What does 27 months sound like?

Well, if you were in our house today, 27 months sounded an awful lot like the vacuum cleaner running, the carpet shampooer cleaning, the washer running, the dryer running, feet pounding up and down the stairs in a hurry trying to get it all done in time – followed by bats cracking and six- to eight-year-old boys yelling and screaming at a baseball game.  That’s what 27 months sounded like to me, anyway.  Oh, and don’t forget the bickering.  Because I was in a VERY cranky mood today.

Gregg and I originally had our second homestudy update scheduled with the social worker for June 26.  Something – don’t ask me what it was – had me suddenly feeling all nesty and in the mood to clean the last week or two.  Maybe it was the weather.  I don’t particularly like to clean that much.  Imagine my delight in how clean my house was when we got an e-mail requesting that the home study be moved to tomorrow!  Still, we do have quite a few fur babies, and even though our social worker has told us every single time she has come to visit that she also has two large dogs and she is quite used to homes with pets, I normally prefer to go overboard with the carpet cleaner.  Just because.  By the time I was finished with the vacuuming and carpet cleaning (and laundry), I was pretty much ready for a nap but it was time for Gregg’s coach pitch game.  (Thankfully it was just one game this weekend.  The last two Saturdays were double headers!)  The boys play a six-inning game, and by the bottom of the fourth it started to rain. 

Gregg will tell you I’ve been bitchy all day.  I’ll tell you I’m tired and irritated.  And since it’s my journal, I can say that.  I’m irritated that it’s gotten to 27 months and is just going to keep going.  I’m irritated that I’ve spent the better part of a week getting ready for my third homestudy.  I’m tired trying to say “Maybe today will be the day” every single Friday so that I don’t let myself go down the path of believing that I’m going to be doing homestudies and fingerprints every year and a half for the rest of my life because this adoption will never ever happen.  (Which may be what Lakota thinks.  When we came home from church tonight, she had gotten her jaws on my copy of Parenting Your Internationally Adopted Child and ripped off the front cover and shredded the first section.  So that’s what she thinks.)

So I’m tired.  And cranky.  And absolutely unapologetic about it.  But, hey – my house is clean.  And that, my friends, is what 27 months sounds like today.