Hello World!

When people tell you to start a blog they don’t actually tell you how to do it. They say things like “you’re so funny! You should start a blog!”, which isn’t helpful at all. A blog about what? Parenting? Hah! I’m barely making it from one day to the next! Adopting transracially out of foster care? I don’t think adopting one tiny human makes me any kind of an expert. Infertility? Nah. I barely like to talk about that in my real life, never mind my internet life. Autism? Today my son peed on the floor and watched two hours of Word Party. Who am I to give anyone advice on how to parent an Autistic child?

Maybe a little bit of all of it? I’m an expert on nothing, but have opinions about everything and am just trying to survive day to day, living with my tiny tornado.

Who am I and why should you care about anything I write? Simple answer- you probably shouldn’t. I don’t have any groundbreaking insights or life-saving words of wisdom. What I do have is an amazing son who keeps me on my toes, a husband who always keeps me laughing, and a couple of critters who I do my best to remember to feed. Our life is loud and messy and chaotic but it’s also loving and sweet and perfect.

I am a House Spouse (for some reason Stay-At-Home-Mom makes me feel like I need a crinoline, triangle boobs, and pearls) living in Lexington Kentucky with my husband, our 2 1/2 year old Kangaroo, one lazy dog and a couple cats. I’m from PA and moved down here after college on a lark, because why not? Eight and a half years later I’m pretty sure I’m here for good. Prior to House Spousing I worked with tiny humans in a couple different capacities: nanny, preschool teacher, daycare worker, and Developmental Therapist doing Early Intervention for the state. I’ve spent 15 years working with infants and toddlers, so you would think I’m this super prepared mom who knows all the tricks. NOPE! I know enough to know all the things I’m doing wrong (and maybe a few things I’m doing right) but other than having considered going pro in diaper changing, parenting is a whole new thing for me. In addition to chasing the Kangaroo around I love to be creative and crafty, garden, hike (prepare for many, many shout outs to Hike It Baby!), spend time with my amazing mama tribe, and watch reruns of The Office.

Papa Roo works from home and he and his partner have their own business where they sell CBD/Cannabis oil extraction equipment and do various other things in that industry that are too complicated for me to fully understand but involves lots of sciencey stuff. He spends a lot of time with spreadsheets and too many numbers, which is my version of hell, but as long as he’s happy, I’m happy! Papa Roo enjoys gaming, both in person and on the computer, is an encyclopedia of every sports fact in the entire history of sports, and is maybe the smartest person I’ve ever met. He is a quadriplegic and the Kangaroo’s favorite game is to push his wheelchair backwards while making beeping noises like a truck backing up. He’s from Eastern Kentucky and has an accent so thick that sometimes it sounds like he’s talking with a mouthful of marbles. His family all live nearby and have graciously welcomed me into the fold, despite my Yankee upbringing and my preference for bringing bunny food to family gatherings. They are wonderful, loving, fun people and I’m so lucky to have married into such a great family!

Now on to the Kangaroo. We adopted him out of foster care, having had him since he was two days old. He is the most fun kid in the entire world (according to my entirely unbiased opinion) and has the biggest smile you’ve ever seen. His first two years of life are mostly a blur for me due to unbelievable exhaustion, with little moments of memories sprinkled here and there. He didn’t learn how to sleep through the night until very recently (and sometimes he forgets and stays up all night partying) and as a result my brain is a permanent pile of mush that can’t even remember what I ate for breakfast, so I’ve lost a few of the details of his early life. He was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) the day before his second birthday, and has a whole host of other diagnoses written in his medical chart- Sensory Processing Disorder, Global Developmental Delay, Central Nervous System Dysfunction, Motor Planning Disorder, Speech Delay, Pica, Hyperactivity. We call him our tiny tornado and I spend my days doing my best to keep up with him! When you look at him it’s easy to only see his diagnoses and not the boy behind them. The boy who has more teeth than any human should and whose smile takes up his entire face; who works SO hard in therapy to figure out his little body and make it do what he wants; who asks me to lay down next to him each morning and “cuggle” before we get up for the day. He is my favorite person and my best friend and being his mama is an honor. I am grateful every single day of my life that I get to be the one who raises him. What unbelievable luck that we got the call on August 8, 2016 asking if we were interested in picking up a newborn from the hospital.

So that’s us. A family of three trying to make it from one day to the next, and usually succeeding. We have highs and lows, catastrophes and triumphs, and I am looking forward to sharing this with all you strangers on the internet! I regularly share snapshots of our life on instagram (@raisingthatkangaroo) and plan on taking each little snapshot and giving you the story behind it, the embarrassing stuff I don’t share on instagram (but apparently I’m willing to share here?), the stupid little details that I think no one else should actually care about, and the full story that doesn’t fit into a little picture caption. If you like what I’m sharing, hate it, feel ambivalent about it, or have words of wisdom please reach out! I’m new to all this and have absolutely no idea what I’m doing!

If you’ve made it this far, yay! Come check back soon for actual content and a cute picture or two.

Happy reading,

Mama Roo