We've Doubled in size!!

Well I seem to have fallen down on blogging in the last year but it is busy here; and I hate to use that term but I really have no other way to describe it.  I guess in the list of priorities taking the time to sit and write what we have been doing has fallen to the wayside.
So in October we had CJ join us.  She was 17 at the time and I remember seeing her working and she was the cashier that served us.  I walked out of the store knowing that she was going to come and live with us and it was just a done deal in my mind.  Sure there were the finer details to work out but it was a done deal. And it was; she's been with us since October 28.
Then I contemplated adopting again since November pretty much.  In February I decided I needed to get a move on it.  To be real here, I heard of a few other couples wanting to adopt in the community as well and I thought that they likely were wanting a little one similar to me and then it becomes almost like a competition.  Maybe this is a horrible way to look at it but that really is the reality when you are doing the matching game and having someone else decide how you become a parent to what child.  Yes it is all in the Big Guy's hands but human hands are in it too and that piece scares me...
So anyways I got my act together, called my references and they did their piece.  Then in early April I did my portion of the paperwork.  April 28th we were all done and our stuff was sent to headquarters to be entered into the system and placed on the "matching list" for the entire province.
So back up to 2010.  A few weeks before Jacob was placed with me his bio mom popped back in the picture and told the social worker that she was pregnant.  Based on this little fact I had registered with post-adoption registry to foster or adopt any siblings.  I always wondered about whether the pregnancy went to term or not.  In April 2011 I called posted adoption registry to find out if they in fact had my information because I never heard anything.  I assumed that maybe the pregnancy didn't work out or maybe she was a healthy person now; who knows.  All I knew was that if there was ever a baby I was at the mercy of a system that I feel has so many flaws in it that I didn't have my hopes too high that I would ever get a call.  I did wonder though.  I wondered if it was born, if it was a boy or a girl, if it was healthy, if Jacob would ever have a sibling who was his through blood, I wondered......
On May 1st I got a phone call that made me almost hyperventilate.  There was a baby, and it was the baby I always wondered about.  A little girl had been born on April 22, 2010.  Did we want her?  Ummm.......YEAH!!!!  I couldn't believe it.  Jacob had a sister and she was a healthy well loved little girl who had basically the same history as Jacob.  June 3rd I met this little girl whom I named Deliah Rae.  June 14th she came home to live with us and be loved by us forever and ever and ever.

I won't make this fairy tale too fairy-taleish and not write the truth about some of my hiccups along the way.  Such as..... Did you know that siblings fight??!!!??!?  I was living in a dream world thinking that they would always get a long and play happily together for 12 hours a day!!  I'm lucky if they last 20 minutes playing nicely together with no tattling or fighting.  I definitely got a reality check.  I now know that they play best when I am peeking out my window watching them and they don't know I'm there.  It's these moments that I savor.  Tonight I watched with a grin how they jumped on the trampoline together, knowing that Jacob had helped her on because she's too little to get on herself.  I then watched as he helped her get down and smiled as he ever so gently put her on the ground and I could hear her say "thank you Jacob."
Deliah is so similar to Jacob in so many ways and so different in just as many.  Both are routine kids and remind me of the routine.  Both love to sleep and happily go to bed.  Both are compassionate and kind.  The differences however are that she is very outgoing; he not so much, she is a jabberbox and talks a mile a minute, Jacob not so much.  She is super strong willed and stubborn, Jacob not so much.  Both at the end of the day are my kids and I love them to pieces.
After now adopting 2 kids; although both share the same mom then and now I've learned my biggest struggle with adopting.  I've missed out on 2-1/2 years of Jacob's life and 3 of Deliah's.  This means someone else has parented for those years and I struggle with that and now feel bad when I'm disciplining for things that were once okay and accepted things to do.  This is just some "raw truth" right now and in the big scheme I've always had it in the back of my head, "you are raising an adult, what kind of adult do you want this little person to be one day?"  That cold hard truth makes me follow through and take on that bad guy role every once in a while again so that my kids do have respect for rules, adults, consequences, etc.
So that's us.  We've doubled in size in a short year.  Saturday will be one year since we moved in and I'm thinking my family is probably happy I didn't buy a five bedroom house because I'd likely fill it full with teens and kids!