Guess who's coming to breakfast


I sent an email to some important people letting them know a very auspicious event will occur on September 5: BabyGirl begins her new life as a kindergartener. I asked them to send a quick note to her to be read that morning letting her know how excited they are for her and that she's loved. Almost immediately, we got a phone call from her firstdad, who now lives in the South (we're in the Midwest) for engineering school. He booked a flight and will be home for her first day of school. How great is that? Wonderfully great.

This is a guy who loved school, who loves the girl he helped create, and has always been as involved as he could in her life. Had his life circumstances been different, he would have been a terrific dad to her; if he has more children in the future, they will be very blessed to have him. Anyhoo, we're just tickled to pieces that he'll be able to join us for breakfast that morning and will join us on the ride to school to see her off.

I was thinking of hosting a small champagne brunch for the other playgroup moms whose babies will also begin kindergarten that same day. I saw it in RealSimple magazine and I like champagne; it seems like a good way to celebrate/mourn our new status as moms of school-aged children.

Huh? What was that you said?


I knew it would happen one day, I just didn't expect it would happen at 5 years, 4 months, and 8 days.

BabyGirl woke up early in a pissy, hungry mood because she hadn't bothered to eat lunch or dinner yesterday. For whatever reason, there's not much else that gets me so pissy as a kid who doesn't eat then complains of hunger. Anyway, as I was saying, "put more eggs on your fork and eat them" for the millionth time, she hit me with it.

"I wish Firstmom and Firstdad were my parents."

Now, we have a very open adoption, we see them as frequently as we can, and they are very much in our lives even though we don't see them all the time. Before our daughter became our daughter, the agency had us talk about our fears about parenting by adoption. Hearing my teenager spit out those very words was the second thing on my list (right after a birthparent reclaiming their/our child before the consent hearing--something that happened 3 times).

I must say I responded well. I didn't get upset, I didn't hyperventilate, all I said was, "I'm sure they seem like much more fun right now, don't they?" and kept on reading my NYTimes. Most remarkably, it didn't even phase me! What do I think this means for me? I must be really confident that I'm her mommy, Mr. Handsome is her daddy, and that we're a family.

Aside from the crappy, pissy way the day started, it was a pretty nice way to start out her last day of daycamp.

Beautiful, beautiful book

I was just re-thumbing through one of my new favorite books, Soul Sanctuary: Images of the African American Worship Experience, by Jason Miccolo Johnson. It's wonderful.

http://www.soulsanctuarybook.com

Daycamp, Day 4

So BabyGirl is off at daycamp, it's after 10am, and I'm still sitting here like a lump. Spun through the tv channels only to realize there's still nothing on, then found the energy to break that spell. So now I'm wasting time on the computer. What I should be doing is taking a shower and getting ready for yoga at noon. I'm simply at a loss with an empty house or how to motivate myself as a grown-up and not a mom. Does that make any sense?

I quit work about a year before BabyGirl came home and managed to amuse myself pretty well then, but I was in graduate school (again) so I had something productive to do with my time. I finished that second master's in April 2005 (three weeks after our 4th baby came home) and now I'm adrift with my 6-hours of daily solo time this week. I'm actually glad daycamp is done tomorrow! I've defined myself as a stay-at-home mom for so long, I'm not sure what my grown-up self-definition is anymore. I think I know, but I'm pretty terrified of stepping out there again. I opted to leave my former industry to train for one I actually care about, so, in the unlikely event that I'm able to find part-time work in my new field, I'll be the new kid. At 42.

So I ask, how does a reasonably-intelligent formerly-working woman begin to become a grown-up again, separate from my baby bird who is quickly getting ready to leave the nest? After all, next month is kindergarten, next year is college, right?

For better or worse...

... I'm jumping on the blogging bandwagon. Why on earth, you wonder, does the blogosphere need yet another stay-at-home mom yakking about how cute/smart/amazing her kid is? Because I haven't found any blogs that address the kind of changes going on at our house these days.

So what's up here? Here's our family in a nutshell: Mr.B is 45, works hard to take care of us, and is an even better dad than I guessed he'd be when we got married. I'm 42, used to work in the auto industry but quit as soon as I could even remotely rationalize it under the guise of trying to get pregnant, now I stay home with Her Cuteness and try to stay one step ahead of her and her shenanigans. We've been together for almost 13 years, married for over 10. It's pretty darn great--except for the part when we're confronted by our own human foibles, of course. And then there's BabyGirl. Frankly, she's the most remarkable little girl I've ever met. She's five, smart, kind, curious, strong, and beautiful. We have a great open relationship with both of her firstparents, a first grandparent on each side, and are slowly meeting more of her first kin. It's unspeakably wonderful.

Mr.B and I did four years on the infertility merry-go-round: me, no eggs; him, wacked out sperm. Together, there's no way we can make a baby. You've seen the infertility blogs, you know how hard it is, I don't need to elaborate now. Two cycles of donor egg/ICSI/IVF resulted in only one fertilization, known as Hercules, who slipped out of my uterus when we weren't looking. We became committed to open adoption, had a little boy placed with us who was ours for two days, then met our daughter a few months later in April 2001. Last year, we tried again. In January 2005, a little girl was ours for four days, then in April, a little boy was placed with us. He was with us for 16 weeks (that's 112 days). I'm sure that whole ugly situation will be covered here at some point...

So what's our deal now? Baby Girl is gonig to kindergarten next month. I'm at a loss as to what to do with myself as a stay-at-home-mom-to-a-child-who-is-no-longer-at-home-full-time. Feeling adrift seems to sum it up. And since we've decided to be done with trying to build a bigger family, everything BabyGirl does becomes infinitely more poignant. On September 5, when Baby Girl goes off to kindergarten, my first and my last baby will be going to school. I hadn't quite expected that, the plan was that we'd have two kids, that I'd have a chance to be a mom to a little one again. Anyone else feeling at a loss like this?