visits » Stop, Drop and Blog

Love Thursday: Sibling Love

Adoption, Parenting, Photography 6 Responses »

Jan 292009

Our mountain vacation, as you may have read over on The Chronicles of Munchkin Land, was also a visit with the Munchkin and her family. It was a fabulous time for all of us. Somewhat relaxing for the two adults (you know, as relaxing as four children can be). And lots of fun for the kids. The Munchkin and I had some of our own moments but what touched me the most were the moments that TheBrothers had with their sister.

BigBrother had been talking about the visit for a full week. On the morning that we were set to leave, he had a small break down when I informed him that he still had to go to school first. He was so excited that he was jumping up and down, making it impossible to put pants on. The joy on his face was contagious, or, perhaps, my own joy at the visit was contagious. All the same, he was a happy little-big dude when we finally got there (only to be disappointed that his sister was sleeping). He enjoyed playing with the Munchkin and JD. There were small issues, of course, as there are when any children attempt to play together but, for the most part, they had a great time together.

What was even more touching for me was watching the Munchkin with LittleBrother. Due to circumstances that were really above and beyond the control of those involved who cared, LittleBrother had never met the Munchkin. I had talked about her since the day he was born, just as I had with BigBrother, but we were unable to get together until just now. Life happens, right? As such, watching my youngest child meet his sister and then follow her around like she was the best thing since Bee Crackers warmed the heck out of my mommy heart.

Some people teased me for taking close to 600 of my own pictures on our visit. These two pictures I’ve thrown together for today’s Love Thursday are a reason as to why I did such a thing. While we have another visit scheduled for this coming May, I need to be able to look back on happy moments like these when the dark days of grief roll in as they are bound to do. The healing process has hills and valleys. I’m still on that post-visit high right now. But there will be moments between now and the next picture-fest in which I will need to look at this picture and realize how truly blessed I am. I have so much.

To clarify: I have so much love.

[For more Love Thursday, visit Chookooloonks.]

My Learning Adventure Mini-Vacation

Adoption, Living Life 8 Responses »

Jan 272009

We are home from our visit with Munchkin and family. I will be discussing specifics of anything open adoption, visit and relationship over on The Chronicles of Munchkin Land later today. For now, I will tell you some lessons that I learned while staying in a mountain house in the middle of January with four very loud children.

1. Don’t forget the booster seat. I mean, sure, LittleBrother sat at the table and ate his meals just fine. But he wanted to get down every now and then to meander simply because he could. It would have also been nice if we could have strapped the two older boys in as they fell out of their chairs a total of five times. Wiggle worms indeed!

2. One awake child equals four awake children. Enough said.

3. Bundling up to go outside on a cold, windy day seems like a good idea to use up some of that energy. But trust me, it’s a bad, bad idea. Cold by itself is fine. Wind by itself is fine. Cold + wind = disaster. We had three crying, angry children by the time we got back to the house. (LittleBrother was fine as he was in the Mei Tai and the Peekaru Vest.)

4. Getting four children to agree on what to eat, when to eat it and then actually eat it for any meal is a task and a half.

5. Do not brag about how well your children traveled to the vacation location. They will repay you on the way home with 55 minutes straight of high pitched screaming.

6. Don’t. Forget. the. Coffee.

7. Having your camera in hand is obviously a necessity. But realize that when you have a total of 799 pictures, they’re going to take awhile to upload.

8. Speaking of uploading, five days without internet will make two mommies twitch.

But seriously, it was a great visit -slash- mini-vacation. The children had a blast playing together, whether inside or out in the snow. (Except for that walk. Man. That was awful!) I had some needed and great bonding time with D and not even all serious stuff. It was nice to laugh with her, to make jokes and to be two friends with four noisy children between them. And on them. And under them.

TheBrothers are now returning to some semblance of a schedule. For those who watched the drama unfold on Twitter, LittleBrother is back in cloth diapers. No horrible reaction to the disposables besides my awful face every time I had to endure the baby powder smell. I have over 300 email which need responded to in the next day or two. That’s right: responded to. I’ve already deleted the spam, internet offers and general junk mail. I’m a bit overwhelmed!

I’ll probably be using pictures from the visit -slash- mini-vacation for Wordless Wednesday, Love Thursday and a few other posts this week, so stay tuned in. Also, I’ll be editing and uploading pictures to our Project365 blog (Stop, Drop & Photograph) after I get caught up on actual work!

All in all, I’m glad we had this visit, this experience. Life sure feels good.