Custom Made Kids: Ours

For as long as I can remember, I've never wanted any more out of life than to be a wife and a mother. The kind just like my own mom.

And as long as I can remember, I've always wanted 2 kids; my daughter first followed with my son, 2 years apart. And in the most round about way and in a way that I would have never in a million years would have imagined, I got exactly what I wanted. Without flaw, without mistake, but pure perfection wrapped in sweet Elaina and Lincoln packages.


One of Ava's nurses from the NICU once told me that if it weren't for Ava's passing, Elaina would have never been a part of our family. On the same token, we would have never gotten Lincoln if we weren't already prepared for adoption.


It's these reminders that I hold dear when I look at our family dynamics and how our children came to be ours. It's for these reasons that I started blogging in the first place. It's been plenty healing while at the same time, pure and honest. Having adopted both of our children makes our bond of love even a little bit more unique than that of having biological children. Even though this isn't the way that I dreamed our family would be created, this is the family that I've always wanted. From the moment we held our newborns in the hospital rooms, we gazed upon the faces of little strangers. Little people who would change our lives and capture our hearts. With minimal family history at best and hardly a description of their biological fathers, their stories would be unfolding in our homes as they shared our last name. All the while knowing that their lives and their futures were changed from that very moment.
With promises of love, happiness, family, faith and abundant spoiling, our bond was cemented. While I'm not naive enough to believe that raising our kids through the hormonal teenage years won't always be sunshine and rainbows, our kids will always have that extra "circumstance" of being adopted to cause a potential riff in our Fairy Castle Dreamland. I'm using our time right now to capture these pure and celebrated moments to remind our kids that there wasn't a day in their lives that they weren't loved. That there's not a single thing in this world to suggest that they weren't meant for us and us for them.

One of very reasons that I began blogging all those years ago was to have a keepsake to come back to. A time capsule of pure and honest tales of our kids growing up and the happiness they have brought to everyone around them in the process. Memoirs so clear that I can just about hear their throaty, little giggles in the hallway while each of them thinks that the other looks the silliest. While they chase each other from one room to the next until finally realizing that they both want to crash atop mom and dad's bed with the silky comforter to squirm around on.

To remember the tender moments of the eldest convincing her mother that she wants to lay with "Lil'Lincoln in his crib so that he doesn't get lonely." And then laughing and playing with each other for nearly an hour before either lets the other rest.

And at the end of our crazy, long days, finding a mom that is most happy and satisfied with both of the little strangers who have made her life even better than she could have ever dreamed.