Friday, June 18, 2010

Babies, Babies, Everywhere...

On Tuesday evening I got a call from the Foster agency telling me that they had gotten a referral for two children, and they wanted to place them with us. All he really knew when he called was their ages: nine months, and 21 months. He hadn't even asked if they were boys or girls. Of course I said, "Sure, we can take them." I now have three children under the age of two - Travis, and two foster daughters. To protect the identity of the innocent, I shall refer to the older sister as Big S and the younger as Lil S. I'm not going to post any photos of them publicly until I find out what the policy is for that. Trust me when I say that they are absolutely freakin adorable. They seem to be healthy, normal little girls, and I am happy to have them. The older does have some behavioral issues, but since she's not even two, I feel like we can work past that. They came to us with about a 45 minute notice on Tuesday evening, with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Since then, friends and family have really shown their generous natures and come together on helping get clothes and supplies to get us set up for these two girls. I have been inundated with baby clothes and supplies, and it is appreciated so much.

I, of course, have been running around on the verge of a nervous breakdown. I will say, it is getting better and better though. Brad has been a saint, helping me as much as he can while he's home, and giving me little breaks whenever he can.

Today, I managed to make it to bible study. I wasn't able to find my study book, but at least I was able to find my bible. The past few days, our house looks like a baby store exploded, and I'm having a hard time finding anything. Sarah, I had to follow along with Nathan's mom this morning. Pitiful, huh?

This afternoon I took the kids to my mom's for a family get together, and we all went swimming. There were plenty of people there to help me. So aside from being physically tired, I' have had a pretty good day. Now I had better go to sleep before I collapse.

Monday, June 14, 2010

Here We Go Again

Yet again, I'm going to try to get back to this blogging thing. It's time. I haven't posted much because things have been so good, but things have been stressing me out a bit lately. Travis is 10 months old now. Here are a few pictures.

 Here, Travis was about 7-8 months old, I think. I had my mom take pics of us in the bluebonnets.
 This is Brad, Travis, and me at the family reunion last weekend. We had a good time.
 This was also taken at the family reunion. Travis is a camera hound, and a ham.

I have been staying at home with Travis, and I am enjoying it. It feels strange to not be working, but I do like taking care of Travis. It has been kind of hard on us financially, but we'll get through. We recently went through the process to get licensed for foster care and adoption. We want to take kids ages 0-12. We are finished with the process, and just waiting for kids.

A few weeks ago, I had to have surgery to remove my gallbladder, but that went well, and I am recovered from that. The only lingering effect is about $2000 worth of medical bills. In addition, we got a nice letter from the IRS saying that we owe them $500 from 2008. And since I haven't been working, I have been paying for COBRA so that I have health insurance. So we are doing our best to stay afloat right now.

But if that wasn't enough, since the COBRA only lasts for 18 months, and I have already used up 7 months of it, if I want to have another baby while I've got it, I need to get knocked up within the next two months. And my deductible resets at the end of August, so I need to take advantage of what limited fertility coverage I have with the COBRA. So today I called the fertility clinic, and got set up to start treatments as soon as my cycle starts. They ordered the meds, and I'm supposed to call them on CD1. We're going to skip the clomid nonsense this time and go straight to what worked for us last time. The protocol should be about the same as last time, with follistim and IUI. While I have a sense of deja vu about all of this, I am able to approach it with a little more calm, since I already have a real, live baby here at home with me. Part of me feels very selfish to be trying fertility treatments when I've already got my gorgeous baby boy, but the other, bigger part of me insists that I have as much right to the family of my dreams as anybody else.

So, here we go again. Dear God, please let things go smoothly, and help me to keep the number of self-injections and strangers looking at my lady-business to a minimum. Also, I pray that the hormones don't make me too murder-y. Amen.

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Back to the Blog

So I haven't posted in quite a while... oh, say six months or so, but I've wanted to. Really, I swear. It was just hard to post when everything was going so well, and then the baby was born, and I got kind of busy, to say the least, and now it's been kind of overwhelming to try to get back in after so long an absence. So I'm just going to jump in like I was never gone, and I will try to fill in the gap as time allows.

Here's a quick update - or summary rather, so you're not completely clueless. Weeks 35 - 40 of my pregnancy were long, hot and boring. Nothing happened that was really worth writing about. I think around week 37 they did an ultrasound that showed the baby's head as being the size of a 40 weeker. Nothing unusual there, as massive noggins run in my family. At 40 weeks and 2 days, I had the baby. Here's a pic of me as we were leaving for the hospital - the last picture of a pregnant Stacy.



Travis James Woodruff was born on August 13, 2009 at 7:00pm.



He weighed 8 lbs and .25 oz. and was 19.5 inches long.



I will post the birth story later. He was a beautiful healthy baby, and still is. He's now about 4.5 months old, and is getting to be more fun every day.

Exactly four weeks after Travis was was born, Brad had a heart attack. He's fine now, and in fact was back to work the next Monday, but that was certainly stressful. I'll post the story about that later.

In other news, I quit my job to be a full time stay at home mom. I'm enjoying it. I'm currently looking for an extra kid to watch during the day to make a little extra cash, but it's not a huge deal right now. I also paid off my truck finally, and rolled over the odometer to 100K miles shortly after that.



I'll be coming back to the blog, especially since I now have a laptop that I can move around the house. My mom was nice enough to give me her old laptop for Christmas, since she got a new one. Now I can actually get on the computer more than once every 3-4 days. I think most of the posts to fill in the 6 month gap will be picture-centric as the pics on my iPhone are the easiest reminder for me of what has happened during that time. It's all kind of a blur in my mind, but with the help of all the pics I've taken, and maybe going back to old facebook updates (I FB from my phone a lot), I think I can fill in the gap.

I'm excited about coming back to the blog, and looking forward to updating everybody with my adventures.

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