five o’clock

Something happened to us as you all were leaving your place of work to make your way home to begin your weekend.  You met friends out at happy hour, or if you have kids, you picked them up from day care or after care or met your teenagers as they bounded home in time to sit around the dinner table.  While I was stepping off the train, it happened.  As I drove to day care to pick up T, it had already transpired.  The life of our little family took one big step forward. 

Reactions, Perceptions, Impressions

I didn’t know just how small he would be

–mind you, he was born full-term, and he is average with a birth weight of six pounds

–his feet, I think, are the most surprisingly small

The Great and Powerful….IKEA

Oh, IKEA!  How we worship your store, its grand selection, its spectacular prices, its quantity o’off-the-shelf, ready-to-assemble stuff.  Oh, great IKEA!  How marvelous thy meatballs; how fabulous thy strange fabric patterns and colors; how helpful thy blue & yellow smocked sales clerks; how mysterious thy potty training powers.  What?  You didn’t know that IKEA potty trains your toddler for you? 

“Just one of the many customer services we provide at our store.”

October 19th–again

It was three weeks ago that I began thinking about this day.  I wondered how we would remember October 19^th.  If we had been able to adopt T, then like other adoptive parents we would have been able to celebrate “gotcha day.”  But we are far from that right now.  The uncertainty that surrounds this time can be a little stifling.  We are very close to adopting a baby, but it’s hard to be happy for the one when the loss of the other hovers over you like a cloud. 

Another mother, another baby

Back in early September when we were presented to the mother that we were eventually matched with, it seemed a bit too quick and a little too easy.  The agency director even seemed a little skeptical about the parents’ resolve.  I told him at the time and have told others as well as myself, that if a mother suddenly changed her mind and decided to keep her baby, it was a good thing.  I don’t want a kid growing up without his or her birth parents even if those parents decide at the last moment to keep them.  The decision to voluntarily give up your parental rights and entrust your child to someone else’s care is immense.  It resonates through your whole life; it’s irreversible and life-long.  It’s a remarkable conclusion to arrive at and in my head I applaud anyone able to make this choice.  You see, that is what I told myself—a very adult response, a very healthy attitude.  But that information left me sitting on the train home feeling agitated and angry and wanting to stop the madness. 

The Reappearance

“Sometimes this happens,” said the Director.  Sometimes they make other arrangements; sometimes they change agencies; sometimes they change their minds.  It was so early that we didn’t have that much vested.  I think we were disappointed but it palled in comparison to other disappointments we have lived through.  Then suddenly she reappeared.  In fact she hadn’t really disappeared at all.  There was some mix up, somebody didn’t tell somebody, somebody forgot a prior engagement, somebody did or didn’t do something, or something like that.  The arrangements were made to meet again.

We waited to hear.  The appointment time and then the day passed with no word.  After dinner we read the little one his customary three books then he was bunked for the night.  As we stood in the kitchen pondering the phone call we were about to make, the phone rang. 

Flying Babies

 

 

Since we began our foray into private adoption, it seems as if babies have come flying at us.  That weekend, after T and I deposited the envelope with our application in the mail—that’s when it all started.  On Monday we got an e-mail from the Agency with all of the forms and the details of the home study.  We figured it would take a couple of months to complete the entire process.  Since we had been through this before we knew the drill, but also knew that it was just plain time-consuming.  We joked about having a Christmas baby. 

Junior the Sequel

I am going to be a father!  Again!!  Yeah!!!

Now that we have put the plan into motion, I have no doubt that there will be dishwashers full of baby bottle paraphernalia, formula crumbs on the counter and silly daddy faces over a crib sometime soon.  It’s a shame that our decision to move forward has been so shrouded by the plight of our family’s tribulations with the foster care system.  But I won’t let Junior no.2’s little entry into the world be haunted by the uncertain future the three of us face.

Adrift

 

It was January 2008, just a few months after T had been placed with us that she came on the scene.  With a blend of immature confidence, a newly minted twenty-something case worker for BCDSS entered our home and our lives. 

Flying solo

Darrow is off to New York to attend his brother’s wedding.  So it’s just me and little T for the weekend.  I don’t know why, but it made me a little giddy thinking about the prospects of just the two of us bounding around the city, running around the Inner Harbor, shopping, heading off to the play ground.  Because of my schedule, most weeks I am out of the house before the little tike wakes and come home just in time to eat dinner, read him a story or two and then put him down.  It isn’t often that I have him all to myself.