I'm Told it's Ok to be Happy...

We met our birth parents today. We liked them and they liked us (*phew*) so it was deemed a success. We're going to get together again on Monday at a park by them so we can meet the baby and some of their immediate family members. I can NOT wait to meet this little dude. I'd like to say that I'll be graceful and respectful. But I'll probably dissolve into tears over love for the baby and grief for the birth family. I better stock up on stoic pills that morning.

 We were told by our agency's social worker at the end of the meeting that we really have no reason to expect another disappointment. I'm trying very hard to hang onto those words. I'd love to be more excited and less nervous. Luckily, placement is going to be soon. Our social worker thinks it'll be early next week, definitely by Wednesday. And they're probably going to sign in NJ which means we can simply go home after placement. That would be divine! Dang you interstate compact bureaucracy bologna.

I'm so totally in love with my house full of boys. Boys are just the best.

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I'm trying to enjoy all the almost-baby giddiness. I really am. It's still hard. At least I'll have one less thing to worry about soon. Friday is my last day of work. I love my company. I love my work friends and my employee discount. I'm highly tempted to bust out the credit card and grab this mushroom I've been eying for a year before my discount goes away. Stupid ridiculously overpriced completely useless but covetable mushroom pouf.

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But I digress. I'm going to miss my job and more importantly, I'm going to miss working - bringing home some bacon for the family - contributing. I know raising two kids is no small feat, but it's not the same as providing. I'm sure I'll be singing a different tune come Memorial Day when our town's pool opens up. Hello beach and hello pool. Muahahahaha...

So, that's where we stand. Hopefully Neil and I can sneak away this weekend to watch the Hunger Games (nerds!) before it's all baby all the time.
Keep your fingers crossed for us. We're not out of the woods yet... but we're getting close. I can almost smell baby head from here.

Stuck in Maybe-Baby Limbo is the Pits

Here we go again. We got a call on Thursday from our dear social worker. There was a birth mother and birth father with a three month old that were looking to make an adoption plan and did we want to be considered for it. It turns out, we were the only people in our program to agree to be shown to her, due to the nature of her medical background (more on my feelings towards this later). She's taking the weekend and Monday to decide with her family and the birth father that placing with us is the right thing to do. So we could have a possible placement on Wednesday. Holy balls! We were just starting to get over the last disappointment and now this.

I have coined this period of waiting to see if a baby comes home with us "maybe-baby." And you know what? Maybe-baby is really starting to take a toll on me. I can't take much more. If this situation doesn't work out, I'm going to need a few weeks without any baby drama.

This baby comes as a major surprise to us. We've only been shown to African American or biracial birth mothers to this point. We've been preparing for over a year now to be a trans racial family. This particular baby happens to be Caucasian and we were knocked off kilter a little by it. It's weird for two white people to have to prepare for a white baby. But that's what we're doing. More on this later, as well.

We haven't told many people about this situation. But I feel like to stay true to the process, I needed to comment on it here. I created this blog to help others in the same situation. And to help myself get through this excruciating Wait period. So dear friends, this could be the first post marking my descent into madness. Haha... ok, that's a little dramatic. But who knows, at this rate, a few more weeks here and there of maybe-baby could have me going bonkers for sure.

I also need to add that I am fully aware that no amount of anxiety I am feeling can come close to matching what the birth mother is feeling. I can't imagine the pain she is going through. My heart is with her (even though we haven't met yet) during this agonizing time and I hope that our profile is comforting to her. If I could speak to her right now, I'd like to tell her that if she decides to place, we will love and honor her forever as one of our own and she will be with us always as we raise this baby she has entrusted to us. He will always know who she is and how much she loves him. That's how we roll.

So peace and godspeed to her and her decision. We're here, ready and willing.
Wish us luck and hopefully we'll have a joyful update later this week.

Starting over isn't so bad

Since the baby was born and the father decided to parent, things haven't been too bad around these parts. We were busy with incredibly warm beach days, grown up get-a-ways and little W's third birthday. All of which have been excellent distractions.
Wednesday night we scrambled to throw together a last minute weekend getaway. We gave the boy and the dogs to my parents and we took off to the Finger Lakes in upstate New York. We went there for a short weekend about four or five years ago and we fell instantly in love with the area. We're just two soggy winos at heart and it was calling me back. Loudly.
This was a very healing trip. Our hotel was warm and luxurious (by our standards), our suite was about the size of our home (ha!), the porch was cathartic and the jacuzzi literally healed my (broken) bones.

View from our hotel porch

On Saturday, we hired a chauffeur to take us around for the day to all the wineries on Seneca Lake.  We got soggy and stupid by 5:00pm. And we bought a LOT of wine. Like, a serious lot. That's all I can really recant from that experience.

This is me after about eleventy billion glasses of wine. Mmm... wine

Sunday was a quick trip to Kauka Lake for a visit to a few vineyards before the long trip down to pick W up at my parents. And what trip to wine country would be complete without stopping at super classy Bully Hill?
The ancient memory of twenty three year old Lindsay that lives deep in my head, somewhere was reveling in all their cheap-wine-splendor. Once upon a time, many a night was spent with a bottle of Bully Hill in the crook of my arm. And of course I had to get a few bottles of Sweet Walter. Because, well, that's my Little W! And by late Sunday morning, we were really jonesing for our own sweet Walter.

Bully Hill: Giving Young Lindsay headaches since the year 2000

By the time it was all said and done, we sloshed back down the highway with over three cases of wine of varying colors, flavors and fancy winey words we don't care to understand (seriously... you can't tell me the tannins of your table wine matter as you're downing Wegman's brand spaghetti in your sweatpants on a Tuesday).

Monday was our sweet W's third birthday. How that happened, I'll never know. He's been begging to go to the Franklin Institute to see the traveling dinosaur exhibit for weeks. So we took him there for his birthday. And it scared him to death. Like, little hands plastered over closed eyes the whole time, scared. I have to admit that the exhibit was pretty spooky. Lots of mood lighting and creepy noises gave it an eerie feeling.
So we showed him the rest of the FI, which he loved as much as I remember loving it as a kid. After a long walk down to Reading Terminal Market for his favorite food in the world (Amish pretzel dogs) and back, he decided that "the dinos weren't too scary and I'd like to try it again," which yielded the same, petrified results. Oh well. At least the kid tried. It was a good birthday, for sure. His favorite restaurant sang to him and he was up on an ice cream and present high until 10:15pm.

Now we're all home and our souls have been recharged and we're ready to jump back in and redo our home study and profile book et cetera et cetera. I can not wait to get The (next) Call. I'm so ready for W's little brother or sister. I'm not sobbing myself to sleep at night over this disruption, but I'm not 100% ok, either. I'm in a weird, emotional limbo place and I'm not sure how to express what I'm feeling. "It is what it is" is really the best way to describe it.  I'd like to take some time and try to write through my feelings some more, but I'm not quite there yet, from an organizational stand point. I'll get there.

What I can take away from this experience right now is that I am an incredibly fortunate girl. I may have the most amazing husband in the world and my son is just the sweetest thing on two legs. What else can a girl ask for?

Back to the drawing board

Well that wasn't totally unexpected.
D had the baby on Friday and didn't tell anyone. Her social worker had to track her down yesterday. From what I could gather, the birth father decided he wanted to parent in a very erratic manner and wouldn't let her contact her social worker(?). That's just what I could gather from a short phone call yesterday. We'll hopefully learn more today. The baby's set to be discharged today and we don't know to whom yet (definitely not us, though).
While I'm not throwing myself on the floor and wailing in despair, I'm pretty torn up about it all. That little person would have had everything he ever wanted with us. I'm trying not to judge the birth father too much, but it's just the facts that this kid's life is going to follow a grossly different trajectory now. And my heart breaks for him. Not for us... but for him.

That's really all I have to say about it right now. This kid's life is screwed and it doesn't need to be. The birth father is being selfish and stupid.Maybe I'll feel some sorrow for us as the healing process wears on, but right now, our feelings are the least of my concerns. I just can't believe that some low life can slink in and destroy this kid's life because he has biological bonds to him. It's just not fair. Ok, so maybe I'm judging him a little. But whatever. The wounds are fresh and still bleeding. I'm allowed a few snap judgements.

Limbo

We met our birth mother, D on Friday and it was a really nice experience. Her baby sitter fell through and she had to bring her two youngest children with her. So we decided to meet at a McDonalds with a playground instead of the original restaurant. I don't want this to come out the wrong way. Because to say it out loud sounds like I was "window shopping"... but her two young children were absolutely gorgeous. I couldn't help but make the correlation, staring into that little boy's eyes, that I might be staring at the same eyes our son will soon have. D was struggling with some personal problems, so our conversation didn't get as deep as I had hoped. But we still had a really lovely time. She asked us a few questions. But I wanted her to ask so much more! I was prepared to tell her so many things. But mostly she told us about her story. Which was both enlightening and heart breaking. I wanted to hug her and tell her I loved her (because I do. The moment this woman chose us to parent her baby, I was instantly and irreversibly in love with her) and I couldn't wait to get to know her better and share this precious little life with her. We gave her a picture of our family and she let us look at her ultrasounds, which was very special to me.

From speaking with our social worker, it sounds like she felt equally good about us. She was very comfortable with us and really seemed to love our family. I'm very grateful that our first meeting went so well and we have mutual respect for each other. But it brings me no closer to feeling like we'll definitely have a baby in 25 days. Because despite her apparent conviction that this adoption is going through, once she gives birth, and that warm little body is in her arms, anything could happen. And I'm VERY aware of that. So I'm still full of anxiety and worry and probably will be until those magic 72 hours are up.

Another problem I really wasn't anticipating has arisen, as well. I really didn't think I'd feel a connection with or love for this baby before he was born. Partially as a defense mechanism and partially because that's just my personality. But meeting her and seeing her children and seeing those ultrasounds has changed things. I'm in love with this child. And I feel VERY invested in and protective of his well being. So if D decides to parent this child, while I won't hate her for her decision, I will mourn the life he could have had with us. I'll forever wonder if he's had enough to eat that day, or if he got a christmas present or if he did well in school.
So that'll be the stuff rattling around in my head for the next few weeks.

On a happier and less stressful note, this past Friday was opening night of the musical and it was a wonderful distraction from all the baby stuff going on. It was a blast and I look forward to doing it again this coming weekend. I'll definitely be sad when it's over. We also got our new cabinets/sink last weekend. They're just what I wanted and I can't wait to get everything back to normal. We won't have our counter tops for two more weeks, so that means that much longer without running water. Yikes! Living without a kitchen sink is HARD! Silver lining is that we have a stove and when it's all said and done, we'll have a super sexy dishwasher, as well. I'm a quiver with anticipation.

I think I Preferred the Other Wait More

We've had four days to get use to the idea that a baby will be here in about forty four days. We're getting all his furniture together and have a small stock pile of necessities in case he comes early. We're set. I basically ran around the baby section of Target squealing for 25 minutes. Then I can across the preemie clothes section and I held a tiny onesie up to W and remembered how he use to swim in it and so started the waterworks. In the middle of the store. Super classy...

I wouldn't be so stressed if I didn't have the musical hanging over my head. Oh yeah, and we're having work done on our kitchen in two weeks. It'll only take a week, but it's just one more thing adding onto the pile of stress. Getting this done before the baby comes home is imperative because our hundred year old plaster wall is crumbling apart and we don't have a dishwasher. Seeing as this kid is going to be 100% bottle fed, a dish washer is a necessary upgrade. Yeah, we don't currently have a dishwasher. Our house is insanely old and the kitchen is all original. It's very quaint and charming, but it's 2012 and momma needs a dishwasher.

Then, on top of all of this stress is the Big Worry. Is the birth mom going to change her mind? What if, when we meet she doesn't jive with us and she decides to parent or have someone in her family adopt the baby instead? I'm plagued with worry. We have this kid's furniture. We have a name for him. What if he doesn't come home with us?

What if he doesn't come home with us? I have fortysome days to obsess over this. Grand...

One Ringy Dingy

Well hot diggity... We got The Call.
The woman who was checking out our profile last week chose us. We're over the moon excited about this turn of events. So much so, I'll be recapping the last 36 hours in bullet form.

- I was at work when I got the call. I ran over to my boss because I had to tell her before I could get on the phone and make enough noise out of my mouth hole to tell Neil the news.I toyed with the idea of breaking the news to him in a big reveal type style. But that's not really how we roll. So I picked up the horn and told him point black.

-We ran right over to our agency's office and jammed a cheeseburger (bribery of choice this week) in front of Lil' W to keep him content while we signed all the paperwork. We read all about D, the birth mother and learned all about her. I took an immediate liking to her. I can't WAIT to meet her! We also learned that I will be completely and utterly outnumbered as the only female (human) inhabitant of out house for quite some time. It's another awesome little boy for us!

- I swear I'm not lying when I say I felt an instant connection with this woman's story. From the moment we were asked if we wanted to be shown to her, I knew this was our situation.. I don't believe in signs, but I do believe in feelings and I just had a feeling - deep in my spine. This was the first situation that we were informed of that I really got my hopes up for. And lookie how it turned out!

- We went public with this information pretty much right away.We partially fear (as I'm sure everyone does at this stage in the game) that she'll change her mind and we'll have to un-tell everyone. But you know what? So What?!?! We were robbed of so many happy big announcement moments with W's scary birth. So we're reveling in the good and hoping for the best. If she does change her mind, we'll be supportive and happy for her and her beautiful baby boy. And yes, I'll un-tell all the people I told with my head held high.

- Baby Boy 2.0 is due mid-March (approx 47 days away, if you're counting) so we're in zomgscramble mode now. Yes, I said ZOMG. Deal.

- This weekend will be a whirling dervish of Home Depot and Ikea and Target and Babies R Us. And I'm loving every second of it. If I could run up and down the street screaming at the top of my lungs, I would. In fact, I'm surprised how cool and collected I've been on the outside. The inside is a mess of nerves and emotions and I need to drink more wine to settle things down. *gulp*

I'm sure I'll be back with more complex feelings and ideas and really deep thoughts a little later, but right now, this best explains how I feel:

A Call, not The Call might be the hardest part

We got A Call yesterday. Our social worker from our agency wanted to present us to someone but our profiles didn't quite match. So she had to run it by us before giving the ok to show our profile. This has happened several times to us and each time brings a unique rush of emotions. I've done a really good job of not getting excited for any of them. But there's something about this one that's really sticking with me. Something about the birth mother's story grabbed my heart. And the birth father is still around, so to speak. So the baby could have a chance to know both of his/her first parents. And the most silly reason this situation resonates with me is because the baby is due in March. All of our birthdays fall in a five week March to April span in this house and we call it our birthday season. It's like having a month long birthday party and we love it. It's just a silly tradition but I can't help but take it as a sign.

I'm not expecting to be chosen by this birth mother. The odds are generally not in our favor. But I can't help going against better judgment in hoping she does. There's just something about this situation that latched onto my heart. It's the first one I will be truly sad about not being matched with. We're being presented this morning, so my fingers are crossed.

Knowing that we're being presented to birth mothers makes The Wait so much harder. We're always being shown to "someone." Last month for instance, we were shown to three birth mothers. And that's awesome. But KNOWING that someone is looking at us causes so much more stress.

So off I go on my day, trying hard to not look like a frazzled Cathy Comic frame. And trying unsuccessfully to not think about adding another super awesome birthday to our nonstop birthday extravaganza month.

Avoidance is no Longer Acceptable

We bit the bullet over the past few days and finally painted the baby's room. It was very hard for me, for some reason. I've yet to figure out why. I guess because it forces me to acknowledge that no one has deemed us right to raise their babies. Every month we're shown to several people and no one picks us. I know we're awesome, so it's hard for me to accept.
The bedroom is striped and adorable. It's going to come together fast, now. We're using W's old crib and area rug. So I just need to find a few pieces of furniture. We're attempting to go used on this kid's room. There's SO much lovely stuff out there on craigslist and in consignment shops. But shall those intentions fail, we'll be loading the wagon up with Ikea for sure. Either way, I'm really going to enjoy putting a proper nursery together. We didn't get to do that with W. We moved into our house two weeks before he was born and I was too sick or spending too much time at the NICU to get it together. So it was all just an after thought. This process is very cathartic for me. Getting started was the hard part. Now I'm a roll that can't be stopped.

That Pretty Much Covers It

I don't have much to say these days. I'm getting tired of waiting. Plain and simple. I know I should empower myself and redo our profile and get the room ready for baby. But I just don't feel like it. I think a steady case of the gloomies has crept in and is keeping me from being productive. So because I'm in a woah-is-me kinda mood, here's a list of things hanging over my head in my black cloud:

Every time I think about starting our profile book over, I get so overwhelmed. I need to suck it up and take control. But blah.

Not sure if this is a local or national thing, but as you probably know, the homestudy now has to be done every 12 months. Grand. This partially annoys me (because we're on such a tight budget) but it partially excites me, too. At least I'll have something to do.

We're having our kitchen slightly redone in a few weeks. It's just bare bones aesthetic stuff that's necessary for the well being of our house (ok, and throwing a dishwasher in for good measure. Yes, we don't have a dishwasher. Gasp.). But we're still going to have to put the adoption on hold while it's being done. It should only take 2 weeks at most. But that's still painful for me. What if we miss our birth mother in that period of time? Guh. At least our kitchen will be (barely) in the 20th century when it's done. And at least we'll have a proper wall instead of a crumbling plaster mess. Maybe some before and after pictures will follow.

Little W has a monster cold. We've been waiting for him to come down with it for a long time. He's the last kid in our small circle to get it. And it's a doozy. He topped off last night with a 104.5 fever. But he's such a strong little tropper. Still smiling and polite and generally happy with life and sleeping through the night (and most of the day). I'm just waiting to come down with it, too. So being stuck in the house the past three days is not helping my mood.

So blah blah blah... I want my baby. That's really all it comes down to. I've been patient for a while now. And I'm having a weak moment. I just want to yell into oblivion that we've been waiting what I deem to be long enough and I'm tired of it and I want my little bundle of sweetness. I want my phone call.

I know I sound whiny and obnoxious. But whatevs. I'm allowed weak moments.

Keeping Busy

I find that it helps to keep busy during this stupid waiting-for-a-baby-period. Ok, it's not stupid. It's just... well, annoying. So I'm doing things to take up time. Lots of time. Especially since I'll be leaving work in a few weeks. Hobbies are good. Like this blog, for instance. It takes up a few minutes of my morning. I don't think anyone even reads it. But it's nice to get things out there, regardless. I'm of the frame of mind that if I load my schedule up with important commitments that take up a lot of my time, we'll surely get The Call. Like, if your food's taking forever to get to the table at a restaurant, you walk to the bathroom and it's sure to come as soon as you walk away.

So for that reason, 2012 marks my anticlimactic return to the world of singing in front of people in costumes and makeup. Rehearsals for The Music Man started last night. And much to my dismay, somewhere in my 20's, I turned from a 1st soprano to a very low alto. I didn't know that could happen. But I thought, what the heck. It'll be an adventure. Well, it turns out I'm a horrid alto. After so many years of being a loud, bossy soprano, I'm completely inept when it comes to maintaining any sort of harmony. So as my fellow altos were picking the music up right away and singing in perfect harmony, there I was, in the front row wailing away like a cat in heat. I'm surprised no one threw a shoe at me. Needless to say, W's naps will be spent with me tinkering away at the piano trying to become a respectable member of the group.

In March, when my caterwauling is complete (I mean, when the musical has wrapped), I'm going to take a photography class for credits at my community college. I'm thinking about making it my career once the kids are in school, so I'm going to jump in and see if it's something I can really get lost in.

So when that wraps up, it'll be June. And if there isn't a baby by June, I'm going to take up drinking.
I kid, I kid. I'd like to say that I'm going to throw myself into a daily gym routine in the mean time. But I don't see that truly happening. But I do have to say, being able to drop your kid at the play area at the gym is a lovely respite for those days you consider opening that bottle of wine before 10am. So maybe I should start lacing up more often. Dropping the kid off for a few minutes, guilelessly watching Rachel Zoe on mute and listening to Howard Stern... maybe I should runnotwalk there right now!

Have you all filled your schedules similarly? What kind of things are you doing to make The Wait go by faster?

Aaaaand..... exhale

Phew. This girl here is glad the holidays are over. Not because I'm a grinch or anything... I love and all the frenzy it brings. Especially now that Little W is old enough to get the whole Santa thing. It was a blast. But it was tiring as heck. Thank goodness for online shopping (and double thank goodness for free shipping).
My husband, Neil was home with us for two weeks so we tried to fill every day with fun stuff for W. We soaked up all the holiday joy-based goodness in Philly including eating our way through Reading Terminal Market. In fact, we ate our way through everything these past 6 weeks. And it shows. Yikes!

We had to tear him from the train display at Reading Terminal. 

Helping Santa prepare all the Christmas magic was more fun than I ever imagined. By Christmas eve, W was worked into a hot Santa lather and on his very best behavior (by 2.5 year old's standards). And I was glad for this because I was desperate to document picture perfect family memories to slather all over our updated profile.

I failed miserably. Christmas came and went in a blaze of wrapping paper and tight schedules. Narry a memory was documented in focus.

This is seriously the best Christmas morning shot I got. Kid was on full throttle.

New Year's Eve was quiet in our house. We took down all the Christmas decorations, inside and out. Space is a precious thing in our busy little house, so as much as I love my tree and our decorations, it all had.to.go. I needed my space back. After everything was back to normal in our house (except my waistline), we packed all creatures great and small up and headed down to the river for a peaceful stroll. These unseasonably warm afternoons are soooo appreciated (sorry polar bears. I promise to donate to the WWF later this year).

Don't let the serene scene fool you. W was probably screaming about fish poop and trying to jump in the river.

But I did get to sneak of on my own for a minute to do a little nerdy photography.

 I love me some global warming

Later that evening, after W was zonked, Neil and I had a sushi making date followed by gorging ourselves on our creations. Holy soy sauce overload! We watched bad tv and rung in the new year like old farts.But it was a perfect night. I happily said hasta las pasta to the wild and crazy nights out of my youth. Well, I'm still pretty youth-ish. 32 ain't ancient, but after chasing a toddler around all day, we felt pretty antiquated.
At least I made it until midnight.

So that was my holiday in a nutshell. In case you were wondering. And now here we are in twenty-dozen. I'm hoping for big things this year. Maybe this will be the year I make it back down to a size 10 (ha!). And I'm hoping beyond hope that this is the year our baby finds us. I don't think my heart can manage another year of The Wait. It's so painfully obvious that little W feels the same way. He wants a baby as much as we do, I think. We got him a baby doll for Christmas and he's very into making sure it's healthy. Repressed NICU memories, perhaps?

"Lungs sound good, mommy."

So here's to 2012 and here's to friends known and unknown who are navigating The Wait with us. This is going to be our year, I can feel it.

Wishful thinking

Well, it's that time of year again. The pumpkins have hit the composter and the twinkling lights of Christmas are going up. I love (LOVE) the holiday season. I love shopping for presents (maybe because I tend to subscribe to the one-for-you-one-for-me style of shopping). I love the smells of Christmas and the overindulgance of sweets and even the hustle and bustle. My husband brought the decorations down from the attic a few days ago, kicked on the SiriusXM Holly channel and a-decorating I went.

Wait... back up. I should interject here that I've been in a very zen place about The Wait. Honestly, I have. No, seriously. Stop rolling your eyes. For a while there, I was so wraped up in The Wait that I was losing sight of the little dude that was standing right in front of me. I took a minute to step back and look at the big picture and I realized I wasn't enjoying the moment to it's fullest. Time with W was being tarnished with unecessary worry. It's not like I was ignoring him or anything. He's the center of my universe every second of the day. But I wasn't enjoying JUST having him. These times of just him and I being together are fleeting. Soon he'll be entering pre-school and soon (hopefully) there will be another little one needing my attention. So, while I'm still anxiously awaiting The Call, I've also remembered to fully relish this time with W.

Ok, so where was I? Right... The boxes were brought down and the christmas jams were kickin'. The tree went up, the decorations were lovingly hung, the trinkets were placed, garlands were strung. And at the bottom of the box were ourstockings. I pulled out mine, my husband's and W's. Then, there at the bottom of the box, all by it's lonesome was stocking #4. I forgot I had purchased it last year when we were just in the home study portion of the process. I had an irrational mother fear last January that we'd get #2 rather quickly and s/he wouldn't have a stocking and I'd have to run out and get one and it wouldn't match the rest of ours and #2 would spend years in therapy because their stocking wasn't the same and therefore their whole life was some sort of sham and it would be all my fault. Right, like I said, it was irrational. So I got a 4th stocking, tucked it in the Christmas box and forgot about it.

And there it sat in front of me, by itself in the box. I momentarily forgot my zen-like approach to The Wait and got a little teary. Then I composed myself and considered my (admittedly crazy) options. I could hang it and put some sort of little baby present to myself in it as a reminder that #2 will happen eventually (maybe a cute little Sophie?). Or I could burn it because it MUST be bad luck to buy something for a baby that doesn't exist (to us) yet. I decided to go a more rational route and just leave it in the box and hope that I'll be able to hang it with care next Christmas.

But on second thought.. when have I ever denied myself the chance to buy a wee little present? Hanging it and putting one or two baby gifts in there may not be so nutso afterall.

I think a little dilusional part of me thought we'd have a baby by this Christmas. I wish I could go back to 2010 Lindsay and tell her to go at this whole thing with a more rational head. Oh well. I'm rational now. Most of the time.

Did any of you buy things for future baby way far in advance like me? When did you start buying yourself baby things? We're lucky that we have skads of toys and gear from Little W, but part of the joy of expecting a baby is getting him/her little toys and cute onesies. So please share with me when you started going nuts in the baby aisle. I'd love to hear.

On a different note, Little W has his first I-made-my-own-friend friend's birthday party this weekend. Should be a hoot!

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend.
xo

Oh, I'm Aware, Alright...

This month is a busy month for us, as far as national acknowledgments. It's Prematurity Awareness Month as well as National Adoption Awareness Month. Last week, the first World Prematurity Day was celebrated. Maybe it went unnoticed by most people (who haven't been touched by prematurity). But not by me. I thought about all my friends with preemies (some of whom didn't make it) and reveled in how far we've come and continue to come. We're a close knit group of people, even if we don't really know each other too well. We've all felt the same gut wrenching emotions as we rode the NICU roller coaster. So every few weeks when I hear about a friend of a friend who just had a 26 or 28 weeker, I'm always more than happy to extend my contact info to them. When Little W was in the NICU, I would have killed for some been-there-done-that sage wisdom. So I love that I can provide that to future friends. Premies are amazing little people and until you've been touched by one, it's hard to understand just how magical they are.

This is Little W at 1.5 months old, during his second attempt at breathing on his own, sans respirator.

As an adoptive-mom-in-waiting, I don't have much (of the the tangible variety) to acknowledge Adoption Awareness Month. Seeing as we're "paper pregnant," I guess I could pull together all of our paperwork and make it rain up in this piece. That would make a seriously big mess, so I'll refrain. What I'll probably do one day soon is redo our profile forty seven more times. Maybe I'll hand in one of the edits. May not. Maybe we'll finally get out butts in gear and finish painting the baby's room. Over the past few weeks,we've become masters of avoidance as far as that bedroom is concerned. Rather than get in there and put some elbow grease into the space, I'd much rather sit on the computer and stare at already adorable bedrooms like these, compiled by Design*Sponge.

Anyhoo... Whether you're waiting for The Call or your house is bursting with kiddies (or something in between), what are you doing to recognize National Adoption Awareness Month?  I'd love to hear all about it.

Distractions from The Wait

Just like any expectant mom, I find comfort in painstakingly nitpicking over every detail of baby#2's bedroom. When our little bundle of joy arrives, everything has to be Just Right so s/he can gracefully grow into the next Obama, Jobs, Einstein, Whitman or poet laureate. You know... be all they can be. Maybe their nursery has something to do with that? Probably not. But if it gives us expectant moms some control over such an uncontrollable time, lets us go with it.
This is especially true for expectant moms by way of open adoption. We are completely out of control when it comes to any family-related time line. We can't take vitamins or eat the right things or go to the doctor to see the heartbeat or feel the kicks and punches. That part kind of sucks (and that is coming from someone who threw up every time I brushed my teeth for the duration of my pregnancy). What we waiting adoptive moms have is the nursery. And so it must be perfect. Lets not even talk about nesting. I am living proof that nesting has little to do with actual pregnancy. But I guess that's a post for another time. If I start talking about cleaning insane things, I very well may have to follow through and jolt up to my attic to color code all of the boxes of W's old baby clothes. So I'll save that for another time.
Here's a few things I've been eyeballing on the interwebs for baby#2:

I recently picked up these inspiring Tibetan prayer flags from Ruka, a lovely shop in Philly.

I think they're wonderful because they're colorful and playful for baby as well as peaceful and inspiring for mom and dad.


At a local book fair I recently picked up some old books for a few cents full of amazing images. I fully plan on framing and adorning #2's walls with some of the more memorable illustrations. I so wish I remembered Gordon's Giveaway Gibson from my childhood. It  is chock full of early Sesame Street awesomeness (although I see on Amazon that a copy is selling for $88... maybe I should rethink cutting it apart!).

 Little W's current favorite book is Caps for Sale by Esphyr Slobodkina. The images in this book are just so lovely and endearing. Plus... It was Little W's idea to include them in #2's room. So how could I say no?

 And finally, in this house, no child's room would be complete without some of Anthropologie's Pinwale Alphabet letters.

They're just so very sweet. And I need to utilize my employee discount while I still can. February (marking the end of my time in the professional world) is fast approaching. But what letters to buy? If only my crystal ball could tell me if we are having a boy or a girl. I guess that's something I'll have to put off until #2 is safely home with us.


So three cheers for distractions. They're wonderful for passing time and forgetting about the painstaking Wait. In fact, while I was writing this very post, I received an email from our social worker saying we were passed over by quite a few birth mothers last month.

The Wait continues...


Photos courtesy of Amazon and Anthropologie

The Waiting Game that is Adoption

I had a whole post planned this morning about some of the bright and shiny things I was planning on getting for baby#2's room. Then my cell phone rang and that whole train of thought and a few beats of my heart flew out the window. I don't know if it's this way for all waiting adoptive families, but every time my cell phone rings, my heart skips a few beats. It's in my pocket or in my hand every second of the day. And it makes me crazy. I mean, my actual phone doesn't make me crazy. I have a deep love for my iphone. But The Wait drives me crazy. Seriously crazy.

RING, DANGIT!!!

It's not that I wasn't prepared for this experience. I actually have a very zen approach to waiting for baby#2. I know the birth mother that picks us is the right person for us and the relationship we create will end with us getting our baby. And every birth mother that passes us over didn't have our baby. I repeat my mantra every night when I'm falling asleep: We will get our baby when our baby is ready for us. And it works - I'm content.
But that doesn't mean I don't have moments of unflattering spazz-out-titude when my phone rings and I'm not in the same room as it and I push people out of my way like a linebacker to get to it before it goes to voicemail (nevermind the fact that it's the Red Cross looking to take my blood like, 80% of the time). It's not attractive but it does provide a wee bit of comic relief to those watching. So there's a silver lining, I guess.

So if anyone ever reads this blog, I'd love to hear some stories about your Wait. It's such a unique experience and I have to assume that there's other people out there who have done silly things like upturning a sleeping dog to get to their cell phone in time (why did my darling W decide that mommy's phone belonged in our dog's bed anyhoo?).

Photo Credit david st.pierre