Things Have A Way Of Working Out

I've recently had some turn over with my job. Within the past year and a half two children moved out of the area so they could no longer come here for child care. Another child stopped coming because she turned 12 and her mother decided it was time to let her stay home and get on the bus herself.  Another child had two new siblings added to her family so her mom decided to stay home full time.

I've had a large number of children in the past and I've even had a waiting list at times. I went into this summer with the lowest number of kids I have had since I started. All of them part time.

I was freaked out about it and we had to come up with a plan on how to save money in other areas in order to make it work. Especially since the IRS still hasn't given us our tax return. (Many adoptive families have had this issue. They are still "reviewing" our adoption expenses that we claimed.)

There is a lot of pressure on me when things change and I make less. It is made worse by the fact that I have absolutely no control over it. I lost a lot of sleep over these changes.

We are now almost a month into summer vacation. Despite the decrease in pay...I have to admit....having less kids right now is a blessing in disguise.

Jayden is a high maintanence baby. No doubt about it. He likes it when I am in the room when he naps. (How does he always know?!?!) If I am on the opposite side of a gate from him, he flips out. He still doesn't sleep through the night. He is a needy little one. Which is fine, but it makes 12 hour work days very hard on me.

Having a day or two off during the week is kind of awesome. And I honestly don't know what I would have done if I had to work all day, everyday. I am not sure I would have survived it.

On the days without other kids we can be more flexible with our schedule. We both can catch up on sleep- I sometimes get to take a nap with him and he sleeps longer because there are no big kids around to play with. It also gives us more opportunities to go off on adventures with grandma while she has off from teaching for the summer.

This is one of those situations that seems devestating at first but then as it happens you realize it was exactly what you needed. The universe gave you exactly what you needed when you didn't even know that was what you needed.

It kind of reminds me of our long struggle to start our family. Who knew someday I would look back at it all and be at peace with it and think it worked out and had the best possible outcome.

Maybe there is a little lesson in this for me.