I have been having quite a few dreams about my daughter's birthfather. They kind of come within a night or two of seeing her. In my last dream, we were involved as in laying in bed. oppsss. I am married and not going there but in my dream we were too close for comfort. No sex but cuddling. Then, all of a sudden, I was like OMG I have to call Izzy now that I found you and I am so sorry. Why do I always say I am sorry in my dreams to him?

volunteering

I have come to what I think is a final decision about my volunteering with MELD. I have had a couple weeks off cause of me taking a week and then giving a week off due to the holiday. I am wanting more free time since I am working basically full time.

I am going to finish off the year with two more weeks and then the Christmas party that they put on for everyone. Then, I will tell them that if they will accept my help on my terms I am going to volunteer every other week.

I will plan this out so the weekend that my youngest son goes to his Dad's that I won't volunteer the next day. I am choosing this option because I want to make it a goal to get my son to the YMCA for walking and swimming and maybe even some fun in the game room that they have upstairs. On the weeks that he is home we will do this on Sunday and then I will volunteer. I am pretty good about getting myself to the Y twice a week and if I am super good maybe three times a week. I need to do this for my son. Unfortunately, I need full time work to get the bills paid and to get by without feeling like I am stressed cause I spent a few dollars on myself or my children.

Besides, the obvious that spending time with my child is good and that exercise is good for him I need to do this because we are still battling an obsession with food. I believe that school is making it at least four times worse. He has asked for food and of course we feed him but he hasn't had any major outburst over food while the school was on holiday.

I hope they can agree to my terms. I can't help MELD if I don't take care of myself and my family. I don't want to walk away from volunteering cause it was really a lifesaver for me. It made life a little easier to bare while I waited for my reunion with Izzy go in turtle speed. It gave me stuff to think about besides that. I will continue to support MELD with donations of clothes and toys when I can afford it.

At my company's last meeting, I did bring up MELD so maybe in the next couple months when we have another meeting they will consider having MELD come and speak and get support from some of my co workers.

This message was put on FB by MELD. I want to do something for MELD but on a smaller scale than last year. I am thinking of adopting a Mom to make her a gift basket kind of close to what I am making Izzy for Christmas. Is there anyone that would want to donate either money towards this gift or have anything extra mommish that you would want to donate. No pressure. It's just a thought as of right now.


Happy Thanksgiving. Help make it a happy holiday by adopting a MELD young family, mom or toddler. Contact Rachel Miller, Shelter Supervisor at 815-993-3369 x17 for information on how you can help.

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to all my blogger friends!! Hope you have a great day with family and turkey!!

I have a lot to be grateful for. I have a wonderful husband. We don't always see eye to eye on everything but I do know that I am lucky to have him. This morning, he said, you mean I am stuck with you till tomorrow afternoon. I said, "yea and that should be okay as long as your own my good side. He said, isn't that the truth. haha. Cause I can be a royal pain in the butt if I am unhappy about something.

I have been very lucky when it comes to Izzy. I see her quite often now. It's not always a long amount of time but she is asking more questions and I love that I get to see her on her own sometime. It doesn't mean that I don't love her BF or my sons but it's nice to get that quality time alone to talk.

Dear Todd (birthfather)

I have been in contact with our daughter for two years now. I have actually been seeing her face to face for a year now. She is beautiful! I am losing track of how many times I have actually seen her. This year hasn't been easy. We have moved very slow to get to where we are now. There were days where I thought she could care less to see me.
She has been slow with the questions and I have answered them the best I can do. Sometimes, I do feel like I wish for more privacy when the questions come up. We both tend to talk and it's easy to get side tracked into another subject.
Izzy has had great parents and she seems very happy. She has asked about you and I gave her what information that I can remember from way back then. I feel bad that I just don't know more about where you are or what has come out of your life.
She is very interested in ethic background and I don't know if we ever found you if you could answer those questions since you were also adopted. How ironic is it that you were adopted and so were two of your children. I hope it stops with her. Adoption can be a beautiful thing but it also destroys families and takes away the ability for those left in the dust of adoption to have answers to the questions of background. I hope someday you think to look me up and Izzy can possibly learn more about you.
I hope your haven't found me cause your having a good life and not cause something horrible like a jail sentence or worse that you have died at a young age. Maybe, you don't feel like you have a right to ask questions about Izzy. We can't change the past but who knows what the future holds.

Side note: These letters to him are a form of therapy for me but I use the real name and info for him but I do protect my daughter's name. I do that just in case this story ever rings a bell and someone knows something. I know it's a slim chance but who knows, right?

Forgiveness

For those that been reading a long time might remember how my husband used to treat me poorly about my desires to meet my daughter and make my sadness worse because he didn't think I had a right to grieve. He thought I should move on. He thought blogging was stupid. He thought the scrapbook was a waste of time. He said, he would send Izzy walking if she knocked on our door. A lot of these things was said when he was drunk. He has been sober for three years in may.

I won't blog in detail here but will do in my private blog cause I just love to write it down. I invited my husband out to have dinner with my daughter. It wasn't the first time he met her cause she took my son to Great America during the summer. I didn't have any control over that meeting cause it had to be done for my son to get picked up to go. Today, I did have a choice and have if not forgiven him for everything but pretty darn close to forgiving him.

I wanted to share that part of my life with her cause she is important to me and by the rules in marriage that means he has to learn to love her too.

Question

I learned thru blogging that the term "monkey" can be racist against black people. I figure since I never knew it until I read it thru blogging that I would ask the question here.

My kids were at the YMCA playing what we call "Monkey in the Middle" You know the game of whoever is throwing the ball and the middle person (what we call Monkey) gets it then the person changes place with the middle person.

When we were at the YMCA a little black boy about 12 or so asked if he could play with us. I almost said, "sure, we are playing monkey in the middle" then I remembered how I read thru blogging that it could be offensive to use the term monkey to him.

All in all.. we had a good time and after my youngest son and I got tired of playing my oldest son and him goofed around for quite a while. So what's the thoughts on this.. Would we been wrong to keep calling our game Monkey in the middle? Or did we do right not to use that term in front of him.


I honestly say that when I use the term monkey... I am thinking of a four legged creature that hangs from trees and eats bananas and I don't know where my game came from. I have always heard of that game since I was a kid. The same with sitting Indian style which I know the schools now call that criss cross applesauce.