The Walls

Our house has a nursery.

At one point, we still thought we'd have babies in this house.

At one point, I was on a two month work trip to Singapore. Brent does projects to keep himself sane. You should see what he's done and redone to the main floor while we're waiting for our babies to come home. But I digress. While I was in Singapore Brent put hardwood floors in the nursery and painted the walls the color of the ocean and the ceiling to look like a sky with clouds. He knew I wanted to do Noah's Ark in the nursery and he put a Noah's Ark border on the wall and had it all ready by the time I got back home.

At one point we even had a crib in the nursery and we only used it when we would watch our friends' little boy. He's long since grown out of the crib.

At one point, we thought that maybe we'd get Nathan home in time to need the nursery.

There's a twin bed in the nursery now.

I bought bedding a few weeks ago - girly pink and white bedding that I hope will welcome Jessica some day. This weekend I changed the sheets on the bed in the nursery and wondered for the billionth time when we'd actually be tucking Jessica into that bed.

I laid back on the bed and stared at the clouds Daddy painted on the ceiling and wondered when Nathan will be in that room looking at those clouds and daydreaming about flying or baseballs soaring through the sky or just try to find shapes in the clouds Daddy painted for his baby.

And for the billionth time, my heart hurt that we'll never have a baby in this nursery.

Nathan was 5 months old the first time we met him. This June trip will be exactly a year from the first time we met our Miss Jessica. We'll get to visit our babies in another 55 days. And just a few weeks after we return home without them AGAIN, Nathan will turn two. Day by day they're slowly morphing from babies to toddlers to children. Day by day their formative years are being shaped by people I don't know in a place I never wanted them to be.

If you know me at all, you know that I always say it will "probably be another year before we get our kids home". I always say "another year". We've been at this 18 months and our papers haven't progressed in the last several months. We're still in IBESR. There's no way to know when we'll get out of IBESR. And that's just the first of several Haitian government steps we have to go through. We're still stuck on the first step. 18 months later and we're still on step one. And all I can tell people is "That's just Haiti - when you can't keep the people fed, when they don't have clean water, when 3/4 of the people don't have jobs, getting a few orphans out of the country is the least of the government's worries. At least they're being fed and not trying to survive on the streets."

I try really hard to "get it" and I try really hard to stay optimistic and positive and find funny things in life to keep me going. I try to remember that "it is what it is" and I can't change it and the only thing I have control over in this horrible situation is what I'm going to do with this wait we've been given. I want people to want to help Haiti and I want people to want to be involved and I try to keep things interesting and light here on the blog to keep people interested. No one wants to hang out with that bummer friend who drags everyone else down.

But every now and then I can't hold it in any more and I can't pretend that I'm OK with all of this. And I have my brat fit and then I move on and we go back to waiting. And we try to fill our waiting with fund raising and working to make things better in Haiti.

I wonder when I'll break down and paint the walls.