Tuesday, March 24, 2015

It was bound to happen sooner or later

Based on the suggestion of junior's therapist we gave him a photo of his birth mom over the weekend.   This was a tough thing to do as we weren't sure how to react and whether or not it would cause a regression in behaviors.   I decided to give it to him at night in case there was a melt down he could then go right to bed and it wouldn't be an all day issue.  

As I expected he got very sad and emotional when he saw the photo but bed time was not a disaster.   He did cry and say that he missed his mom and then it happened.  I heard for the first time "You're not my real mom."   I knew this day would come and those words would be uttered but I just didn't know when it would happen.   I honestly expected it to be when he was angry with us, not just upset and missing his birth mom.   I imagine I will hear this many more times over the years and I will have to learn how to respond.   I do not remember what exactly I said to him in the moment, I did try my best to acknowledge his feelings and let him know that it is perfectly normal to miss his mom.   

We do have more photos but I need to get them scanned into digital format before I hand them over.   I have heard horror stories about kids destroying the only copy of photos that existed and I do not want that to happen.  Should a photo get destroyed we will definitely have a back up.   For now he seems happy with the 1 photo he has.   

Sunday, March 1, 2015

Taking a Step Back

The month of February has brought around many changes in our household, and hopefully they are all for the best.   Dave &  I were both stressed at work and trying to adjust to life with a 6 year old has a unique set of stressors as well.   We decided to take a step back from our careers and focus on ourselves and our family.   It is scary and exciting at the same time.

When I first started working my grandfather gave me the advice to pay myself first, thankfully I took his advice which makes this all possible.    I  have a long list of projects I want to accomplish around the house and I will also be looking for another job.  Dave is following his passion and has found a job as a beer specialist at a local liquor store.

It wasn't an easy decision for me to make leaving a job I just started 6 months ago.  People always talk about "having it all"   and recently I heard it put a much better way.   You can have it all but you can't do it all at the same time.   This really resonated with me and made me realize that becoming a mom and  taking a position as a director at the same time wasn't the right thing to do.   If junior had been with us longer and felt more stable here , or if I had been in the job for 6 months before he was placed with us things might have ended up differently.   As it was I was not able to give either home or work 100% and that just wasn't good.

I don't have a crystal ball and I don't know what the future holds for us.   What I do know is that we are going to take some time to reconnect and bond as a family.   Hopefully I can find a job that doesn't require me to start at 6:30 and has limited travel.  Maybe in the future that will change, we are just going to take things one step as a time.

Admittedly I was a little worried about the reaction I would get when we announced our plans to others.   I was quite surprised by the number of people who commented  on how much they admired what we were doing.  I was expecting to hear many more negative comments and have people try to talk us out of our choices.   One of us making a big career change is one thing but both of us at the same time seems crazy.  

This isn't something that was decided on the spur of the moment, those that know me well know I am a planner.   So yes a  lot of planning went into this.   We actually started planning for Dave leaving his job back in November, my change wasn't part of the original plan but life happens and I have a plan on how to deal with this.