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?