Seeking God Knows What

Our friends just called and they had their baby today. A boy. Obviously, they are very excited and happy. It is the husband’s dad’s birthday today, which is cool.

I just wish that these stupid little twinges of jealousy and sadness about my infertility wouldn’t butt in and mess up my happiness for them. I feel like smiling and crying at the same time.

Wishing it were me isn’t going to make my infertility reverse itself. All the desire in the world to be a mom through a pregnancy isn’t going to make it happen. As much faith as I have in God’s ability to create miracles, that is one miracle that won’t be happening. Ever.

Okay. Enough whining. Get over yourself, right? Your turn to be a mom again will come. Some day.

The bank took our short sale request and approved it basically because the appraisal they did came back $25,000 less than the appraisal that was done last year, which makes me even more suspicious that the other one was jacked up- while values have gone down, they have not gone down that much.

And they gave us NO indication that we are liable for the difference. In fact, the woman at the bank said we should just proceed to close as we would with a “normal” sale except they take the lower amount as pay-off. I would assume that if we owed money, she would have said something.

Yes, this will be in writing. A letter was mailed to our realtor, which she said he should hopefully have today.

I am so relieved, even if I am not looking forward to returning to apartment life but once we get settled, I’m sure I will be fine. You should have seen me prattle on about my relief during my session with #5 today (then we got onto my mother/parents, not so much relief there but a very good discussion about what is MY responsibility in all of that crap and what is not!)

Thank God!

This is an odd occurrence for western Michigan in April. 80 degrees, a few clouds, light breeze.

I got sunburned spending 3 hours outside with Widget, washing our cars -she was a big helper… okay not so much when she rewashes what you just rinsed. We even pulled out her kiddie pool and filled it partially with water from the hose, partially with warm water from the house.

Gorgeous weather. It won’t stay this warm but I’m reveling in it while it lasts

If you haven’t seen it and plan to, don’t keep reading. Continue reading ‘Tonight’s Grey’s Anatomy’

It has been a rather long time since I posted about Widget and her doings. And she is doing…. constantly! The weekend I spent in TN at the beginning of March, M said to me, “she really is busy, isn’t she?” Yes, yes, yes! She is in motion 90% of the day. The only time I can get anything done in terms of housework is if she is napping.

She is talking up a storm, although as she has started putting longer sentences together, her words get jumbled and it is a little harder to understand her than when she was speaking single words or two word sentences. She sings a lot: Twinkle, twinkle; ABCs; Itsy Bitsy Spider; I’m a little teapot among the many she knows. She loves Dora, Diego, and WonderPets, although if it is a cartoon type show, she’d watch it- I need to be better about how much TV she watches.

She would walk for hours outside if we’d let her. T was amazed the other night because they walked around the block and she didn’t ask to be carried until they were almost home. She has mastered pedaling her tricycle. I will miss having a driveway for her to ride it when we move.

Give her paint, chalk, crayons and she is content for quite awhile. Messy but content. She has become very precise in the way she paints or draws, carefully choosing which color (mostly blue) and determine where she wants to use it. T’s mom watches her one day a week and we usually have a piece of artwork to bring home. They explored fingerpainting not too long ago and that was an absolute blast.

We haven’t moved her to the toddler bed yet because she is content in her crib and not interested in climbing out. Nor have we started potty training. She occasionally expresses some interest in the idea but doesn’t appear to actually want to use the potty.

She does try my patience regularly and sometimes I feel like I’m always snapping at her to stop climbing on me, stop kicking, stop hitting, running away while I’m trying to change her diaper or get clothes on her. We haven’t found a successful discipline method- we generally use time outs now but I’m not sure they are actually making a difference. It makes for some frustrating times.

She is so very two!

I meant to post this yesterday but got sidetracked by the horrifying events at Virginia Tech.

Awhile back I posted with a link to a news story about Stephanie Bennett’s attempts to have her daughter, Evelyn returned to her after what is a very unethical process that terminated her rights as a parent.

Today Baby Evelyn turned one. She has been hidden away for over 6 months by the paparents at the urging of the agency, A Child’s Waiting of Ohio. A court order to turn over custody to her grandparents was issued, a refusal by the agency to comply.

As an adoptive parent, I know the urge, the desire, the overwhelming longing to be a parent but that does not give me a right to a child taken from her mother under extremely unethical methods. I cannot imagine what the agency is telling them about the legalities of the situation. I am giving them the benefit of the doubt and, until I hear otherwise, I am assuming they do NOT have any idea what really happened regarding Stephanie’s rights termination. But no matter what, in the short time period immediately after when she changed her mind, they should have been done the right thing and returned Evelyn directly to Stephanie, whether there was a revocation period or not. I feel very strongly that between 6 and 12 weeks post placement, a child should be returned without any hesitation if the firstparents change their minds. I know it may feel like forever and there is a fear of not being able to attach if you as the aparent are guarding your heart, but you do. I knew every minute of every day for 12 weeks the phone could ring and L could say she wanted Widget back. It would have killed me but I would have done it. I also believe a line has to be drawn somewhere where the decision is irreversible but immediately after placement, heck no.

I want to know what they will tell her if they do end up being able to finalize the adoption about what happened. If they think they can hide it from her, impossible. I am quite sure she will find out. Whether they have any knowledge of the true situation or not, they are still guilty of keeping her when they should not have.

This is a case, along with Allison Quets (who remains in jail awaiting trial), shows the myriad of issues and reforms needed in adoption.

Thirdmom has prepared a great list of all the blog posts about this case here. Sign the petition here.

I am completely horrified and saddened by the shootings at Virginia Tech. Reports now say 32 people died, the majority in the second round of shooting.

I have been reading the news periodically but it seems no one knows yet why there was an opportunity for the shooter to cross campus and attack one of the engineering buildings.

Many, many prayers going out for the families and friends of victims plus all those connected with the school.

May God give you strength in this incomprehensible tragedy.

During our session on Tuesday, #5 and I had a short discussion about God and adoption, following along the lines of the recent blow-up on one of the forums I visit. I said something about how the notion of God choosing a particular child for me to parent really bothered me. We talked that there are likely two concepts at work here- one dealing with idea that God has completely defined the future and paths our lives will lead and the other has to do with people needing to feel entitled to parent the children they have adopted. Sort of the feeling that “this is what God intended and the reason I was infertile, etc.” I explained to #5 how I felt that adoption was part of the fallout of sin in the world and while God gave me a desire to be a parent, He did not set out to create Widget to be my child through L. To me, that would be the same as God choosing me to have cancer and I just can’t believe God did that.

So, #5 ends up giving me this book called God of the Possible to read. Now, I will admit I got a little bored with the writing format, but the concept was very interesting. The author was trying to prove using Biblical passages while God does foreknow some things, He leaves some things open to the possibility of this happening or that happening depending on our free will. It does make sense to me because if God absolutely knew everything about my future right now, how would I have any free will? I think He is there through whatever decision we make or every bad thing that happens or every good thing that happens. He guides us through our lives, wanting us to choose His love and grace, instead of our self-centered desires. But if He already knows who is going to be “saved” and who is “condemned”, nothing that we chose to do should make any difference. I’m not sure I’m explaining this right
Anyway, a random post about theology

Even if the mortgage company tells you you are qualified for a $200,000 VA mortgage at 6.25%, DO NOT take them up on it. Especially since you signed two different 6 year car loans for brand new vehicles in the last 6 months

Take the military up on its offer for FREE housing on the air force base. It is BRAND NEW and 4 bedrooms, 2 baths, even if it means crowding in to an apartment for a few months until it is ready.

If I had an offer for brand new free housing, I would jump on it.

Oh, I’m having a dilemma. Nothing new, right?
We are still waiting on the bank to tell us if they will take the offer submitted as payment in full for our loan. We missed a piece of paperwork and now have to get that to them before they can process it. Of course, since they are reviewing more short sale requests than before thanks to the *fabulous* real estate market and whole subprime mortgage deal (totally us and the more I’ve been reading up on it, the more sure I am that we had some predatory lending going on ).

Now my dilemma is this:

We talked to the apartment complex people where we would prefer to live: it has a play area, a pool, a fitness center (heh that may just eliminate my excuse for not exercising…) and we can paint the walls in our apartment…. Sorry, I digress. They only have one two bedroom two bath apartment and one possible coming open in May and their April lease special is one month free rent which you can either take upfront or divvy up over the lease term of 12 months but you have to sign by April 30. I’d prefer the two bath because the overall size is larger and the expense isn’t that much more than a one bath- about $40-$50 more per month depending.

If we do need to move in May, truthfully the only weekends we could do it would be the 1st weekend as in a little of 3 weeks or Memorial day weekend. If the approval goes through, the buyer wants to close and take possession 30 days from then.

There’s this teeny part of me saying to heck with it all, let’s just move the first weekend in May and if they don’t take the offer, we’ll just stop paying and let it go into foreclosure or attempt what they call a “deed-in-lieu of foreclosure”. If the bank is smart, they’ll take the short sale because we KNOW the only other option will be foreclosure since we are in WAY WAY WAY over our heads right now.

We paid the hold fee on the apartment style they had, which is refundable through end of the day tomorrow, but we have to say yes or no by then too because we haven’t filled out the applications yet and they need those to hold the apartment longer than that. We would then have a month before we would have to sign lease paperwork or lose the apartment to someone else.

So should we….

Say no and wait until we hear from the bank about approval but run the risk of not being able to get the apartment size we want?

Say yes and hold the apartment for the month knowing we may not get the same special in May?

Say yes, and lease the apartment by the 30th to get the special but wait to move until we know whether we will be going the short sale or foreclosure route?

Say yes, lease by the 30th, move the first weekend in May and just say to heck with it.

You should have seen me yesterday during my session with #5 while I’m rattling on about these options, not knowing what is the right thing to do, my anxiety level, the amount of time I’ve spent running assorted numbers in various spreadsheets trying to determine financially what is the best. He kept making me stop and take calming deep breaths.

And just so you don’t think I’m making all these decisions without T, we have talked at length about it. Both of us just don’t know. One minute, we think yes we should go ahead and move, the next maybe we should wait. I’ve also prayed about it but at the moment, it feels like it is one of those times in which God is going the “no answer” route.