Hodge-podge

Well, I'm either doing a decent job at this blog thing or no one reads it, because I got zero questions to answer. So, you are stuck reading my ramblings, so here goes:

The House

Painting is in progress and is getting close to being done. Our once boring off-white plaster walls have been replaced with color!!! I really like all of the rooms, but there is one room that didn't come out quite like I imagined. I picked the color Mercer Blue for the nursery. The sample, when held up to other blue colors, looks almost silvery or smokey blue. On the wall....it looks really gray. But I don't hate it. I picked this color blue because if we end up with a girl, I think pink accents will really pop and no matter the gender, I was kind of thinking of doing an underwater theme. So once the color was on the wall, I did a little research and found the bedding and theme I wanted and I'm relieved to report that it will match. So we didn't waste any money on paint and Gus doesn't have to repaint the room. (And Mike, he helped paint that room so I'm sure he is relieved too.) :) But, the carpet I picked out for the upstairs won't go well in that room, so that might have to be the odd room out or I might have to change my carpet pick altogether. But it looks like we are ON TRACK for being back home sometime in September!!!!! For once, I actually believe the estimate.

Adoption Paperwork

Round one of the adoption paperwork has been completed and received by our agency, except our book reports! Look out world, the Martins are in "get it done" mode. We have also received more donations and we are currently 14% of our way to our goal!!!!!! Yahoo!!!!! God is definitely providing for us every step of the way. Just Monday, he provided us with a photographer! I was just thinking that we should probably get some pictures taken for our adoption profile, but being in saving mode, I didn't want to spend the money and I was sure once we got our stuff back, I would be able to pull some more recent photos together. And then I logged on to facebook, and one of our friends who just started a photography business was doing a giveaway for a free sitting fee and I actually won something for once in my life! She does awesome work and I'm excited to throw more business her way once Baby Martin does arrive (or as we refer to him or her, Sammich Martin, but we will get to that in a minute.) Anyone in the Springfield area needing a good and reasonable photographer should contact Amy! www.wix.com/amyjoyphotography/amy

Okay, Sammich Martin. I really like the name Samuel Mitchell for a boy. I told Gus we could have ourselves a little Sam Mitch! He pronounces the word sandwich as sammich, so the nickname stuck. He then told me not to tell anyone because the kid would be called that for the rest of his life if we did end up with a boy and using that name. However, Gus keeps spreading the nickname, so I decided to go ahead and post away. Of course that would be an around the house kind of nickname, not sure I could picture myself at a soccer game yelling "Good job Sammich!" But I could see myself yelling upstairs, "Sammich, dinner is ready." The nickname is also gender interchangeable. Samantha Michelle is in the running, but nothing is set in stone and as my realistic husband points out, we need the child before we can name it.

Back to pictures for a minute. Do you ever wish you had a personal photographer to follow you around and capture the moments you know you will remember forever? I do. I was thinking that when I snapped this picture:

Yes, that is a laundry basket on a leash. EVERYONE who sees me dragging this down the hallway at the hotel comments on it, and I know I will remember this from our time at the hotel for the rest of my life. I would have loved to have a photographer capture the tender moments of our infertility journey as well. Those are the "good" memories I will cherish from this time. My husband, the awesome nurse through surgery after surgery; our hope and anticipation; the giant bear hugs Gus used to keep me upright after receiving the "not as we hoped" phone calls. All of those things are things I wish that 1) I could have seen and 2) I could pull out and look at over and over again. But I'm just not famous enough to have paparazzi following me around, so I will have to rely on mental images of how I think those moments looked.

I recently had the opportunity to hear a friend give her testimony and she was talking about her recovery from an accident and how the day she was going to therapy, she asked God to let her just take 2 steps. That day, she walked down to the end of the parallel bars and back and then sat down and cried because she only asked for 2 steps. I don't know why this is the part of the testimony that hit me so hard, but it was. And when I think about my life right now, I think all I asked for was a baby. At first, I asked for it the easy way, and then I asked for it the not so easy way, and now I'm asking for it the even harder way. But my point is that He has given me so much more. I have tapped inner strength that I didn't even know I had. I have had some incredible conversations with people I may have never met otherwise. Our marriage is thriving because we agreed at the very beginning of this to be completely transparent about everything going through this process and oh how I wish we would have made that deal on our wedding day. (If there is anything I have learned about marriage through all of this it's that you can't protect each other from getting hurt. Your spouse is going to get hurt, either by you or someone or something else, you can't prevent it from happening. Your job is to just be there and help put the pieces back together however you can. Sometimes you do more damage than good by trying to protect them from what is bound to happen.) I'm learning more every day about acceptance, of circumstances and people. My compassion for others, which I always thought was high, has about quadrupled. And I GET to adopt. I'm sure Gus remembers taking me to the Steven Curtis Chapman concert in Champaign shortly after we moved to Springfield, and the little promo he did for his adoption/orphan care program and how I sat there and bawled through the whole thing. On the way home that night, I told Gus, with the best of intentions, that we were going to adopt someday. I never thought it would be our only way to build a family, but I really felt a yearning at that moment that we were supposed to adopt. I think at some point, most people at least think about it, but then the cost or the strain on the existing children and other resources prevent people from following through. I know I've been given a Momma's heart and, for lack of better wording (I hate this phrase), "empty womb" for a very specific reason. We could have given up and decided to live a childless life. But there would have always been a piece of me missing. I could be happy living a childless life but I wouldn't be fulfilled.

Migraines
I'm happy to report I haven't had a migraine since that last one when I called the doctor's office. But seeing how they are triggered by stress and fatigue, I'm fully expecting them to return. :)