My Kid Circus

My New Year’s Resolution was to blog more.  Since it has been 2012 for 10 days now and this is the first blog that I have written, I don’t think I’m doing too great so far.  It isn’t because I have nothing to write about, because my circus is as active as ever, but any time in the last few weeks that I have sat down to blog, the words just have not come.  They just seem to insignifcant.

I hate cancer.  I HATE cancer.  I have hated cancer since the day that it took the life of my mother’s best friend on my brother’s 5th birthday. I was 12.

Five years ago cancer hit my best friend since 8th grade.  My maid-of-honor,  Karson.  She is now dealing with Stage IV Metastatic Breast Cancer.  I have watched her handle the pain and grief of the last 5 years with such grace and faith it has been incredible.  She showers everyone with her positive, bright attitude, so no one can help but love her. Still,  I know about the deep pain that she has to deal with constantly due to her life’s hopes and dreams having to be completely altered.  I hate it.  I don’t think anyone “deserves” cancer, but Karson certainly doesn’t.  Even after her initial diagnosis, she spent her days working as a Social Worker at a local children’s hospital.  She is truly one of the kindest and most loving people that you could meet.  Karson, I love you dearly. I hate your cancer.  I wish that I could wave a magic wand and take it away, my dear friend.

Have I mentioned that I really hate cancer?  Several weeks ago, cancer struck another one of our closest friends, and yesterday he was officially diagnosed with Stage IIIa lung cancer.  He has begun blogging about his journey.  I urge you to read his story, and please send him your prayers.  Their pain is what I think about when I wake up in the morning, and what I am praying for as I go to sleep at night.  Everything else in the world seems insignificant right now.  Ryan and Julie, we love you so much.

Our children love you all like family.  I don’t know why this had to happen, but I know that we will be there for you every step of this journey.

I hate cancer.  I despise it.  I really needed to be able to say that before I could say anything else.

This morning I decided to take Hannah to our “measuring wall”.  I figured I would see some growth, but I was shocked!

She is still eating nonstop, which makes a little more sense now.  Her body has needed all that fuel!

She has just slid right into our family like she has been here forever.  We are so excited to celebrate this holiday with our very full house. 🙂

Happy Holidays!!

If you have been reading my blog for a while, you might remember that my husband has struggled with being able to pick the correct pull ups.  Not once, but twice, he bought pink pull ups for D.   So I would have thought that the shame of me blogging about this TWO times would be enough to make him double check his work when he has been sent to the store to buy pull ups.  Apparently not.  Poor Miss K was devastated to have to wear “boy” pull-ups. This prissy girl in the tu-tu pajamas did not want BLUE pull-ups.

Honey, I know it got hammered into your head not to buy the pink pull-ups, but our next two children are girls.  Please buy the pink pull-ups.

I never publicly shared this part of Hannah’s story, but when we got her referral, we were told that she had a faint positive on her Hepatitis C test.  In fact, I believe the whole reason that her referral came to us is because of that Hepatitis test.  There were certainly families that had been waiting longer than we had waited (just 7 weeks).  There are many families that would have been open to a 10 month old with a heart condition, like Hannah was.  However, there are many families that are not open to a child with a communicable disease.

Honestly, we were one of them.  Having 3 young children already, I purposely did not check off anything on our Medical Needs Checklist (the checklist of medical needs that we were comfortable with) that our other children could acquire.  Hepatitis C however, is fairly rare in adopted children from China, so it was not even on the checklist.  The wonderful people who work at our adoption agency, CCAI, took a chance, and gave us the call.

When she called, she told me about the Hepatitis C. Initially, my heart sank.  I thought that I didn’t want to take that kind of chance.  It was  fleeting though.  I just felt in my heart that it would be okay.

I still only shared with a handful of people that it was possible that our daughter could have Hep C in addition to her heart condition.  Until we knew for sure I didn’t want people to be worried about being around her, or to have their children close to her.  Maybe that sounds extreme, but I know that parents will go to any lengths to protect their kids, and I was in touch with other families with children with Hepatitis B who had lost friends over it.  I wanted to be cautious, but again, I just  felt like it would be okay.

Today we got the official news that her Hepatits test was negative.  Even though I felt in my heart that everything was fine, it was so wonderful to hear those words.  And I will be forever thankful for that initial pesky test that led her to our family.  She was meant to be ours, and we are so grateful!