Happy Halloween!

 


Here's a little ditty to help get you into the spirit of the season...

One little pumpkin bumping down the lane,

bumping down the lane,

bumping down the lane.

One little pumpkin bumping down the lane...For this is Halloween!

 

Two little skeletons jumping up and down,

jumping up and down,

jumping up and down.

Two little skeletons jumping up and down...For this is Halloween!

 

Three little witches flying through the air,

flying through the air,

flying through the air.

Three little witches flying through the air...For this is Halloween!

 

Four little black cats walking on the fence,

walking on the fence,

walking on the fence.

Four little black cats walking on the fence...For this is Halloween!

 

Five little goblins dancing around the house,

dancing around the house,

dancing around the house.

Five little goblins dancing around the house...For this is Halloween!

And, if you need help getting the tune right, here's a little how-to from the star of Halloween himself. Enjoy the day, but make sure you dress up and go out tonight!



Anniversary, Happy

For those of you who joined the world of TaJ after our move to Colorado, there's something to explain. We got married on 10/07/06, but that wasn't as significant as the selection of a day that coincided with a full moon. For us, we give a nod to October 7th, but we celebrate our anniversary on the October full moon each year. So, while there has already been a reference to our anniversary in a previous post this month, we really see today as the big day.

Unfortunately, after a much needed weekend away with friends in the mountains and a great costume potluck with our adoption group last night, I woke up sad on our anniversary. It's bound to happen. We did say this was a roller coaster. The grieving process isn't linear and that makes for surprising set backs to those familiar stages of depression, or even more anger. Today, I was just sad, despite the face painted on in the picture below.

(Sorry to those of you who are scared of clowns.)

Thanks to a very good friend, who has been supportive in countless ways throughout this ordeal, for sending me the video below today. Admittedly, it was hard for me to watch. I finally broke down when the subject shares the date of her baby's birth. For me, it ties to our due date last year and the time period that this year's baby was to be due. Of all of the September 11th dates when we've hoped for something happy, why couldn't we have been matched with this sweet girl who was due at the same time? Different elements of this journey will hit each of us differently. For me, the date is significant.

 

But the message in the video is an important one. This young teen is trying to get the word out about open adoption. She wants a different story told than the one depicted on "Teen Mom" or "I'm Having Their Baby". It really is a beautiful message. My frustration lies in the fact that I'm not living that message. Mine has been very different and that pisses me off. I think we deserved to be matched with someone like this emotionally mature, genuine young lady, not Satan (there, now you know her real name). It was a good day to receive this gift of a positive shared story. I'm passing it on to everyone here in an effort to get more positive vibes flowing through our connections again.

 

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSQ01vchItg&feature=youtu.be

Later this evening, we began our anniversary ritual of reading our vows aloud to each other and watching the video our family made of our special day. With our stiff dancing and a groomsman speech that wouldn't end, let's just say it's not a highlights reel. But, it was a beautiful, love-filled day and we're not yet old enough to have forgotten that! What hit me the most in this year's viewing is that our officiant, "Deputy Jim", said he hopes that as we look back on our wedding day in the future, that we remember it as the day when we loved each other the least.

 

That day, we each promised to stick with each other through any challenges. Today, it took a revisit to our commitment to do so to make me realize that even when I'm sad, I'm lucky. I feel so fortunate that we've grown to love each other even more than we did on that fairy tale day six years ago. I am proud that the adversity we've endured in the last two and a half years (beginning with the devastating loss of Josh's brother too young, then the hope and demise of our own pregnancy, and now this garbage) has only brought us closer and more deeply connected to each other instead of tearing us apart, as we've been warned can sometimes happen. 

 

At the end of the evening, we managed to live up to the well-wishes of a Happy Anniversary after all, under a bright, full moon.

 

Tonight, our love beams go to our family and friends in the eastern U.S. We have too many people over there facing that super storm this week. We're sorry that our full moon celebration is rising the tides even more. All of our love is headed your way. We hope you feel it washing over you!

Accelerated Motion Down to Our Cores

We don't expect to have too much to say these days. We're just settling back into our reality of The Wait. It's been particularly quiet with our agency counselors out of town for a vacation last week, so we knew not much would be happening on the growing family front. Then, they came back.

Yesterday, all of the adoptive families working with our agency, regardless of their documented preferences on family size and child's health, got an email about a set of siblings who are waiting to be adopted. These kids are living in individual foster homes and need a forever home fast. Opening our home to them would be an instant family of five, with three under age 4! Now, that's enough to get your heart pounding.

Josh and I spent a few hours thinking through it, trying to find room in our humble abode, knowing there is already room in our hearts and reminding each other to breathe. We were taken back to 2007 and the beginning of our journey into parenthood when we were wondering just how big we wanted our family to be. And, we wanted BIG love in this house.

We reminded ourselves then that one of Tiffany's dads grew up in a house this size with 9 kids. It could happen. Okay, maybe 9 couldn't happen. After all, their little house was surrounded by farm land that could feed all those hungry mouths. Over the years, it's become clear that we're not welcoming a new child into our lives every other year, like Tiffany's grandma and grandpa did. We've had to readjust to a new daydream and we've become quite happy with the vision of our family being smaller than we originally thought about.

Still, when we considered adoption, we were counseled to just be open to what comes our way. That has taken on a lot of new meaning over the past few months and yesterday we were open again to the chaos that three new family members would bring into our quiet home. We received quite a shock to the system and spent the afternoon making sure we could say "yes" before we actually did.



This is a printout of a seismograph. It measures accelerated ground motion (to those of us who studied the stuff), or earthquakes (to the rest of you). Sometimes, the jolts are significant and unique in a relatively calm line leading up to and away from the event of the earthquake. However, sometimes you can see that the earth was shifting in its seat for a bit afterwards, these are the reported aftershocks. With earthquakes, it's the aftershocks that send people into a panic because they've just lived through the terror of the full jolt. Each time the ground shifts a little more, there's another wave of "oh my goodness, here it comes again" that rushes in when all of the shelter around them is still vulnerable.

After realizing that we were ready to dive in to the family we thought about so long ago, we scheduled a call to meet with our agency last night to get our questions answered. Our mistake was that we overlooked that the time we were available after work coincided with the last presidential debate, not significant for us since our minds are already made up on that front. (It's nice to know where we stand with at least one decision in our lives.) Instead of being available for a call, the agency sent us more information on the little ones in waiting. Unfortunately, they have lived a hard life so far and that is playing out in their behavior and their health. This just wasn't the match we were ready for after all.

While we considered the additions to our family, we reminded ourselves repeatedly that we're still reeling from a humongous shock to the very core of our beings. We were steadying ourselves and dreaming of more hope to come. We remain open, and that means we're going to suffer through some aftershocks.

Autumn

We share this as our collective favorite time of year. We were both born in late autumn/early winter and I think the onset of autumn just reminds us of fun celebrations to come with spooky costumes, happy birthdays, yummy pumpkin and pecan pies and warm family gatherings. Autumn was one of Josh's key talking points in convincing Tiffany to move to Colorado. Dry heat in summer was enough of a reason for her really, but crisp autumn air allowing a bundled up day inside with a book and piles of leaves all over the ground were icing on the cake.

Obviously, we had a different vision for how this autumn would go. We had planned out how to keep up with putting the garden to bed for winter during nap times. And, how on earth were we going to put up the year's harvest while mixing formula and changing diapers? We also dreamed of rocking a new baby girl as she gazed out her window at the turning Elm trees and hoped to feed her just enough to fatten her up so she could fit into her new holiday-themed outfits sent from loving relatives far away.

It's a peculiar thing to be a in a funk. Nothing stops and waits for you to recover. Crops grow, but give in to the first frost before you can muster the energy to process them. Trees turn and leaves fall. Work piles up and the inbox refills quickly. Chickens molt and leave feathers flying everywhere (that was for you, Shannon). Friends have parties that you just can't attend because there's only one thing on your mind.

It takes everything in me to start each day and hope for a smile or two to find us. The good news is that as I pass the nursery on the way downstairs, I don't feel that anticipated pang of sadness. It turns out we did a lovely job of creating a space of peace. I know that if I don't go in there each day, a time will come when I don't want to. So, I force myself to take a few steps inside. When I do, all of the hope and love and togetherness that we shared in there, before moving to Helltown, California for six weeks, comes rushing back. It is a really awesome room, if we do say so ourselves. Sure the paintings are cool and the decor is spot on for our style, but it's more than that. The energy in that room is calm and positive. I continue to draw on it to help me find a path forward. And for the next few days, while the leaves hang on a little longer, this is the beautiful view that greets us as we venture in.

Though I have to say, I am more at peace when there isn't
a squirrel waving its tail at me as it gnaws the branches.

 

Oh, and a little Bailey's helps sometimes too. Let's all raise a glass to TaJ having a very different blog post to write when next autumn rolls around.

Telling It Like It Is

It's been almost a week since we learned about the roots of our twisted trip to California. I can't say that this brief amount of time has helped heal any wounds just yet. Of the multitude of emotions we got to experience in the past 3 months, I'm just glad that at least the impatient curiosity about when the baby will be born has been put to rest. From cryptic facebook accounts, we assume that a tiny little one was born two days after we arrived in California. Hopefully that baby was placed in a loving home far, far away from S. Our biggest worry is that there was another child brought into her oozing swamp of yuck. We also know that S has served time in prison twice for this same fraud and that she started playing these games with people's hopes and dreams at around the age of 17 or 18. May she fester...

In the land of the good, we've been welcomed home to such loving, open arms. We have had many meals brought over and hugs doled out at every turn. Again, we're so grateful for all of your continued support.

With some of your love comes the curiosity of just how this could happen. When we're not comfortable sharing, we're still encouraged to just tell it like it is. If I was to tell it like it is, I would say it was, and remains, an excruciating reality to endure. We're sharing what we feel comfortable sharing in ways that are as easy as possible for us. It might not give you all the details you're seeking, but it's torturous to relive it each time we're asked.

Please be patient with our healing spirits right now. We're inching our way towards a new path forward, one foot in front of the other. I'm thinking again of the sagely advice espoused in the movie The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, which for us has about as much meaning as any other form of prayer or positive thinking. If I accept that "everything will be alright in the end", then I know that it's not the end yet as everything is not yet alright. The operative words we focus on are "not yet".
Stick with us in hope, TaJ

These are the Days of Our Lives (cue stupid music...)

Time to settle in with your cozy cup of tea, a bag of popcorn, whatever you turn to when you're about to subject yourself to the onslaught of a scary movie, or the twisty-turny plot of a soap opera. (My snack of choice when I was young and was about to watch a TV drama unfold was a bag of Chewy Chips Ahoy cookies and a Coke. Sometimes I would forget the Coke on the kitchen counter and not realize it until I parked my lazy butt back on the sofa. Doh! I would actually stare at it for a while, trying to conjure up the powers of Samantha on "Bewitched" and will the soda to me so that I didn't have to get back up. I did say this soap opera craze was in summertime of Junior High, right?)

Anyways, for those of you waiting for a detailed update, we thought we could write it all out for you by now. It turns out, we're going to take you only so far on this journey with us and stop just short of the ending, mostly because we don't know what the end is yet, but also to protect the guilty until, hopefully, they're nailed.

After weeks of turmoil over missed appointments and multiple rejections of offers to meet, this is the unbelievable story we got from our agency in an email last week (it is more entertaining, and slightly less sickening, if you read it in dramatic soap opera character voice):

 

“So it seems that [birth father] has asked T to take care of him as he dies with this lung cancer. It is a job offer. His parents have money and will pay her to move her other four kids in and take care of him. They also would like her to place the baby with them.

However, T does not want to place the baby with his parents. She told the agency clearly that she wants to place the baby with [us]. But she needs to clarify if the job offer requires her to place her baby with his parents.”

 

And later in the week, "his parents are trying to get a replacement child out of this because the birth father's brother is in prison forever and now the birth father is going to die with lung cancer. They are telling her that she can have his life insurance when he dies if she places the baby with them".

Okay, if you're still here, reading this garbage, you're probably asking yourself a couple of questions by now:

1. If a 58 and 65 year old are in good enough shape to take care of an infant, why don't they take care of their own dying 42-year-old son?
2. If they have so much money and are so willing to help, why don't they pay the child support for his other 7 children as well since his wages are being garnished?
3. A job offer in exchange for a baby, really?

...and enough other questions to keep you awake and focused on this 24/7 for weeks and weeks straight.

We know what you're thinking. This all seemed pretty far fetched to us, too. We've asked a lot of questions throughout this process and we were told we were just anxious, first-time parents. We've felt for a while now like mushrooms, kept in the dark and fed manure.

However, the lifestyle we heard being lived on the other end of the phone for the past three months was so incredibly different than anything anyone we know could imagine. Even those of you who watch those sorts of "reality" shows couldn't come up with this trash. I'm not even willing to write some of the quotes we've heard from T in our conversations. So, when something this random comes out of her mouth after months of other sickening stories, who am I to judge?

Well, I'll tell you who I am. I'm the prospective adoptive parent. I'm the one sitting on the edge of sanity, living out of a suitcase for nearly six weeks, screaming at walls and hugging my spouse like I'll fall off of a cliff if my grip slips. But, I'm also the one who has already acknowledged on this blog that we're good people. So, the internal conflict between calling the b.s. on this latest story and feeling sick to my stomach with guilt for doubting anyone who would claim that someone has cancer was unbearable. It's been a week of hell trying to determine which way I should go on this.

Finally on Wednesday night, she started to really waiver. She said she just wasn't sure if she could turn down such an offer from his parents and that she was no longer sure she wanted to place the baby with us. Later that night, we bought our tickets home.

Thursday, we packed. Friday, we drove back to Sacramento to stay with our generous hosts one last time.

But wait, there's more! On the way back to their house, we got another bit of breaking news from the agency. It seems our "T" was actually an "S". She doesn't live at the address she gave them initially. She had a baby two weeks ago and there was another couple taking her to and from her doctor's appointments all along. The agency received a phone number for "S" and it was the same one we'd all been using to converse with "T". She answered when they called. Busted.

Or is she? Armed with a new name, we hit the Internet again. Surprise! She has a federal record a mile long and has already served time for fraud. Who knows how many other couples were crying themselves to sleep over this "failed match"? She's not too clever, though, because she gave the agency the address of a different apartment in the very same building where she was living and used the same phone number for all of her contacts in this charade. This is turning into a federal investigation and charges are being discussed. Hopefully, she gets a free ride back to prison.

And, breathe...

This latest blog post is being written in the emotional comfort of our own home. A home filled with all of the love and hope and goodness of expectant parents who adore each other. A home that doesn't appreciate learning first-hand that scum like that are out there. And tonight, a home of broken hearts and loosely-tied-together dreams.

We're genuinely sorry for dragging you all along on this vomit-inducing journey and for asking you to send love to "S" and her family. A love story, this was not. We can't tell you how much we appreciate all of the support sent our way, though. It's the only thing that kept us sane, really. We know there are more good people out there than bad ones. We also know that Meadow is still out there waiting to find us, or at least her brother is - and he better like pink!

Good People

You might be feeling like all of your emails and phone calls can't possibly be helping us, especially when we all believe that good things happen to good people and, well, this isn't a good thing. However, it's just been a continuous stream of love and prayers for us and that's a constant reminder of all of the good people we've surrounded ourselves with in our life together. Your support is all we need to remember that this current situation does not represent a reality we live in. Sure, we're a little more sensitive to it because we don't watch the TV shows depicting this nonsense, the news screaming it at us, or read the on-line articles (until recently) about how crazy some people are. For those of us who don't allow the crap in, this is particularly unreal.

Before you build us up to be helpless, naive bunnies though, we did not spend recent weeks just sitting here in this hotel crossing all fingers and toes until our baby was born, remaining blind to the evidence in front of us. We mean it when we say we committed to trust completely, and doing so was nearly impossible through the clouds of doubt. However, that was the only way not to go crazy and to still stay true to the people we are.

Once, and just once early on during our stay here, I allowed myself to act on my doubts. Because T and I had had a lot of jovial conversations, I ventured into a sarcastic text one day to get confirmation that our hope was still valid. I told her that I hoped she wasn't one of those crazy girls who pretended to be pregnant. She was silent for hours. I bawled myself into a daytime nap, sure that I had offended her. When she finally did resurface, she said I'd gone too far, considering "all they made [her] go through to prove the pregnancy." Oddly, though not as odd in hindsight, she recovered quickly and was joking again in no time. Never again did I allow my commitment to trust waiver. It did not feel good to be that person who cast doubt on the trials of others, and I didn't want to doubt her and be wrong in doing so.

However, it is now more and more clear that she was not to be trusted with our hopes and dreams. Each day we plan to update you, the updates are ugly. We don't have all of the details yet, but this is the stuff of television programming that we just don't normally subject ourselves to, so we feel like it's uniquely nauseating that it's happening to us. "Unbelievable" is the public-blog-for-viewing-families way of putting this tale. You'll see in a day or two.

We're left with pits in our stomachs, but we still have no regret that we trusted so openly. It's who we are, and I feel better when I'm trusting people than when I'm mentally destroying them. Just because bad things happen to good people, doesn't mean good people need to turn bad. We're too stubborn to be reduced to that lifestyle.

Thank goodness we're not the only ones out there. We know you're all in the good people camp too and we're grateful for that!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOytKU9cBNA

Not Amused

Remember those old roller coaster rides at amusement parks that would click loudly on their way up a long, straight, steep incline just before plummeting down and twisting into a crazy corkscrew maneuver leaving you unsure if the funnel cake would stay down? Well, this is kind of like that. Only, you're not getting charged exorbitant prices for the thrill of the ride. You're welcome. :-)

We know you've waited patiently all day. We did too. We got a report on the day's events from our agency this evening and every one's tone was low, frustrated and caring. That's never a good sign.

T did go to her appointment today. No induction was ordered. They stripped her membranes (look it up if you don't know what that is). She has another appointment on Friday to see if that helped kick her cervix into gear. She's now 10 days past her second due date. We're now in our sixth week of Hopeful Hell and about to drop the "hopeful" part.

If you remember, the latest character in the story is the birth father. While the report is that he signed his relinquishment paperwork last week, he is now putting a lot of pressure on T to place the baby with his parents. They are offering substantial assistance to her and her other four kids if she will not place the baby with us. Are we having fun yet?

So, back to the amusement park. There was that other ride where you were lifted straight up, really high in the sky, to be suspended for a few seconds before the bottom falls out from under you and you drop straight down to what feels like your imminent death. Remember that one? Remember how no matter how scared you were,  you couldn't scream? Just silence. Well, the next few days might be a lot like that for us. So, just bear with us. The good thing about that ride is that it doesn't actually kill you, but curves at the end and everyone ends up breathing a sigh of relief. We're hoping for that in some shape or form. We are not amused.

We're so grateful for all of your support and will keep you all posted on the last chapter of this journey. With so much love and appreciation in our hearts for all of your thoughtfulness these days, thank you. We know you're screaming and throwing your hands up right there with us on every drop!



P.S. You might think we got off the phone with our agency and broke down. However, the A's were in the bottom of the 9th and we resumed our watching of game four of the ALDS just in time to see them tie and then win the game to keep this series alive! Go A's!

Stages of Adoption Labor

First stage, part 1: Early Labor - Traditionally, a woman's cervix gradually effaces and dilates. In our case, we began to feel the pang of impatience a little, began breathing a little irregularly and got our bags packed to head to California. We spent about four weeks waiting to get to that next centimeter of dilation, to efface just a little more. To no avail. Nothing was happening. That's right, four weeks compared to a typical day or two.

First stage, part 2: Active Labor, ending in Transition (a time to push) - Traditionally, contractions are longer, stronger and closer together. In our case, we began to get more hints at how this was actually going to go. We got word that appointments were missed, others wanted to parent the baby and a drastically reduced sense of control over our emotions as communication with T dwindled to very sporadic, at best. We're still here, on week two of this phase. Yep, two weeks to your typical few hours.

Second stage: Pushing - Traditionally, the screaming, sweating, cursing, tugging, wrenching phase of intense pain. In our case, this will be the phase when we're in the waiting (or hopefully the labor) room while T does all the pushing. We'll be the ones in the lobby wondering if she'll stick with her plan to have us parent her baby, if anyone else is going to show up who wants to parent the baby instead, and if T wants to meet us, finally. Luckily, this stage ends with the birth of the baby. In our case, it will end with us getting to hold her.

Third stage: Clean up - Traditionally, the placenta is delivered. In our case, relinquishment papers are signed and we're given that coveted permission to head home with Meadow. This one is stretched out for us as well. The placenta is typically delivered in minutes after the baby is born. We'll be here for a week or two or three while paperwork flies back and forth over Nevada and Utah to and from Colorado.

Disclaimer - I often admit to Josh that I think one reason we never did carry a baby to term is that I couldn't handle the labor. So, to my friends who have delivered, this is a joke of a comparison. I know that.

We got word today that T has her doctor's appointment tomorrow. This will be the appointment where she begs to be induced (hopefully by wrapping her way-over-9-month-pregnant self around the ankle of the physician until they have no choice but to pull that baby out - I think growling would help too). We don't know yet if that means she'll be admitted to be induced tomorrow, or if it will be scheduled for some other, future, not-early-enough-for-us date.

Rest assured, we'll be thrilled to keep you all posted when the Transition begins and we're there, in the final push, waiting to meet Meadow in person. My goodness words can't express how happy we'll be to report on that! And we end tonight just thinking about tomorrow and give you this age-old classic to fill your heads as you fall asleep:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yop62wQH498



Afro Annie is evidence that I knew I'd need this song someday.
Enjoy the last minute version of the "red head" wig. (Thanks mom!)

 

Squirrels are Bad (a little comic relief)

Most of you know our back yard. We love living in it and loving it. One key element is a big shade tree that not only covers our "zen" half of the yard (the other half being the "farm"), but also spans over to shade a bit of the adorable neighbor's side (see the Swaddling, Sideways, Shooshing... post).

Most of you also know that each year, I battle the darn squirrels in our little paradise back yard. They eat my veggies and laugh at me. They taunt the chickens and do everything they can to get in their food, including chew through plastic. They even chew the bark off of our tree and kill entire branches!

I'm proud of the video below from the other side of the fence. I know feeding cute, cuddly squirrels (and risking catching any diseases these vermin carry) is supposed to be a fun, childhood memory. Instead, I've managed to recruit our little friends next door into my own personal army against them. My favorites are that "you gotta talk really loud at them!" and his sweet agreement chuckle at the end. They're looking up at the tree and at our fenced in yard. Things seem to be in good hands while we're away. Enjoy!



A Watched Pot Never Boils

It's no secret that we've had a rough couple of days. Things got wierder and more convoluted through the weekend and, as you read, we began to lose a lot of hope. We learned that the baby's birth father's parents are interested in parenting the baby, but that T still wants to place her with us. And, just so you get that out of your minds and can read on in peace, we did learn this afternoon that if he and T both sign their relinquishment papers with a plan to place her with us, then the grandparents cannot challenge the custody decision of the parents. Still, we hoped to have an extended group of love and support around Meadow through this adoption, not create any adversarial relationships for anyone, so we hope Meadow's birth grandparents will be happy with T's decision.

Lots of recommendations came in from all of you to "go out and do something stress free", but we know ourselves and this follows us wherever we go. However, I can tell you that bottling it up in our hotel room was not therapeutic, to say the least.

There are nuggets from our training earlier this year that surface every once in a while through this experience. They are only appropriate when they're needed most, so it's been helpful that they show up when they do. After our "crazy" fit this morning, Josh remembered that we learned to be guided by our hearts, not our heads. Logistically speaking, the head has to intervene to make sure this is all still feasible. But, our problems lately have arisen from our leaning more on our heads for how to feel than our hearts. That breakthrough memory opened up Team Hope to a renewed way of thinking. And, I'm happy to say that even the one of us that had lost hope over the weekend is back on board!

If you remember, last Sunday we were worried that if we left for Yosemite, we would be out of cell range and miss "the call". Today, we acknowledged that a watched pot never boils, so we got out of the kitchen altogether. T seems to be the only person I've ever known who can go this far past her due date and not act like she'd go into labor any minute, so we left. We needed to find more 100-year-old trees (or 500-year-old as the case may be) to focus on.

Behold, the Mighty Sequoias!



Josh is showing you where he proposed to me at the top of Upper Yosemite Falls.



We spent the afternoon walking through the trees, hugging in the shadows of the mountains and reliving a lot of childhood and pre-wedding memories. It was wonderful. Every once in a while, we'd allow ourselves to think about what we're doing here, but it often came out as a hopeful reference to when we would bring Meadow to meet Yosemite one day, or some such daydream. Just like the old times of two weeks ago.

We made the mandatory stop in the Village Store. This used to be so I could find my one, shiny rock in the gift shop that I just had to have. This time, it was with a mild curiosity to see if the personalized keychain and fake license plate racks had "Meadow" in the M section. Stop laughing!

For those of you still getting used to her name, we thought we'd share a scene from our life together that has always inspired us. This might be one of the most beautiful Meadows we know...so far!

On our way back, we stopped for dinner, and a celebratory margarita. We were celebrating several things: a few shared moments of laughter today; the peace we felt driving through the mountains that all of this will happen as it should; and the hope we felt again that it will happen as we want it to. We decided to text T to rub it in a little and offer that we would toast to her with a margarita if we could take her out for one. She responded with "Thanks, but by the time I can have one, you'll be busy with your baby."

That was a first from her. "Your" baby. Our hearts soared.

What Goes Around...

I know it's very early in the day for me to add any updates, but I wanted to share the hope I'm feeling this morning. By the way, we're halfway through the day and haven't heard anything about a doctor's appointment yet.

We heard from T late last night. She expressed that she hasn't changed her mind and that the plan is still the same to place her baby with us. This morning I reminded her that the letter we wrote in our Profile Book says that we wish her peace as she makes her decisions for her baby and that we hope she can feel our compassion for her and her family. She thanked me for the text.

I only have the strength to support her in this way because of the support I receive from all of you. So please, keep it coming. Your support is definitely getting around and we need to focus everything on her right now. We hope to be in the final stretch soon. No one knows better than we do what we're asking of you when we say "hang in there a little longer", but we don't have another option except to give up on our dream. And, I'm just not ready to do that.

Complete Trust

On this, the actual calendar date of our wedding anniversary, we are grappling with what seems to be our imminent reality. It feels like this baby was not meant to come home with us. One of us still has about 1% of hope left, but it is not feeling very good right now. No matter how it turns out, ours would not qualify for "a beautiful adoption love story", at least not in our book.

We can at least say that we did this with open hearts, complete trust and a willingness to look past a lot of the doubts and fears that nagged at us the entire time. We decided it was better, even despite the intense residual pain of our loss last year, to let our guard down and reopen our hearts. We committed at the beginning of this to take on anything that might come our way, trust openly, and remain positive and compassionate. We knew there was risk, but we dove in anyway.

We have written daily journal entries to this baby girl and kept a candle of hope burning for her safe delivery. We gave her a name, shared our dreams with her through meditation, and continue to send our love out to her and her mother each and every night. The nursery (complete with painted animals, stars on the ceiling, thoughtfully tied ribbons and a full wardrobe of the most adorable little clothes in every shade of pink imaginable) could be a painful reminder of what was not to be when we open that door upon returning home.

Or, it can remind us of everything we’ve all done to show how much we all cared for her. We let her in completely, and it felt so good to have that hope in our lives again. We’ve been able to envision each other in the role of kind and loving parents again, and it has been beautiful. Even now as we add what feels like the next inevitable loss to our list, we still don’t regret taking a position of complete and total hope instead of fearing for the worst the entire time.

Now, as we watch it all crumble in our grasp at what feels like the end of this dream, at least we still know what is most important, and that is our love and complete trust in each other. Thank you for the amazing love and support we’ve received throughout this process from all of you. We've committed to go through anything, including anything like this, with love for each other as the constant, unbroken thread. We have good examples of that love from our parents, too. Some people have no clue what it means to love someone like that, so for those of us who do, we should consider ourselves fortunate.

Something just has to add clarity tomorrow. For the one of us with a sliver of hope left that all of our fears will fade and give way to the love of a new daughter, keep us in your thoughts tonight. We're waiting as fast as we can to get to the end of this, one way or another.

We're Okay, Don't Worry (too much)

We know we've been either quiet or gloomy lately, so we thought you should get a little sneak peek into our evening to let you know that we're okay, as long as we're together.

Picture it, Josh sitting at a table in a book store reading about carving swans out of apples with exquisite knife skills. Meanwhile, Tiffany is sporting her new t-shirt (Lettuce Turnip the Beet!), standing in front of shelves of books about gardening, totally engrossed in Michelle Obama's book on the White House garden and tucked, lovingly, under her arm is our new little friend:

"Chicka", the Chic Hen

Hang on Tight, Here Comes Another Corkscrew

Have you ever watched a soap opera, with all of the plot twists and new characters that come out of nowhere? Better yet, have you ever felt like you were living in one? Well, we do.

We were counseled in our adoption training to remember that we are creating a love story. Admittedly, there are love story plots in a soap opera, but there's always something interfering to prevent it from being just a calm, pure, happy storyline amidst all the chaos of the other characters. (Unless the characters in love were the older generation, then it was nice. What can I say, I was once a junior high aged girl with long summer breaks.)

Anyways, we are spinning in circles trying to keep up with the plot twists over here in Waitsville, CA. We thought we were waiting for an appointment between T and the CA agency two weeks ago, then her son was suspended from school and she had to stay home with him. Last week, the meeting was rescheduled, but it still didn't happen. We began to text her asking if she's changing her mind, but she wasn't responding. (Scary times for sure!) Meanwhile, we're still waiting for her to go into labor, aren't we? She's 6 days past her due date! She finally checked in with us today.

The day that she met with Meadow's birth father to get his paperwork signed (which we're told has happened), she learned that he is very ill. The afternoon that she was to meet with the CA agency, she went to meet his parents instead. We don't know if they knew he had a baby on the way or not. She had been silent until today. She was really just checking in to make sure we are updated. We don't know if this has any impact on our path forward or not, but our agency should be talking with her later today to hear about how she's doing.

How are we doing? Well, we're sad. We're sad for him, for his family, for T, and especially for our daughter. We have only a foggy idea about how to prepare for the day when Meadow wants to meet her birth parents, but we're confident that the day will come. When it does, we hoped to have a contact and a willing party on the other end who could share a little of their life with her. We hope that is still the case and that he can beat this!

We know that our silence is hard for you as you are eagerly supporting us and waiting for good news. Just know that these are challenging times for us, again, but we are hanging on tight to each other and to each and every supportive email we get from all of you. Please keep all of us in your prayers, hopes, good vibes, love beams, and any other positive energy force you can call on. And by "all of us", we mean Meadow, her birth parents, her birth grandparents, her siblings, our family and friends, and us.

Truthfully, we don't feel like we're getting closer to resolution on this adventure yet and we might not even have met all the characters. But we only have a few more days before it will all become clear. We just believe that much to be true.

P.S. The nitty gritty (lack of) details - Monday will be the first time the doctor would be willing to induce, but as far as we know, she doesn't have an appointment scheduled. Pregnancy is not a permanent condition. Stay with us a little longer...

We Bayve All of Ew

 Thank you for the continued support!

Declaration of Insanity

We the people believe that we are endowed with certain inalienable rights to know what we believe and to know what we know.

Beliefs 

• We believe T is pregnant.  
• We believe that T wishes to place her baby for adoption.  
• We believe that T would like us to adopt her baby.

 

Knowns 

• We know that we love each other.
• We know that pregnancy is not a permanent condition.  
• We know the chicken puppet at Barnes & Noble requires three hands to bring it to life.
• We know the carwash at Chevron closes at 8:00 pm.  
• We know that for 11.11% of this year so far, we have lived in California.  
• We know there exists another state called Colorado, and we call it "home".  
• We know sudoku is not a guessing game.  
• We know the button you would think turns on the jets in the hot tub at our hotel actually sounds the alarm.  
• We know cheap red wine tastes the same coming out of a white wine glass.  
• We know the ringtone our BND makes when a text comes in and that it can be whistled note for note.
• We know the smell of a hotel room that has a kitchen and windows that don't open farther than two inches.

 

We also know that we've been told that T didn't go to her appointment with the CA agency this week.

If what you want to know is not stated as a Known above, then we don't know. However, we Hope that all of our Beliefs become Knowns real soon.

Life Lessons from the Oakland A's and Pensioners in India

First of all, thanks to all of you for the well wishes today. We felt the collective positivity and, to some extent, it paid off! We got word from our agency that T said she and the birth father got his relinquishment paperwork signed with the notary today. Yay!

Her planned meeting with the CA agency got moved to tomorrow, but we're still hopeful that it will happen as scheduled and that there will be another promising update tomorrow evening.

In an endless effort to distract my thoughts, I had the last game of regular season play for the American League West (Major League Baseball) on my computer while I worked today. I've been a fan of the Oakland A's since childhood, so this week's match up with the Texas Rangers was particularly intense. (Why wouldn't it be? Nothing in our lives is a calm float down the river right now. All rapids, all the time.) The story of the A's is awesome and always leaves an impression. (Watch Moneyball, the movie.) It always gets my heart pounding since I'm usually a pretty loud critic of the salaries these guys get just to play ball and entertain me while teachers have to beg for donations to teach our kids. But, I digress. Suffice it to say that the integrity of the team is worth standing behind, and I do! (I'll admit it was a little hard to do that when they stomped our Rockies this summer in Colorado...but I'll forgive them. The Rockies barely seemed to try this year. Ouch!)

Okay, so back to the game...when I turned it on, the A's were up by 1. Yay! Within minutes, they were down by 4! What the?! They then dominated from the 4th inning on and turned it around to win the game 12-5, and the Division Title mind you! Awesome. The kind of stuff that makes grown men cry, just a little. Not that there's anything wrong with that. 

I needed a comeback story today. I needed to be smacked over the head with an "it ain't over 'til it's over" lesson. The outcome of the game reminded me of a quote from a movie that I watched on a plane this summer, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.

"Everything will be alright in the end...if it's not alright, it's not the end." It's not alright around here right now, but that just means it's not the end. This is also evident because we still manage to sleep for about 5-6 hours straight through the night. She's clearly not here yet. But, something just has to happen in the next four or five days, right?

One Month Down...Make it Stop Already!

Today marks one full, long month since we arrived. We thought we were about a week early according to information at the time. We thought we could get adjusted to CA life, visit some friends and family, and then head to T's town and walk on into Labor and Delivery and document the start of our daughter's beautiful life. Oh the promise of those not-yet-in-the-final-week-of-pregnancy days. It's blissfully hopeful.

We've made the most of our time out here. We've managed to visit with a few people and we've spent some much needed time alone processing a dream that was changing on a daily basis. We've done our very best and we continue to do just that. Still, we're ready for this little (turning into big) chapter to close.

We had a long conversation with T today. We talked about the minimized correspondence we've had of late and had some touching moments while we considered what is to come for both of us in a week or so. Most of our talk was spent laughing at a multitude of things. I just focus on keeping her laughing because 1) she's got a great laugh and 2) it's better for all of us if she's as happy as she can be right now.

She still has her appointments tomorrow to get the birth father's paperwork signed with the notary and the counseling meeting she is required to have with the CA agency. She's struggling with all of these logistics so late in the game and she reminds herself that these steps are a means to an outcome that she wants. It doesn't make it any easier to waddle her 9 month pregnant self around town to get it all done. So......

You can band together in one big, positive energy force that will help us get over a hump tomorrow, this week's "hump day". We need everyone focused on getting T to her meetings. It will mean we get to come home sooner after the baby is born! Oh, and on that note...something has got to happen in the next five days, right?

Oh, that game!

Well we sat in that hot tub last night, talked to the full moon and swam around to make all sorts of water move. It was still a quiet night, with no ringing nor texting. Nothing more today either. Nothing from our agency. Nothing from T. Just nothing.

All I've got to write about is the evidence that we are complete zombies, focused on one thing, and one thing only. In the dining room of the hotel tonight, they were playing the Monday Night Football game. We got our fajitas and sat down, front and center, on a comfy sofa, vowing to be good and distracted for at least 20 minutes. Mind you, we were the only ones on the comfy sofa, though others were behind us at the dining tables.

We thought we were watching the game. We knew who was playing (Cowboys and Bears, for those of you wanting to test us). We had our dinners in our laps and we were going to kill some time mindlessly, darn it! Well, our glazed stares at the screen were violently disrupted by a shriek from behind us. We both startled and turned around, worried. I swear by the way we jolted, you'd have thought we were going to jump up and rush to give CPR.

Then they yelled "touchdown!" Oh yeah, we're watching a football game. We had no idea anyone had scored despite being five feet away from the screen, despite staring straight at the TV and listening to who was doing what when the announcers spoke. Oh well, at least we caught on quickly and didn't embarrass ourselves by trying to do rescue breaths on this poor Cowboys fan.

Thank you to the parents who checked in on us tonight. Only six more days to something, right?

And then......

"Yaaaaaaaay!"

 
"Booyaaaaaawwww!"

 
"That's a Bonanza of appointments!"

 
"That's like three scoops of the most delicious ice cream I've ever tasted, right there!"

 
"I'm excited, happy, happy!"

 
"There's hope!"

This is all coming at me in a flash right now from Josh! I just had to capture it in a rare second blog post. I shouldn't have tried to get to bed earlier tonight and blog without something informative to say; there's always something. After I published that last, pathetic account of our day, we got a great email from our agency.

It turns out that they spoke with T tonight. She has an appointment with the birth father to get his relinquishment paperwork signed on Wednesday. Then, she's planning to head over to the CA agency and meet with them to take care of her pre-delivery paperwork. Tomorrow, our agency is going to broach the subject of her getting back to the doctor this week.  

We're both smiling right now at the end of a very smile-impaired kind of day. And, if you knew what we didn't share with you about our emotions today, you'd do a little happy dance for us.

Thanks AAA, for the happy dreams just in time before we signed off for the night. We're a little closer to the end zone now and putting all of our psychic energy into scoring that much-needed touchdown.