Past Due

Hello, two faithful readers and countless (hundreds? thousands?) unnamed others :) A bit of blogging humor there.

I meant to blog about our adoption experience but as it turns out having a toddler around can really put a cramp in your blogging style, especially when you're not a reliable blogger to begin with.

The wonderful news is that the bumps in the process smoothed out after a false start and we met our beautiful new 18 month old daughter in early September. It took 7 days for us to receive the required ICPC (Interstate Compact) approvals from both States. We returned home on September 11th.

So now it's my hope to share more about the experience of beginning life with a new little one when that new little one has a life and opinions of her own. And can't really communicate any of it to these new strangers who call themselves "Mom and Dad".

One initial realization that hit me is exactly how difficult toddler adoption is...not for parents (though it's a challenge) but for the child. This isn't a newly discovered fact. But it a newly realized "ah ha" moment for me. Some things you just can't fully understand until you are living it.

Here is this little person whose job as a budding 2 year old is to separate and individuate from her caregiver/s. Along come these people who are completely new to her and she is faced now with the gargantuan task of attaching to them and trusting that they will actually take care of her and meet her needs. Attaching means allowing someone to do things...lots of things for you. Only at this point in her development every fiber of her being is saying "ME DO IT!!!"

The challenge is in allowing her enough independence to be 19 months old but at the same time encouraging enough dependence that she learns to trust that Mommy and Daddy will be here to take care of her needs, that she can trust us, and hopefully that we're kinda fun along the way. :)

So here we go on an interesting tight rope walk of attaching/dependence and individuation/independence.

PS. For a great read on toddler adoption try the classic: Toddler Adoption The Weaver's Craft by Mary Hopkins Best It's a classic!

A Different Path And Another Bump

It's been alittle over a month since my last entry. In that time, we have decided to adopt domestically. We are working with an agency that specializes in finding homes for African-American and bi-racial children.

The most difficult part of our decision was wrapping our minds around the idea of parenting a newborn again. It's been over 9 years since we've had a brand new baby and we know we have forgotten alot! We asked the agency if they ever placed toddlers and they said it was rare. So newborn it was! We went to work creating a profile book and were able to pull together photos of our family and write an "all about us" page.

No sooner had that been complete than the agency called us and asked for our book and a letter to expecting mothers because they had a mother who wanted to find a family for her toddler and they wanted to provide her with multiple profiles to look at. So we hurried about with the finishing touches in the hopes that we might prove to be the family for this little one should her mother decide that adoption was the answer for her. The next day we received the call that all adopting parents wait for!

The agency asked us to fly to the state of this little one's residence so that we could meet her mother and go about gaining legal custody.

Here we sit today. We arrived early this morning, but the little one's medical report wasn't ready so we haven't been able to meet. We were disappointed to learn that we would have to wait. We're hopeful that tomorrow will be the day, but nothing is for certain. That we know for certain!

In reflecting, I believe this may be God's way of giving us a little "breather", some down time, before we enter the wild ride known as toddlerhood. So, I'm breathing deeply trying to get a handle on all the emotions coursing through me...hopeful that tomorrow will be the day we get past this newest bump in our adoption journey.