We've taken on a lot, and somehow managed to stay in tact. Living life now as a family of 4!

I've really been bad at this, so some random thoughts: **** I've never been into 'doing' things. I like doing NOTHING. When I was single and living alone a big day was when I did the dishes. I procrastinated EVERYTHING: chores, work, shopping, EVERYTHING. It all felt like so much effort. Maybe I had low-grade depression.....? My life now could not be further from that, and strangely, it gives me a sense of accomplishment when the kitchen is clean, the laundry is folded AND put away, and there is food in the fridge for my family. (lest you think I'm the only one who does those chores, Jake does them at least half the time. It's a collective win :)) I feel tremendous satisfaction from making healthy homemade treats for Rudi and Jake. WHO AM I!? A normal day includes doing the dishes, folding some laundry and cleaning the toilet IN ADDITION to making supper, playing with Rudi, and working! I do more things in one day now than I used to do in a WEEK. But d...

I didn't write about what it was like to be an Intended Mother last time; I think I was afraid of jinxing it. But this time I want to write about how it feels to have your baby being grown by someone who isn't you, because it is a very unique experience. I don't know when/if I'll publish this as I want to be free to write how I'm feeling, but I definitely don't want Sara to feel like she isn't doing a good enough job of growing and taking care of our baby! She's doing FANTASTIC! I should start out by saying this is different for everyone, but there seem to be some commonalities for all intended mothers going through this process. You have NO CONTROL. You might think you do, but you don't. It doesn't matter what your agreement states; your surrogate is in the driver's seat - they have your baby and they can do whatever they want. In our province, Sara and her husband are legally the baby's parents, even. Some Intended parents seem to...

There was a moment at the end of our spring break vacation, which was AMAZING, where I surveyed the scene around me with a mixture of revulsion, amusement, worry, frustration, and helplessness, but overall, calm. Rudi had just puked for the 4th time in about 100kms. He puked with such force that I didn't catch it with the bib he was wearing as a preventative measure; it went down his front and pooled in his crotch, soaking into the already-fouled carseat. Thankfully, we were on a straighter and wider stretch of highway than we had been for the previous 3 pukes, where pulling over immediately was impossible due to low visibility and the very real possibility of being hit while we tried to clean up our child and the car seat. Jake pulled over and we sprung into action as best we could. Bib off (spilled most of the puke it did catch) and out the door in the grass. Rudi unclipped and muscled out of the car without letting him come in for a snuggle, which he desperately wanted as ...

It is astounding to me that here I am again, writing again that we are going to be parents again due to the extremely selfless act of another woman. If all continues to go well, we'll be welcoming a baby into our family in late fall. To review, in case you haven't been reading my blog (not that there have been a lot of posts - I'll never be a person who will make money from their online presence ;): At the end of last April, I wrote a post about searching for a surrogate to carry a sibling for Rudi. People shared it and much to our total shock, several women replied with interest in being a surrogate. Sara was one of those people. We connected over many commonalities and after sending LOTS of emails back and forth for May, June, and July, and meeting in person, we started the long and arduous legal and medical process to enable her to try to carry our baby. We transferred 1 embryo in September and 1 in October of 2018, neither of which 'stuck', and then this one...

I got WAY ahead of myself. Once we had found our new surrogate, S, and we managed to line up all the pieces and cross all the T's and dot all the I's, I started thinking of baby names. I started scouring kijiji and facebook for the babystuff we didn't have with Rudi that would really have been handy. I started plotting about how we would fit another kid into our upstairs, which has only 2 bedrooms. Our car was giving us all kinds of grief and it was clear we needed something more reliable so we bought a larger car in the hopes that there would be 2 carseats in it sooner rather than later. We've had 2 failed transfers. After the first one, I was pretty ok. It is not to be expected that EVERY embryo will turn into a baby - that's just not how the math works. We tried again right away. When second one didn't take, I was thrown for more of a loop. I didn't spiral into deep darkness but there was definitely more chocolate and ice cream consumed in the wee...

My relationship with God has changed over the years, as is true for most people, I expect. Life's twists and turns and experiences have given me more nuance, more skepticism, more desire for simplicity and goodness without worrying about the how's and why's. Basically where I've ended up is that I believe in God as Creator. Nothing makes me feel better than being in Creation and I truly believe that all life and the Earth and everything we can see and observe is just too amazing to not have have a Divine aspect. And that's pretty much all I need, in addition to the Golden Rule. I'm distinctly uncomfortable with the idea of a God that intervenes in individual lives. Working with highly vulnerable people does that to you, I think. Why should I expect that if I pray, God will intervene in my life, whereas I KNOW that my little 12,13,14 years olds, who are desperately praying in all the ways they know how for better situations, are stuck dealing with garbage n...

There is a predictable pattern, around this time in the school year, where the adreneline of the beginning of the year has worn off, kids are comfortable and showing their true colours, and the to-do list grows and grows and grows, and teachers get tired. Or at least, this teacher does. I honestly forgot so much about teaching. I forgot how much OTHER stuff there is. Things like: flagging and assessing kids who have fallen through cracks, finding and reading files, keeping the people who are in charge informed of how kids need support, emailing and setting up meetings with parents, finding and building new resources and units and tweaking old ones, talking to other teachers about kids, talking to kids to find out why they are mad/sad/unproductive/anxious and what we are going to do about it. Notice how none of that is actually teaching or marking or even cajoling. I forgot how intense and how much energy CAJOLING takes. Really, teaching is mostly cajoling, I think. Cajoling to get ...