Excerpt from Scott Simon

I was reading in a book by NPR's Scott Simon (from Weekend Addition) about his adoption experiences. He and his wife went to China. I didn't read the whole thing as most of the book was about other people's adoption experiences but I really liked the way he described the process of getting approved to adopt. I hope I don't get arrested for plagiarism but this is from "Baby, We Were Meant for Each Other", by Scott Simon.

"No single hoop that we were asked to jump through was onerous or ludicrous. Criminals should not adopt children. neither should drug addicts, excessive drinkers, abusive spouses, louses or tax cheaters. But the overall effect of all the questions and test can be oppressive, especially as months roll on with no word of a child. Most of the documentation that you have to complete expires after twelve months, for reasons I respect (over the course of a year you can get sick, go broke, or get arrested). So when the wait that you were told might be six to nine months goes past twelve, you have to complete new forms (and pay new fees) all over again. Grrr, grrr, grrr. Its' not the cost (though that pinches), or the time (though that grinds). After a while, it's the sheer galling indignity of being asked to prove, pay and prove all over again that your a worthy parent."

So true, although we were never told it was likely to be 6 to 9 months. They told us to plan on 2 to 3 years. Every agency is different.

The Dreaded Christmas Letter

So far this blog has been a fun learning experiment but now the Christmas cards are going out...and we are finally announcing to the our friends in general. I'm a little nervous. Now I need to start keeping it up and trying to make it entertaining.

Cool Tools

Ever driven a mini excavator? Ezra has. We dug out the hill in our front yard and installed cage walls with rock in them... Well, there are a few cages yet to install, but the digging was a lot of fun! Neither of us knew what we were doing yet but we soon figured it out. Lucky for me, Ezra was concerned for my safety so he brought me his own hard hat to use while operating the equipment. We ended up hauling away some 6 yards of dirt to the recycle! Come this next summer we'll be ready to plant a garden in the terraced landscape which should be beautiful!

Adoption Awareness Month

I just discovered that November is adoption awareness month. And as such those in the adoption community are challenged to write in their blog every day. Well, as it is already the 9th and it is my first time I've obviously fallen a little short but I thought I should at least write once. And I do have a lot to write about...

This last weekend we went to an adoption conference. We don't need anymore adoption credit hours but it's always so good to meet other people looking to adopt, learn something new, and support adoption in general.

I learned about new ways to network to find a baby, being an adoption advocate, and I got a new perspective about open adoption. Ryan and I spoke at the conference about our experience with open adoption and for the first time I felt I ran into some valid concerns as to why you might not feel confortable with it. If you do have an open adoption with one of your children how can you be fair to another child who's birth family has no interest in contact. One child will get presents and cards from a doting birth family while the other will feel that for some reason he or she is less worth being loved. There is a solution. If the birth family is involved with one of the children they have to be involved with all of them. You need to be fair. If you send a gift to one child they need to send a gift to all of them. I always felt instinctively that our birth family would feel that way and they told us as much with our last "almost adoption". They had every intention of "adopting" our would've been son as their grandson or nephew. I think that if you have that open relationship and as you grow together, it will all occur very naturally. As we adopted Ezra his birth grandparents, Kolene and Scott adopted us and they would've adopted any other family we had.

Going to the Pumpkin Patch

We made some new friends at a Families Supporting Adoption (FSA) Activity. Left to Right Juliet, Kingston and Aaron-and then us. We went together to a pumpkin patch

Here's the Pumpkin we took home :) Okay, Just Kidding! We don't own a chain saw big enough to carve it. Who knew they got that big.

It took forever to get Kingston and Ezra to sit still for this pose. Asking them to smile at the same time would've been too much.

Apparently the corn maze was really growing corn. Not just that normal stuff you see in the produce section but the really cool decorative kind. After tasting it we realized there's a reason we normally eat the other kind.

They had real bowling balls and pins which we found surprisingly difficult to pry our boys away from.

Miniature Golf. You can't tell but they put shoes on the end of each "golf club". It felt a little like kicking the ball.

After taking advantage of the myriad of activities the place had available we decided the pumpkins themselves weren't really that great. We never actually bought one but we sure had fun.

It was also great to get to know another family going the adoption route. Even though their experiences are very different. Everyone's experiences with adoption are different, even the trials and blessings for another family can be different.

Some of us struggle with failing the mission of every living organism on earth-to reproduce, or pass on that red hair, or never experiencing pregnancy or giving birth, or never parenting a child that looks like you, or never fitting in with other new mothers who talk about labor, delivery and breast-feeding, and the list could go on and on...

The blessings can be different too. They hopefully will all eventually include children. Some of us are blessed with an open relationship with the birth family, a stronger relationship with your family, Heavenly Father, and of course not having to experience the pain of labor, delivery and breast-feeding :) And you get to meet other great people like you :)

No baby :( but we still have a cute little boy

Some adoption blog posts are hard to capture with a picture.

It's high time we updated everyone on our birth mom/baby situation....it didn't work out. The birth father changed his mind. I feel a little like we had a child die but we have no pictures to look back and remember no memories to cherish and thereby no pictures to post. No one wants to see pictures of us mourning the loss of this child-the unwashed dishes and sleepless parents looking frumpy.

Fortunately we still have Ezra being as cute as ever. He had a birthday and that was a good distraction for us to plan a celebration. We decorated cupcakes for his party. The cupcakes weren't much to look at but apparently they were delicious.

"King for the day"

Yesterday was Ezra's birthday. I guess I'm still feeling a little sentimental because one of the greatest presents (for me) was hearing from Randi-Ezra's birth mo.)

She said:

"Just wanted to say hi, and i love you guys sooo much, on this very special day. give ezra a big hug for me : )"

We love you too Randi!

It was a long party...like 5 hours I think! But it was very fun. We had several couples with children Ezra's age over and let them tear the place apart. We even had a HOME MADE pinata (thanks to Heidi)! It was a bright orange basket ball made of paper mache. By the way....as a tip to any of you who are wondering; It is best not to use carpenter's glue when making one of these. After all the kiddies had several swings at the thing and nothing was happening Dad finally took the broom handle and broke that thing open (but we sacrificed the broom handle in the process!)