Things to be thankful for...

One year ago on Thanksgiving I posted this. At the time, we had been matched with a birth mother and had so much to look forward to. It didn't work out. I don't want to rehash what happened. But I am glad I read this post again today. So much has changed in the last year. But the thoughts in last year's post have not changed. I am still so thankful.

I am thankful for our family of three.

.

I am thankful my mom has beaten breast cancer.

I am thankful for my in-laws who look after Richard whenever we need help.

I am thankful for my husband who has had the biggest change in his life these last 8 months. He has passed childcare 101 with flying colors. Yeah, I might get mad at him for quoting WebMD a million times a week. But, at least he has his child's best interest at heart. Thank you, Hunter, for being a fabulous Dad!

And mostly, I'm thankful for this little guy. By the way, he just started crawling last night!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!



Thank you, Veterans!

In honor of Veteran's Day, I am reposting this from 2 years ago. My mom and I were fortunate to help welcome home the USS Bainbridge back to Norfolk after it's successful pirate-hunting deployment. My cousin, who is now a veteran, was one of her crew members. Thanks to all the veterans and to those who are still serving!

Open Adoption Roundtable #30

Do you remember the first time you heard about open adoption?
If you need some further prompting: What were the circumstances? What was your reaction? If you grew up in an open adoption, do you remember the first time you heard the label applied to your relationships?

The Open Adoption Roundtable is a series of occasional writing prompts about open adoption. It's designed to showcase of the diversity of thought and experience in the open adoption community. You don't need to be listed at Open Adoption Bloggers to participate or even be in a traditional open adoption. If you're thinking about openness in adoption, you have a place at the table. The prompts are meant to be starting points--please feel free to adapt or expand on them.

Write a response at your blog--linking back here so your readers can browse other participating blogs--and share your post in the comments here. Using a previously published post is fine; I'd appreciate it if you'd add a link back to the roundtable. If you don't blog, you can always leave your thoughts directly in the comments.

We were so confused about adoption. After our fertility treatments failed in 2006, we looked towards adoption. We knew we wanted to become a family through adoption. But it took us 3 years to decide how to make it happen.  We concentrated on foreign adoption because, quite frankly, that's all we could find information on back then.

We decided to go to an adoption orientation for an agency in Northern Virginia which advertised both foreign and domestic adoptions. They went on and on about the foreign adoptions. Then spent 10 minutes explaining domestic adoption. I swear the social worker rolled her eyes throughout the whole explanation. It was absolutely no help. They made domestic adoption sound impossible and there was no mention of open adoption.

Then, in 2009 when foreign adoption became much more complicated by the Hague Treaty, we decided to look into domestic adoption again. Long story short, we were lead to the Childrens Home Society of Virginia. We attended yet another adoption seminar and it is there that we first encountered the term "Open Adoption" and we truly did not know what to think. Their presentation was all about openess in adoption. Although we were not sure about an open adoption, we loved the staff and decided to take the adoption plunge.

During our home study the question about openess finally came up. They wanted to know if we would be willing to meet with the birth parents plus what kind of contact to have after the placement of the child. All kinds of scenarios were placed before us. Would we want contact with birth siblings, birth grandparents, etc. It made our heads spin. We were very conservative in our answers to the social worker's questions. Because open adoption is the norm for today's domestic adoptions, we later found out our answers to these questions kept us from many placement possibilities for about a year.

During that year I started reading adoption blogs. I can't remember which one was first. But one lead to another and another and another. And eventually I found the Open Adoption Roundtable plus Heart Cries and Amstel Life. Through all of these bloggers I was able to get a big picture of open adoption. We finally asked our agency to amend our home study to include a completely open adoption.

One year later we were matched with our son's birth mother and we couldn't be happier. We are so thankful for the time we got to spend with R and her mother. We initially agreed to send pictures and letters through the agency. And we certainly started out that way. But now we have each other's email addresses and can communicate through Facebook.

I haven't yet digested how this will all turn out. But, I am so thankful to have an open adoption. The possibilities for the future are there and I can't wait to see what happens!

Open Adoption Roundatable #29

Heather at "Production, Not Reproduction" has opened a new Open Adoption Roundtable discussion. This roundtable was inspired by her visit to the BlogHer conference. She attended a session where bloggers actually got up and read their own favorite blog entries. She has encouraged the rest of us to share our own favorite blog posts and explain why it is our favorite.

I have chosen "Come Monday, It Will Be Alright". When I posted this, we were at a crossroad. We had just experienced the loss of a failed adoption and six weeks later experienced the high of being asked to meet with our son's birthmother. We were still healing, yet we had a glimmer of hope at finally becoming parents.

9/11 Ten years on

A lot happens in 10 years. Hunter and I watched the United 93 movie last night and I reminded him that 10 years ago today, we hadn't even met. We met in November of 2001. And now we are a family of 3. He's too young to know what today is all about. But Hunter and I will make sure he understands what happened in NY, at the Pentagon and Shanksville, PA.

We survivied the earthquake and hurricane

I'm late posting this, but we made it through the big natural disaster week on the East Coast just fine. Irene hit on a Saturday. So, for once, Hunter was at home. We did just fine until 1pm and then we lost power. Hurricane with a baby, very interesting! Actually, the baby was great. I think it was just the anticipation of the unknown that made it all so difficult.

We entertained ourselves without power until dinner time. We sat looking out at our deck. I made sure the humming bird feeder was full before the storm so the birds could tank up before heading out before the storm. But they stuck around. This picture was taken at the height of the storm.

We finally fired up the generator around 6pm so we were able to feed and bathe the baby and put him to sleep. We still didn't know what would happen after midnight, so we put his pack and play in our half bath. No windows! He slept pretty good until about 5:30am.

We were all up after that. The Electric Co-Op that Hunter works for called him in around 8am Sunday morning. And so began my week as a single parent. Poor Hunter worked until after 9pm every night and was up and gone by 4:15am every morning. And just in time for this difficult week, the baby started cutting teeth!

But we survived. Hunter worked 90+ hours. It took the Co-Op about one week to get every one's power back on. It all sucked. But Isabelle was worse, so we are grateful to have been spared. Sorry to all the folks in the Outer Banks of NC and up north.

Hunter didn't see RJ from Sunday night until Saturday morning. He's still catching up on his sleep.

Come on, Irene!

Looking back over my blog, it seems like I have written about I don't know how many hurricanes, nor'easters and other natural phenomenons. Yes, I grew up and now live on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia, so these storms happen from time to time. And yes, I spent 4 years in New Orleans for college where I basically was on hurricane alert at the beginning of every fall semester. As a result of these experiences, I do not have a cavalier attitude towards any of these storms. I always prepare the same way. I gas up the car, get cash, make sure the pantry has non-perishable food items, etc.

I'm not one to worry about what ifs. I just deal with the storms as they come. But this one is different. It is the first time I have a child to think of. Currently, according to NOAA, we are in the pink zone which indicates we are in a hurricane watch area. We probably won't get a direct hit like the Outer Banks of North Carolina, but I can predict we are gonna lose power maybe for days and have lots of storm damage. This means Hunter will be at work from sun up until sun down until everyone has electricity and I will have to learn to manage with the baby on my own.

Storm preparation has been a little different this time. We have a generator, so we are ok for big people food and the Co-Op feeds its employees breakfast, lunch and dinner during these crises. So today I stocked up on formula, cereal and baby food since RJ just started eating these things last weekend. I get a crash course Friday night on operating the generator and then we wait and see. Oh, please let Irene be easy on us.