Well, I spent the whole weekend with tears in my eyes. However, these were happy tears, anticipating the joy of the quickly upcoming season. I think my biggest challenge is trying to cram everything we/I want to do into less than a month.
Readers, I won't kid you. My emotions are always close to the surface. Anything to do with children, especially adopted children makes me weepy. Here's the emotional scoop on the last week:
1. After much consideration, earlier this week, I made an appointment to bring Kelsey to Target to take her holiday photos. Just making the appointment in person and telling the sales person that it's Kelsey's first Christmas at home made me tear up. I was embarassed that I "welled up" and quickly left the store.
2. When I told Kurt, he wanted to make this appointment a family photo session not just Kelsey. However, I know that everyone wants to see photos of our precious daughter, not so much us :) It meant a lot to Kurt, so I switched it.
3. I had an appointment to interview a new pediatrician. Due to change in our insurance I had to find a new one. I am not pleased about this at all! I love our Dr. group and find them incredibly flexible to our needs. We didn't have much choice in Dr's but I felt good that it was close to our house, in the same town as our original Peds and had a large group of Dr's working in it.
I must have had a miscommunication (no!) in our meeting because I thought I was scheduling a one on one appointment with a Dr. who had experience with Chinese adopted children. When I got to that appointment, I was appalled to see a few women in a room with one very young very very blonde Dr. It seems I missed the "introduction meeting" that they had scheduled me for instead. When I insisted that they gave me the wrong appointment to the very young very blonde Dr, she had the freakin' nerve to suggest that this might not be the right practice for me! As if I had a choice! Anyway, I rescheduled an appointment to bring Kelsey in. All I want right now is to have an interim Dr. until my NEW insurance kicks in and we go running back to Dr. Singer. Stupid Young Blonde Dr will not be seeing my baby!
4. I had my very first meeting on the major project I work on all year. I went with a co-worker and we had lunch at Maggiano's (a new restaurant in Bridgewater). The place was really cool and fun but the food was not good at all. Will not be going back! Plus I got lost going half a mile on 206 and was 10 minutes late. Luckily Jane was her usual charming self until I got there.
5. We are having a big fundraiser on Dec 11th. I was told the printer handling the invitations would handle everything, but they were sent the files too late so they didn't have time to do anything but print and fold our invites. That meant I had to get 4000 invitations stuffed and bulk mailed. Needless to say, not fun. However I finished them with a great deal of help from my new colleagues and they're off to the mail house first thing Monday am. (sidebar, the guy I'm working with knows Kurt's uncle from highschool and has very fond memories of his paternal Grandmother! small world!)
6. When I was going to pick up the last 2000 invitations, I fell down the cement stairs and hit the sidewalk. I felt myself fall in slow motion and all I could think about was I was going to hit my head and it was going to hurt. My Angels were looking out for me. I didn't hit my head AND I only had one bad bruise on my side. But I cried all the way to the printers! And spent about 6 hours stuffing the invitations at home.
Readers, I won't kid you. My emotions are always close to the surface. Anything to do with children, especially adopted children makes me weepy. Here's the emotional scoop on the last week:
1. After much consideration, earlier this week, I made an appointment to bring Kelsey to Target to take her holiday photos. Just making the appointment in person and telling the sales person that it's Kelsey's first Christmas at home made me tear up. I was embarassed that I "welled up" and quickly left the store.
2. When I told Kurt, he wanted to make this appointment a family photo session not just Kelsey. However, I know that everyone wants to see photos of our precious daughter, not so much us :) It meant a lot to Kurt, so I switched it.
3. I had an appointment to interview a new pediatrician. Due to change in our insurance I had to find a new one. I am not pleased about this at all! I love our Dr. group and find them incredibly flexible to our needs. We didn't have much choice in Dr's but I felt good that it was close to our house, in the same town as our original Peds and had a large group of Dr's working in it.
I must have had a miscommunication (no!) in our meeting because I thought I was scheduling a one on one appointment with a Dr. who had experience with Chinese adopted children. When I got to that appointment, I was appalled to see a few women in a room with one very young very very blonde Dr. It seems I missed the "introduction meeting" that they had scheduled me for instead. When I insisted that they gave me the wrong appointment to the very young very blonde Dr, she had the freakin' nerve to suggest that this might not be the right practice for me! As if I had a choice! Anyway, I rescheduled an appointment to bring Kelsey in. All I want right now is to have an interim Dr. until my NEW insurance kicks in and we go running back to Dr. Singer. Stupid Young Blonde Dr will not be seeing my baby!
4. I had my very first meeting on the major project I work on all year. I went with a co-worker and we had lunch at Maggiano's (a new restaurant in Bridgewater). The place was really cool and fun but the food was not good at all. Will not be going back! Plus I got lost going half a mile on 206 and was 10 minutes late. Luckily Jane was her usual charming self until I got there.
5. We are having a big fundraiser on Dec 11th. I was told the printer handling the invitations would handle everything, but they were sent the files too late so they didn't have time to do anything but print and fold our invites. That meant I had to get 4000 invitations stuffed and bulk mailed. Needless to say, not fun. However I finished them with a great deal of help from my new colleagues and they're off to the mail house first thing Monday am. (sidebar, the guy I'm working with knows Kurt's uncle from highschool and has very fond memories of his paternal Grandmother! small world!)
6. When I was going to pick up the last 2000 invitations, I fell down the cement stairs and hit the sidewalk. I felt myself fall in slow motion and all I could think about was I was going to hit my head and it was going to hurt. My Angels were looking out for me. I didn't hit my head AND I only had one bad bruise on my side. But I cried all the way to the printers! And spent about 6 hours stuffing the invitations at home.
7. Kelsey is still having trouble sleeping through the night. She wakes up crying or screaming and won't go back to sleep unless she comes into our bed. And she tosses, turns and kicks all night. We are so upset over this, because she was a fairly good (but light) sleeper all spring. Summer really screwed us up because we don't have airconditioning in her room. This is one of the things I intend to discuss with the new Dr. We have read a lot about this, and we're trying things that have worked before, but she is stubborn! (she's definately our baby!)
8. Kelsey is walking more and more. However today she didn't want to walk at all and crawled everywhere! Kurt thinks she is mad because we tried to make her stay in her crib last night.
9. The 3 of us got dressed and took Kelsey to Target for those photos. I had a few dress choices for Kelsey and went with a traditional "Santa Dress" (red knit velour with white fake fur trim on the sleeves and hem) She looked adorable! (There isn't a color I've put on her yet that I don't love on her...she looks wonderful in everything! ) It was hard to choose which photos to use because they all came out so well! I got all teary again creating our very first Christmas card. I can't wait to see it! Then we took her out to breakfast...she is such a Hoover!
10. I'm trying to finalize our marketing plan for the YWCA. I've never written one before without a few collaborators. Long and challenging, but good for my career.
11. Went to Church this morning. It always makes me a little weepy because I thank God for my beautiful baby every week. One of our congregation just returned from Guatemala with her first child. Isabell was so cute and sweet! It's hard to put into words how you feel when your adoption dreams become reality.
10. Our friends came over and took their Christmas card photo in front of our fireplace. Kelsey just loves their son....he's 13! Let's face it, my baby is a huge flirt! They also brought their dog. Kelsey just loves puppy dogs!
11. Went to Wegman's this afternoon to wrap up Thanksgiving shopping. We ate at the store. Kelsey ate Chinese food and shared half my sub sandwich! Our girl can eat up a storm! Can't wait to see her at her first Thanksgiving eating event!
12. While at Weggie's we saw our friends Jeff and Laura (the newlyweds and my former colleague and cohort) Jeff left PHI a few weeks ago and said things have gone from bad to worse. Thank God I am out of that place!
13. We are shopping for a new bedroom set. Kelsey routinely gets stuck in our bed and it's too high for her (she's fallen off a few times). Plus we've never had a real bedroom set and have been married almost 10 years! Trying to decide one of 2 sets is challenging!
14. Got weepy at dinner again...everytime I look at Kelsey I am overwhelmed at how beautiful she is. It would have been enough to get a baby. I never dreamed that she'd be so smart, loving, funny, and friendly. The cherry on top is that she is beautiful. People stop us everywhere to tell us how gorgeous she is. And people, her photos don't do her justice. She's prettier than her pictures! I am always amazed at how blessed we are.
15. Here's what I hope to get in this season:
Thanksgiving
Advent Dinner
Cookie making with Friends
Decorating the YWCA for Hanging of Greens
Mom's Birthday
Hanging of Greens Event
Rich's birthday
PW dinner
Circle dinner
cookie walk at Church
baby shower for Gillian
Open house at Rachel's
Christmas Eve
Christmas Day
New Year's Eve
New Year's Day
Yikes!
Hope your holiday seasons are chock full of friends, family, children and love!
JoAnn
