Beagles!

Watson already playing with a toy!

Not sure if anyone has seen on the news about the rescue effort that the organization Beagle Freedom Project undertook recently. This organization rescues Beagles from research labs after they no longer need or want them. On the day before Thanksgiving, their biggest rescue yet arrived in Los Angeles. 40 Beagles were flown here from a lab in Spain. We had volunteered a while back to foster one while they get adjusted to just being a normal dog, and then they will be adopted. So we went there on Wednesday night and what a sight it was to see 40 Beagles running around a backyard! It was such cute chaos!

We called our little guy Watson, as I really like to come up with literary names, and I thought it sounded good with our original Beagle, Marlowe. Watson is adjusting so well. He is sweet and lovable and pretty sharp, as he picked up his name quickly! He really loves food, and if you know how Beagles are, you know they love food. He likes to jump up on his hind legs to get your attention and ask you to rub behind his ears. We are trying to train him to not jump up on people. It is pretty amazing to see his curiosity and how quickly he just enjoys doing dog type things.

If you want to know more about fostering, adopting or donating check out their website.


Marlowe, me, and Watson

A favor...

Hello everyone. I have a favor to ask. My sister is a student at USC and she is doing an anthropology paper on adoption and parenthood. If anyone is willing to help out we would really appreciate it. She would like to interview (waiting or already) adoptive parents, birthparents and adoptees. This can be done through Skype, phone or perhaps in written form if that makes you feel more comfortable.

If you would like more info or are interested in helping please let me know in the comments and we can arrange some contact info.

Thank you so much!

Waiting with sniffles.

So we have been waiting for about 15 months now, and still not one contact. Becoming parents really does not seem real to me anymore. Family and friends don't really ask for updates anymore, and in a way that is good since there is nothing to update. But it makes me feel like they don't believe it is gonna happen either.

Maybe I am just feeling bad because I have a cold and have been on the couch for the past three days. Yes, that must be it.

Crazy

I was reading a waiting families message board in which a woman answered how she was spending her summer with " doing all the usual things etc. Dealing with scammers, which seem to come out during the summer months."
So am I crazy to feel bad that we haven't even had one scammer that wanted to contact us?

Anti-adoption?

Has anyone heard or had any experiences with anti-adoption folks? Since being in the "adoption world" for about 2 years now, I have had some glimpses of this movement. One of these encounters was in the comment section of a fellow blogger a few months ago, and today I stumbled onto a facebook page called Mothers Stand, which I have to admit, left a bad taste in my mouth. I think the main reason this page bothered me, was that I am often bothered, and let me be honest, angered when people try to push their beliefs and experiences onto everyone. The owner of this page states that she is anti-adoption and anti-abortion. So it would seem according to her, if you get pregnant and know that you are not capable of taking care of a child, too bad. You have no choices or options except to parent. Well, I guess you do have the option of having your family members help, or parent the child. I just don't see this kind of reality being good for women or for their children. Obviously an adoption plan is not for everyone, and I think it is abhorrent for anyone to push a woman into making this choice. But it is just as abhorrent to push her into the choice of parenting if that is not what she thinks is best for her and her child.

So does anyone else have any thoughts or experiences in this matter. I would really love to hear from you. And I hope you all are having a lovely Sunday as well!

A year in...and painting!

So apparently I have lost 2 blog followers. Is it strange to admit that it kinda hurts my feelings! Oh well, not much I can do about it!

Last Thursday we had an appointment to update our home study at the agency since we are hitting the year of waiting mark. We had to get notes from our doctors, saying we were still in good health, and we had to go over our profiles and think about some things we might want to update or add. Our adoption coordinator also gave us the advice that if we want our letter to go out to more potential birthmothers, we might want to open up what drug or alcohol use we are comfortable with. Right now we have that we are fine with marijuana and alcohol use in the first trimester. We were not ok with cocaine, heroin, or meth. There is also a new category, other, which includes pain meds or anti-depressants. All of this means that if a birthmother admitted to using, even once any of those drugs, including marijuana and alcohol after the first trimester, then our profile will not go to her at all. As far as the health of the baby goes, from what I have read, alcohol seems to be one of the most damaging, but we felt that there are times that women do not know they are pregnant in the first trimester, so social drinking or smoking pot might be common. The reason that we felt uncomfortable with other drug use was that we want to have a good relationship with our child's birthmother, and drug addictions can make having a good relationship difficult. Our coordinator suggested that we might want to expand what we are comfortable with because our profile would go to more birthmothers, and we can then decide if she picks us if we are comfortable with any drug use she may have had.

Does anyone have any thoughts or experience about this?

Since we have been waiting for a year, we also go on the last minute hospital list. Sometimes our agency gets a call from a hospital (most likely it will be in Southern California) with a mother who has just given birth and she did not make an adoption plan before hand, but she has decided that she wants to do now. Our agency will then send over, with a counselor, profiles of those on the last minute hospital list that match and prerequisites that she may have stated (such as a religious preference etc) and then she will pick one or two and then the counselor will call the first one and see if they can get to the hospital. Generally, they will want an answer within 30 minutes, or they may go onto the next family. This is up to the birthmother. If she is fine waiting longer because that first family is the one she wants, then the counselor will of course follow her wishes. So in this scenario, one day we will have no baby, and the next day, bam, we will be parents. That is a little frightening, but also exciting! I asked how many of these situations they see, and our coordinator says it probably averages like once a month. So not too common, but a possibility.

With the possibility of a last minute placement, we had a painting party over the Memorial day weekend. We took everything out of both bedrooms, with the hope of getting them both painted, and then the nursery will be set up in what was our bedroom ( a better closet!), and our new bedroom will be the front (bigger!) bedroom. We only finished our new bedroom. The nursery is all set up, and taped, ready to be painted sometime this week. Then the fun will begin, as I will start painting the tree mural. I am pretty excited about it, and I hope I can actually get my vision onto the wall!

Here are some pics of my sisters and Adam's dad helping us paint. I want to thank them, and our friend Chris for helping us out!

Free Range kids?

I stumbled upon a blog that I have become obsessed with. Free Range Kids is the site, and it is an outlook or philosophy on parenting that would be an alternative to the "helicopter parent". If you do not know what the term means, the blog has this definition:
It’s a sort of disparaging term for parents who believe their child is so vulnerable — to injury, to teasing, to disease and disappointment — that they have to sort of hover (like a helicopter) over the child, ready to swoop in if anything remotely “bad” happens.

You may have heard of the woman who runs the blog. She has been labeled, by some, as the worst mother in the world, because she and her family live in New York, and she let her 9 year old take the bus and subway alone. From that, this sort of movement sprang up. I am 37, and most people in my, and previous generations, would probably say that we were raised as a free range kid. I am not a parent yet, although I have been a nanny, and I am an aunt and a member of society, and I must say that I have witnessed the so called helicopter parent all too often. I happen to agree with the philosophy that fear should not run your life. I can see how easy it is to succumb to fear, since all you hear are bad, horrible, negative stories in the news. Which is why I love that this site exists. It helps give some perspective. Anyways, check out the site if you are interested, or just want a better idea of what free range means. And let me know your experiences or thoughts on this matter.
Have a great night!

Mother's Day

Just a quick observation. Right before Mother's day, I read on an adoption board, a woman who was upset that her agency sent her an email card saying Happy Mother's day. She, and others who responded thought her agency was callous to send such a greeting to a woman who was not yet a mother, but was waiting. I found this very interesting, especially since being in this process, I have constantly read and heard the term "paper pregnant". Having never been pregnant myself, I am only going by observations, but I seem to recall people wishing "Happy Mother's Day" to pregnant women. Did this upset them? I suppose it could have, even though they did not express it. So if we as waiting couples, (or singles) are "paper pregnant", why shouldn't we enjoy a Happy Mother's day greeting? We have gone through tons of mental preparation to get to the point of wanting to adopt. We have filled out tons of paperwork, and answered many questions about why we wanted to become mothers and fathers. I think we should enjoy this time as much as we can. Full disclosure, we are about to hit our one year mark in waiting, so I know the waiting can be hard, but I just can't get upset if someone would want to wish me a Happy Mother's day, knowing all that we have gone through in order to be parents, and knowing we are going to be parents, sooner or later.

What do you think? Have you been in this position before? Would it upset you too?

I can't believe it's May!

Hello everyone! It has been a while since I have posted anything. I do see that I have a couple new followers, so I want to welcome you!

We have been pretty busy the last few months. We had decided in January that we needed a nice holiday, to keep our minds off of the waiting, and because it may be a while before we can take two weeks to go to Europe! So we spent my birthday in London for a week, and then a week in Paris! It was such a wonderful experience, the history, the art, the people and the food!

We still have not had any contact from potential birth parents. I have to say that I feel very removed from the whole thing. It doesn't feel real. We still have not switched bedrooms, or painted. In the back of my mind I keep telling myself that we should get going on that, but it just feels like we are playing at becoming parents. Which is why it probably is a good idea to prepare the nursery, as it will be a real step, nesting if you will, towards us becoming parents.

It has been 11 months since we became paper pregnant. Next month it will be a year. This means we have to go into the IAC and update our home study. We have to get another letter from our doctors, saying we are still healthy. This also means that we will now be on the Last Minute Placement list. So if there is a woman who decides at the last minute that she wants to place her baby for adoption, say at the hospital, during or after labor, our profile will be shown to her as long as we are compatible, and she may decide that she wants us to parent her child. Wow, see it probably is a good idea to get our bedrooms in order! That would be a whirlwind, getting a phone call that you have been picked and the baby is ready to go home right then! Has that happened to any one out there?

I hope everyone is enjoying springtime. Here is a pic of Adam and me by Notre Dame.

Not Fair

So, I have been very busy at work for the last couple of weeks, and there really is no news as far as the adoption goes. I have been reading some of the other blogs from awaiting parents, and have been surprised to see that there has been a lot going on in the past few weeks! It seems that three of the couples has been contacted by a potential birthmother. I was excited to read their news, but was surprised that all three of them had pretty recently 'gone live', really in the last month! And I know how excited and nervous and scared they probably all are, and they are unsure if this is 'the one', but we have been waiting for over 8 months and not a peep. Is our email address correct on everything? Does our 1-800 number really work? Of course feeling this way, makes me feel guilty for feeling this way, but it makes you start to wonder "what's wrong with us?" I know, there are many couple who have been waiting or waited longer than us, but it really starts to feel like we are being picked last in gym class! To sum up, I am 98% happy and excited to read their great news, but there is that 2%, that just wants to cry out "not fair!"

Our agency was recently featured on KCAL 9 news. Here is the spot!
I hope everyone has a lovely Valentine's Day.