Who turned on the water works??

I'll write more about the awesomeness that was my first half marathon (13.1 miles of jogging / walking that took me past the capitol, through beautiful neighborhoods, and up and down some crazy hills) later, but first I wanted to share an incident from around mile 6 this morning that made me realize that no matter how much I may look like I've got it all together on the outside, on the inside I just miss my husband more than I can put into words.

I thought I was doing so well since I got back from our beach vacation. There had been very few (if any) tears since I got back and I was holding things together pretty well and really trying to just enjoy my time at home right now, knowing that I'll be with Davie again soon (26 days!) and he'll be home before we know it. I was proud of how well I seemed to be doing.

All that came crashing down this morning with two little words.

To preface, I will say that I got up at 4:30 this morning after a very full week, a late night Friday, and a crazy day Saturday. To say I was tired would be an understatement. I was also in the middle of tackling a huge challenge, one I never thought I would accomplish before two months ago, and one I was still very nervous about. So I was emotional to begin with, and very tired, which just makes my emotional status even higher.

And then the lady I was walking with, who was soooooo nice and did a perfect pace for my first half, turned to her friend who was with us and asked "Do you think our boys will be at the finish line?"

And I was immediately reminded how much I wanted MY boys to be waiting there for me with big smiles and proud faces and huge hugs. Or, even better, how much I wished Davie could have been doing the half WITH me. He has been such a great supporter through all of this and was amazing to workout with last year. When we talk about my work outs now, he likes to tell me that I'm strong and I can do anything I put my mind too. I tell him he makes me strong and I can do so much more with him.

Needless to say, my friend took one look at my face and thought I must have injured myself. (Which wouldn't have been out of the realm of possibilities.) And instead I had to tell them that I'm pretty much just a walking mess these days and not to mind me. :)

I try so hard to be strong. I want to be strong for Davie, who is bored out of his mind and out of his comfort zone after spending so many years in the US, and I want to be strong for Eduardo, who will be coming home with us soon and is still trying to get to know his dad and I, and I want to be strong for myself, because I hate being the one everyone expects to be a puddle of crying goo on the floor. But sometimes I'm just not able to do it. Sometimes this whole process is just too overwhelming, too suffocating to be able to believe I'll make it through.

But just like I did today on the half marathon route, all I can do is mentally pick myself up and keep going. Because, eventually, putting one foot in front of the other, over and over, will get us where we need to go and where we so desperately want to be. And, maybe, hopefully, if we're lucky, Davie can be on that course with me next year, with Eduardo on the sidewalks cheering us on (with a friend/family member of course - I may not know much about parenting, but I know a 6 year old can't be left alone for a half marathon 😝), and we can run through the finish line together, knowing we've accomplished more than one thing that most people would find impossible.

Testing, testing

I added a widget to my blog that you can use to get email updates when I post.  So I'm testing it to see if it works.  If it does, you should all use it!  :) 

Timeline

I was thinking about this last night as I was mentally mapping out my vacation days in my head, and thought others might be interested in this as well and decided to share.  :)

Here's what I'm currently estimating / expecting for the rest of this process (assuming things go mostly smoothly - which we all know has not really happened so far :P, so take that to mean all of these dates are subject to change). 

End of May - We'll know Davie's appointment date at the consulate in Nicaragua
First of August - Davie will have his appointment
Mid August - Submit second round of paperwork to the National Visa Center (My plan is to be ready to do this as soon as Davie walks out of his appointment, but I'm saying it will take another two weeks or so, just to play it safe and because the lawyer is ultimately responsible for the submission and I can see it taking them longer than I would like....they do have other clients that, I guess, need help too. :P)
Mid November to ?????? - Get answer on the second round of paperwork and (hopefully!) bring Davie and Eduardo home!

Right now I'm hoping we have an answer in time to bring them home for New Year's.  I think even if we got an answer in mid November, we wouldn't try to bring them home until New Year's.  I would go for Christmas and then they could come home with me after that.  That would really be ideal, as the process would have taken us a year and that's what we had originally hoped / planned for.  At this point, I don't think getting them home will happen any earlier than January, unless the system just really speeds up all of a sudden, and I just don't see that happening.  Technically, three months to get an answer on the second round of paperwork is the SHORTEST amount of time the lawyer estimates for that step.  It could be upwards of a year before they finish processing that application and get us an answer.  So, conceivably, we're looking at summer of next year before we know something.  Which sounds terribly far away, and I think will be the worst part of this whole process because we will only be waiting - there won't be any steps for us to do during that time, so we won't have any control AT ALL.  And we all know how well I do with a lack of control!!  I'm going to end up with some crazy hair style every other month, major renovations on the house and who knows what else!  :)  I'll definitely need to find other ways to keep myself occupied if it really does take that long - good thing I've got this work out addiction going.  That should keep me busy!  (Especially since right now I'm contemplating training for a full marathon after I do the Route 66 half marathon in November.  I think I could do the OKC Memorial full this time next year, don't you?)

So that's where we are right now.  I'll keep you posted as we find out more and hopefully this timeline turns out to be accurate.  I'm ready to have my boys home!!  Although, I will say that yesterday was a pretty darn good day.  I had a CPE event at the bank my company uses, followed by a happy hour with free food and wine, then I went home and hopped on the treadmill and busted out 3.75 miles (first time on the treadmill since doing 12.45 miles on Sunday and almost keeling over - it felt good to get back on there!).  I got some laundry done since I'm headed down to OKC this weekend to help Mandy and Colin pack up and cuddled with Bella for a while while watching TV.  I miss my boys, but there are times when I'm still able to be pretty happy.  I partly feel guilty for enjoying my time without them, but I also know that time to myself will be few and far between once I become a full-time mom, so I'm trying to make the most of it while I can!  :)

I hope everyone has a great weekend.  I love you all!!!!!  Thanks for following along with us during this process!  We couldn't do it without you!

Making Memories of Us

One thing I realized this last trip to Nicaragua was that in most circumstances you can't know what kind of parent someone is going to be before you marry them.  Which freaked me out at first - what do you do if you don't like the parenting style of the person you married?  How do you decide if the things you don't like are deal breakers?  Is it possible to fix the things you don't like?  What if things YOU are doing are deal breakers for the other person?  Especially when the child isn't technically yours - I don't want to mess up someone else's kid!

Before we went to Nicaragua the first time, I had seen Davie talk on the phone to Eduardo and I had watched how excited he got when he would talk about him, and seen him play with Grady and other kids.  So I had some idea of what Davie would be like as a dad.  And when we got to Nicaragua, I saw some of Davie's interaction with Eduardo, but it was different with Davie's mom around all the time.  This trip, with just the three of us, it was easier to identify things that maybe aren't perfect about us as parents.  Things that I think we can work on and improve.  But there were a lot of things that I think show how great of a parent Davie is. 

My favorite memory of the trip is at night when Davie would read to Eduardo.  Davie isn't a reader.  He likes to make fun of me when I'm reading a lot and I do my best to not let him see if a book makes me sad or cry because I'll never hear the end of it!  So Davie will grumble a little when it's time to read to Eduardo (My Spanish just really isn't good enough for me to read anything but the most simple of books - I end up butchering the story for the poor kid!), but eventually he always does, and it's so awesome to listen to them.  I bought Eduardo a book (and this one) about why a kid loves their mom or dad.  When Davie read them to Eduardo, he would throw in things that we had actually done.  Like - I love my mom because she buys me books!  Or - I love my dad because he plays with me in the pool!  It was really adorable. 

Remembering Davie reading to Eduardo and picturing the two of them playing in the pool makes me know that Davie is a great dad.  We won't be perfect, and I know we'll make mistakes, but I'm very excited that I to get to be a parent with him.  And I can't wait for us to have more kids together!

Help!

I would say I tend to get overwhelmed easily.  And while it's something I know about myself, I often don't realize I'm overwhelmed until it's too late.  When I get overwhelmed, I like to retreat from everything - I stop trying to plan, start watching a lot of TV or reading a lot of books, and kind of give up.  Or at least I give up in the area of my life that is stressing me out and start trying to focus on an area that I feel like I have more control over. 

For example, a few weeks ago I decided I needed to buy a new house.  I started looking at houses online and thinking about where to buy and trying to contact realtors.  All because, ultimately, I currently have very little control over what is going to happen with my husband and his immigration situation and I wanted to feel like I had some control over something and I wanted something fun and exciting to work on.  I was pretty much being ridiculous though as there are many reasons why we can't move right now, but especially since I was starting with the buying a house part of the process instead of working on trying to sell the one we already own!  The sell part is yucky though and I wanted the fun part only.  :) 

All of that leads into where I am right now, and I hadn't even realized I was here until this week.  I was overwhelmed by the process involved in visiting Nicaragua and so I had given up a little and Davie and I had decided I wouldn't visit for a while.  Now, I will say that we had some semi-decent reasons why I was going to wait to visit, but, at the same time, I think I was partly just tired of searching for flights on multiple websites at one time trying to find the best deal / best flight times / shortest layovers, deciding about hotel rooms and emailing with / calling people in Nicaragua who don't speak English and trying to determine if the pictures on the websites (if there are pictures.....or websites) are realistic or taken from a magazine to make the hotel look good and maybe there's really going to be bugs all over the place and when they say single room do they mean one bed or one person (because it can be either over there!), figuring out the money and vacation time aspects of the trips, especially when it's hard to plan trips not knowing how the rest of the year is going to work out - I don't know how much money and vacation time I need to spread over the whole year, and I hate to use it when I'll need it later, but then what if I don't use it and it turns out I could have and I miss out on something that I could have done.........

STRESS!

So, while I was sad about the idea of not getting to see Davie, we talked about it and decided I would wait to visit.  Until, that is, I got a phone call this weekend saying "We don't want you to wait that long between visits - we'll help make a trip happen before September, what can we do?"  And that was all I needed to remind me that I'm not in this alone, even though sometimes it seems like it, especially when I first get back from Nicaragua after leaving Davie and I'm at home with just the fur kids.  It's hard to remember that I've got all of you behind me, helping me through this.  You all have been great - I don't know what I would have done without my friends and family during this time - but I also hate asking for help, so I tend to try to go it alone for too long and that just makes me overwhelmed......and we're back in the vicious circle again.  :)

As hard as it is, and as much as I may hate it, I'm going to try to be better about asking for help.  And I'm still working on trying to recognize when I'm starting to feel overwhelmed so I don't get to that stage or don't let it go on too long.  I think asking for help will make that easier.  I'm really bad about thinking I have to do everything alone, so it may take a while for me to get used to asking for help.  In the meantime, I continue to appreciate any phone calls and emails asking if there is anything you can do.  That small gesture, that reminds me that people are in this with us, helps make everything so much easier.  Even if there isn't anything you can do, other than just be there in spirit with us during this process.  I'll take all of that help I can get! 

Oh, there is one thing I can ask for now.  I ended up booking a trip to Nicaragua for May 24th - 30th for our anniversary.  Davie and I are so excited!  We appreciate the push to get me to start looking at flights again and the help to get the flights booked!  (I ended up getting pretty awesome flights, so I'm pumped about that!)  However, if anyone would like to make a trip to Tulsa to visit the weekend of June 1st, I'll take it.  :)  The first weekend back from Nicaragua without Davie is always a killer......

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger

If nothing else, I think Davie and I are getting better at this separation thing. We parted this time not knowing when we'll see each other again. When we first started this whole process, back when the idea of being apart was paralyzing, I didn't want to not know when we would be together again. This time, given the circumstances, it's too hard to plan ahead to the next trip since we don't know how things will go with Davie's paperwork and the expense of the trips and my lack of unlimited vacation makes it impossible for me to come as often as I would like. So we're going to hold off on planning the next trip until May, hoping we'll have a better idea of where we are in the immigration process, before I book my next trip.

If Davie's already had his appointment at the embassy and we've turned in our next set of paperwork and we're just waiting on an answer, I'll probably wait to come until September when, ideally, Davie and Eduardo might be able to come back with me. If we've encountered more setbacks and still feel we have a way to go towards finalizing everything, I may come in July for Eduardo's birthday. Either way, I won't be coming in May for our anniversary after all. Which is sad, but we'll have lots more anniversaries to be together, so we can survive one apart. I got Davie a few presents and four anniversary cards - I couldn't decide which one I wanted, so I got them all. :) Davie got me the chicken and rooster in the pic below (we have a thing about chickens). So we had a mini anniversary celebration last night. We can't believe it's been three years already!!

I know we'll be okay. Getting to visit and spend time with him and Eduardo, knowing that all we're doing is to make our lives better in the future, makes me feel better about everything. It is hard to be apart, but being together reminded me why we are doing all of this.

We love each other and have good things to look forward to in the future! That makes all of this worth it.

Eduardo

I was excited to spend some time with Eduardo since I didn't get a lot of one-on-one time with him at Christmas. I was also more than a little nervous to see how it would go being thrown into the step-mom role. Not that I feel like I have a ton of responsibility at this point since he doesn't live with me yet. I can more be the fun aunt-like figure who brings toys and clothes and candy. :) I can play that part well, for sure. It was stressful though to know that Davie and I alone were in charge of Eduardo's well-being. Eduardo ended up getting a cough and stuffy nose and I kept saying that my MIL is going to think that I broke him since I was sending him back sick! I'll never get to have him for good if I can't keep him healthy for five days!

Eduardo was very well behaved on this vacation. Other than a few melt downs when he was tired, he was good natured and helpful. It's nice to have an almost six-year-old around to go get things when we need them. :) I worried a little that he was almost too good natured and well behaved as he almost never asked for anything and mostly wouldn't voice a preference when asked if he wanted something. I told Davie to stop scaring the kid out of having an opinion! :P

He was also extremely patient, waiting without whining or complaining for all sorts of things (food, the outdoor shower to wash the sand off after we got out of the ocean, pool toys). He even did the almost two hour drive to/from the hotel without something to keep him occupied! He just stared out the window and watched the countryside go by. Considering he's spent most of his life living by his cousin Randy, I was surprised at how well he could play by himself.

One of my favorite parts - he would sleep 10-12 hours a night and would watch a movie after he woke up until later in the morning so Davie and I could take our time getting around. He was in no hurry to get up. Does that make me sound like a horrible step-parent? I hope not! :) I would have gotten up if he wanted! But it was very nice to get to be lazy in the mornings on my vacation. Sleeping in is one of my favorite activities. :)

It wasn't all perfect. There's nothing as frustrating as trying to teach an almost six-year-old how to play Skip-Bo, although he seemed to be getting the hang of it by the end and he is a little over a year too young to play and I think he was really tired when we were playing. And the melt downs every time we had him shower after getting out of the pool or ocean were exhausting. I'm not sure how well logic works with young kids, but yesterday I tried to tell him that he had done the shower thing three days by that point and while it might not feel great during / after, he also knew it would stop and that it wasn't the worst feeling ever. I also asked him to help me get him bathed super quick and that, while we had to sometimes do things we didn't like, the faster we did them, the sooner they were over. It seemed to help and the crying was kept to a minimum, so maybe my speech worked. I'll tell myself that anyway. :) One point for the step-mom!

I loved how he seemed to already feel like he could count on me to keep him safe. When we were playing in the pool and Davie got too rough or Eduardo needed a break, he would come to me and sit in my lap and rest. He would reach out for me when swimming since he's still learning and wasn't 100% confident in his abilities, although he's a pretty good swimmer, in my opinion for someone who's never had lessons! And he would jump my direction off the side of the pool so I could make sure he was okay.

While the idea of having to keep him safe scares me half to death, getting to be the one he trusts to take care of him is an amazing feeling! I'm really looking forward to getting to watch him grow and seeing what kind of person he turns out to be. I feel like he's off to a great start so far!