Happy Anniversary and keeping it real

So if you check out the timeline to the left of the blog you can see that today marks the one year anniversary of when we first saw S at the Junior League sponsored adoption match event. That was one fast year with LOTS of loooonnnngggg days. Most of those long days refer to the waiting periods between meeting him and the transition to him living with us and then the long road to finalization. But to be perfectly honest we are having a new kind of long days now. The kind of long days that point out the differences in the three children you have raised from birth and the one who joined your family 8 months ago at 11 years old. Differences like work ethic, truth telling and the desire to do your best. This is why the blog has been so quiet lately. My mom always encouraged the, "If you don't have anything nice to say don't say anything at all" rule. I honestly haven't felt like there is much nice to say lately. There have been some good times, it is just that they are overshadowed by the negative times. The times when he is giving us more drama than the three girls combined ever did. Just for comparison sake I'm talking about three girls ages 12, 17 and 18 - if that's not a recipe for drama I don't know what is. I feel like our new house motto is "man up!" The tears can start (and stop) at the drop of a hat. Generally hats aren't involved but math frequently is.

Okay so back to those good times let's have a few photos.

The end of January brought about a VERY thorough eye exam - WOW! What a difference between our eye Dr's first look at S and the medicaid approved provider we saw prior to adoption.

So here he is "reading" while his eyes are dilating. 

Here he is looking handsome in his new tortoise shell glasses.... the glasses that lasted 3 days before they met their fate with a basketball. Thankful for complimentary replacement and a couple pairs of cheapo spares purchased from Zenni. 

       

Happy Valentine's day with cheese and chocolate fondues and sparkling juice. I'm not sure how many of these we will be able to celebrate with all four of our kiddos as the girls are getting older and will likely have their own more romantic plans in the future.    

  

Also in February news - he's TWELVE!!! Of course he got to choose the birthday celebration restaurant location. We have trained him well in that regard - he chose "Olde Towne Pizzeria."

A day of baseball and tree/root climbing at Medard park.

 A day at buddy RD's lake house - what an awesome day!

Spring Training with the Tampa Bay Rays with dad. 

Spring break we took our first road trip as a family of six and it went REALLY well. We drove up to North Carolina and stopped at St Augustine, FL for a couple of hours en route.  

What's a road trip without a full picnic lunch at a pit stop along the way?

Then came the AWANA games. S enjoyed this tremendously - anything sports related and he's all in. This is how he came out of his room the morning after the games - not sure if he slept with the medal around his neck but he wore it every day all day until I told him he really needed to keep it safely in his room. 

So there I did have some nice things to say and this has been a fairly therapeutic blog post to write. 

I know I have many blog writing adoptive friends who do a better job of "keeping it real" in such a  public forum. I guess it's just not my personality to share the tough stuff so freely. It is the daily grind that is getting us down these days - hoping for better days ahead and it's going to take all six McIntoshes to make that happen. 

As an update to the last post ... how's the list coming along......

Upcoming events in 2013

- get that birth certificate  - No surprise here, first contact with the Puerto Rico lawyer was in January. Papers were filed with Puerto Rico courts on April 1st. Now we wait three months for that process. Then we need to apply for a new SSN for our son. Then we need to submit our taxes (filed for an extension) because we can't file without him having a social which we can't get without a birth certificate, which brings us to needing the birth certificate to update his passport. Phew!

- celebrate S's 12th birthday (in 3 weeks) - Yes he successfully turned 12 complete with cake, ice cream and presents. 

- plan for prom and graduation for our TWO graduating high school seniors - Completed prom dress & shoe shopping while in NC - hooray! Ordered and received Grad announcements. It's getting more real every day. They will be picking up their grad gowns in the next couple of weeks. 

- celebrate our baby girl becoming a teenager (yes that's 3 teenage girls) - 3 months to go on this one