Bye Bye Ba ba, kindergarden decisions, and other random thoughts

I swear I will add pictures one day! Because yes we do have a picture of our little man obliviously waving goodbye to his ba ba. It has gone well but now he acts just as neurotic about his sippy cups. So here is a question...I really need feedback. Wesley is a May boy. This means (supposedly in the world of school) that we have the hard decision of holding him back until he is a full 6 or starting him when he is 5 and will turn 6 at the end of the school year. This is a really difficult decision for me. Mostly I feel that right now and his pre school teachers have agreed that he academically can handle kindergarten at 5. Socially I am told he is doing well. I am just not so sure that his ability or readiness for kindergarten should dictate what will happen in 2,3,or 4th grade. Even if he is social and has friends I just don't know if his maturity is where it should be. For example: Wesley's class has a star chart, I think this system is fabulous for his class and his teacher to maintain order but I was sad to see that Wesley was one of 4 kids with the least amount of stars. Sure I did the whole "not my kid, it was the other kids fault", the teacher must not have been paying attention, etc. But after my split second moment of dreaming I realized that 9 times out of 10 the teacher tells me it is because he has a hard time following directions(there was that one time him and another boy were tackling ). I have started working with him at home, going over letters, having special read time, playing a game(during Liam's nap of course). I have found he really does have ants in his pants. He cannot sit still. He is very distracted. I am not talking about him needing to be medicated I am talking about him being a 4 year old little boy. Wesley's teacher this year is working really hard to prepare them for kindergarten next year. I am just wondering if he will have all his wiggles out! So I have a few thoughts. 1. Put him in kindergarten next year and see how it goes. 2. Ask the other may birthday boys what they are doing and follow suit so that if we hold our little men back at least he will still have peers from his class. 3. Put him in kindergarten at the christian school he is in now and put him in Kindergarten at the public school the next year. 4. Home school him. I love this idea purely from the stand point we can work at his pace. We can do Kindergarten or first grade work, with lots of breaks and recess to get out his wiggles. My only hesitation with #4 is that well...I actually have 2 hesitations. 1. I am an extrovert and a mom of little ones and I enjoy my few hours of either cleaning the house, going to bible study or running errands. My second hesitation is that I want to be sure we have enough social activities to keep him involved with kids his age. Can anyone throw out their ideas as far as what they did? Do you home school? Did you have a may boy? What are your thoughts.... Oh and one more thing we are considering a vehicle right now ...any thoughts on the Ford Flex versus the Toyota Sienna?

Our path starting out as 3 going to 4 and when to 5?

I am so shady I know. Hey at least I got you here! Well Aaron and I have prayed and prayed and prayed. Well let me rephrase that I have prayed and prayed and prayed. I know that Aaron has prayed about it but he doesn't obsess until a decision is made. He is a pray and wait kinda guy. Boy can that guy wait. He is awesome with patience. I am totally the opposite. Waiting is not my gift AT ALL! My true colors have been shining so brightly as I work on our home improvement projects. I will ask Aaron to help me with something and if he hasn't helped in like 3.5 sec. I huff and nudge him out of the way to do it myself. It's scary. Needless to say We have picked individual projects to work on it seems to be going much smoother.

Sorry side note....

Reason for the post: what have we decided?

Drum roll please........

We have decided to WAIT...HA!

You aren't going to believe this but it was my decision. I know hard to believe. Seriously though I prayed and prayed and prayed about which direction we should go. I had a talk with AGCI we were strongly praying about and considering Rwanda. I feel so passionately about this program and felt we were supposed to start. As of Friday after our talk with AGCI this was the direction we were headed. I still didn't feel peace. Aaron had to go out of town this weekend and I had the boys to myself. I always enjoy this time because it really does mean undivided attention for the little men in my life. I felt God's direction on Sunday. I had a great time of sorting and processing and being able to bounce ideas around, here are some of my revelations...

1. Our big struggle when bringing Liam home was that we had 2 kids to divide our time. Liam needing to take priority as he was new, yet Wesley not understanding mommy not being available. Trying to balance Liam being acclimated and Wesley not feeling replaced.

2.With #1 said this means we would go through this with Liam.

There are some things you need to understand about our little man. He is so precious and quite a snuggler, but he is also very high maintenance and demanding. He wants to be the center of attention ALL THE TIME! I realized We only brought Liam home 10 months ago. True he is 16 months but really he has only been a part of our lives for 10 months. If he was a 10 month old we wouldn't even be considering baby #3.

Right now Liam is our baby. He has every right to be our baby for longer time. He needs to be the one with more attention. He needs to take priority even still. I am not ready to push him out of the baby position and I can tell He in no way is ready or willing to give it up. I want to be free to baby my baby longer!

This is all considerations for our own family. Each child is different. I was just concerned with the Rwanda program going potentially very quickly or 9mo. of pregnancy well let's just say I am not ready. I think things may have been different if Liam came first. He would have had Mommy and Daddy all to himself for those 10mo. But because he has shared us from day 1 we just want to give him more time as the baby.

Oh and We also decided that with him being a future middle child it's nice to let him have a little more time to have a unique and special position. Meaning if we adopted we were told we couldn't specify under 6 mo, which would leave a great potential for Liam to be sharing his birth year or position with another child. We were told he would be 9 months different then the new one. We wanted Liam to have his own age own grade in school etc.

Again this was just our conclusion, it may change in a few months but I am not in a hurry to decide anymore and I feel so much peace and contentment in the stage of life we are in.

Just loving life, being a wife, and a Mom to 2 of the sweetest, busiest, craziest, most loving boys in the universe(ya I said universe!)

Where is God leading us?

I believe wholeheartedly that God created us choosing beings. I believe that there are some choices that we make in life that are not wrong or right they are just well a choice and as long as we involve God in the decision he will do what he promises and direct our path. Other times I believe that there is a specific path he wants us to journey down and we need to wait and see his direction. Here I sit totally humbled and looking for answers. I am wondering which path God is directing us to chose...

I feel humbled because I know that God is the author of all things and although we chose one path it may not be the one God blesses us to move forward on.

So what in the world am I talking about? Well I am talking about growing our family. When I was younger my sisters and I and our friends would play house. After the beautiful wedding (complete with fake flowers and a real but poor fitting wedding dress) the babies would come. As my sisters and our friends would often put pillows in their shirt and walk around for half the game "pregnant." I would always be on some adventure and during my adventure I would "discover" a baby in the other room. I never had the pillow in the shirt my baby was always found. To top things off my baby doll was very dark complected (just an ironic side note?). As soon as Aaron and I got married I wanted to adopt. You can imagine my surprise (and sheer joy) when I discovered I was pregnant. I then proceeded to have the fairest complected child known to man:). As Wesley got older my desire for adoption grew once again.

When Aaron and I brought Liam home things were really difficult. I really struggled with being a mom of 2. During those first initial months I knew and even looking back I know my struggle was not with Liam being adopted it was going from 1-2 kids. I always felt like I was short changing one of my kids. I often felt torn between working on bonding with Liam and making sure Wesley was not ignored or feeling replaced. I struggled constantly with guilt. I often felt like nothing I did was good enough. In the end someone was left out.

As a result I had difficult time initially bonding with Liam. He seemed angry all the time and I was frustrated with myself for not knowing him perfectly. I assumed it was my job as his mom to know him perfectly and meet his needs perfectly and it was hard. I was trying to be a mom to 2 a wife, Learn my second son, remember my first son and not forget me. I was so deep in analyzing it all and trying not to fail that I was doing just that. FAILING. Looking back now I see just how right I was doing it. I get to see now that as I would hold a very angry baby, both of us crying, thinking I was torturing the poor soul, I was doing it right. I needed to hold him I needed to show him that I was best and that I would take care of him and he didn't have to fight me.

I only know this now because of how beautiful things are now. My sweet boy who used to be sooo angry and aggressive is now quite a sensitive little love bug. Liam cries when others cry, Liam gives kisses out like crazy, Liam needs a snuggle all the time. If you give the boy a stern look you have to know that big crocodile tears will follow. We may have not found this Liam if we hadn't by God's Grace been able to stick with it even when it felt sad and hard.

In the end I sit here wanting more than anything to adopt again. Call me crazy or call it the holy spirit but I want to start the adventure again. I love both my babies more than I can breath. I would give my life for them. Liam and Wesley feel like equal parts of my body and soul. To me whether we adopt or biologically have one either way we are growing our family. I feel so convicted about adoption right now.

My big question is where is God leading us to go? Even if we think bio. there is nothing to say we will be able to conceive. We assume we will be able to but I have no idea. If we chose to adopt where is the money coming from. We would need it rather quickly and I know God can do it. He did it in abundance the first time. Why do I think he can't do it again. I need answers, I need help, which way do we blindly walk forward?