Summer!

I guess posting every six months is better than not posting at all. In all honesty, I should be working right now but the universe gave me a gift of a super long oil-change and the inability to connect to my work computer at the moment- so I'm taking advantage of the time to revisit this blog.

Nora changes by leaps and bounds almost daily it seems. She's 22 months and a toddler to the core. She's super active, chatty and fun but she also has her toddler moments complete with glaring at me and saying "no mama, mama stop!" We have our hands full but we wouldn't ask for it any other way.

I've been thoroughly enjoying this stage. Nora is so much fun and has such a happy and vivacious spirit. She is chatting up a storm and loves to point out everything in her environment. Her verbal skills are so incredible. She said her first completely thought out sentence today when she asked me, "Where did Bentley (our dog) go?". She's been saying "I love you" but that's more of a phrase that she knows and one that I, of course, love to hear often.

I've found that since she's turned 18 months I've been somewhat melancholy about how quickly each stage goes and how quickly she changes. I wish I had much more time to spend with her as I know that these days and moments are precious and are so short-lived. We're doing our best to fully enjoy all summer has to offer and create many fun memories along the way.

Life Update and Home Study

There are many days that I really miss blogging and keeping up with all of my bloggy friends, but, sadly, my new reality is too few hours in the day to even maintain order let alone find time for hobbies. This morning is a rare exception as Joel took Nora to go see his parents. I blazed through our taxes (yeah adoption tax credit!) and now I find myself with a nice little caffeine buzz and a few minutes of free time - hooray!

Life has been so hectic but fun. I started a new job right around the holidays and that has me pretty much exhausted. It's a demanding job with a learning curve but I'm definitely enjoying it. I'm also proud of myself for maintaining pretty decent boundaries around leaving in time to be able to spend some time with Nora and put her to bed (which is remarkable considering that she goes to bed around 6:30 pm and I have a 30 minute commute).

Nora is fantastic and is learning and growing every day. She literally adds a new word to her vocabulary daily and is constantly surprising me by what she knows. She loves to recite all of her body parts and she'll often look down at a shirt and point to the design and say "heart" or "bird". It's so incredible how quickly they learn at this age. At the end of this month she'll be 18 months- so hard to believe. The baby days seem like an eon ago when they were just not so many months ago.

In the midst of all the craziness of life, we decided that it was time to start the process to adopt again. We submitted our paperwork at the end of last year and just had our home study on Thursday. It's interesting how things change. The house was tidy but far from clean. I was on a business trip much of the week before and then there is only so much time on the weekend since I try to make it a priority to spend time with Nora on the weekend. It's funny how my ego and priorities have shifted in not being so obsessed with the condition of our home. It was sort of freeing. Clearly, we wanted it to be clean but it wasn't "scrub the baseboards" clean which is what I would have preferred. My new way of operating is something has to give and the orderliness of our house has become that thing.

The most ironic part of our home visit was that Nora hit her head at daycare earlier in the week and had a huge yellow-blue bruise in the middle of her forehead. What are the odds of the timing? Our caseworker is fantastic but I kept the accident report just in case. Nothing like a visit when your child's forehead is black and blue! Luckily, Nora wasn't hurt and just had a black and blue mark to show for the continuing development of her spatial sense. (I'm uploading a photo from her first haircut yesterday).

The wait for #2 is going to be long so I don't think that Joel and I are even processing the adoption much yet. I know that our caseworker was probably shocked by my lack of Type A questioning but I think it doesn't seem real yet. I'm sure once we delve into the dreaded checklist again it will all seem very real.

It's going to be interesting this next time around as our next child's story will be so different. We have had a pretty amazing adoption experience with Nora and I'm a little worried about what that can mean for #2 but we're ready for the ride!