And now...The (beginning of the) Rest of the Story

At the end of a long weekend in the mountains with family and friends, you would think that a young teenage girl would want to just plug in her Walkman and tune out on the ride back home with her parents. Instead, I was interested in the Paul Harvey show (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rest_of_the_Story) that played on the radio as we rode along. It was always so interesting to hear the real end of the stories we all thought we knew. After seven months off from writing the story of our growing family, we now present the rest of the story.

~

When we first moved into our new home in Denver, we received a fragile heart-shaped tree ornament from a friend in San Francisco who had purchased it in one of those tiny shops in the Castro. Eggshell thin and light as air, it was a bright rainbow striped heart with tiny bands of gold nestled between each stripe. A proud beacon of love on our colorful Christmas tree, its shine held a special attraction for children. Of course, that attraction, combined with its fragility, would conspire in its eventual demise.

I remember that ornament tumbling from the branches of our tree and bursting into a cloud of tiny shards on the floor during our annual Winter Solstice party just as one of the youngest guests was reaching for it to express how it was her favorite. The night before, we had stepped out the back door to gaze up at the full moon winter solstice eclipse at 3:00 am.  I remember thinking it was peculiar that the moon was so dark red, yet all the news reports leading up to that night referred to it as a “blue moon” because the timing was so rare. That fleeting moment in our back yard together, with my arms around Tiffany under the red blue moon, would be made even more auspicious by the fact that it would happen to be just days into our only pregnancy. However, the baby’s heart would stop beating just a few short weeks later, in February. I’ve always looked back on that moment when that beloved heart-shaped ornament shattered as a potential sign of that heartbreak to come.

When our agency finally collapsed in 2013 and our adoption group scattered a few months later, we all tried to maintain our connections with each other. But as others rushed to sign up with other agencies, we felt utterly finished. We concluded that if a baby didn't join our family by just falling into our lap, it wasn’t meant to be. We’d give it a year to see what happened and then we’d finally be done. We’d most likely be a family of two, which would be fine with us. We have friends who have come to that decision naturally, without having to endure any devastating mistakes in the process, and we could certainly also take that path. We could simply take a deep breath, close our eyes and paint over the giraffe on the wall, and the elephant trunk, and have a great big yard sale for the rest of the baby stuff that had accumulated in bright boxes and lined the shelves of our empty nursery. The “baby’s room” would become the “meditation room,” and we could have a life of rest and thriftiness that would eventually lead to early retirement and vacations in Spain. Besides, we already had children in our lives, just other people’s kids. We could spend fun times with them and then go home to hypothesize about various styles of parenting and then contemplate our next vacation once we got bored with that conversation. That actually didn’t sound so bad at all when we talked about it last year. And, honestly, it still sounds pretty good.     

Just a couple of months later brought an interesting twist. It was a day full of signs and messages sprinkled with hope and caution. The last step in being done with the agency we had been working with was for them to send us back the profile book that had been sitting on their shelf for the previous year and a half. One bright autumn day, we came home to two packages on the porch. One was the profile book in a torn paper grocery bag with no note or anything attached. “Well, I guess that’s the official end of that,” we said to each other.

The other package was an unexpected gift from a friend in South Africa. It included two sweet heart-themed gifts. One was a simple string of wooden beads tied with twine which lead to a larger heart made of wood. The other was a string of soapstone hearts each stamped with the words love, hope or joy. These particular friends have always been very supportive of us over the years. They have three children and are a true model of positive parenting, always nurturing and engaging with their kids. It’s really beautiful to witness. They make it seem very possible (and even rewarding) to be parents. They later shared that they just sent the package for fun, not for any special reason.

On that evening when we received our profile book that finally closed the chapter with the agency and that special gift of hearts, we were also particularly distracted by other news. That day, we had learned about someone who knew someone who was intending to place her baby for adoption and was looking for a couple to place him with. All of a sudden we had a big decision to make. Should we hop back on the adoption train? We had seen it derail several times and were beginning to feel pretty comfy with the idea of jumping on the child free train headed in the opposite direction. Suffice it to say that the adoption “adventure” had been a really, really, really bad trip. But this was still exciting and positive news, or at least we would have certainly seen it that way in the past. It was just a shame it was coming years later than we would have liked. But…there we were anyway. We stared at the new heart-shaped ornament we received on that truly auspicious day and considered that at least this one was made of wood. Maybe it wouldn’t shatter this time.

Not wanting to ever succumb to blind hope and get hurt again had driven us to be extremely cautious with our expectations. We spent the following three months waiting for the birth mother to decide that she wanted us to parent her baby. We kept our secret close to home and only allowed the occasional “what if?” to creep into our dreams. After our trip to Costa Rica in January, we learned that she did in fact want to place her baby boy with us and that she would be due in March. We also learned that she had been hospitalized for preterm labor multiple times during this pregnancy and that we should be ready for a preemie.

Now when we see that wooden heart hanging in our home, it gives us a sense of peace that this time our hearts won’t be broken. As for the other string of hearts, we put that over the door to his room to remind him of how much love he’ll give and receive each day, and how glad we are that he finally made it home to our hearts.

Miraculously, she carried him to full term and we were there for the delivery and discharge of our little boy. He’s now six weeks old and we have yet to figure out how to describe what we’ve been feeling since March 14^th (Pi Day!). We’ll make every attempt to get back into this blog with more frequent updates. It will certainly be more fun to write the posts again. Feel free to stay tuned if you want to. We have a lot of catching up to do.

  

A Cleansing Rain

We saw a postcard in a gift shop the other day that read:

Putting the Whole

Hideous Thing

Behind Me

by Blogging

About It

It made us laugh, but in the same jaded, angry way we've laughed for years now. We decided not to pick it up.

This journey has made some undesirable characters out of us. We go to work, we meet with friends, we love our loved ones. However, the anger bubbles just beneath the surface and rears its head in ugly ways every once in a while. A few weeks ago, we both had finally had enough. There comes a time in every adventure when the element of excitement turns to something sad, or worse. With us, that often means turning the car around or boarding the plane home because vacation is over. In this case, it meant that we had become people we didn't like anymore. Anxious, cynical, cheated people who weren't able to see the beauty around us because we were crowded by the mess of buffoonery too close in view. It was time to put an end to it.

We realize that we've been quiet lately. It's been over a month since our last post and it was a long time before that since you heard from us. Just know that there hasn't been anything we were comfortable sharing. It's been a time of making hard decisions and we needed to make that an insular process. Not all caterpillars are ugly and not all butterflies are beautiful, so it can't be said that it's always a progression for the better, but you get the idea. We've come out of our little cocoon and are beginning to spread our wings again, tentatively.

Some people have the tenacity to wait through multiple failed baby placements, or even years of silence for their special bundle to arrive through adoption. On the other hand, we know people who would never even consider adoption to grow their family. Everyone has to know their limits. Even if we didn't know what those limits were when we started down this path, we've reached ours. After three failed matches, two of them criminal, and four babies that we were told to welcome into our hearts because they were "ours," but they turned out not to be, Josh appropriately declared that no one ever gets to hold our major life decisions in the palm of their hand again (as long as we're conscious). And, I agreed.

Right about the time that a majority of our state was under water, our spirits needed that cleansing rain. We soaked it up. We used it to deliver us a new perspective and a renewed interest in the little things around us. Our favorite summer concert venue was completely lost to the floods here a few weeks ago and the owner simply said that he was "power washing the facility." That was the perspective we needed to absorb. What could result from the torrential soak we've endured are cleaner, fresher versions of us. But not if we didn't first make the move to wash away the layers of stagnant muck.

For those of you who like the details, here is how it went with the adoption agency. Just weeks after we made the decision to search for our sanity again and put an end to this pursuit, we got a message from them. It turns out that they aren't working with any birth mothers and they are sending all families on a search for a new agency to work with to grow their family. We had already been in talks with another agency for about five months. We had already received the application packet and our hearts sank at the thought of diving in again and starting over. We had already made the decision not to put ourselves through that. When we heard from the agency with which we were working, we felt some comfort in having an emotional head start on this next round of surprising twists along our gnarled path. We weren't surprised at their closing and we were already clear on what our next steps were before they dealt the latest blow to our dreams.

Maybe the butterfly was an optimistic image to put in your minds. We're certainly not fluttering around weightless just yet. We might be more like that 100-year-old tortoise at the zoo. The one that mostly sits and watches what is going on around her, sticking her head out to see if anything new and interesting might be happening and quickly retracting when she senses danger or annoyances. Yes, we're cautious right now. But, we are sure of our decision and that's refreshing after years of questioning what's next. We have finally shed a few pounds of doubt that hovered over us for too long.

Thank you for your support for the past 22 months through reading these posts about our roller coaster. We don't know what the future holds, but we're sure it will be an improvement over parts of the past. We've committed to making one hard decision at a time, and nothing else. You know, living in the moment...

Eventually, you might notice that spring in our step again. For now, we're just getting our springy shoes on. With summer coming to a close, and a greenhouse to build, we're going to focus on growing our farm-ily instead of our family.

Intruding on Hippos

As you might have guessed, we've been pretty busy lately. We've managed to be away every weekend for multiple weeks in a row on camping trips to the mountains nearby. The weeknights have been consumed by music practice, babysitting, rescuing the garden from squirrels and cleaning up after or packing for the next weekend. The weekdays have both of us neck deep in big projects at work, with more piled on before we can complete the task at hand.

Some complicated family dynamics, a lot of stress and not enough time in the day for life to do its thing have made for some rough waters along our stretch of the creek. With emotions so high, life-changing decisions get made and then rethought a day later. Then, we're back where we started. Not a lot of what we're going through is fit for the blog, but I thought of a way to sum it up for you.

Lately, I feel like I'm standing too close to a hippo guarding his stretch of beach:

http://youtu.be/hy8nDb5nCak?t=10s

Parenting Books

Despite the claims of exasperated parents everywhere that there are no books telling them how to raise a child, there are in fact hundreds (maybe thousands) of titles on bookstore shelves claiming to lead these parents to the happiest, healthiest, hippest kid on the planet. There are books about sleeping, feeding, clothing, loving, disciplining, educating and so much more. There really is no excuse for not knowing what you're doing these days.

Except that books can't train you for your baby. Thank goodness we're not all wired the same way. It's a relief to know that human beings still maintain some shred of individualism and can throw curve balls at the "experts" who think they have it all figured out. Unfortunately, these experts succeed in selling millions of copies to desperate parents trying to get their baby to stop crying, sleep through the night, eat more variety or just generally be super cute and easy to care for. Once the neurotic parent has read these how-to manuals and inevitably fails at the execution of steps 1, 2 and 3, the guilt of not doing it "right" sets in. The happiest, healthiest, hippest kids I know are cared for by parents feeling their way along the murkiness of parenthood and doing what feels right for their family, not the latest trends in baby care.

In contrast to my general advice (because I'm an expert too, just an uninformed one) to just take it as it comes and do what feels best for you at the time, in this case we do have a book recommendation for parents everywhere. It's a parenting book that will make your most embarrassing, frustrating or feeling-incompetent stories about how you're parenting absolutely okay. Our only disclaimer is that the language is foul. Be ready to wince at some of the expressions within.

We read the book to each other last weekend and both of us shared moments of laughter and tears. It's well-written and, again from an uninformed perspective, describes what we're sure we'll experience someday. We can already relate to some of the scary moments in the story. However, mostly we were in stitches at the way seemingly benign trips to the grocery store or the playground are described. It crosses generations and we're sure most of you will get a kick out of it, young or old, kids or kid free.

Check it out at your local library and enjoy a few days of a funny tale. It will make all of your parenting decisions seem brilliant and it will also pierce your heart with the unconditional love of parenthood.

P.S. After you've read this and you assume that we're planning to parent with four letter words, please know that we've also recently acquired this:

Don't worry, kindness will always prevail in this house....but foul-mouthed sarcasm gets a nod every so often.

Dear All of Us

Sometimes the craziness of life can leave you feeling like you're gasping for air in the deep end of the pool. It's hard to remember that everything, and I mean all of it, is temporary. We don't have enough fingers to count the things that are unresolved and challenging in our lives right now. For me, the physical reaction is a tightness high in my chest that I try to take deep breaths to diffuse. We're just left with throwing our hands up and knowing that regardless of our stress levels life will continue on, however it is going to - on its own time, along its own twisty path. In the midst of this dizzying chaos, I found this plaque in a shop the other day and it resonated with me. So now, we own it and I try to read it multiple times daily as I catch my breath and wait for what's next. I'm passing it along in case you too are trying to stay afloat these days.

 

We were excited to learn that our neighborhood started a new Farmers Market last night (or rather, Farmer's Market, since there was only one farmer). We checked it out and it was a little dreamlike inside when we felt how happy and peaceful the place was while nestled along one of the busy thoroughfares through town in rush hour traffic. It was packed with our neighbors and a lot of hopeful feelings for a new traditional food truck dinner on Wednesdays in the 'hood. There were, of course, kids everywhere. The loved it. We just hoped it will last enough seasons that our own will get to enjoy it as well on these perfect summer evenings.

 

The live musician at the market sparked something in my house band's soul and when we came home and I stepped inside, this is what I found in our back yard minutes later.

 

 

There is goodness in the summertime. Easy livin' and peaceful evenings are for the taking. Summertimes' oppressive heat can force you to relax, without getting all of the chores done or coming to terms with everything that the air-conditioned day shot at you like a fire hose. Sometimes, you just have to stop and soak it in.

 

After our calming stroll through the neighborhood market, we even got a response from the agency on my standard three questions about the status of their work with potential birth mothers. They are working with women now who are due in the next couple of months. None of them are ready to look at profile books yet and, despite the urging of future grandparents to rush that part of the process, we appreciate the care it takes to make sure these women really want to make an adoption plan for their baby before showing them eager families waiting to adopt. It's a process that takes time to make sure it goes well. It is just very reassuring when we get hints that there is actually a process happening.

 

The irony in the lyrics and tone of this song rings true for me right now. Enjoy this as you sip on your summertime drink of choice tonight and remember us over here treading water, but livin' easy this summer, all at the same time.

 

http://youtu.be/LDF4_qVgbFU?t=1m30s



Average

Summer is in full swing. That means our days and evenings are packed with fun things going on outside. Our good friend asked me last week "How often do you two not have plans in the evenings after work?" The answer is rarely. At around the same time, another good friend sent us this article. Do yourself a favor and take the time to read through it. It's long, but important.

In the context of that article, I suppose our claims of being busy all the time could sound like boastfulness. The truth is that sometimes those busy plans consist of pulling a few weeds and sitting on the back deck, drinking wine and talking about how lucky we are to the sound of the bubbling water fall we created in our own little urban oasis. Sometimes I'll say no to any plan being made so that there's time for a weekly laugh with a good friend in CA, or sometimes I'm blocking out time for yoga so that I can maintain some semblance of patience with my life and the people in it. Once a week, Josh is "too busy" to do anything else because he's playing music with his band. We dedicate time to just being grateful for what we have and for enjoying it to the fullest during the seasons that allow us to be outside in it.

Today marks the nineteenth month that we've been working with our agency with the hope of growing our family. Eighteen months is often quoted as the "average" wait time for an adopting family to be placed with a baby. We met the newest member of our adoption group last week, the second baby placed with a couple in our circle of waiting parents. After hearing their story, it is again evident that no two journeys follow the same path. After our own three failed matches with what were touted as "our" babies, we know that there is nothing average about The Wait. With only two of the seven families in our group placed with their babies in the past 18 months, it seems even the average time it takes to Wait has been extended beyond the norm for us.

I'm sorry to report that we have no information from our agency about any planned placements any time soon. And so, we remain "too busy" with fulfilling activities during The Wait. We volunteer, exercise, grow food, play music and love our friends, family and ourselves. Nothing distracts us from the knowledge that we're Waiting. Not even a packed schedule could help us avoid that incessant truth. But, we don't stay busy to brag and avoid life, we stay busy to soak in everything life has to offer us in this present moment. And, there's a lot on the table if you're open to it. We're also open to the notion that at the end of our journey, we'll either be here:

 

or here:

 

Stay tuned to find out!

Thank you from the bottom of our busy, but full, hearts for your continued support.

Third Time's a....Double Play?

If only we weren't on the wrong team. In baseball, a double play is when a team gets two consecutive outs in the same play action. In the world of adoption, our third at bat resulted in the hope, and loss, of an adorable sibling pair.

When we returned from one of our recent travels, we had a message waiting for us. Our uncle always shares with people that we're planning to adopt hoping that someone he knows will know someone who knows someone who is pregnant and is interested in meeting us. He received word from a friend that there was a woman who was due soon and that she was planning to place the baby for adoption.

The woman didn't want to talk with us directly yet, but her friend did. Unfortunately, we don't speak the same language, so a good friend was our mouthpiece as we tried to figure out if this was a real, promising conclusion to our Wait. For the past week or so, our friend has been communicating on our behalf with the friend of the birth mother.

Surprisingly, the friend mentioned that she had the birth mother's older child in her care as well and was interested in placing both children with us so that the kids could stay together. We had a lot to think about. We had recently decided that "one is enough," after years of hoping for "as many as possible," mixed in with a healthy dose of "two would even things out a bit" and finally settling on "whatever happens, happens." We shared that we would consider the situation when there was a baby born and the birth mother wanted to place him with us.

Along the way, some of those familiar red flags began to surface. The most glaring, blinking, screaming, SMACK YOU ON THE HEAD sign for us was the mention of money in exchange for this baby. Apparently, there was another family who was supposedly willing to pay for this baby and if we wanted to pay more, then she'd consider us. (Are you throwing up yet?)

Our friend did a superb job of explaining that once our agency was involved, we would discuss what medical and legal expenses would be covered through the legal process of adoption. The birth mother didn't like that. She didn't want to work through an agency. (Are you running scared yet?)

Today, we received pictures of a healthy newborn baby boy. We also received pictures of his older sister, who turned one today as well, sort of like those twins I've always wanted. And, we were told again that there was another couple and that they were writing a personal check to have the baby placed in their care in two days. Unluckily, we've already been engaged with the type of people who would consider selling their babies to the highest bidder. We are finished with the conversation at this point. Nothing more to say. We didn't sit suckered in a hotel room for 6 weeks this time, but our hopes were dashed again, for the third time out. Still, no money was lost in our pursuit of a larger family. (Are you breathing a sigh of relief now?)

We have been quiet lately because we wanted to see where this third venture into match-dom was going to take us. We're glad to have spared you the back and forth this time. We're not happy to be in this boat again and are left wondering what it is about us that attracts such twisted characters.

Supposedly we're still in the game to grow our family. If you can stomach it, stick with us. We're still hitting foul balls into the upper deck like Roy Thomas and the game is dragging on and on and on...but we're not out yet.