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