back in the saddle again

In the notes section of my phone, there is still a to-do list labeled "BW", which stands for "Before Whipple." Little did I know when I entitled that list that is exactly how time would be measured over the next several months. Before Whipple. After Whipple. Everything was normal before the Whipple, before my mom got pancreatic cancer. So much was not normal afterward, for so much longer than we expected. However, little by little, normalcy (or something like it) has crept back into our lives and we (mainly Mom) have found ourselves experiencing so many things for the first time again.

First day home. First trip to church. First time to go out to eat. First time to go shopping. First time to sleep all night. First time to stay awake all day. First Christmas. First time to hold a baby. First time to celebrate a birthday. First time to eat lunch with Tekia at school. First garden.

We had another first last week - our first vacation! (our trip was amazing, we made so many great friends, and I'll blog about it soon!) Trish did awesome. So awesome, in fact, that two days after getting home she added another first to the list.

First foster baby.

Yep, seriously. Are we crazy or what? 

Foster care was one of the many "normal" things that cancer took from us. Last fall, we weren't sure that Mom would ever have the opportunity or the ability to care for another baby (and neither would Dad or I, as we'd be taking care of her and the kids). But after her last clear CT scan back in April, one of the first things I did was send our social worker a text from the chemo room telling her she could put us back on her "list." :-)

So here we are. Meet Little P.

A sweet baby girl who was born last week and needs a place to stay for a little while. Maybe a few days. Maybe a few weeks. Whatev.

Wanna guess what the P stands for? Oh, you know, just Patricia. As in, my mom's first name. How great is that? We hadn't planned on taking any babies until we were done with our summer traveling (we're going on our original family vacation with the whole family next week) . . . but how could we say no to a Patricia?? Especially a Patricia who didn't have anywhere to go? So we didn't say no, because that would've been silly.

We originally thought she'd move to her new family by the end of this week, but now it's looking like she'll be around a little longer. So she'll stay with another family while we're on our trip and will likely return to our house when we get back (unless she's able to go to her adoptive family before then, which would, of course, be great for her). For now we're enjoying getting to love on her while we can! Jamal and Kia are at camp this week, so Little P has our undivided attention.

On the schedule for tomorrow is her first photo shoot. But right now I'm headed up to my area of the house with a baby, a bottle, and a binkie (normally I prefer paci, but obviously binkie sounded cooler here). I'm off work tomorrow, so I'm on baby duty tonight.

We are so happy to be back. Can't believe we've been blessed enough to get to do this again. :-)