Bad, bad days...

Adoption is on hold. Nik's team at work got laid off a little over a week ago. Just couldn't blog about it, y'know? So... we have money in the bank, we'll survive. Job market is small and slow, no real action in over a week. He might possibly get a contract position within the next month. In normal economy he would've had a job already. The nursery is done. The domperidone is in hand. The baby? I don't know if it will ever be. And we were on the list... we were ready at any time....

And God help me if my kid throws one more tantrum because he chooses not to nap and he's so dang tired I'm seriously going to lose it and just scream at him.

And if one more person does the "God's plan" or "It will work out" or any other happy advice I'm going to scream. Do people think we don't know this? That we don't tell ourselves this? When we hear it from someone else it's almost like they're telling us our grief isn't justified.

It's just... why couldn't it have happened a few weeks earlier? BEFORE we sent out our applications? Before we were accepted into a program? Before our profile went active? Or why not a couple months later, when we might've had a baby in our arms? People keep telling us that that would be harder, more stressful. Do you really think actually having your child is more stressful than having to give up the new hope you've just found?

I've been pretty upbeat lately, don't get me wrong. We've been looking at the bright side, spending time together, and Nik's been more relaxed since he's not working his butt off anymore. And we're keeping our heads clear and thinking about the various possibilities, like redoing our paperwork if we haven't adopted by the end of the year and switching to our old agency's new Rwanda program or seeing if Vietnam opens up again, both places I've felt called to. We're not wallowing in self pity.

In fact, I didn't even think I'd become emotional at all writing about it.

But then I started writing and started crying. I guess that's what writing does, brings out the emotions you've put on the back burner. It doesn't help that I'm frustrated with Paxton today, now does it? Arg, it's always Sundays he refuses a nap, and that's when we like to stay up a bit later too! I'm either a bad mom for not getting him to nap or a bad mom for keeping him up late when he hasn't napped, or maybe even a bad mom for denying him time with his loving grandparents in order to keep him on a schedule. I don't honestly think I'm a bad mom but something about being all emotional brings that out in me.

Alright, so this is becoming a bit more stream of consciousness than I'd thought. *Sigh*

So let's just get this all out then:
This sucks.

This economy sucks for the American public and, well, all other countries really.

This sucks for me as I've felt that welcoming our next child (next son, I think) was literally just around the corner and I've been working so hard to prepare our home and our son and my body and our marriage and the car and everything, just literally waiting for the moment we'd receive the miraculous news that we'd been selected and our baby was either born or soon to be so.

This sucks for my husband who lost his job, along with friends, after working his butt off, not realizing that they were just squeezing out what they felt was the last usage of his team. He lost 16 hours on a Saturday to finishing their company website, totally unpaid, just to be fired shortly therafter. He lost contact with friends, a friendly group environment, a fun boss. He now has a trunk full of stuff that used to cover his desk and a list of about 30 applications he's sent out, none of which he's heard back from. He's got one interview under his belt, another tomorrow, both for contract work. And I'm pretty sure his ego is shot. I mean, they let go 20% of their workforce, but he was part of that. And he hasn't been hired, interviewed, or even contacted really in over a week despite lots of contacts and so many people circulating his name around. This just sucks for him as a man.

And what I'm really worried about, this sucks for our son. He wants the new baby. We spent waaaay too much on a Pottery Barn Kids nightlight, a Frog Prince, to match Paxton's Moon and Star one. Paxton has to make sure that light is on for "baby" before he can take a nap. He talks about baby. Says things are for baby. Asks about baby. We were preparing him and he is ready to be a big brother and now... Maybe sometime this year? Maybe not? Was it all for nothing? And let's not even talk about him having to deal with adjusting to daddy being home, which is kinda cool but also messes with schedules, and oh yeah there's a little extra stress in the air. And then there's us indulging him a bit more, which I don't really think is good for him or his waistline since mommy bakes when she's stressed and he's getting more cookies now.

This just sucks.

And I know it will all work out in the end, and in a way it's a relief since the process was seeming a bit too smooth so far compared to Paxton's (only hard part was selling a house in this economy). It's like I was waiting for the next pitfall and bam, there it is. Over and done with. Let's pray it's the last one.

Okay, so I'm actually feeling a bit better writing that out. I think that's actually my first real vent since right after Nik gave me the news. Whooooooo, breath in, breath out...

On the bright side, there's a possibility (acc. to his contract interview) that he might be able to adopt while doing contract work so long as he takes unpaid time off and declines any paid vacation time. And he'd still have some benefits through that. So, if he starts a contract job within the month (possible) we might still remain active and not actually have to put anything on hold. Or we might be on hold for only a few months, or there's the possibility of finding a first parent choosing an adoption plan within North Carolina which would work even better, especially if we do a fully or mostly open adoption. Or it might not work out at all, either we're on hold too long or more pitfalls come or, God forbid, we finally match and it falls through. And then? We adopt internationally again. We're young and we have time to build the large family we desire. We know this. We are fully cognizant that this, too, shall pass and some day, maybe far and maybe near, we'll be holding our next child and we'll be so glad that everything happened to set it up right.

Still sucks right now though.