Harder than I ever anticipated....

Bringing another baby home has been much harder than I ever anticipated.  All those years we waited to adopt I figured I'd breeze right into motherhood the second time with very little issues.  I'd know what I was doing...I wouldn't be physically recovering from labor...I wouldn't have all the hormonal changes that a woman goes through after birth.  Really, how much easier could it get?  And somewhere God is laughing at me right now. 

Ok, so now I will add another phrase to the list of things all infertile and adoptive parents hate to hear
1.  Just Relax
2.  Adopt and you'll get pregnant .......and drumroll please....

3.  It's not like you are recovering from labor

I'm a nut right now, which is probably apparant by the fact that I still have our sad story on the right of the blog along with a picture of just the three of us.  I see it mocking me everytime I get on here but blogger has been very slow about uploading my pictures and I just don't have it in me to mess with it yet.  For some reason the computer has made me very angry the last month, it doesn't seem to work fast enough to suit me.  I tried to submit a birth announcement to our local paper and was temepted to throw the computer down.  Yeah, so much for not having any "hormonal" issues.

I also seem to have some serious time management issues going on.  You would think that since I've been home all week I'd be more on top of things.  Instead I finally made it through our bill basket this evening.  I found 2 bills that needed to be paid that I had completely forgotten about, a tax thing for the Icebox that had also slipped my mind and it dawned on me my car tags were due in June.  So now tomorrow I have to fit in a lot of things before we leave for KC on Saturday that I could've spread out over the week but it never crossed my mind.  So much for not having pregnancy induced memory loss.

I just feel crazy...I'm not sure it even has anything to do with Camryn directly.  I think it's more that I'm just out of touch with so many things and I'm the type who has to know everything that's going on.  We are going to the Hereford Jr National next week.  I've never been to something like this so I'm already clueless.  Add in this weird out of touch feeling I'm experiencing and I really don't know what is going on....and Jay is in charge of this trip so I've seen none of the emails.  Thank goodness I've got a 10lb excuse to hide behind. 

I do think part of my problem is that it is becoming apparant I'm not a very structured person.  Why is it last summer when we worked constantly between our normal jobs and the Icebox my house stayed clean?  I'm home all day for 4 weeks and it's like the laundry monster vomitted.  Clearly, I work better with time constraints.  Give me a whole day and I'll put it all off until the last minute.  Jay looked at me yesterday and said I needed to go back to work.  I'm loving being home with everyone, but I know what he means.  When given the choice between doing the dishes during Camryn's morning nap or watching Fraiser I will take Fraiser.  Because I've got all day to do the dishes....yeah right!!!

Even though I don't believe I ever directly said anything to an adoptive parent about it being "easy" I want to apologize for thinking it.  No matter how the baby comes into your life it is still hard.  In someways adoption may be harder.  Yeah, we had 3 yr 8 months and 1 day to prepare, but we didn't do anything during that time.  We squeezed what most people do in 9 months into one weekend so we weren't super prepared for anything.  Our calm little monotonous family life has changed...although it is a wonderful change and I'm not complaining, it's still a new normal we are adjusting to.  Also, and this is totally selfish, I can see where there is a pro to it being a closed adoption.  With everything else going on I've somewhat blocked out the whole adoption thing and since we don't have contact with Camryn's family it's not right in "my face" all the time.  I can't imagine families going through this adjustment plus handling the dynamics of contact with the birthfamily.  Talk about emotionally charged!  But we do have our first post-placement visit with our social worker a week from Tuesday so that's hanging over us.  Not that I'm worried about anything, but with being in KC for a week, getting home Sat/Sun and then having her here Tuesday I'm a little overwhelmed.  It is hard enough unpacking after a trip normally.  How will I handle unpacking this time?  Hopefully since I'll have a time contsraint I'll get it done.  Or Jamie may have to sit with piles of laundry around her.  Oh well....one definite plus of being 9 years older this time is that I'm not as uptight and I've learned to let things go around the house....or at least that's what I'm telling myself.  I'm not lazy...I'm loosing up!