There is an old Jimmy Buffet song that I love called He Went to Paris. Here's a bit of the lyrics:
He went to Paris, lookin’ for answers
To questions that bothered him so
He was impressive, young and aggressive
Savin the world on his own
But the warm summer breezes
The French wine and cheeses put his ambition at bay
The summers and winters, scattered like splinters
And four or five years slipped away.
This is what I feel like. We get so busy living life and soaking up the love from our sweet girl and before we know it another two months have slipped away.
The last few months have been good, really good. I don't want to be say they were wonderful or perfect but compared to the first couple of months, they have been really good.
The first month to six weeks that Annie was home, however, were rough for me. I went thru some massive post-adoption anxiety and didn't do a good job of handling it. I never wanted to hurt myself or my child but I did not want to get out of bed despite the fact that I couldn't sleep and when I did, I was plagued with nightmares. I wasn't functioning well at all and the Massive Anxiety Diet of 2011 which resulted in me losing 25 pounds in 11 days was not good either. Thankfuly, Chris is super husband, and between him, our social worker, amazing friends and family, an awesome Christian counselor, and my medical doctor who believed me, within weeks I was doing so much better. Looking back on that time, I honestly feel like a totally different person from who I was during those 4-6 weeks.
At the beginning of July we headed to Michigan for a long 10 day vacation visting family and friends. When we left I was still dealing with some moderate to severe anxiety. By the time we returned I was rating my anxiety levels around low to medium with a few flashed of moderate. And things have only improved from there, despite some major life changes for us.
The change in our lives, besides adding Miss Annie to the family, has been Chris' job situation. As he became increasingly dissatisfied with his job, we talked about him finding another tech job. Neither one of us felt that would solve anything. I asked Chris to do some serious soul searching and talk to friends and mentors and decide what he would like to go into. In late June, he enrolled back in school to earn his post-Baccalaureate certification to teach. He wants to teach math and work with junior high students. I cannot tell you how proud of him I am. He started classes in early July thru a local university's accelerated program and got A's in both of his classes. He is now in two more classes and is getting A's in both of them. He has never been a great student but he is seriously an awesome student now.
Because of the way the program is set up, classes are held two evenings a week, on Saturdays (he hasn't had a Saturday class yet - thank goodness!), or online. The schedule works perfectly with mine - Chris is able to stay home and study and take care of Annie all week and I am home in the evenings when he goes to class or youth group. It might not be a traditional set up but it works well for us.
And in Annie news - our baby girl is almost 20 weeks old. She is an absolute delight and we are so enamored with her. Annie is sleeping thru the night and has been for a couple of months. She is such an easy going baby - laughing, smiling, talking, rolling over, loves her jumperoo, recognizes and loves mama and daddy, is drooling like crazy, and is just a ton of fun. She loves to go for walks, to dance, laughs like crazy when one of us sing to her, loves any kind of music we play, and already enjoys when we read books to her. At her 2 month appointment she weighed 14 lbs, 4 oz and was 24 inches long. It's official - she's growing!
As proof, here are some more recent photos:
All smiles for Daddy!
Her favorite outfit:
Tummy time talker:
Happy girl!
Our little family at the zoo - note the lip!



