Seriously.
And I want a Wii Fit to go with it.
This is the first video game system I actually REALLY want.
Okay, maybe it isn’t the first because I coveted Nintendo with the Track & Field game and the mat my best friend had when we were kids. Oh, how I loved that game. The only time in my life I was good at any sort of sports, especially hurdles 
Anyway, I want a Wii. I am saving my money and when I find one in stock somewhere, I am buying it!
Last night we went to one of the required adoption classes for adoption #2. It was about open adoption from an adoptive mother’s perspective. They really had a roller coaster ride with the natural father contesting, then the natural mother wanting the baby back after 10 weeks while still in the legal risk period, then both of them changing their minds after another 2 weeks and letting the adoption go through. They now have a very open adoption with both sides of their son’s biological family. The talk itself was interesting but that wasn’t where I learned something.
It was at the end after the other couples attending the class had left. You see, the adoptive mother was (and still is) the pregnancy counselor at Catholic Social Services that worked with L. She also does some homestudies for the agency we are using this time since she has a connection with our social worker. Needless to say, they adopted through a third agency because of conflict of interest using either of the other two. Anyhow, we were standing there talking with her afterwards and she was amazed at how big Widget is now. She didn’t know we were going to be there although we did know she was the speaker. We talked a little bit about L and how things have been going. And then she told us she would never forget Widget’s birth and placement because L didn’t want to hold or see her right after birth. So she was the first person to hold her. Then after the nurses cleaned her up and did her newborn check, she gave Widget her first bottle. She said she had never had that happen before, nor has she since then. We had no idea. We knew L didn’t hold her or see her right away, in fact it was several hours later before she actually did decide to see her. We just assumed that the nurses took care of Widget right after birth until we got there. I thought it was cool to hear that part of Widget’s story, something we might never have heard if we didn’t happen to go to that meeting last night.
In fact, I wish I had taken a picture last night of Widget with her to put in her “First Years” scrapbook, which is no where near finished 
We got the application today from the agency we decided to use to adopt from. It is run by the social worker who coordinated Widget’s adoption while she worked at Catholic Social Services. She has always done homestudies on her own for international adoptions from China but began to have an increase in referrals of women who were experiencing unplanned pregnancies and were considering adoption. Part of the problem she felt was that the counseling the women were getting was not what they needed, so she decided to start her own program. I had an interesting dialogue over e-mail with her earlier this spring, particularly after we met with Bethany Christian Services, and it really just confirmed my instinct that she really has a strong heart for women experiencing unplanned pregnancies and helping them get good counseling- not just the usual pro-adoption slant. She is a single mom herself and knows it can be done.
Here are some snippets (my comments are in italics and hers in caps)
On the decision making side, can I ask what kind of placement rate do you have or been having?
SLOW FOR ABOUT THE LAST YEAR. ONLY TWO IN 2007, AND ONE SO FAR IN 2008. WE HAVE 8 RESOURCE FAMILIES WE CAN SHOW, AND 2 BACK UP FAMILIES.
I know placement is definitely subject to a lot of different things, so ballpark numbers are fine. I’d also love to know how many women that come in decide to parent in the end and I mean that in a good way. I just think that knowing the expectant moms are getting a good chance to consider parenting as a real option makes it easier to feel confident that a mom is making the decision to place out of more than just “it is the right thing to do” or pressure. I have gotten involved in the online adoption community and learned some less than desireable things about what can happen during the process.
MOST OF THE MOMS WE COUNSELED LAST YEAR DECIDED TO PARENT. THEY WERE REFERRED BY OUTSIDE SOURCES FOR ADOPTION SUPPORT, BUT AFTER MEETING WE FOUND EXACTLY WHAT YOU SAID—THEY FELT PRESSURED TO PLACE AND REALLY DID NOT WANT TO.
HOW DID THE MEETING WITH BETHANY GO?
All I have to say about our meeting with Bethany was that both Tim and I left knowing that we would not adopt through them again. Not just because their fees were marginally more expensive but because we both had the feeling that counseling was skewed completely towards “placement good, parenting bad” and we don’t want any part of that.
THAT IS JUST ONE REASON I HOPE YOU END UP IN OUR PROGRAM!
I am glad to hear that the majority of expectant moms/parents coming your way choose to parent. I know it could mean a long wait for us but I’m okay with that….
*****************************
I’m excited we get to start the process sooner rather than later. Getting a financial gift from my in-laws has been a huge blessing for us and one we never expected, which is part of the reason we decided to earmark it mainly for adoption costs. It is enough to cover all the fees we should have barring anything unforeseen. Obviously, if T lost his job or we had a situation where we needed to use it, we would but right now, there is nothing keeping us from allocating it to our next adoption. Plus with tax credit, we will eventually get much of it back over 5 years. Part of the reason, we chose this agency was because she does everything she can to keep costs down. She doesn’t think adoption should costs huge sums of money for the adoptive families and she wants families experiencing unplanned pregnancies to get good counseling in considering their options, something she has found lacking.
We might have a possible contact in a young twentysomething woman who is experiencing an unplanned pregnancy. She is an acquaintance of a friend of ours. Our mutual friend hinted around that we might be interested in talking to her about adoption. And while, yes, I would be interested, I absolutely do NOT want her to feel any pressure from me or our friends that adoption is the answer to her situation. If she can parent, and I think she probably could, though it would mean an adjustment to her “lifestyle”, she should. Then again, if she really doesn’t want to parent, we would obviously be interested in adopting her child as long as she has good counseling about the ramifications and possible long-term effects of placement on her life. Too tricky. It would probably be best to just stay out of it unless I get contacted by her. Even then, I will probably just refer her to one of the counselors at our agency.
Many of you who have been reading for awhile are aware that my parents’ marriage is ending. And yes, it is really going to happen this time.
One of the things that has happened as a result of this is that my younger sister and her DH are going to gradually buy my parents’ house from my dad. It will be a good house for them and their two little ones (perhaps more down the road). Initially, they will be splitting/sharing the house with my dad. The way the house is designed, it will work like to separate apartments with a shared kitchen and laundry. The blessing about this idea is that has helped relieve some stress for my dad because, as we all know, it is a tough market for selling homes.
The not so good part of this is the stuff. 35 years of stuff, compounded by my mother’s propensity to both save momentos and to use shopping as a coping mechanism (or perhaps as an addiction). What is interesting is that my mother never spent thousands of dollars on one or two items but she certainly spent it on multiple little things. Seasonal things like the bag of patriotic party supplies or Valentines’ Day stuff and the napkins. There are napkins for every holiday plus assorted other needs: wine, cheese, Swedish parties (she has a thing about Scandinavian stuff). The box of ceramic Madonnas (as in the Virgin Mary not the singer). The large quantities of rugs. Stationary and wrapping paper. It was all well organized but there is A LOT of it to deal with.
And my mother doesn’t really want anything to do with dealing with it. Since she has moved out, my dad has asked her to please come and go through things to make sure what she really wants to keep is kept. She doesn’t. Or when she does, like last week, she wants to save everything such as our old prom and bridesmaid dresses none of us will ever wear again.
I have to admit I have only helped half-heartedly. Partially because even though the divorce is inevitable now, who wants to take apart their family home, which, I have to say I never lived and can never find where anything is but it is still “the family home”?
But the main reason is I need to. For my own stability and making sure I keep myself separate from my parents’ issues. I know myself well enough now to realize that I can far too easily get caught up in my parents’ emotions surrounding the break-up of their marriage. I make myself the caretaker, the peacekeeper, the “one who has to make sure no one is going to kill themselves over this”. It is not good for me, or for my own little family. I become overly wrapped up in my grief over losing my parents’ togetherness. For me, once I become too attached to my grief, I let it overtake my life in the form of depression. This isn’t to say I haven’t allowed myself to grieve over this. I have. But I’m learning to sense what is a “normal” level of grief and what is a “depressed” level of grief for me. I put those in quotes because I don’t think you can qualify (or is it quantify?) grief very well. Everyone grieves differently, dependent on their personality, history, emotional make-up and so on. What is important is that I recognize what is “normal” for me.
I will admit I do worry about my younger sister and her level of involvement by buying the house because I don’t want her to get caught up in those same roles. But I have to let her make her own decisions about this and to trust (because I’ve never been given a reason not to) her judgement on her capabilities of handling the added stress. She knows I’m here if she needs me
I have gone back and password protected some of my posts. I am more than willing to share the password and I have used the same password for each, meaning that once you enter it once, it should open all the protected posts.
Yeah, it is a bit like locking the barn door after the animals have escaped but I felt it was time.
Gosh. It has been nearly two weeks with no posts!
You would think since I’m not working at all, I might post more often but we’ve been busy taking advantage of the days with warmer weather. We are still having cool windy days on occasion here, but Widget and I have been trying to walk to the park in the afternoon when it is sunny and warm enough.
I’ve had blog post ideas running through my mind but honestly, I just haven’t sat down to take them to more than just ideas.
Post ideas like:
What I’m trying to change to live a greener life.
A possibility about adoption #2 (very, very remote but yet still a possibility).
What’s happening in our relationship with L and the future of it, particularly as Widget gets older.
The detritus of my parents’ life together.
How I feel like a round peg in a square hole when it comes to our church and its denomination: I fit but not exactly. Whether I should be striving to be a square peg or should I be looking for a round hole?
My overall emotional wellbeing and how it has changed (for the better!).
So there’s few ideas running around
I keep thinking of posts but haven’t sat down to formulate them into more than just ideas.
So I’ll just share some pictures from yesterday when MK and I braved the crowds of our local festival Tulip Time to take pictures of Widget and her two cousins in their Dutch costumes. MK made Widget’s and A’s Volendam costumes last year and whipped up a copy for W this year. I love Tulip Time, even if it is full of crowds, traffic and leaves our town temporarily full of chaos :-p
The other day I received an e-mail from the woman who is the social worker for the Long Term Follow-Up Clinic at the University of Michigan asking me if I’d be willing to be interviewed for U of M’s Cancer Center’s publication Thrive because one of the writers wanted to do an interview with a childhood cancer survivor and they thought of me.
Me.
Out of everyone they see.
So I said yes 
Now we’ll see if it really happens!
