What are You Grateful for in Life?

I mean for you to really think about it, and often. Josh and I share two things that we're grateful for each day as we lie down to sleep. We try to focus on bigger things relating to our family and friends or our own souls' smiles, but sometimes we're just happy to have gotten a tricky work assignment taken care of or the house cleaned. It turns out that considering how great some things are is one ticket to being happy in life.

Last night, we were fortunate to find a couple of extra hours in our evening without plans. We turned to the top of our old TV looking for the ever-present Netflix movie taunting us and waiting patiently to be watched. Typically, movies sit and wait for us to get to them for months, but last night there was nothing there. Worried that someone stole a movie out of our mailbox (because for some silly reason that was more plausible to us than the truth), we turned to the Internet and found that our on-line queue had run out months ago. We hadn't even noticed. So, we browsed the instant watch options.

We came across a film simply called: Happy. It had been recommended to us recently, so we gave it a whirl. It looks at happiness levels in different cultures around the world. As travelers, we've already learned that a lot of people who we Americans would think must be miserable because they have so little are actually quite content in life. This wasn't a new message for us, but it's worth revisiting often. Reviewing behaviors that lead to the opposite of happy is also a good thing to keep our eyes on lest we drain our own glass to half empty.

We're soaking in some glass-half-full days recently, but that doesn't mean we don't need reminders to know that we're pretty darn lucky. Keeping the right perspective on how great the rest of our lives are helps to make up some imbalances on the happy index when we get lost in thoughts of our history with trying to grow our family. It's always worth noting that while our immediate family under one roof has maintained a constant of two, our extended "family" has grown leaps and bounds in recent years. Thanks to all of you for contributing to one of the key ingredients to creating true happiness, our community.

Enjoy the film when you have some time: http://www.thehappymovie.com/
(Available for download to watch instantly on Netflix and lasting only a quick 76 minutes.)

Boy? Girl?

I checked, Motley Crue didn't sing a song called Boys, Boys, Boys, so you'll just have to think of your own tune to whistle as a soundtrack to this post. I thought about harnessing the vibe of my When It Rains It Pours post, but the song It's Rainin' Men just doesn't seem appropriate for newborn babies.

Yes, it seems 2013 is the year of the boys. Remember all of those pregnant friends and placements that I wrote about earlier in January? We now know that they are all having or have been placed with boys. There has to be a break in the boy action at some point or the planet would be out of balance, but it's getting pretty predictable.

One of the obvious unknowns in the adoption process (and early stages of pregnancy) is not knowing who is coming into your home, never mind the when and for how long questions. "Who?" is a biggie because it's the first thing anyone wants to know when someone is pregnant or planning, "Do you want a boy or a girl?" We all know the correct answer is "We're only asking for a healthy baby", but there are emotions tied to which one is coming for a lot of people. My symmetry-loving friends are keen to get a balance in the family with one of each, while others are terrified of those female hormones in the teenage years (do they really stop then?), or challenged by keeping curious little boys out of trouble. Still, no matter what the response is when we first learn the sex of our bundles, within a very short amount of time, everyone I've ever known can't imagine what life would be like with the opposite sex child than who they were blessed to welcome home.

Before I left for the Peace Corps, I went to a card reader in LA for fun with my friend. I went in with a healthy skepticism and ready to test her by giving nothing away. She flipped the cards and told me I was about to leave on a long voyage, that I would meet my future partner - who would have blondish hair - and that we'd raise two boys together. Fast forward about 7 years and sit me down in Austin, Texas across from a seer who, in my memory, strongly resembled Tangina Barrons from the movie Poltergeist. She too mentioned the two boys.

When we were matched with a little girl last summer, we hoped that the psychics were all just wrong and that the adoption would still be successful. When that didn't work out, we wondered. When we were matched with a boy in December, we thought that seemed more like it, but that one wasn't ours either. So, now we're left wondering again.

I'm not necessarily saying we want boys, or that we don't, just that I've been told they're on the way. We actually couldn't resist an adorable little flowered, blue dress in El Salvador, so hopefully the boys can share it.

Or, maybe our little girl will love it.

We've lived through daydreams of both a boy and a girl and we don't have a preference, we're only asking for a healthy baby. :-)

Shoveling Away Hopelessness

What a storm! We got about a foot of snow in our neck of the woods from a long, overnight storm on Saturday and Sunday. In typical Colorado fashion, it began to melt yesterday and made for a relatively easy effort to scoop it up and pile it on the lawn and garden for some additional moisture until the next dump, which started this afternoon.

At about mid-day, I became increasingly frustrated with Monday's version of The Wait. I did mention that there were glass-half-empty days, right? Well, yesterday was one of them. I was stir crazy in front of my computer and decided that a lunch hour spent shoveling the melting snow in the beaming Colorado sun would provide just the physical release I needed.

When I came back in, there were urgent email messages from a dear friend. She wrote that her heart was pounding and that I needed to get in touch. This is a friend who has occasional leads on mothers who might be considering an adoption plan for their babies, so my heart began to pound too. We played email tag for a bit and then she shared the news. She had received a call from a Spanish-speaking woman wondering if my friend's office was where adoptions happen. I felt so relieved that we went to all the trouble to send out our adoption notification cards to friends and family last year, and more so that some people haven't forgotten our journey and still think of us first when a random potential opportunity passes their way.

She didn't have a name, just a phone number, which she had gotten through an interpreter. I immediately called one of our Spanish-speaking friends to see if she was willing to follow the lead. She was! We wrote out a script with a few key questions and she was left to make the call.

In the meantime, Josh and I exchanged a few emails about what this could mean. There's no telling what our story will end up being and there's no reason that this wasn't it. He spent the anxious minutes deciding to learn Spanish once and for all so that his kids would feel comfortable in either community. I was daydreaming about how cool a story like this would be, one that came from a woman who genuinely wanted to place her baby for adoption and came to us through two great friends.

We got the response within minutes...the woman was looking for a place to find a child to adopt, not place her own with an adoptive family. Luckily, this wasn't a 3 month journey, or even a 2 week one. We knew in minutes that this lead was a dead end.

However, I was relieved at having experienced the teaser. On a day when I was considering the pace of the criminal justice system and that of the independent adoption process, I got a friendly reminder that there really is no way of knowing how our story will unfold. It left me with a renewed optimism that receiving a call from our agency isn't the only way this might happen.

Keep your eyes and ears open. You could be the one who introduces children into our lives. And if you do, I reserve the right to call you during a 3:00 am feeding to thank you personally. But don't let that deter you.

Unbridled Thoughts in the Shortest Month

A friend wrote this morning that she is really ready for February to be over. I understand the sentiment. For a few years, February brought nothing but scary sadness to our home. One year, we endured my dad's heart surgery. The next we experienced the loss of our baby and then dad's emergency brain surgery squeezed in a week later. I became so engulfed in the threat of February that last year I worried all the way over the Atlantic and back when I attended a workshop in Oxford, England. Luckily, February 2012 passed without negative incident in our lives. And this February has brought a hospital-free visit with dad, fun memories abroad and good times with friends in the mountains at home. Yes, it seems our personal February spell has been broken.

It isn't just our family that has trepidations about February. Songs of February never really seem to carry an upbeat tune, though they can be beautiful in their own right (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yy-v-UgNhuI). Poems of February often involve darkness, solitude and sometimes death, but some share thoughts of warmth and love inside the cozy, winter home.

There are things to get excited about in February. After all, an entire day in the middle of the month is dedicated to love. It is also a great time to hear celebrations of our African American history. For me, the best thing about February is that it is short and that when it ends March will come marching in to save the day (hey, maybe that's why they call it that). Still, the month lives on and brings with it the cold of winter and the stillness that can lead to uncertain and vulnerable thoughts.

With no news since the good news of January to share in our adoption group, the restless thoughts begin. We're supporting each other through some wanderings of the mind that lead to glass-half-empty kind of days. I've said it before, and I promise to beat it into you again, the adoption journey is not for the weak in heart.

I have a daily calendar with sayings about the life of a gardener. One of the recent quotes came to mind as emails were flying between our group this week.

"Your mind is a garden. Your thoughts are the seeds.
The harvest can be either flowers or weeds." ~ Unknown

Now, there are a lot of other quotes in that calendar about how we have to give weeds respect for boldly growing wherever they want to and not being forced into tidy rows. The same could probably be true for our negative thoughts through The Wait. They have the tenacity to persist in the absence of a focus on positivity.

For those of you waiting for the march of spring to begin, hang on, there is just one more week until we're through with February and can welcome the month of the spring equinox. To give you some inspiration to dream of brighter thoughts to come, I offer you this from our garden of springs past...

Look for these little guys first...

...with these lovely ladies not far behind.

"The flowers of late winter and early spring occupy places in our hearts well out of proportion to their size." ~ Gertrude S. Wister

I'll choose to focus on that one love-soaked day in February and fill up my heart with the brightness and hope of what is to come.

Perpetual Planning

As is well-documented on this site, not all of our plans come to fruition. When we decided to embark on a trip to Thailand in December, we figured that either we would go, which would be awesome, or it would get canceled to welcome a baby, which would be awesome. When it was canceled and we still didn't welcome home a baby, we were not feeling very fulfilled in our attempts to move on from our California trip and plan a new adventure.

Some people eat ice cream when things don't go their way. Some people wad up in a ball and rock themselves. Some become obsessed with their work or sports or some other productive distraction. I plan fun things, down to the smallest detail.

A number of you have heard me say recently that I'm fully aware that I'm planning simply to prove to myself that the plans we make can really come to be. It's not a subconscious coping mechanism. I know I'm doing it and why. Not everything is out of our control, darn it, and I'm determined to prove that to us. And, I'm grateful that this is my outlet. Enter El Salvador...

We spent 5 quick days in the loving hospitality of
our host family in San Pedro Puxtla, El Salvador.

Night one brought the much-craved pupusas!

We toured the countryside to see volcanoes and coffee plantations,

stopped off at a Sunday food festival to try a few new things,

hiked through National Park El Imposible and one of us jumped into the waterfall pool...

...while one of us practiced Spanish with the guide.

We got up early (mostly because of confused roosters) to check out the sunrise,

and met some new friends.

Josh helped build a new home for our host's son, responding to the work chit chat
 about how big our family is with a confident "we have chickens" in Spanish.

And Tiffany just relaxed while the rain came down.

We flew home on Valentine's Day after hearing midnight serenades and
receiving a bouquet of fresh flowers from our host for the Day of Love.



 

On the point of our efforts to grow our family...

We found new 100+ year old trees to meditate on when we need to stay grounded in patience.

And we found beautiful inspiration to plant new seeds of hope in the garden.

Up next? Weekends in the mountains, climbing, gardening, painting in the nursery, camping, who knows what else! But, I can tell you that it will be well-thought-out ahead of time as long as there are no baby distractions on the horizon.

Spring is in the Air

In years past I would have rejoiced at the warmer weather we've been experiencing lately. It must mean it's time to get outside and dig in the soil! However, now I worry for our state's water situation and hope that we have a few more huge snow dumps in the mountains so that this summer's activities can proceed without significant reductions in water supply. Still, there's the anxious gardener in me that can't wait to see things come to life again.

Last night's coveted free time was spent drawing this summer's gardens. It's a chore that I relish. It involves planning (fun!) and fills the house with the hopeful thoughts of green growing. All summer, fresh food and flowers will materialize with a little water and some excessive enthusiasm about each new sprout's growth through spring. It surprises me every year that food grows from the tiny little seeds that I obsess about in my office upstairs in January and February.

This year, we hope to enjoy multiple types of specialty tomatoes, hot peppers, a variety of beans, sweet winter squash and delicious herbs in the back. The front will be our "Show the Neighbors What Can Grow" garden with rutabaga, chards, okra, kales, beets, parsnips, carrots, broccoli, pumpkin, quinoa and asparagus. Hope springs eternal that it will grow, stay free of bugs and be plentiful. Each year brings a new lesson.

Now, if I could just get my hands on a packet of these seeds:

 

We haven't heard anything from the agency about our hopes to grow our family. We decided to update our profile pictures to do a little spring cleaning and wash away last season's image. We look forward to abundant life springing up this year from the soil that has been turned and revitalized to support new and happy growth.

When it Rains it Pours (and we sure need it)

Here in Colorado, we've been enduring a drought for years, with this winter's precipitation levels not expected to provide any relief in the foreseeable future. Our reservoirs are down to about 65% of where they should be currently. This is the time when we hope to see deep snow pack in the mountains, but unfortunately, on our trip to the slopes a week ago, we were skiing a natural slalom course through exposed rocks and patches of dry ground. The anxious anticipation of what's to come is pulsing through the farming, ranching, recreational sports and gardening communities. It's an impatient time with our hopeful eyes ever-searching for that moisture icon in the weather reports.

Likewise, some families in our adoption group ended the year on an emotionally dried up note. There hadn't been any news from the agency about new birth mothers for those of us hoping to add to our family through this course. Multiple couples expressed that they just needed to see that something positive could happen for the waiting couples rather than the disappointments of the last half of 2012. It appeared that the start of 2013 was going to feel as scorched and hope-deprived as the desolate situation we wrote about earlier this month.

A few months back, one of the women in our group shared her story of an emotional visualization session she had just experienced. She was meditating and focusing on nothing in particular when the vision of multiple babies came raining down in her mind. This hadn't happened to her before and she was sharing the hope it inspired in her to stay positive and welcome the coming months with optimism. It might sound peculiar to some of you, but she is the one who is now a new mom. The additional good news for the rest of us is that she envisioned multiple babies...so we wait with open hearts!



We learned that the agency we're working with placed a baby with another waiting couple from a previous group in recent weeks as well. Last week, three good friends shared the exciting news that they are now pregnant. It certainly feels like there is something happening out there in the drive to keep the species alive.

And, although it won't be enough to help the state's situation in the long term, it snowed through last night and we woke up to a moisture-laden slog of a yard.

We're still in a personal drought for now since we don't have any news to share about our family's unique wait. However, I'm clinging to the idea that they changed the term from Global Warming to Climate Change to imply that it's not just hot and dry conditions, but also abundant moisture that we can expect in these uncertain, changing times. Hopefully, the precipitation of babies will pick up again soon in the same fashion that El Niño increases the depth of a good snow storm in Colorado.

As if trying to contribute to the return of the hopeful sense of creating what we want to happen, our hens picked today to start laying again after their winter moult. Yay, eggs! Though it would be a stretch to use these unfertilized eggs to also represent the coming of new life, they will certainly be added to the hope that is back to happily sustaining our own.