocking me saying how tired I was. In college, if a paper or studying wasn’t totally done by the time I faded, I shrugged and figured that’s as good as it would get and turned in.  All nighters? Not for me. I need my (at least) 8 hours.  Fighting it is futile, and I’m okay with that.

With swimming twice a week for 90 minutes and running about 25 miles a week, I have been using V’s naptime as a nap for myself as well. And as Calliope, E’s Mama, Mel, and N can tell you, I have been REALLY tired.  I’ve since cut out the swimming for a few weeks, but I’m still pretty snoozy.  Of note, both my folks are hypothyroid.  I didn’t even realize, but apparently my mom even was taking thyroid supplements in her twenties! Having a slow thyroid can definitely do a number on one’s energy level.

One of the great things about the steps we take for adoption is that they require a full physical, and my doc always checks my thyroid levels.  As anyone who dealt with fertility issues know, having unexplained fertility sucks so much worse than having something you can treat.  So with that knowledge, I was almost hoping for a medical explanation for my fatigue.

Well, the doc’s nurse called me yesterday, and it seems that my thyroid is indeed sluggish!  I’m going in for more tests today, but hopefully, relief is on the way.  Otherwise, I might have been sleep running on my long slow runs!

Tagged by Bean:

You’re all tagged! Yes, you, reading this. You’re tagged. Now that you know more about me than you ever wanted to know, play the game, it’s fun! Let others know a little more about yourself, repost this as your name followed by “ology.”

FOODOLOGY:
What is your salad dressing of choice? Thousand Island
What is your favorite sit-down restuarant? Founding Farmers and their delicious Bacon Lollis
What is your favorite fast food restaurant? Noodles & Co.
What food could you eat every day for two weeks and not get sick of? Pasta
What are your pizza toppings of choice? Meatballs & mushrooms
How many televisions are in your house? Three, but we only watch one. There is one downstairs for when it turns into a playroom, and one in the guest room.
What color cell phone do you have? Black

BIOLOGY:
Are you right-handed or left-handed? Right
Have you ever had anything removed from your body? My wisdom teeth, a few moles, a tumor on my scalp, and my tonsils
What is the last heavy item you lifted? My son.
Have you ever been knocked unconscious? No
Have you ever fainted? No

BULLCRAPOLOGY:
If it were possible, would you want to know the day you were going to die? No.
If you could change your name, what would you change it to? When I was a kid I loved the idea of Jodi, but I do love my name.  Good work, mom & dad! Even if I was named after The Bionic Woman.
How many pairs of flip flops do you own? 1
Last person you talked to? Mr. Badger

FAVORITOLOGY:
Season? Spring
Holiday? Thanksgiving
Day of the week? Saturday
Month? If November could be part of spring, It’d be infinitely better. Because it isn’t, I have to go with June.
Color? Purple, but not in excess.
Drink? Hot Cocoa
Alcoholic? Yes. Oh wait, what kind of drink? I love a quality Margarita.

CURRENTOLOGY:
Missing someone? Yes, my folks & bro.  Luckily, my dad’s coming in this weekend.
What are you listening to? Quiet right now.
What are you watching? Nothing right now.
Worrying about? Not much, honestly.  Curious as to why V was up twice last night with no fever, but I think it’s congestion and teething, so not worried.
What’s the last movie you saw? Inglorious Basterds. Aside from the gory bits, I actually liked it!
Do you smile often? Yes, but too often lately it’s an effort.
If you could change your eye color what would it be? Blue, or maybe a more green green.  It is cool that mine are green on the outside and hazel/gold at the center.
What’s on your wish list for your birthday? Ooh, that’s far from now. New clothes? I’m so bad about shopping for myself, so a gift card to get some nice stuff is always good.
Can you do a chin-up? No, never could, but I can hang for a while.
Does the future make you more nervous or excited? Excited, I think, but for the first time I am really able to live in today.
Have you been in a car wreck? No
Have you caused a car wreck? No
Do you have an accent? I don’t think so.  I left Philly with most normal speaking intact. I did say “wudder” for water for a while after leaving though.
Last time you cried? Don’t remember, but certainly within the past week. I am a cryer. I cry when I’m sad, mad, frustrated, etc.
Plans tonight? Sleeeeeeeep.
Have you ever felt like you hit rock bottom? Yes.
Name three things you bought yesterday? Rubbermaid tubs to store V’s clothes, gravy for Mr. Badger to go with dinner, and a twix bar.
Have you met someone who changed your life? Yes, lots of people.
For the better or worse? In general, for the best. I don’t think anyone’s done irreparable harm to me.
How did you bring in the New Year? Out with Mr. Badger, my bro & his wife (to celebrate their anniversary) and my cousin & her husband.  We were up in NYC and enjoyed it mightily…until the next morning.
Would you go back in time if you were given the chance? Probably not. The past is done, and I am enjoying where I am today.
What songs do you sing in the shower? I don’t. Showers are zen time — I want quiet and lots of hot water.
Have you held hands with someone today? Not yet.
Who was the last person you took a picture of? My son.
Are most of the friends in your life new or old? Mostly new (relatively speaking)
Do you like pulpy orange juice? I used to, but now I like the low acid kind.
Last time you ate peanut butter and jelly? A few months ago, but I did have pb on an English muffin for breakfast.
What were you doing at 12 a.m. last night? Sleeping.
What was the first thing you thought of when you woke up? I didn’t get enough sleep and hope V isn’t sick.

I also don’t do well with accents.  So if you have one, even within this country, I may just nod but not have understood you.  Asking “what?” for the 50th time tends to lose its charm.

Which brings me to a story that Mel has promised to hold over my head well past my 80th birthday.

Today I was in the post office getting stamps, when an older woman gets in line behind me and V.  He charms away and she prattles on about how wonderful children are and how boring and awful my life would be if I didn’t have him.  Since she was from a different era, I gritted my teeth and laughed with her.  “Gee thanks lady! So if I were childless, I’d pretty much want to off myself to escape my boring and meaningless existence ?  Wow, that is such a refreshing thought that I have never heard before.  None of my friends could ever relate to that sentiment.”  Okay, I didn’t say that, but you know you’d be thinking it too.
Anyway, she then says in her thick accent, “is he a foster child?”.  I was taken aback so fast.  How did she even guess?  So I said, “No, he’s adopted.”  She looked confused, but she just went back to telling me how lucky I am.  Which I agree, I am.  Only after a few more minutes of speaking to her did I realize that she had asked, “is he your first child?”.

So somewhere out there, a little old lady has a story for her family, or dog, or plants, or whatever about the crazy lady at the post office that insisted on saying that he was adopted when she asked me if he was my first.  Oh yeah, that happened.  I will now go flush the wax out of my ears.

Actually, a new study said that it takes at least 66 days to become a habit.  Nonetheless, I don’t think I could actually come up with something interesting to say for that many days. I’ve had a rough time with the 22 in a row that I’ve already done, including this one.  Heck, one could argue that most of these post have barely been interesting!  Then again, you’re still reading, so I must have at least something going for me.

The funny thing is, it’s not like I don’t have things that I want to talk about.  Far from it. I have tons of things that I’d love to expound on in a blog post.  I want to talk about why I didn’t blog for three months this year.  I want to talk about geeky things I adore like gadgets, and about how I am the worst person in the world to shop for.  Why not?  Because to do some of those topics justice takes time and focus that I didn’t have before V, and I certainly don’t have now.  Some things have resolved, and some of them aren’t even worth talking about anymore.

A lot of the blogs I read, I love because they write like me, like the way they speak.  I can read blogs of my friends and then see them in person, like Serenity, and JJ, Lori, and Somewhat Ordinary and and all of the TOOTPU bloggers, and they sound exactly like they do in written form.  Then you have the creative genius types like Mel and Kym and they write like I wish I could write.  I’m not doing a comparison thing, but in my head, these unwritten posts are the most erudite prose on the planet, and then I start to write and stuff like this comes out.

What’s good though, is that in writing each day, the month has flown by.  I dwell less on crap when I get it out of my skull and out through my fingertips.  And I’ve tried keeping a diary, but that never stuck. Now at just two shy of my 600th post, and week or so shy of my 3rd blogoversary, I can say that while not consistent, my blog is quite the comfortable habit. I may drift away at times, but like exercising, I feel better when I do it, and it’s better for me the more I do it.  Thanks for keeping me company.

I watched three babes today.  V, his girlfriend, and her dad who has had a fever since Monday.

To my friends who are single mothers, by choice or otherwise, I bow to you.  You are queens and built of stuff so strong it could stand up in war zones.  That being said, it was actually really fun, and everyone got along fantastically, but I am wiped out after not having Mr. Badger at home all week.

Oh, and I will never again get the flumist.  I got that for my H1N1 vac, and since I always have seasonal allergies, my already inflamed nostrils have been virtually sealed shut since last Saturday night.  Now, as a result, my lips are chapped beyond belief from mouth breathing at night.
I figure, after my post about poop, chapped lips are nada.

My nails, they mock me. They fray and tear at the tips, and rip just looking at the dishes. From time to time, I have had the gumption to not bite them for a few weeks or even a few months, but it never stuck. I’d always get to some sort of stressful life event and *poof*, they’d be bitten to the quick before I even gave them a second thought. Heck, I even mentioned this in a tagging meme last year.

In September of 2008 though, I just decided, I was done. I wanted to be able to paint my nails to go with this dress:

And so I stopped biting them, cold turkey.

It’s now more than a year later, and I haven’t gone on a biting spree yet.  While there have been a few times where a nail has begun to rip, and so I have bit that one to keep it from tearing down, I have managed to keep it at that one nail.  I always fix it with clippers when I get home, and I can count on two hands (har har har) the number of times I have done it.

Today, my trick is simple.  In the past, I had hoped that by not biting them, I’d get long hand-model like nails.  But like I’ll never look like Gisele Bundchen, no matter how much dieting I do, my nails would never look that strong and sleek.  So, I keep them relatively short.  If they get long, I give it a few days to enjoy, and then out come the clippers, so that I don’t get tempted to bite.

By the way, do you know how hard it is to take a good picture of your own hands?  This is one of them, this morning.

What a provocative little header I put up there, no?

Let me put out there that a) No, I do not actually think all other mothers suck b) that the story I am going to tell is unique to moms.  However, I do think that men waging wars all over the globe over the size of their dicks have nothing on catty mothers.  Mothers can be the atomic freaking bomb of interpersonal relations.

I do this workout outside and in bad/cold weather at the local mall before it opens. Moms bring their strollers and resistance bands and little ones, and we do a 1-hour cardio and resistance class.  It’s fun, and a decent workout. We sing songs to the kids as we do bicep curls, and get out of it what we put into it. Trust me, it’s a good workout.

Because V’s had this thing of napping about 10 minutes before we would leave for class, I hadn’t gone in a few weeks. I decided to capitalize on the time change and get back to class. It was a good class, and in the middle, I felt this sudden burst of energy and took off on one of our running laps. It was a total sprint.  I heard one woman snarkily mumble to another “geez, no need to show off!” and I knew it was directed at me.  I didn’t turn around because I honestly didn’t want to know who had said it. What was going through my head was, “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize that the instructor said that judging other mothers for working out at their workout was the holding pattern.”

My dear friend, E’s Mama, has said that motherhood is not a competitive sport.  I wish it were so.  I wish I could say that I never did similar things to others, but I am sure I do.  Anyone who thinks they don’t judge others really is in denial.

Another adoptive momma blogger wrote a few weeks ago about how she doesn’t fit in with her pre-baby friends, and she doesn’t really connect well with other moms.  I remarked that it’d be great if ALI parents could just have our own little island sometimes. I can’t tell you how much I treasure my DC blogger friends, and the extended bloggers who I’ve been lucky enough to either meet in person or talk to on the phone. I just find that as a group, there is less (though clearly not an absence of) judging and more openness to life experiences.

Thanks to all of you who, over the last three years, have held us up, hugged us in person or virtually, or even just read silently and said, “me too”.

You’d think that considering that Mel is one of my dearest friends, that I’d have done IComLeavWe before.  Nope, it’s my first time.  I always seemed to have too much going on, or was lazy, or who knows what my excuse was.  Now though, I am diving in, head first.  With 138 participants as of this morning, I’m not planning on being an Iron Commenter, but I’m going to see how many new folks I can visit.  If you’re coming here for the first time, here are the quick and dirty facts about me:

1. March 2006 – Irregular periods, got it maybe 4 times a year, which was great in my teens and early 20s, not so good when my husband and I started trying to have a baby in our late 20s.  My OBGyn put me on clomid.  I didn’t have any instructions on how to take it, and so found some pregnancy message boards and started posting there.
2. After 6 months of charting and Clomid, I saw my OBGyn again, and she referred me to the local SuperGiant Fertility Clinic.
3. After lots of bloodwork, it showed that I was homozygotic for th MTHFR (motherfucker!) gene – a clotting disorder.  When I googled, I found the amazing Mel, who has the same thing.  I started blogging in December 2006.
4. January ’07 – IUI #1 fail
5. April ’07 – IUI #2 WIN! But started bleeding the next day, and a loss followed
6. Spring/Summer ’07 – IUI #3, 4 fail
7. Signed up for Shared Risk IVF, did 3 fresh and 1 frozen cycle
8. More testing showed that I had natural killer cells and that there was something where I am allergic to Mr. Badger’s white cells.  We’re booted out of shared risk, but as a result, get our money back.
9. June ’08 begin paperwork for adoption.
10. September ’08 homestudy completed.  First potential match falls through.
11. December ’08 matched with a birth mother who ends up fooling us and our agency trying to extort money from all of us.  We cut our losses and go back to waiting.
12. January 24, 2009 – we get the call that a birthmother is in labor and due to give birth any minute.
13. January 29, 2009 – our son is born.
14. February 1, 2009 – we meet our son for the first time.  Though we have never met his first mother, we know bits and pieces about her, and her about us.  It’s a closed adoption by her choice,  but should a time arise that she wants to open a window even a crack, we’ll welcome it.

Since then, we’ve had nothing but smooth waters.  He’s a crazy advanced guy who is the most mild mannered baby you could meet.   Though all of the events leading up to the birth of our son were exhausting and excruciatingly slow, I can say on this side of the fence that it was all worth it.  On one hand, if I knew then what I know now, we’d have chosen adoption far sooner.  On the other, had we not gone through what we did, we would not have become joined with our son.  As fast as they tell you that babyhood goes, it goes faster than that.

Other than that, I also blog about me and Mr. Badger and random shit.

• I’m a huge Grey’s Anatomy fan, or at least I was until Shonda Rhimes trashed it to bits, and you’ll see a little graphic in each of my posts from the show.
• I have struggled with anxiety and also my weight for a lot of my life, but these days am pretty damned comfortable in my own skin.
• My blog was once found by my folks, but we talked through it all, and now that they understand more about where Mr. Badger and I have been are really proud of us and totally get why I blog, and why Mr. Badger contributes from time to time.  We are both so appreciative of the support that they have given us, and the time they have taken to understand where we have traveled.
• I attempt to knit, but have never gone much past beginner.  I’m thinking about knitting a sweater for winter for Baby Badger, so if you have some cute/basic patterns, let me know in the comments!
• I love love love music, especially indie rock and singer songwriters like Ingrid Michaelson, Frightened Rabbits, Brandi Carlile, and so on.  Paul McCartney will always be my first love though.  I try to get to concerts when I can.
• Wine.  Wine is good.
• Mr. Badger is an amateur  mixologist and makes a mean cocktail.

There’s more, and I’ll try to add in links to posts later, but for now, that’s the quick and dirty!  Let the commenting begin!

That peach wine that we had last night, it was definitely good.  I probably had about 10 people hit unsubscribe after my rant last night, though I really didn’t mean to offend.  Those of you who know me know where I’m coming from.   Like I’ve said before.  I’m not blogging for the bright and shiny of it all, I’m simply chronicling my experience in the ALI world.

Last night, me and the girls talked about this – how we’ll never forget how we got to this amazing place of parenthood.  We saw a little girl at the pool yesterday who simultaneously annoyed us and broke our hearts.  She was 6 years old and was totally enamored of the little guys.   As her young mom sunned with her girlfriends, she stuck to us like glue.  She wanted to hold the babies, feed the babies, love the babies.  She was clearly seeking that which she wasn’t receiving herself.  We could almost see her path right in front of her, where the cycle of motherhood far too young could continue.  It was astounding to us that a parent could just ignore their children to the degree that this girl was.  JJ even said it best, “Even on our worst days with our kids, it’s more wonderful than the best days without them.”  Sure, our kids can wear us down and frustrate, but damn straight it’s the most amazing time of our lives.

It’s the circle of blogging sometimes – we follow and we fall out of touch.  Sometimes we are lucky enough to meet people who truly touch our hearts and become friends, confidants, and part of our closest circle.  This week I got to spend time with two women who have been blogging right along side of me for ages now.  They were even more amazing then their fantastic blogs would lead you to believe, and exactly the type of parents I hope to be with the baby badger.  Laid back, no fuss, and love wine.  I’m thankful that I get to see them again with Mel in a few weeks, but I will have to make sure to keep these ladies in my family’s life.

Plus, JJ’s husband Mook washed my car while we were out of town.  How awesome is he?  Almost as awesome as Mr. Badger.