Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Been awhile, hmmm?

We're actually have a good summer, I must admit. P's been rough the past two days, the result of 2 skipped naps in a row. Today both he and A are out like a light (or a pair of lights I suppose). In general I've been re-discovering my love of just hanging out with P all day, spending far more time with him than I do during the school year. I think the January-May burst of preschool was like a breath of fresh air: after caring for P all day every day for over 2 years, and going through the jealousy and anger and sleeplessness of those first couple months with A, it was nice to just drop him off in the morning and not have to worry about him for a couple of hours. And the change in him! The sudden burst of questions, learning, social skills, behavioral modifications, everything! Oh, it was glorious! If only we could bottle that!!!

Preschool starts again in a month, and while I'm excited for the whole family.... I have to admit, I am somewhat enjoying myself. I'm enjoying lazing about in the morning. I'm enjoying the fact that I can say "you know what? I feel like going to the pool/mall/museum/library/park/farm today!" and just pack a lunch and go, or even better not pack a lunch at all and eat out somewhere. I'm looking at our Summer Camp refund as a sort of weekly allowance, a $115 weekly allowance, and treating our vacation as just that, a vacation. We're even going to Maine in a few weeks to visit my sister and her family and show P where I grew up (and maybe escape the NC heat for a few days, unless it keeps up the heat up there). I'm a little wary of making the trip with just me and the boys, and leaving Nik to his building project down here, but I suppose at some point you have to trust the fact that some good will come of it, if only to teach us never to do it again :)

I should mention Ambrose's immense growth lately. My tiny, clingy, floppy little peanut has blossomed into a very think, very active older baby. He eats everything in sight (he pooped styrofoam once) and wants to pick up his food himself. He nurses greedily but quickly. He's very loud, very verbal. He can say mama, dada, Paku, Huggu and poopoo, often for the right reasons. He doesn't crawl with tummy off the floor but scoots along, pulling with both arms and pushing with one leg and one foot, as he drags a leg behind him. He's very fast and follows us around the house now. He pulls himself up on things and has a pretty long reach. He plays with everything. He's highly inquisitive and remembers everything, so don't try to hide anything where he might actually be able to reach it because he'll see you do it and find it. He's also a little booger to his brother, stealing whatever toy P has his hand on and eating the paper off his lessons table! The two boys take a bath together most nights and enjoy splashing each other. A mimics frequently. He also plays peek a boo with a blanket. He sleeps pretty well at night now and we have frequently seen a 5+ hour stretch at night, once it was 8 hours. He doesn't nap nearly as well so I suppose that's the trade off, but he still takes a 1.5-3hour nap around noon, same as Paxton (hooray!).

As for #3.... we're still hammering out a name and a time frame. I'd prefer to wait until A is at least 18 months and refuse to accept a baby before October, before A turns a year. I'd prefer him to be closer to 2 and perhaps a little less needy and maybe even sleeping in Paxton's room. We doubt he'll be in a room by himself anytime soon. Anyway, we're hoping for a girl this time around but have a boy's name picked out, just in case. We aren't certain which agency we'll be using, especially since the agency we used for A seems to be having a pretty big lull creating quite a backlog. But our HS is almost complete (we need to pay another country change fee since we'll be going back to domestic after trying international) and we'll have time to look around. I'm already starting to look around at agencies listing situations for which they haven't found homes, especially situations for African American baby girls do in or after October... But I want to wait until we get Brozy's tax refund back anyway, early next year, just so we don't have to worry about $$ or credit during this.

At this point our family building plan looks like this:
Adopt #3, or Baby Girl #1, within the next 18 months.
Adopt #4, or Baby Girl #2, a couple years after BG#1 comes home.
Be done with 4 children, 2 boys and 2 girls, and have our family complete by the time I'm 32 and Nik's 30, meaning that when I'm 50 and he's 48 they'll all be adults and likely be out of the house, if only in college.
On the one hand, this somewhat destroys the mystique, the "how many and where will they come from?" and the "let's just see what happens!!!" On the other hand, by age 35 I'll be sleeping through the night most likely and at a time when many of my friends are dealing with dirty diapers and two year old tantrums, I'll have all school aged children.
This also gets rid of any possibility of a pregnancy... something I should go ahead and come to terms with.... perhaps another day though :-)
And it means Ambrose is going to be our last baby boy if we stick with this, which makes me a little sad looking at the newborn sized boy clothes we were putting in the attic a few days ago.
Back to that second hand, though, I'll still have time and energy to go back to school myself in my thirties while they're at school (if we've chosen not to homeschool), and there'll be a finite amount of children, a reasonable and manageable number, and if we stick to this we only have a few years left and our family will be complete and we can all just grow together and not worry about any major changes for a long time. I won't have to deal with a new baby and a cranky teenager in the same day and Nik and I will have more time for each other, more time to travel, and more time for the children in our home.
Still, some part of me will always gaze wistfully at the mamas walking around with a half dozen or more kids, raising a family on a homestead, homeschooling and home birthing and tandem nursing and enjoying a life out of their own hands... a life that will never be for me, but a life I do enjoy dreaming about anyway.

Alright enough thinking... :) Time to read some celebrity gossip and blogs before either boy wakes up (because then it's a quest to keep one quiet and the other asleep for as long as possible).