Oh, too much.

The eating, the eating. Both of the girls have taken to swiping their arms back and forth and knocking the food on their trays onto the floor. I don't get the feeling that it's just because they're finished eating. We have their highchairs set up right in front of our dining table. Last night, Zazie put a plate of the fried rice she'd just made on the table to cool, not realizing it was in arms' reach and BAM! El reached for it and knocked it to the floor, so we lost the portion they were supposed to eat and the plate it was on (we normally use the melamine plates when we serve them, but Zazie put their food on one of the breakable plates). We tried to give them the remainder (there goes OUR dinner!) of the fried rice. First, we put some on the trays, but neither of them would eat it, so we put it in their bowls and gave them spoons. Ru completely refuses our help now if a utensil she can use is in sight. We can't give her a pre-filled spoon to feed herself, she won't let us guide her hand to pick up food, and god forbid she take anything spooned into her mouth.... she just sits there and stabs at whatever's in the bowl, not picking anything up. When I tried to help her, she started crying and screaming and crying and screaming. El on the other hand? That girls just wants to eat. She'll give eating with a spoon a shot, but if you feed her, she doesn't complain, because that means the food gets to her belly faster.

Bossy and cute.

All of us (and the judge) on our adoption day:

Some cute stuff about...

-Ru: has been Houdini-ing her way out of her sleep sack during the night. Has been "helping" me fasten the buckle of her highchair, so I'm sure Ms. Picky Fingers will figure THAT out soon, too. Walks up to her sister and says "Share" if she wants whatever El has.

-El: slower and less frequent with words, but when she says them, she does so perfectly. We always ask the girls for "pats," and they pat us on the back. The other day she started patting me and saying "pats." This morning, she pointed to her aunt's baby picture on the wall and said "baby."

In the last week, they've started playing a game where they'll run to the opposite end of the room. We clap our hands and hold out our arms and they come running to give us a hug before running off again. They LOVE doing head-shoulders-knees-and toes. They can't sing along, other than saying "heaaaa--" and touching their heads, and they skip shoulders and knees and go straight for the toes, but they love it.

Also, I dunno. Maybe writing all that stuff out yesterday worked the "what if we didn't have another kid" out of my system? And maybe I still want to have another kid? Jury's still out until September, I supposed.

Have I had a change of heart? Our adoption went through last Wednesday. Just the week before, I'd received a call from our attorney saying we still had a few other pieces of information that needed to be finalized. Two days after that, we were told the adoption was going through because the judge needed to clear his caseload. Procrastinating! Sometimes it doesn't bite you in the ass! It was a very anti-climatic five minutes in a conference room, alot of yesses and that is corrects, and then the girls were legally mine! I won't have to wake up in the middle of the night, worrying that we hadn't finished the adoption. And suddenly, I felt like a weight was lifting. Then I saw an ad for what would be a more prestigious and better paying job. And I applied and was told by the recruiter that she was passing my information along, so my spirits were lifted higher. Basically, our plan has been for me to stick with my job long enough to get pregnant and take maternity leave. My job offers faboo reproductive benefits, so I will be able to do IVF right off the bat and have it covered. After our experience trying to get pregnant with the girls and all of the failed IUIs and the sads that go along with that, and having limited supply of our donor, we need to get right to it. Time frame has been to start right around the girls' second birthday. If I switch jobs, I need to do that in the next two months so that if everything sticks, I'll be at that job for a year to take maternity leave. That's IF the job offers reproductive benefits, which not all do. All of the sudden this weekend, though, I started thinking about what it would be like if we don't go for a third. No need for a behemoth car. We might even be able to AFFORD a car. (Haha) The possibility of staying in NYC (3 bedrooms are a rarity, but 4 bedrooms under 3000 a month? Not happening with three kids). Lauren going back to work. My switching to a more lucrative job. There are so many things that will become more difficult with three kids, as well: day-to-day care, paying for those kids (clothes, braces, food, classes), the strain of having three kids on OUR relationship (we don't have much help and we can't afford help now WITHOUT three kids), more years of Zazie staying home. We'll have to move, most likely not in the tri-state area. Not to mention, I am FREAKING out about moving back South, with or without the second-parent adoption. Here in NYC, it's just a given that there are out gay people and if you have a problem with that, then YOU'RE the freak. Religion isn't seen as a polite topic of conversation. Even if we don't have close gay and lesbian couple friends, we know many as acquaintances or through parent groups. It is conceivable that we could move to a neighborhood where our girls will be one of several kids from same-sex households here. Atlanta? Maybe, but I'm not sure we can afford the "gay" neighborhoods on the salary I'll make there, and so that sets them up for an uphill battle I don't want for them. Religion is front and center there. Plus, I just won't be able to have the kind of job I'm hoping to get and I certainly won't get paid as much. Zazie will have difficulties finding design work at all. I always wanted to have a kid. Now I have two and I love them with a heart full-to-bursting. Are they enough or do I want another that has my genes? Does my desire to have a baby outweigh all the sacrifices we'll have to make? Zazie's staying out of it and being very supportive, but I know that she'll be relieved if I say two's enough. I don't want to say, ah, forget it, let's stop and then end up regretting my decision after it's too late. Any other non-bio mamas in my situation? Or anyone, really... thoughts on this?