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Adoption update

February 7, 2010

Here is a little more information with regard to the situation I posted about here.

We are having our profile shown for a little boy who turned two in December.  Our agency director is meeting with his mom on Thursday and will be showing profiles to her then.

Placement may be inevitable (not necessarily with us), whether she chooses a voluntary placement or not, so please say a prayer for his mom while she decides which is the right path for her.  And for us, especially that I do not get too hopeful, in case this is not “it”.

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Pray for us

January 29, 2010

There is a possibility lurking but it wasn’t our original plan, even though we said we would be open to this type of situation.

Sorry to be so vague but I don’t feel I can share too many details because we only just indicated our interest to our agency and I have heard nothing back from her and probably won’t until Monday at the earliest.

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I’m tired

January 7, 2010

of worrying about whether, even unintentionally, I’m coercing a mother into losing her child.

of having to be extremely picky about which agency we use for ethical reasons

of being limited on how much adoption costs us because we only have X dollars.  A lot of situations we might consider we have to turn down because the money isn’t there.

of being expected to open our hearts to the risk of being crushed over and over again, just to add to our family.

And I’m hating infertility.

I just want to be a mom again.

thankyouverymuch

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Staking her claim

December 26, 2009

This is a processing post for me, so as an FYI it may be a bit disjointed.

Awhile back I friended Widget’s first mom on Facebook.  After the fact, I had a momentary wonder if that was a good idea but I decided it wasn’t a big deal, which has proven to be true, primarily because L doesn’t actually log in to Facebook that frequently as she doesn’t have internet access at home.

Then today, I am doing my daily (okay, multitude of times per day) check of what is happening on Facebook, and I saw that L had logged in and added new pictures.  Some of which include Widget from our last visit.

And I have to admit I am a bit disconcerted about it.  It isn’t so much about the pictures themselves since my family  and friends post pictures of Widget, plus I share them all the time here, on forums, etc.  I am trying to put my finger on why because if it were a question posed to me on a blog or forum, I would definitely reply that a first mom has the right to post photos since it is her child too.

Maybe it is because I have been sensing a change in L with regard to Widget, as if she is somehow staking her claim on Widget as her mother.  She called on her birthday and commented that she had the alarm set on her phone to go off at 2:36 PM that day, which is when Widget was born.  She called on Christmas, something she has never done before.  She is making more of an effort to set up visits.

I don’t mean any of this is a bad thing.  I think it is good and healthy for L (and for Widget).  But for me, it is strange and I’m feeling a bit of a “Mama Bear” instinct that “this is MY baby, MY daughter”, which is not what something I really ever anticipated feeling because I have truly tried to recognize that Widget does have another family that loves her as much as we do.

Sigh.

After 5 years, I thought the way our open adoption was going had settled into something routine and now it suddenly feels all changed up.

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Merry Christmas

December 25, 2009

Wishing you much peace and joy this Christmas!

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New Blog Address

December 14, 2009

New blog address :)

I finally came up with a blog name!

Seeking Simplicity

I hope to see you there! (And here!)

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New blog

December 10, 2009

I am thinking of starting a new blog that focuses more on parenting and the changes I want to make in how we parent Widget and our future children.

I will probably occasionally post on this one still.  Mainly, because I don’t want to clutter the new blog with the issues I tend to focus more on here like adoption and childhood cancer survivorship plus there are some good posts in the archives about coping with depression.

I want the new blog to be a fresh start…

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This is exactly why!

December 9, 2009

In browsing for some information about why this feels so important to me, I ran across this post called “De-Commercializing the Child”.  She just nails exactly how I am feeling lately about things regarding raising Widget.

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Simplicity

December 7, 2009

I’m trying to get myself back onto a track of living with simplicity, especially when it comes to parenting.

It is a daily challenge for me because I feel bombarded by letting Widget have or do mainstream things, and she is the kind of child who has always been attracted by busy toys and games.  She makes a beeline for the electronic learning toys/games when we are at the store or wants to play on the handheld video game demos.  She loves television, and not just nice simple shows like Kipper but wants to watch Scooby-Doo.

Plus I would like for us to live more simply as a family.  I would like to learn to knit or sew, though I don’t have much patience.  I would also like to become better about eating less processed foods and making more of the meals we eat.  I know I can do it.  And we don’t need all the technological things we think we need, like a new television or more games for the Wii (see, we even have a Wii which is totally against the principals of simple living) but it is hard when your husband lives for technology and deals with newer and fancier things on daily basis with his job.

Maybe I will start using this blog as way of tracking my goals in moving towards this.  If anyone has any suggestions of books or blogs to read that follow a simpler living style, I would love to hear about them!

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She’s 5

November 21, 2009

Today is my sweet girl’s 5th birthday.  I cannot believe 5 years have gone by since she came into our lives.  She is changing so much and turning into a beautiful, articulate, wonderful little girl.

We had a party with family and some close friends.

It was a lovely day but full of emotions for me.  I have so much joy, love and blessings by being her mother but I never forget L.  Even though Widget is her own person, sometimes she smiles or looks at me just right and I see L looking back at me.

I thank God for the privilege of being Widget’s mothering mother and also for the presence of her first mother in our lives.