So, once again, I’m slow… Mr. V is now 6! Well, he’s been 6 for over a week, but I haven’t posted any photos yet.

On his birthday I took him to the park to take a couple photos. He’s such a handsome little dude.

 

 

To our #2!

Mr. David just turned 9.

And, once again we’re in my favorite time of the year (well, at least one of my favorite times of the year)… Yesterday, today, and tomorrow I get to pretend that I am the mom to two sets of twins. I have 2 five year olds and 2 nine year olds 🙂 And then, on Sunday, we go back to “normal” with the next birthday.

For d’s birthday, we got up a little early so that the kids could have donuts before school. And Bean and I took treats to his class. For dinner, he requested IHOP because he wanted the funny face pancake. Instead, we made our own funny face pancakes. I mixed some coaco into the pancake mix and made the pancakes big enough to fill the whole plate. Then the kids played with the whipped cream and cherries and made their own creations. I thought it was a pretty good substituion!

I’ve also started working on the party plans. Last year, we skipped a party because we’d just moved and life was just a little crazy. So, we’re planning on having a big party this year. We’ll be combining all of the boys’ birthdays together.

And with that, it’s off to clean up a bit.

Now I have to remember where I left off… Hmmm…

What we decided to do is leave the door as open as we can, while keeping in mind that the safety of our children.

We entered into an open adoption agreement with Bean’s mom. The agreement states that we’ll write to her four times a year and she’ll do the same. And both parties will keep an address available. So, we got a P.O. Box. And since we had the P.O. Box we decided to share it with the boys’ family. It’s pretty inexpensive and gives us at least a little more security.

For the first year after Bean’s adoption we wrote our letters and never heard anything. In fact, I tried sending one of them registered so that I could be sure that it was getting there, but I still didn’t hear anything.

And then November of 2010, we got our first letter from her. She asked about meeting with B and me. We were in the process of buying a house and moving and getting ready for the holidays and it was all just too much. I wrote her briefly and told her that she’d need to be patient and I’d reply to her soon.

And I just tried to put it aside and deal with life. But, as life often does, it threw us a curve ball. In June of last year, we received a letter from our boys’ mom. She told us that one of the biological dad’s was very ill and hospitalized and wanted us to take his son to see him as he had a 50/50 chance of surviving. B can tell you where he was when I called. I stood outside of the car while the kids were inside listening to music and talked to him about this turn. We had no reason to ever expect to get a letter like that. The letter had been sent several days earlier (we don’t get to the post office everyday), and it didn’t have very much useful information. Add to that, we had no way to call bio-mom to find out more. So, we tried calling the hospital, but they wouldn’t give us any information other than to say that he wasn’t a patient…

I think that that letter was one of the things that pushed us to get back into contact with Bean’s bio-mom.

So, we did.

We contacted her and worked on setting up a meeting. She provided us with a medical history (This was *huge* for me… I hate filling out medical forms for my kids and having “unknown” be the only thing that I can write). She tried to let us into her life as much as she could.

Last fall we met with her for lunch.

It was a painful, beautiful meeting. There were tears and there was laughter.

It’s a very odd balancing act. We didn’t want to hurt her. We can only imagine how painful it would be to know that you’re missing out on the everyday. But, we also wanted to share our daughter. We adore her and we wanted her mom to see that.

I think it was good.

We have been working on another meeting, but it’s hard with two different families and busy schedules to plan.

And it’s hard to know what should be next. But, for now we’re taking baby-steps and getting to know her and letting her know us.

 

So, that’s *this* end of our open adoptions. There is a little more that I will share about our boys in the future.

Today I feel like I need a friend.

Honestly, I’m hoping that it’s hormones. I’ve been a complete wreck lately. Friday I was sidelined with some stomach issues. But, I was very happy to have B back home after a week away. Saturday we took on the world (or at least that’s what it felt like). And then Saturday night I didn’t sleep. And yesterday I was just in a really, really bad mood. Last night, again, I struggled with sleep. And the sleep that I did get was filled with horrible nightmares.

Today, I was going in the right direction, but a road bump has me in a puddle of tears.

And I *do* have a dog. Heck, I have 2. But, they just don’t seem to be enough.

Maybe tomorrow will be better.

O.K. So, I’m not really in Illinois. But, on my jog across the country I crossed my second state and am now into Illinois. I won’t tell you how many years it’s taken to get this far, but I will share the cool site that I use to log my runs.

http://exercise.lbl.gov/index.html

This is a completely free site that you can use to log your miles ran/walked/biked. You can pick teams or partners or just log your own path. It shows you a photo each day of exactly where you are along the path. I love seeing my little dot move and make it’s journey.

And this week that little dot made lots of progress because on Sunday, I completed my second half marathon. I didn’t really blog about this one because 1-I haven’t blogged about anything lately and 2-it was a pretty last minute decision to run this one. One of my best friends from college flew in for the weekend and I decided to go for it. I honestly didn’t train for this one. I’ve been running 3-4 days per week at about 3-4 miles a day, but I hadn’t been ramping up my distance like I did before the previous half. But, this time around I was far more confident. I knew what to expect and knew that I could finish. I also finished a good 14 minutes faster than the last time around! My goal was 3 hours, but a long line for the port-a-potty and a wait for a train (?!?) made my time 3:01:10. I’ll take it though! I will tell you, I was far more sore this time around. I was hobbled for a couple of days. But, I think that I’ve caught whatever it is that makes these runs addictive and I’ve already planned out my next 2 half marathons and one of them is even paid for.

So, I guess I should quickly update on other things since I’m actually sitting here typing. The biggest event here has been B’s weight loss. I will post before and after photos (if he will give me permission..) at some point. But, for now I’ll tell you he looks amazing. And I feel like I’m married to a totally different person. He has more energy and drive and I often lose him in a crowd (yes, he does look that different).

Second to that huge change has been what I posted about last time.. we have our new pup, Maggie. Next time I post, I’ll tell you about my exciting adventure with her the other night. For now, I’ll just say that she’s a joy and a handful and we’re all (well, at least myself and the kids!) in love with her.

All of the boys are chugging along in school. V celebrated his 100th day in K today. Big D recently got a 90% ( 🙂 ) on a book report. And little D asked me yesterday if he could invite his teacher to his birthday party–so, I take that as a good sign that he’s enjoying school. Miss Bean is still a drama queen. In fact, she’s crying right now. Sigh.

So, with that I’m back to “Mom” duty.

 

 

 

So, the pup has a name… She’s Maggie and she also has the family falling over ourselves to care for her.

In fact, the biggest issue I had yesterday was getting the kids to give her some peace and quiet.

Today we took her to see the vet. There are no concerns and I am hoping that she’s already forgiven me for the shots. The only big news was finding out how big she is. She weighs in at a huge 1.8 pounds.

 

I am a horrible blogger these days. And it’s days like today that explain why. Right now I am typing with one hand in our bathroom. The other hand is holding a puppy who I am trying to bottle feed. And we are in the bathroom because we are doing a lice treatment on the Bean.

This life prevents boredome.

So, I meant to post this a really long time ago. And I think it’ll end up being a multi-part post…

We have ventured into new waters as adoptive parents this year. We are finally discovering what an open adoption means/looks like to us.

Long before we adopted any of our children, we were asked if we’d consider an open adoption. And, honestly, it was a tough choice for us. With many open adoptions, it’s the biological parents that have initiated the adoption. They’ve made the choice to give their child a better opportunity and have asked the adoptive parents to remain in the child’s life. In this situation, I think an open adoption is an easy choice. It makes sense. But, with kids who are being adopted through “the system” the situation is a little different. There’s no innocence on the part of the biological parent. The biological parent didn’t make the selfless choice to give up their child, rather the biological parent made choices and did *something* that caused the child to be removed. In some situations, the child went through very little (the case of our Bean, for example, she was exposed to drugs in utero, but has shown no long term effects at this point). In other situations, the children will wear the physical scars for a lifetime. And, sometimes the children will face a lifetime of emotional and behavioral issues because of the actions of the biological parent.

It’s really easy to hate the biological parents for what they did to your child.

It is.

That’s not a pretty side of foster care and adoption, but it’s a real side.

So, it’s hard to think about letting the person who did anything wrong to your child continue to be a part of their lives… even in a small way.

However, I like to think that B and I matured and grew in our time fostering. Through meeting biological parents, through taking foster parenting classes, through seeing the ins and outs of the system and the families, we changed. Yes, there is still a part of me who hates the people who would even think of causing any harm to my boys or my daughter. But, I also know that no matter what choices or decisions were made, those people will always be a part of our lives. There is no denying the fact that my kids all have 2 moms.

More than that, we love our children. And we needed to make a choice about an open adoption not for the biological parents or for ourselves, we needed to think about our kids.

Ideally, we’d love for them to grow up and never give their biological families another thought. I’d love for them to just always think of B and I as Mom and Dad and just view us as family–not adoptive, just family. But, I don’t know that that will happen. And it’s selfish to think that that is the only way that things will/should go. More likely, my kids will at some point have questions. They’ll want to know who they look like. They’ll want to know about what medical issues are in their families. They’ll be curious to know about their biological families.

So, we have, in our own way, tried to create a history for them.

Back in 2007 we got a P.O. Box at a local post office. And we’ve given the box number to the biological families of all of our children. We’ve received a few things through the years from various members of the biological family of our boys. That’s pretty much the extent of where things have gone on that end.

Bean, is a different story. Before her biological mom relinquished her rights, we entered into a formal open adoption agreement. Each open adoption is different. They can be very limited–only letters once a year, for example. Or, they can be very involved with the biological family having visits and being involved in the daily life of the child. Our agreement was more on the limited end.

Another really important thing to note is that in an open adoption, the adoptive parents are still the parents and they’re the ones that get to make the final call. In our agreement it states that if there’s a point that we feel that the open adoption agreement isn’t in the best interest of Bean, we’re free to break the agreement. I think that this should be in every open adoption agreement (and, to my understanding, it’s very standard).

The rest of this story/post really has to do with what has happened in that open adoption over the past year. And I think I’m going to have to continue it tomorrow. Because 1-just writing up to this point has brought me to tears a couple times and 2-it’s time for me to do my real “job” and get my kidlets to bed.

Take Care!

I’m full of excuses for why I haven’t posted lately. And this week the excuse is parties…

Saturday night we celebrated Grandpa and Bean’s birthdays together with dinner out followed by cake and ice-cream here. Then on Monday, Bean’s actual birthday, she and I spent the day together just having fun–we painted pottery, went out to lunch, and did a little bit of shopping. Tuesday we had her first “friend” party with a few friends from school at an indoor trampoline park. And then today we’ve not really done anything, but we’re certainly remembering that it is her “Gotcha Day” (by the way, if you haven’t read it yet, my guest blog post was all about “Gotcha Day” and how they have a bad rap in the international adoption world).

I guess you could say that we’ve just been busy having too much fun!

And we now have a couple of days off before we start the holiday celebrations. Saturday we’re having a few friends over to the house for Christmas crafts and cheer 🙂

Life is still busy, busy as always.

I don’t know how people keep their blogs up daily. It just isn’t going to happen here.

In fact, I’ve blogged on someone else’s blog more recently than I’ve updated my own! If you want to check out my guest appearance (and you know you want to–I think it’s a great little piece on something that is somewhat controversial in the adoption community), just go ahead and click here.

Hopefully, I’ll get back on here this week so I can share photos of our newest 5 year old (assuming that things go well and she survives the night!).

I will also be sharing some of our holiday traditions and some crafts that we’re doing.

Hope everyone is staying warm.