Kiss it better

So... Ezra's foot was on the toilet seat when he slammed the lid on his toes. He cried showed me the bottom of his foot where the "injury" was and requested the healing powers of a kiss. Hmm...the bottom of a foot having just been on the highly sanitary toilet seat. So I cleverly turned his foot lovingly holding it in my hand and kissed my thumb. "No," Ezra said, "it's this part of my foot." So I kissed my fingers and lovingly rubbed the healing exlickser onto his foot. It still wasn't good enough so I finally settled on changing the subject, "Did you want to play Hi-Ho Cherry-O?" Narrowly dodged that bullet.

Networking: Making your adoption Happen

Ooooh....why is networking our adoption so hard for me? We went to an adoption conference, got some great ideas about how to spread the word that we want to adopt and I've done next to nothing with that information. But now I'm starting to feel the time has come. I need to be proactive. A suggested plan of action is

1. Do an internet search of anything in the community that might have adoption leads (e.g. search "rape recovery centers in Wa)

2. Call them. Tell them who you are and that you would like to share some adoption information with them. Ask if that would be okay.

I'm just going to stop right here and ask myself, "Why can't I do that step?" I promote adoption in the church. This is just stretching me in a direction I don't even want to go. But never mind, moving right along with the plan:

3. Go into the office personally or send a package with a letter explaining who you are and referencing the conversation you had earlier. Place the materials where they will be seen (materials including information about LDS Family Services, ways to contact us directly if they're interested in placing, adoption education in general, etc).

4. Like any good missionary knows: Follow up, and try to come back, give a presentation, etc.

5. Establish a relationship with these people.

I'm sure this is a great opportunity and I know that if we already had gotten another baby I wouldn't even be thinking of this. And I know this could be a great opportunity to bless someone else's life so that they may learn about adoption. But I just can't get past the weirdness factor right now. I may have to hide this post so that birth parents don't see what a wimp I am. I know Ryan and Ezra would be fearless. I'm so scared I want to cry.

High lights from our Christmas letter

We just sent out our family Christmas letter. We tried to keep it short but we directed everyone to the blog. I tried to send a good mix of pictures that summed up a lot of the highlights and so I thought I should include the pictures in the blog.

Now I know this will be somewhat redundant for those of your who've already read the family Christmas letter (which is probably most of you) but I want a good place to display all our pictures too. Besides I need the material to make us look fun and interesting to any potential birth family :)

This first one, was of our big snow fall in November. It was way fun (can't you tell by the look on Ezra's face what a blast he's having:) Here he just build a snow man with our next door neighbor Isabella (actually it was really the dads who did all the work while the kids occasionally helped roll the giant snow balls and then taking the new found knowledge to create miniature balls to pelt at each other. I'm guessing Isabella won the snowball fight by the look on Ezra's face.)

My sister Christina came to visit for my birthday weekend, to go to the adoption conference with us and to meet our 4th cousin Duval. Ryan and I met Duval in Arizona and shortly thereafter he moved to Washington. Within the year we followed. Not on purpose...well, okay maybe a little on purpose. It has been such a blessing to get to know him. He's written amazing books about living through the great depression. He ran away from home and eventually made enough money to care for his mother and family. Now before I exhaust that subject I better stop. If anyone wants to know more I could tell you where to find his books.

Ezra's birth family was going to join us at the adoption conference too but tragedy struck and they had to attend a funeral instead. We were so happy they were able to stop by and visit us on their way back home. We just can't help loving these people who love Ezra so much.

Yes, these master pieces are ginger graham houses. We started out trying to create the nativity scene but...Ryan's architectural genius couldn't be restrained and instead he made a two story mansion. Ezra had a great sugary creation too but somehow using the camera timer kept him too perplexed to keep it on display for very long.

We needed proof of our fun family activities so we included this one-actually I choose to include this picture because not everyone had seen Ryan's facial hair. But Ryan became a veil worker in the LDS temple and he had to shave it off. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.

Ryan's parents came to visit us this summer. As it happened to land on Linda's (Ryan's mom) birthday we decided to celebrate with a Dairy Queen ice cream cake. Wow, those are so good!

This is Ryan's sister Carin. She graduated from Norther Arizona University and has moved to Washington to be near us...and to go to graduate school. It just happened to be a happy coincidence that her school was close to us.

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.