A Little People Warning

Tonight I met my friend Sandra for dinner and then we went to Starbucks for coffee. We only get to do that once every 6 months or so, so it was fun to catch up. After I got home though I found out I may not be allowed to do that anymore...

I left a little after 1 this afternoon. Before meeting Sandra I ran to Joplin to take care of a couple of errands. Then we met at 4 and I got home at 9. As soon as I walked in I could tell Jay had that look. It is the same look that I have when I've been left alone for too long. The look that says both kids are in bed and I need to sit in the chair with no one bothering me for awhile. I knew something was wrong. 

I asked how Camryn was. He said she was fine. I knew Cade was going through some 11 year old stuff today so that was part of his problem but I knew that wasn't all so I prodded some more. Finally he told me about youth group...

They ate pizza and played video games tonight. Jay kept Camryn with him

all night. They were walking around and she was holding a Little People person. They walked into the church basement and Jay stopped to get a piece of pizza. He said all of a sudden Camryn started staggering around and bouncing off the island like a ping pong ball. He picked her up to see what the problem was. The Little People person was standing up in her mouth lodged between her tongue and roof of her mouth. Jay thinks it scared Camryn so much she held her breath and started to pass out. She wasn't actually choking on it, it was just stuck. Jay quickly jerked it out and then Camryn screamed for 30 minutes. 

Jay told me the story and then immediately turned his movie back on. Wait...you just told me you think she passed out and then you turn the TV back on???  I made him pause it and go over the story again. Then I had to make sure she was acting normal afterwards. He said she was. After the second telling I decided to leave him alone so he

could de-stress. I do know how he is feeling.

  I also tried to not let it bother me. From the time Camryn was tiny she was a breath holder. Anytime she would get hurt her mouth would open but no sound would come out. It would scare me enough I was tempted to shake her. I've actually seen her start to turn blue from this trick. But then she would finally let out the biggest wail you've ever heard and she would start breathing again.  I know it is common- but it is definitely scary when you see your child do it.  

Leave it to Camryn to take an age appropriate toy and figure out how to make it dangerous. I said "great, now we can't even let her play with those?"  Jay said "oh, I don't think she will ever put them in her mouth again."  Let's just hope we all learned our lesson with the Little People!!

The Birth Story

With Cade I worried a lot about if he was developmentally on track. I had a book that would tell me the milestones of a certain month and I would look at it to make sure he wasn't behind. He didn't laugh until he was almost 5 months old. I thought there was something wrong with him. I remember literally devoting a whole weekend to making him laugh.  I was so stupid. 

At least I realized it with Camryn so I didn't fall into the same trap. I never opened a book about milestones. When I talked to others who had kids around the same age I never let it bother me if they were more advanced. I was determined to not get into a cycle of outdoing one another or worrying about it if she wasn't the same. Actually I think God was looking out for me since she didn't walk  until she was almost 1. When I think that she has only been moving really good for a year I can't believe it. How tired would I have been if this had been going on for longer?

But back the worrying. I didn't worry about anything EXCEPT how she compares with other adopted kids. Are we talking about it enough? Too much? Does she know the word adopted? How much should I tell her?  Other 2 year olds can recite their birthfamily tree. When I tell Camryn she is adopted she laughs and says "no, you are adopted". It is like a game. Is that bad...or is it good???  Am I missing a key moment to tell her?  Will she not pay any attention to me now and then realize it when she is 11???  What if I screw this up???

When she turned 2 I started trying To remember to mention it more often. Seriously- that is even hard to remember. I forget she is adopted all the time...but I also think about her birth mom a whole lot. It is weird. 

We have a book by Jamie Lee Curtis called Tell Me Again About the Night I Was Born. She loves it and asks for the adoption book frequently. We read it a few times and then I started telling her tiny parts of her story. When asked she can repeat back parts of the story. What Color bow was she wearing the first time we saw her? (Pink) What did we think about her? (Perfect) and she can repeat her birth parents names. 

This went on for a few weeks. I thought not only was Camryn a genius but that I was handling this adoption talk very well. I could teach a class or something on it (ha ha). Things though were going good then last Sunday happened. 

We were getting her out of the van at church. I had to put her shoes on so Jay was making conversation with a boy while waiting on me. Jay asked the boy what his Dad's name was. Camryn started screaming "Alex, it is Alex". Here is a sidenote to the story. I've been listening to Madagascar in the van for weeks. When I heard her say Alex all I could think of was Alex the Lion. I was so confused as to why Camryn was saying David's dad was Alex the Lion. Finally it dawned on me. Alex is her birthdad's name. So now Camryn has called us by her birth parents names a couple of times. 

Thankfully Jay and I are extremely secure in our roles as her parents so we aren't concerned about it in the least. We actually laughed about it and decided to not talk about it as much for awhile. It is confusing since we don't have a picture to put with their names. If we had that I think she would understand it more. She knows all of her other important family members in pictures. 

Not having a picture of her birthmom really bothers me. I've wished countless times for one. I stalk Facebook every so often in hopes I will stumble on one. But in the meantimeI think we will focus on the other parts of her adoption story.

If you see us and we look like we are ignoring Camryn we very well could be. We've decided not to respond if she calls us by other names!!  Not that it happens very often but we definitely don't want to make it worse. 

A Problem with Pants

One of the things that kept me busy last month was that I applied and interviewed for a different job. Ryan, Tera – if you are reading this don’t worry. I’m still coming to Springfield next month since I didn’t take the job, but it was definitely a learning experience for me. 

The last time I interviewed for a new job was 2001. That’s when I started working for FCS. Since then I’ve had two internal interviews – 2002 when I transferred to Carthage and 2009 when I came to Mt Vernon. So it had been a long time since I’d put a resume together or thought about my strengths and weaknesses or references or any of that stressful junk you deal with when switching jobs. The beauty of this process though was that I did not care about getting the job. I already have a great job that I like (most of the time) so it didn’t matter one way or the other to me. I also knew I wasn’t budging from my spot for one penny less than what I make now. It was different having the tables turned….instead of me selling myself to them they essentially had to sell their business to me.

 I don’t say that to sound snotty but this was a bank starting to get their fingers into Ag loans for the first time. I have 12 years of experience doing exactly what they would’ve wanted me to do in this new position. One of the questions they asked was how much of a workload I could handle. This was after they told me that when they bought out this bank they were left with 5 loans. Five Loans. I told them I’m used to $60 million. So you can see the tables really were turned…..

 The other thing that was different was that I’ve never switched jobs while having a family. Jay and I had been married 15 months when I started at FCS. We didn’t have kids, we didn’t have established doctors, we weren’t even living in a permanent spot. Jay was still teaching in Richland and we knew he was going to look for a different position that spring. 12 years and 6 months later…..we’ve been married almost 14 years, we are in a permanent (or at least we hope) spot, we have 2 kids, we finally got everyone established at the same doctors office that is just down the road, I’ve earned quite a bit of vacation and sick time, etc. There was so much more to think about then just how much I would have made – which was what Jay kept asking me. 

 So here were the factors that kept me from leaving…. 

• Vacation and sick time. I would have lost the equivalent of my sick time here. After taking off their required number of vacation days it wouldn’t have left me many for sick days. I could have wiped them all out in one of our normal months of March. 

• The hours – I would’ve left 30 minutes later in the evening. 

• The insurance – complete opposite of what we have now. I did not want to change doctors. 

 AND this seriously was one of my biggest reasons….. 

 I didn’t want to dress up that much!!!

 Not that I come to work in dirty jeans and coffee stains down my shirt front, but I didn’t want to go back to the super professional dress. Isn’t that ridiculous? All I could think during the interview was “I’m going to need some new clothes…I hate buying dress pants…I don’t want to shop for new heels…I can’t wear heels because of my bunions….dress skirts don’t look right without heels….” So there is how I came to say no to a potential life altering choice….I didn’t want to give up my mustard colored skinny jeans (actually they are more like pants then jeans) and boots this fall.

 And much to Jay’s disappointment I never even got to the salary part. The supervisor called to see if I was still interested because they were going to have to do some work to get me the same salary. I told her it wasn’t going to be a good fit for me…like literally because I hate shopping for dress pants because it is hard to find a good fit. Now if it had been a completely different career change – like jewelry making or basket weaving I would’ve been more interested…but why change jobs and do the same thing but have to wear uncomfortable pants and shoes while doing it??? Yeah, it didn’t make sense to me either.

Cheetos for Breakfast

I've really missed blogging this summer. This is one of my favorite hobbies and it has really taken a backseat this summer. I'm hoping that I can get back into it as we transition into fall. But then Stacy texted me and said Camryn may or may not have drunk a bottle of immitation vanilla....At this rate I may not get anything done for the next 18 years!!!

 Last week I was reading a Christian article on how mother's really let themselves be influenced by seeing other types of mother's and thinking we don't measure up to what they do. They had some different types specifically mentioned in the article....like Crunchy Mom, Magazine Shoot Mom, etc. Actually those are the only two types I remember but I know there were more. I probably don't remember because I was too busy trying to decide what kind of mom I am. Today it finally came to me....I am Split Personality Mom. They didn't mention that type of mom in the article probably because Split Personality Mom has so many issues it couldn't be addressed in a few short paragraphs. So I'll try to sum up what all of this means.....

 Sometimes I will have all my clothes ironed and laid out in the order I will be wearing them for the upcoming week...then other times I spend weeks digging through a pile of clothes on my closet floor because I don't take the time to hang them up. Right now I've been digging through the same pile since the picnic. I have yet to actually hang any of them up.

 Sometimes I will have all of our meals carefully planned and prepped prior to the week starting....other times we eat out constantly because I'm so unorganized and the fridge is packed so full from the leftovers from the "all together week" that need to be thrown out. It overwhelms me. 

 Sometimes at work I've got things carefully written in my planner and my desk is clear except for the orgnized stack....other times (like now) I've got piles everywhere, notes scribbled on any piece of paper I can find and my calender isn't even flipped to the right week. This mess is intensified about a million times due to our move that will take place in a few weeks.

 Sometimes I am a neat freak (actually I used to be one, now I'm mostly resigned to the fact our house will be a mess most of the time). But when I finally manage to get it cleaned up I am a micromanager of all stray items in the house...at least for a day or two. Then I realize that I might as well be walking up a hill carrying a 30 lb weight. Oh actually I do do that most of the time - which is why I give up on the house. So if you want to stop by our house do it on a Sunday or Monday. After that there may be shoes on the kitchen table (from bringing in an armload of crap from the van) or unmade beds or a pile of Camryn's dirty clothes left where we change her

Sometimes I worry about what we eat and how unhealthy it is so I make breakfast every day. I usually get that feeling when I also decide I yell about needing to hurry out the door in the mornings too much....then the first day of school Jay drove a bus. I spent the morning herding everyone around. I stood at the door and yelled at Cade to hurry and we'd get him something at the gas station for breakfast...

Last week was definitely one of those unorganized, stepping over piles of laundry kind of weeks. Then to make matters worse Jay had to drive a bus one morning. All I wanted was to get out the door, without yelling, no tears,

deliver both kids with all necessary personal items on their bodies AND make it to work on time.  It was a tall order...everything was going good until Camryn spied a single serve bag of Cheetos. On one hand I was "all together mom who was going to be on time" and on the other hand I was "just get the heck out the door mom". I quickly stepped over the laundry so I could open the Cheetos for Camryn. 

Cade rolled his eyes and said "Cheetos for breakfast??"  This from the boy who drank a gazillion gallons of diet pop with my grandparents at this age. I know he is developing his list of "things I won't do when I'm a dad."  Apparently no junk food in the mornings is one of them. I hate to tell him this but his personality is 90% me...which means he will be cooking his kids a healthy breakfast while they are digging through piles of laundry...or not yelling at them to get in the car but feeding them junk food to get their cooperation on a hectic morning.  Yes...I may not have it all together but at least things are never boring...or predictable around here. 

Back to Work

I have to take a moment here and unwind from the morning. We had a good weekend. I got some things done around the house yesterday that made me feel better about the work week ahead. 

This morning started out really good...then at 7 am we lost electricity. I had eye shadow on one eye and my hair wasn't fixed...fun times. Jay has been having problems with the electricity to our barn and since I'm an habitual worry wart I was afraid we had blown something up at our house. I grabbed some flip flops and went to the neighbors to make sure it wasn't just us. It wasn't. Whew. I came back to the house and used my cell phone to gather up the rest of my eye utensils and stuff to finish my hair, along with clothes for Camryn. My plan was to head to the office and finish up there. Right before I got in the van I did at least remember I was wearing flip flops so I ran in and changed....which was really good considering one was black and one was navy. 

I pulled into the office at 7:30 and unfortunatley the loan officer was there. Drat. We've had some major issues with a loan this past week and I knew he was there because of that. Normally he wouldn't have been here that early on Tuesday. The thinig about the loan officer is that he is a really great guy. Really great....except when he is cranky. When he is cranky watch out!!! Today was a cranky day due to the problems with the loan mentioned above. I walked in looking lopsided since I had makeup on one eye. I probably also looked sick since that is how I look when I don't have on eye liner or mascarea. And it probably looked like I was badling since my already limp, flat hair was still really limp and flat considering I had done nothing but dry it a few minutes ago. He looked up and seriously had a look on his face that said "what the h*** is she doing here" when he saw Camryn. I know he was afraid that she was sick and I was going to tell him I wasn't working today. I quickly tried to explain about the electricity and that I just need to finish getting ready. I'm not sure that he listened because he went into what I needed to do immediately then he said "well I guess I'll just do it since you'll still have to take her to the sitters." Ok...taking Camryn to the sitters was the least of my problems. I looked like a Zombie!!!! And Camryn was in a full diaper wearing her pajammas. Yeah, driving 2 minutes to Stacy's house was not what I was concerned about!!!! I decided not to mention that I'm kind of afraid she might be getting bronchitis. Some things are better left unsaid.

 I got ready and got Camryn delivered to Stacy's and was back before 8...which is my normal start time anyway. As the loan officer was leaving Pam was coming in. She mentioned to Darrell that she didn't feel good all weekend and her blood pressure was high. As soon as he left I told Pam that work was not the place to be today if her BP was high!!! Oh - things are always entertaining around here.  At least we can laugh about it...

Cade's Summer in Pictures

Camryn's Summer in Pictures