I "totally get" someone!!

Beyond the fact that I clearly stole the idea for these pictures from another blogger... I have a lovely story to tell.

My step son (the older chap whose pic is more of a head shot) tells his Mom that I totally get him. That rocks! No one has ever said that about me before. The fact that the person saying it has also been yelled at by me a number of times for things as various as dumping clean laundry from the dryer onto the floor while searching for socks, to refusing to eat anything more nutritious than a pop-tart, kind of just makes that cooler.

You see we share the bond of being oldest siblings and so we tend to see one another's point faster than other family members... His dad and bro share the bond of both being youngest brothers... who in the world understands those folks?!? :)

What is also WAY COOL is that his Momma likes me enough to share that comment with me and gracious enough to take enjoyment out of it too (not sure I am capable of that much serene awesomeness, myself)

It seems that for me, this lad and his brother are certainly living up to the labels at the bottom of these cool posters!!

Steelerstahl

We are HUGE Pittsburgh Steelers fans and we HATE the Baltimore Ravens. So it should be a fun weekend with the two arh rivals playing in the AFC championship game.
It has been a family joke for years about how unfortunate it is to have the word Ravens right there at the front of our name. It became a bigger family joke when Matt's second cousin took office as the mayor of da 'burgh a few years ago. So I fell out of my chair laughing this morning when a friend e-mailed me a link to this article about how Luke Ravenstahl has officially changed his last name to Steelerssthal for the week leading up to the AFC championship game. God Bless lunatic sports fans! Go Stillers!!

and they call it puppy love...

Amidst a morning full of a general sense of unease and anxiety about the future, for no other reason than it is something I cannot control, my lovely husband sent me this picture of two of our three (yes we are nuts) giant pooches catching a nap together on the couch.

I have to say that this picture, unlike singing loudly in the car, deep breaths, or even blog reading like a madwoman, has given me the sense of inner peace that I was struggling for.

YAY DOGS!

Now I will get work done, eat lunch and e-mail the social worker with my daily paperwork questions!!!

Guitar Hero...

So our family is settling down nicely into a routine of work/school, soccer practices, teaching night classes and going to grad school... All without the help of our stay at home Grandmother whom we were all spoiled by from Thanksgiving to the first week of January. I love my Momma and all of the TLC she lavished on us during her stay!! I miss her laughing, our conversations and dinners that are ready when I walk through the door :)

Even with all of the chaos of our lives post-spoiling our oldest guy has still been practicing guitar fiendishly, from the time he wakes up till beyond his allotted bed time, if he is home, he is strumming. It is an awesome thing to have a child who is so devoted to his music (it is even ok to have to lovingly impose boundaries on when it is ok to play and when you HAVE to wash dishes, take out trash, do your homework or let your brother get some sleep)

While he is working on finding his balance between his life and his art, we have been enjoying the fruits of his labour. I'm sure everyone says this about their kid, but he is incredibly talented. We have a wonderful musician in our house! As soon as he began taking lessons last year we knew he had found his "thing" and his continuous and rapid improvement makes me want to document his journey so we had him ask his guitar teacher, a former student of Matt's, to help him record a CD with a few of his best songs on it.

The coolest part, for me, was that when his guitar teacher suggested having someone sing on the CD, Maris asked me if I would do it! So now I get to "jam" with my step son while cooking dinner and hanging out around the house in the evenings. I am having such a good time with this, he is very easy to work with... if only it were this easy to get him to clean his room!!

I am very glad to have music as a way to bond with my oldest boy. It bothers me to think that the baby we are waiting for will get to spend so little time living with his/her uber cool oldest brother. He is a very special guy. You can't have everything though, and while life is sweet, I will savour it... and maybe see if my guitar hero would be willing to learn how to play a few lullabies for his little brother or sister :)

in which the wicked stepmother tortures her poor step sons

So we went to the pediatrician yesterday since the kids had to get their physicals done (much hilarity ensued apparently when the "turn your head and cough" part of the exam was carried out... I could hear the giggles from down the hall.
Then things turned sour. Our paperwork indicates a need for TB testing which is done by injecting a little serum under the skin to see if there is a reaction... I swore to my needle phobic youngest boy that, having just had this done my self, it was no big deal and he would barely feel it. So the nurse accidental went too deep made him bleed and he teared up and then look right at me with murder in his eyes for my apparent fraudulent claims, and he began to sob quietly. I felt like a jerk, but it really shouldn't hurt. It didn't hurt the big guy when he had his 10 seconds later.
The real kicker came when the next needle came out, this time for a "real" shot, the kind that goes right into the muscle. Big guy took his with a little wince and the nurse turned back to the youngest. He went rigid and refused to be vaccinated. He is 11 and in the 95th percentile for weight and height and is quite a strong guy... also very stubborn.
He had decided that there was no way this needle was going into his arm. He bargained, begged, shouted, ducked, squirmed and was threatened by his dad to no avail. Finally my big strong husband pinned him to the table and the nurse jabbed him while he screamed bloody murder (for about 5 seconds until he realised that it did not actually hurt)
I stood in the hallway with our oldest guy and cried a bit my self. If I can't handle an 11 year old crying at a shot, what am I going to do when they jab my baby??
The tears may have been a bit guilt related, after all, His dad and I are the ones who decided to adopt a baby, why should he have to be a pin cushion on our behalf? Still, its all done now and everyone has been pronounced healthy and in no need of further prodding for at least six months! Whew!!!
So I bought them both a big bag of candy and let them each eat the whole thing before dinner.... I'm a sap.

in which the home study continues....

These two charming gents (yes I am such a slacker that summer was the last time I caught the 2 of them on film at the same time!) are on their way to the pediatrician today to do their part for their new little sibling and then we will be all finished with the medical side of the process.

At this point it has taken so long to organize this around every one's schedule that I am left wondering why I am quite foolish enough to have begun a home study two weeks before thanksgiving... did I not realize that appointments, and courthouses, and DMVs would all conspire against our finishing this part of the process in any type of timely way? Just goes to show that I am never quite as well prepared to meet life's challenges as I think!!

Still and all, I am excited that the holidays are over and the process is moving again. Since we are on a domestic path for our first adoption this one should (fingers crossed) be a little lighter on the paper work than our tentatively planned second adoption in which we hope very much to adopt an older child from Africa.

I do love the idea that a girl like me with no discernible trace of fertility could one day be the mother of four beautiful people from all over the world and from various different beginnings. (I am, as usual, way ahead of myself here!)

Step parenting has been a lovely life lesson about how much you can love an older child whom you not only did not give birth to, but who grew up with a world view untouched by you until you first met. Well, that is quite enough rambling from this Ravenstahl!!