not a visitor

Questions and Answers

noreply@blogger.com (Alissabeth) — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 05:47:00 +0000

There is a new Open Adoption Roundtable up, and it's all about questions and answers. Follow that link to read other bloggers responses.

It is likely that we've all had that experience at some time: someone asking us to speak to the choices or feelings of others in our adoption constellation. Perhaps it is someone asking a first parent how their child feels about being in an open adoption. Or someone asking an adoptee why their adoptive parents chose to adopt. You get the idea.How do you handle such questions when they are asked of you? How would you want the other parties in your open adoption to handle those questions when they are about you?

Despite being open about the fact that I have never met my daughters' first mom, I get questions like this all the time. In fact, since baby S arrived it has intensified. My theory is that while my girls' genetic connection to each other is something that is easy to celebrate it is difficult for people to come up with a mental backstory for it on their own. So as soon as someone ferrets out the relationship, something I wrote about here, then the questions about Z begin.

Are these her only children?
Why didn't she use birth control?
How did it happen again?
So...she gave up two babies?
Why did she do this twice?

and so forth. I can feel my defenses go up when anyone asks questions about Z and her motives and reasons for needing to place. I see Z as our family, and I don't feel comfortable sharing all the details of what I know about her with everyone or conjecturing about what I don't know. So the challenge for me is to step back from my instincts - which are to defend or explain or simply shut down the conversation, usually - and instead to default to the time honored "Why do you ask?" response that is my standby. If pressed I will usually say that she needed to place and made the best choice she could for her children. I will not discuss her pregnancies or conjecture about the hows or whys there.

This is the thing I come back to over and over - while questions about Z and her reasons and situation and so forth are totally natural, they are not fair. This isn't stuff that my kids can understand right now but someday they'll have these questions too. I don't want them to glean answers from overhearing me talk to friends or strangers. I want them to get those answers from a direct conversation with, well ideally with Z. It's her story.

It's hard, and I do talk about our adoption experience. But I do my best to talk about MY experience or about Andrew's and my experience without telling someone else's story. And someday when I have a little more courage and presence of mind that's exactly what I'll say - that the answers to those particular questions just aren't my story to tell.

B is for...

noreply@blogger.com (Alissabeth) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 05:10:00 +0000

One of the most elegant women I know sent me a poem in a blue hardcover book with illustrations of rain boots inside.

The poem is called B.

She sent it because my little S was baptized on Sunday, the same day that her own first grandchild was also "sealed as Christ's own forever." (that quote is the part of the baptism liturgy that freaks Andrew out the most. I love it, which tells you something about how each of us feels about being "sealed forever.")

It's the sort of poem I'll read over and over and I'll probably cry every time.

Just like I do when I look at pictures from J's baptism, or re-read my own blog entries in the days after I met each of my daughters. Or, sometimes, just how I do when I stop and feel how it is to be me in this basement condo that is somehow full of energy and light. I have so much to do it's ridiculous and yet...someone sent me a poem today. What a wonderful life. ♥

Five Months!

noreply@blogger.com (Alissabeth) — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 18:52:00 +0000

Oh, hey - somebody is growing up fast!!!

I haven't had a ton of time to blog lately what with school starting up, maternity leave over, a couple new jobs underway and new shows back on TV. But things are going along smashingly. Baby S continues to be the smiley-est baby in the universe, bestowing her grace-and-light-filled, "hey I am glad to see YOU!!" smile on just about every human being with a face who is lucky enough to make eye contact with her. She is flipping both ways now and has recently located her feet. So she has a lot going on too, what with the flipping over and eating her feet and so forth. S and J continue, over a week in, to be a co-sleeping powerhouse. You can see that J's toddler bed is up next to S's crib and J takes her responsibilities as oldest sib in the room quite seriously, usually popping up to check on her baby several times before settling down to sleep herself. Interestingly, the state of said baby seems to be irrelevant. A couple times now I've watched on the video monitor as J has fallen peacefully asleep in the midst of the lively upper register shrieking and babbling that S often engages in before going to sleep herself.

There is snow in Seattle today, or there was yesterday and apparently will be tonight. I love snow days here. It's a lovely excuse to hunker down and enjoy hearth, home,and family.

Four people, two cats and 736 square feet: the Sleep Edition

noreply@blogger.com (Alissabeth) — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 05:54:00 +0000

Last night I followed my usual solo night-time routine, what I do the three nights each week that Andrew is away at work. It involves reading, checking email and catching up on work, maybe some television on the internet, sometimes writing blogs or papers and definitely more time on facebook than is warranted. I also do the stuff that Andrew does on the nights he is here - load and start the dishwasher, check to make sure there is formula made up for the night, feed and water the cats, that sort of thing. The thing that made last night special wasn't what I did, but rather the ambiance. I got to do it with the lights on, because my little S slept in the bedroom with J. This is extremely exciting for me.

Hands down one of the big advantages of the way our condo is arranged is the way it maximizes liveable space. It's basically two giant rooms, so it doesn't feel small or cramped despite its size. None of the square footage is wasted on features like hallways and mudrooms which, while nice, aren't places people spend a lot of time living. As we've grown into the space we have decluttered repeatedly and moved toward maximizing open floor space, so much so that someone who came to visit during Christmas exclaimed "it looks bigger!" However, as we've attempted to manage sleep with an infant, a toddler, and one of the adults working nights this openness has worked against us.

Once we got J sleeping on her own (covered here), we decided she slept better in a completely different space from us so she had the "bedroom" and we installed a murphy bed in the living room. This has been the situation for about a year and a half. Jubilee has been a really great sleeper since she moved in to her own crib/bed, and she usually logs between 12 and 13 hours of sleep each night. This setup worked great for us, too. We would say goodnight to J, shut the door and have the living room(our sleeping space)/kitchen/full bath to ourselves all night. We loved it.

bed, toilet, sink - everything the day sleeper needs!

Then two things happened at once: S came along and Andrew got a permanent job (yay!) working nights(meh). We knew that he would work nights in the beginning, everyone does. So the challenge then became where he would sleep during the day - if he was in the bedroom then that meant he would be disturbed whenever a baby needed to nap. We decided to get creative with the odd long, skinny half bathroom off the bedroom and built him what we affectionately call the "sleep cave" by hacking an IKEA bunk bed.

At the same time, while we were toying with the sleep cave idea, we got the call about baby S. We built the cave while we waited to hear if she would be ours, and Andrew slept there for the first time after we got back from our trip to get her. So we went from our cozy and stable sleep arrangement of J in her room us in ours after 7pm, with Andrew and I going to bed and waking up at the same time every day to the madness of juggling an infant who was seriously opposed to sleeping anywhere but in our bed/my arms and Andrew either at work or asleep 21 hours a day 3-4 days a week. I reviewed the book on baby sleep that we love and decided that we would have S in the bed with us to start. With the murphy bed a co-sleeper wasn't practical and I had a feeling she wouldn't tolerate it anyhow. So J retained sole proprietorship of the bedroom/family room and when S started going to sleep at 7pm when she was six weeks old I just adjusted. She would sleep on the bed and I would hold her until she fell asleep and then put her on the bed, sitting in the dark reading on my Kindle or working by the light of the computer. When Andrew was home he was usually all wonky from nightshift and the darkness made him tired so he went to bed at 7pm too, waking up at 4 or 5 and spending the early morning hours either reading, computing, or working out.

It all worked out okay but quite honestly I found the hours between 7 and 11pm pretty dark and lonely, with everyone asleep but me. I also found it hard to imagine how we were ever going to get both girls in the same room for sleeping - J was so used to her peaceful and solitary sleep time that she would start awake anytime someone opened the door. I looked on the internet but didn't find much aside from vague assurances that "the older one will learn to sleep right through it." Andrew seemed to think this would be the arrangement until S was old enough to be sleep trained and make it all night.

But that's not what happened. S had a couple rough nights in our bed, waking every 1-2 hours and wanting just 1-2 ounces of formula before dropping off again. So we decided to see if she'd changed her mind about sleeping on her own. She had! You could hardly call it sleep training - while she did fuss a bit it was nothing like what we experienced with J, who was much older when she learned to put herself to sleep. We're talking five minutes of low level protest before sacking out and staying asleep for 6-8 hour stretches. After two days she had it totally under control. It was amazing. I was still sitting in the dark at night, but she was sound asleep in the pack n play.

So last night I took the leap and put them down together. And they did it! It took about 45 minutes to get them down, mostly because J kept popping up to check on the baby who was completely asleep within about two minutes. J didn't sleep through the baby's night wakings, but she handled them well. The first one she barely woke for and the second she did get up and turn on her nightlight and want water and a lullaby but she was easily resettled. I bet within a week she doesn't wake at all. Tonight I had class and Andrew was on deck and apparently things weren't quite as smooth (at one point J very clearly requested "baby out!")but they did it and when I arrived home there were two slumbering heads on the video monitor. And the lights on in the living room/our room. And my husband still awake, because of the whole lights being on thing.

And suddenly it feels like our space works again. I don't imagine it will be smooth sailing forever or even that we won't have a few rough ones the next few nights as our girls get used to each other's night sounds and wakings but at the moment I'm feeling pretty optimistic, imagining the years ahead and those two heads whispering secrets to each other after lights-out, and how they will never be able to remember a time when they didn't go to sleep and wake up together.

I never would have imagined that S would be sleeping on her own this early, this easily, and in the same room as her big sister. It feels pretty darn good.

and it all comes around again

noreply@blogger.com (Alissabeth) — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 05:37:00 +0000

"Do you miss it?" Melissa asked me as I took a sip of my thai iced tea. She is my mentor, and I suppose also my priest although I am no longer with her on Sunday mornings. We had been talking about my life before St. Paul's and seminary, before children and homeownership and all the hallmarks of adulthood that dot the landscape of my life.

I had to think about it for a moment. I have had a lot of fun in my life. Do I miss it?

"I love to remember it," I said. "But don't exactly miss it."

I'm thinking about that conversation tonight as I sit in a dark house at 9:30pm. The little ones are sleeping and Andrew is at work waiting for all New Year's Eve casualties to start pouring in to the hospital. J made a good effort, her best yet, at sleeping in her big kid bed but ended up back in the crib again tonight. S is out in the living room in the pack n play. Her big accomplishment this week has been learning how to sleep without being in our bed.

I think about other New Year's Eves, in years past. More recent years, the Jubilee years, were rung in with neighbors here at home. The last seven I have spent hand in hand with Andrew, at parties and kissing each other and friends at midnight. I wondered today if I would feel a little left out here in the dark.

But I don't. 2011 was such a year, it's almost a relief to end it quietly. Andrew graduated and launched his career, our family suddenly expanded, we began to learn how to parent two children. I keep waiting for a quiet year, and that never seems to happen. In my heart I don't think I really want it to. Today J slept a whole nap in her big bed, and yesterday S passed her four month check-up with flying colors. I can't imagine better work, better accomplishments to celebrate right now.

So 2011 - I loved you for how I thought you would be manageable and how you were unexpectedly glorious instead. You are, I think, the year my last child was born. You held in your ending some of the sweetest moments I will ever know, and I'll think of them every time Salome smiles.

But oh, 2012. I can't wait for you to get here. Mostly because I fully expect you are the year I will start sleeping all through the night again on a regular basis. (please.)

I wish you all love and wholeness this coming year. May it be full of life that you will someday love to remember.
A.

Happy Christmas!

noreply@blogger.com (Alissabeth) — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 20:54:00 +0000

On the fifth day of Christmas I finally got around to blogging about it!

helping Daddy trim the tree

We are having a wonderful Christmas season, full of family and fun. J is old enough to be excited and enjoy things like Christmas lights, presents and sugary treats although she's not quite in a place where she understands just why we're getting to do/get/give/eat all this fun stuff. Because of this, and because I remember how crazy-making the holiday schedule was for her last year in terms of sleeping and naps we kept things fairly mellow for the first part of Advent. I buckled and we got a tree mid-December instead of waiting for Christmas Eve, and I don't regret it. It was fun to take the girls to pick one out and spend an afternoon decorating and listening to Christmas music on the record player.

We had a couple fun outings in the weeks leading up to the holiday as well, both of which had riding opportunities! We checked out Zoo Lights with Andrew's family at the zoo in Tacoma, and J rocked the camel rides. We only noticed it was for people three years old and up after we got off! She wanted to stay on the camel and go again.

Then the next week we took a drive up north and met up with my brother and his family for a Lights of Christmas extravaganza that a campground puts on up in Stanwood, WA. That was also extremely fun, if cold. They had free pony rides for anyone under four feet tall (the pony wrangler asked me how old S was and when I told him informed me that the youngest kid they'd ever put on the pony rides was 4 months old. I told him maybe next year.) J did a great job on her own on the pony with Andrew walking next to her and immediately asked to go again. This could have been our entire evening, but we cut her off after two rides.

S likes him, though!

And that was it for us until Christmas weekend, which we spent on the peninsula with Andrew's family. This was the first Christmas in years that I haven't had church responsibilities (my internship gave me the weekend off) and while I missed going to church it was nice to finally make the big family Christmas Eve event that my husband's grandparents host each year. It was a night full of fun, food, and children that ended with exhausted babies and parents collapsing at my in-laws for a good night of sleep. We did presents there on the first Christmas morning, and spent the day lounging about in jammies and playing with their new baby kitten. Who J is inexplicably terrified of.

We did our little family Christmas yesterday morning on the fourth day - stockings for the girls and a big lovely present for J (S is too little to care and ultimately it's for her too), a new kitchen! She put it too immediate good use, and has been cooking up a storm ever since. Mostly soup (or possibly "syrup" as those are both important food groups for J and it is very difficult to tell which one she is asking for/about at any given time.)

In other news one of my out of town besties came to visit and brought her new husband along which was fabulous. Hers was one of two important weddings that I missed because of baby S's arrival and it was wonderful to spend some quality time with D+D, as I shall now dub them. (you're welcome.)

short!

Also, I got a haircut and realized that many folks have never known me with short hair, especially around this part of the internet. I've had long-ish hair since this blog began. This makes me think that perhaps a photographic hair retrospective is in order, perhaps around birthdaversary time. I am loving having short hair again, though dreading the comments about getting a "mom haircut" which this is not. Although I will concede that S pulling constantly on my hair may have had something to do with the timing.

Happy Christmas Baby!

All in all I hope that your world is peaceful as we all wend our way toward the end of 2011 toward a new year. I am grateful for the perspectives of those who read here, and for the time each of you invest in me, and in us.

Happy Holidays from A+A+J+S!

(A+A+fam? A+A family? We need a new nickname.)

Christmas Eve 2011

Homily for the last Sunday of Advent

noreply@blogger.com (Alissabeth) — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 17:27:00 +0000

I haven't had much energy for blogging these past weeks, so I thought I would post the homily I gave last Sunday to the community where I am doing my pastoral internship. The text it is based on is here. You can read the Magnificat here.

I have a tradition, a personal practice that I began a little over four years ago when I started down the long and winding road that was my path to motherhood. It involves Mary – the star of our gospel reading today. It is a fairly simple practice – whenever I can I light a candle for her, to her. It’s a way for me to pray without using words. I started doing this because Mary represented something I wanted very much – to be a mom. I kept it up because I found that in the few moments it takes for a wick to take flame I could admit to God and Mary and myself all sorts of things that were too painful to look at in other settings.

This practice of lighting a candle and spending time with Our Mother Mary is not an action that former versions of myself would recognize or comprehend. I was raised in an evangelical Christian tradition that shied away from discussion of saints and icons, and perhaps especially from that sort of conversation about Mary. There is something sort of dangerous about her, isn’t there? So young and so deceptively ordinary – and yet look at her Magnificat, the song she sings to her formerly barren older cousin Elizabeth. “he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.” If you are a person with any sort of power in this world, those are words to be attended to. And, if you are a person who is powerless those are words to be especially attended to.

I know for me it can seem like there are two Marys. There is the Mary who is “our mother” the glorified and sacred God-bearer, the iconic image that people tattoo on themselves in sacred hearts and reverently place in crèches and gaze upon in icons with awe and wonder. This is the Mary who some theologians argue was not only a virgin but also without sin herself. This is the Mary who is portrayed as the “ideal woman” in many ways that I personally don’t love – demurely supporting her son, perpetually chaste, etc.

And then there is the other Mary, the one we find here in Luke. This Mary is not grand at all. Most women in the Bible who are marked for great and special things are barren (Sarah, Hannah, Elizabeth) but not Mary. She is just a normal girl of marrying age who is about to find herself in a bit of a pickle. She is surprised when the angel calls her “favored one.” The gospel says she is “perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be.” Then comes the news – she is going to have a baby, a special baby who comes with special instructions. Mary may be ordinary but she not a fool – “how can this be” she asks and then just to be completely clear “I am virgin.” This news does not deter the messenger, who assures her that “nothing is impossible with God” and waits just long enough for her to agree before departing. And there she is – pregnant, alone and the father nowhere in sight. I’m sure it was a bit of a scandal, but not really a new story is it? Some might argue you can’t get less exciting, more ordinary, than that.

So how, we might wonder, does one get from that ordinary teenager to the woman a few verses later who speaks some of the most subversive words in scripture? How does one get from the simple surprise Mary shows at being favored to the woman who commands the son of God himself to turn water into wine in John because the party they are attending is out of libations? What is it about the story of simple young Mary that puts her right at the center of the adoration, the idolization, the theologizing, wonder, and awe that swirl around the Mary of icons and statues and feast days?

I will tell you what is true for me. It’s this – the story of Mary is my story. It’s your story too. Where the story of the baby, the One Jesus, is the story of God made flesh and is the bigger story, Mary is the story of how God gets into that flesh. It is through an ordinary human being. Mary said “here I am” and that turned the world inside out and upside down. Her “here I am” was the first stirring of the kingdom, the kingdom that Elizabeth’s son, John the Baptist, warned was coming. It is this kingdom that Mary sings about in her Magnificat and it is this kingdom that we all enter when we approach this table to feast together with the body and blood of Mary’s son, the son she gave birth to with her ordinary body, who she grew inside of her with her own ordinary blood.

Advent is about the waiting, the gestational biding of time in the dark newness of the year, waiting for….well for something to change, right? Mary was not necessarily waiting for something to change when a messenger from God showed up and called her “favored one.” I mean she was waiting like we are waiting, along with all who shared her religious tradition in a rather abstract way. She was probably not waiting expectantly to bring the new thing forth from her own physical self. And while her Jesus is the One who came and changed everything he was not the at all what everyone was expecting. His kingdom was something very different than what Mary had been taught the messiah would bring. So as Christians we believe that Our Christ continues to do and be that which is both longed for and catches us completely by surprise. Like our ordinary Mary was surprised.

And there it is – why, despite the way I was raised and despite the ambivalence I feel about the grand iconic Mary, why I still love her. She is beloved not for being free of sin, if she was, and she is special not because the gospel says she was a virgin. What makes Mary special is that she was not used to being called favored one – so many of us would be surprised to be greeted that way as well, wouldn’t we? You see, if Mary’s story is my story, your story, our story as a people and a community, then it means we also may not really know what it is we are waiting for. Mary’s story pushes us to look again at our own lives and wonder what it is we are invited to be present to – where in our ordinary existence something angelic is calling us to God, asking us to say Here I am. Mary’s story tells us that the something we are invited to may in fact grow out of the very center of who we are. It may be as natural to you as childbirth has been for womankind in time immemorial. Natural yes, but child birth I am told is not without pain, sweat, and blood, not without danger or sacrifice, waiting, and a entirely new way of being once you’ve done it.

I think there are not two Marys after all. I think our ordinary Mary is able to be both without fragmenting. She is sacred, iconic, and full of meaning. She is the God-bearer. She is also ordinary, normal. She is the one precisely because she is the other. She is sacred because she is ordinary. She is special because she is exactly what we are – unexpectedly favored ones charged with the task of reaching deep within our own selves and bringing forth the kingdom of God to the world that is both longing for that baby and completely unprepared for him.

So I wonder, favored ones, I wonder what piece of God or God’s kingdom is gestating inside of you, waiting for you to bring it forth with your own blood, sweat, tears, and faith. I wonder if you know what it is you are longing for and I wonder how deeply it will surprise you when at last your Advent is over and Christmas arrives. As we seek the baby this Christmas, whether at this table, in your own heart, or the faces of those whom you get to love, I wonder what it is that we need to be present to. Where can we turn toward the kingdom and like our mother Mary open our ordinary selves to our extraordinary God and say “here I am.”

Advent

noreply@blogger.com (Alissabeth) — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 06:15:00 +0000

This is my favorite season of the year. I am talking about Advent - not Christmas or winter. Advent is all about newness, darkness, and waiting. I love that the new year of my faith starts five weeks before the calendar new year. It's like pregnancy, coming first before the jubilant arrival of birth. I love that during the time of the year when even sunlight is dimmer way up north, and only here for about eight hours a day, that it is this time when hope is springing, deep and new.

Andrew and I want to have an Advent tradition in our family. It's hard to know exactly when and how to start it. There are Christmas trees going up all over facebook and I admit to feeling the pressure. I also admit to looking around our space and having not one clue where we are going to put one. I tell myself that next year, when the bassinet and the baby swing and the bouncy chair have been permanently retired, when there are two children sleeping in the kids' room and just the two of us in our bed that it will be easier to figure all this out.

I may be right.

I cannot remember an Advent when I wasn't waiting for something specific to happen. Last year throughout Advent our adoption application sat on the kitchen table and sometimes on the desk, waiting for a decision. We sent it in just after Christmas. The year before I was in the thick of first-time motherhood, waiting for it all to make sense. The year before that we celebrated the first weekend of the church year by attending a weekend adoption training, our first one. The year before that I was waiting for this brand new condo to feel like home. Before that we were moving out of our first apartment together and in with Andrew's dad during Advent - waiting to have enough money to buy a home. The year before that I was discerning whether or not to leave my job, go back to school. The year before that I was engaged and waiting to be married...and before that I didn't know it but I was moments away from meeting Andrew for the first time, on December 10, 2003.

And so it goes. I guess waiting for a tree isn't that difficult to do. I want my children to experience this, the waiting and then the glory of Christmas when it does get here full of lights and greens and gifts. And as much as I dream of the day when my sweet wee baby sleeps soundly in her own bed next to her sister's I don't want to rush this.

In the Godly Play Advent lessons there is talk of the Mystery of Christmas. Such a big Mystery that it takes time to come close to it. Such a big Mystery that it is easy to miss. This year I don't want to miss it, even if it means missing some of the frenzy and fun. This is why I love Advent. It gives me permission to wait on the Christmas tree and spend some time alone, looking with gladness into the dark.

I'm doing a poetry thing, where I try to read more poetry.

noreply@blogger.com (Alissabeth) — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 05:13:00 +0000

Here's the one I am meditating on today:

You Reading This, Be Ready

Starting here, what do you want to remember?

How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?

What scent of old wood hovers, what softened

sound from outside fills the air?

Will you ever bring a better gift for the world

than the breathing respect that you carry

wherever you go right now? Are you waiting

for time to show you some better thoughts?

When you turn around, starting here, lift this

new glimpse that you found; carry into evening

all that you want from this day. This interval you spent

reading or hearing this, keep it for life-

What can anyone give you greater than now,

starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?

~William Stafford~

(The Way It Is)

Thankful

noreply@blogger.com (Alissabeth) — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 07:11:00 +0000

We are on the peninsula with Andrew's family. Really, truly, they are my family too. I realized this, not for the first time but again, on Thanksgiving day when I arrived without Andrew. He had to work that night. I had my two girls in tow, both of them tired from the two hour drive in the rain that I gave them instead of a nap. Holidays are hard on kids. I learn this over and over every year. So there we were, the tired three of us and an hour later I realized that I was relaxed. I didn't need to worry about where J was or who was holding S. I continue to be amazed by how powerfully cared for I feel when those who are close to us actively love on my kids. Sure they were a mess by the end of the evening but even then Grandma put J to bed in their room and all I had to worry about was snuggling my littlest one to sleep.

Sometimes making a list of all the things I am thankful for feels like bragging. Hopefully I remember to say thank you to the extensive network of support that continually lavishes us with care. Most of what I am thankful for stems from there. Including the obvious stuff, which I say a small prayer of thanks and wonder for every day.

National Adoption Month

noreply@blogger.com (Alissabeth) — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 21:54:00 +0000

It's this month, as I am sure many of you are aware. I wrote something for Offbeat Mama about it, which you can check out here if you like.

Three months old

noreply@blogger.com (Alissabeth) — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 05:33:00 +0000

Baby S turned three months old today - it's all going so fast! I have loved her third month of life so much - the babbling, the smiling, the rolling over (!!! J was five months old when this happened !!) and have I mentioned the smiling? One gummy grin and S wields ultimate control and power over any one of the other three of us. I think it's something about how her eyes smile too. I may be biased but I don't think I've ever met a baby with such a sparkly all-over smile as our little S. She is completely treasured by every one of us - especially big sister J who doesn't consider her day complete if she doesn't start and end it with baby cuddles. S looks for J, too, and lights up when she sees her sister's face. Life with two kiddos is nuts but heck, it's also pretty freakin' good.

a typical morning scene

The Adoption Blogger Interview Project

noreply@blogger.com (Alissabeth) — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 15:00:00 +0000

Back in 2010 I participated in the Open Adoption Blogger Interview project, the brainchild of Heather over at Production not Reproduction. This year she expanded it to include anyone who blogs at least occassionally about adoption, and I'm glad she did. Last time I was thrilled to be matched with a blogger I already knew and adored. (still adore her!) This time I was happy to see a name that is completely new to me and get to read Shannon's blog, One Inch of Grace. Shannon is an adoptive mom to biological siblings that she and her husband adopted from foster care and she writes with a sense of humor and blunt honesty that I found both compelling and refreshing. Here is my interview with her - to see what questions she asked me you can head over to her blog and to explore and meet over 120 people who blog about adoption check out Production not Reproduction today. Heather is linking to all the interviews.

And here we go:

I've noticed around the blogsphere that many adoptive and first parents who want to write about the hard stuff choose to do it anonymously, or at least under the radar from real life friends and family. Your blog is not only very honest about the challenges you face and read by your family but you also invite them to write guest posts. Could you write a little about how you came to decide to invite those close to you in real life to read and also write your blog?

My mother is a frequent guest poster on One Inch of Grace. If you read her posts, you'll see that she wasn't an enthusiatic adoptive grandmother at first. As most mothers and daughters have, we've experienced our share of struggles over the years, and our adoption was one of the most severe. She's changed her opinion over the last several years, and I think her experience is an important one to share. Many extended family members are affected by adoption, and many adoptive families need the support of their extended families. Having my mom post on One Inch of Grace has been helpful to our relationship as we work to understand each other. And I hope her experience will help others who are reluctant to become grandparents, aunts, or uncles through adoption.

My sister is probably one of my top readers and I think this just speaks to her personality. She is one of the most accepting people I know and I'm thankful that she wants to know what is going on in our family. She and her partner have been an incredible aunt and uncle to our kids.

I also have several aunts and friends who are regular readers and they've also been very supportive.

Most of all, I want to be honest about adoption - I want people to know it's not easy, and we're not saints.

Writing is obviously a huge outlet for you, and I really enjoyed reading the pieces you have submitted to various publications that didn't end up being published. What writers do you look to for inspiration?

I've always been a reader, and I'm a fan of classic fiction. Some of my favorites are "The Power and the Glory" by Graham Greene, "Dead Souls" by Nikolia Gogol, and "The Picture of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde, and "Wuthering Heights" by Emily Brontë. I've been a member of a book club for several years now, it's really opened me to up to current books. Some of my new favorites are, "The Poisonwood Bible," by Barbara Kingsolver, "The Help," by Kathryn Stockett, and "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society" by Mary Ann Shaffer.

Can you say a little about how you and your husband decided to adopt from the foster care system?

My husband, J, and had talked about adoption over the years, but we really started talking about it seriously about four years ago. We knew that the adoption process could take years and that if we wanted to go ahead with it, we should make the decision soon. We've never (as far as we know), experienced fertility issues, we simply wanted to add to our family, and felt that we had the love, resources, and desire to parent a child (or children) that are already here. We opted for the foster care system because there are many children in the system who are waiting for families. Unfortunately, they aren't as "in demand" as infants are.

What are one or two things you discovered along the road to becoming a parent that you wish you had known up front?

There were a lot of things I knew - things that I had read or had been told about, but I didn't fully understand them until we had kids. I had read about how challenging it would be and had been told about the issues our kids would face, so I was prepared in a general sense, but I really didn't understand how it would be specifically for us. It's probably one of the hardest things I've done.

You and your kids share a race so there is nothing immediately visible about your family that screams adoption. How do you decide who and when to tell?

I'm still trying to figure this out! Our adoption was finalized about a year and half ago, but it still seems very new, as though it is the defining element of our family. I find myself wanting to share this information at completely unnecessary times, simply because it is on my mind. I hope that as we attach and grow together, it won't always be on the tip if my tongue. I was recently at the park with my son and I happened to run into a childhood friend. She commented on how much my son looks like me. I was proud of myself - I just said "thanks," and didn't elaborate.

Reading your blog it seems like your view on the potential for an open adoption in your family has changed since you began writing - do you think open adoption is different/more/less challenging in a foster care adoption situation?

I don't know if I would say my view has changed; we've always been accepting of open adoption, but I think that my understanding of it has changed. Through reading and talking to a lot of different people, I've come to see that biology really does matter, and that I only think it doesn't matter to me because I have my biological family. If I didn't have them, I'm sure that I wouldn't take it for granted.

When it comes to our family, I say that we have a semi-open adoption. My kids were separated from their parents for neglect, but we've maintained relationships with members of their biological family. We feel that this is very important for our children's development.

What is your biggest pet peeve?

When it comes to my kids - whining. I can't think of anything more annoying. In general, people who like to argue.

You are a vegetarian and your family eats meat - what's your favorite veggie recipe to make for them?

Unfortunately, I haven't found any vegetarian foods that my kids really love. Here are some vegetarian-friendly food that they'll eat without too much complaining: tofu, hummus, couscous, veggie burgers, bean and cheese quesedillas, and soy milk.

Fierce and Lovely

noreply@blogger.com (Alissabeth) — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 03:00:00 +0000

photos by JennyJ

This weekend two of our dearest friends had the gall to get married, not to each other, on the same day. There was nothing to do but divide and conquer, with baby S and I flying to California for one wedding while J and Andrew stayed in Seattle for the other. Which was shot by my beloved Jenny. Above is J hamming it up in the photo-booth. Jenny sent me these to tide me over through yesterday as S and I spent time with family before coming home.

The California wedding didn't have any professional photographers but it did boast the most rockin' dance floor I've had the opportunity to shake it on in a long long time. This was my best friend's wedding, and my eyes filled with tears as I watched my childhood friend, high school soul mate, college roommate and forever chosen sister stand up and pledge her love and commitment to the woman she loves. In the eyes of the state they will now become domestic partners but the beautiful relationship that I toasted last Saturday night in my role as Nat's matron of honor is every bit as sacred as my own marriage, or any I've ever been lucky enough to witness. Natalie and I made a solemn vow as pre-teens (who read a little too much Anne of Green Gables) that we would stand up at each other's weddings. Six and a half years ago Nat did so for me and I couldn't have been happier to complete our girlhood promise. Twenty years of friendship and counting, my Natalie remains one of the most unique and beautiful people I get to know.

So yes, fierce and lovely. I'm thinking about all the women I love and those are the words that keep coming to mind.

Every child is entitled to opportunities to make friends with people of her race or ethnicity.

noreply@blogger.com (Alissabeth) — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 21:17:00 +0000

It feels like fall just happened here, all of a sudden. I know it's snowing in some places where people I love live, but here in Seattle it was just yesterday that summer started it feels like. And just last week the trees were hardly turning. But now in a flash there are fiery autumn oranges and reds all over the neighborhood trees and the sidewalks are wearing a carpet of fallen yellow leaves. We've had some amazing days (today is lovely for example) but also a lot of rainy ones. Luckily I've discovered that our community center has toddler gym time twice a week. This is a godsend on rainy days when J is bouncing off the walls. We can walk across the street and into the big indoor gym and play in the bouncy house or with the many many other toys they pull out of their closet. Sometimes J just runs from one end of the gym to the other, yelling with joy to have all that space.

The first time we went I was surprised to see that it wasn't very crowded. The girls and I were there with our neighbor Jen and her daughter E. There was another white mom with two girls, the youngest about J's age, and a Latina nanny with two white toddler boys who took up noisy residence in the bouncy house for most of the time we were there. Finally an older African-American woman arrived with a little boy, I thought he was probably her grandson. He took off for the toy cars, grabbing a basketball on his way, and she sat down on the bleachers and pulled out a book. J was enthusiastically pushing a toy lawn mower from one end of the gym to the other, Jen and E were in another corner with a toy and I was tired of standing up with Salome wrapped up on me in the Moby so I sat down on the bleachers as well.

"He's adorable" I said to the woman reading, " How old is he?" She smiled and told me and then asked the same about my girls.

"She's getting big, talking now?" She said about J, as if she knew her. I said yes, and she smiled kindly at me. "You don't remember me, but I met you at the park last summer when you just had the older one there."

After a moment I did remember - she had been there with her granddaughter - and we got to chatting about parks, play times, kids, and the other things we have in common. As we talked J started chasing her grandson around and he shouted "Grandma! Look she's playing with me!"

Every child is entitled to opportunities to make friends with people of her race or ethnicity.

So this is me, continuing my reflections on the Transracially Adopted Child's Bill of Rights, as promised (and requested - hi Carly!!) I want to make sure, as I write these posts, that I am not setting myself up as some sort of example. This is the hard stuff, and I'm just thinking out loud, reflecting on what I've done that's working and how I am thinking about what might be ahead. I think the key to this particular reflection is the word "opportunities." No one makes a friend without the opportunity to do so, so it's helpful for me to think about what sorts of situations tend to produce friend-making opportunities and how we might need to work to make this particular sort of opportunity available for our kids. A few things come to mind.

Location: If my child is the only person of her race or ethnicity living in our neighborhood that will cut out a lot of opportunity for forming friendships and connections. Now, not every neighborhood is close or acts like community, but if there are kids in a neighborhood then they'll be at parks, playing on athletic teams, and going to music classes and daycare in that community. All of these are places where my kids will have opportunities to make friends. This is a big motivator for Andrew and I to live small and stay in our diverse urban neighborhood. J and S see and have opportunities to connect with kids that look like them every time we go to the park or community center or pool. If we lived in a different Seattle neighborhood that wouldn't be the case.
Example: I make an effort to talk to other parents and caregivers when we are out and about, especially those who are racially different than me. I'll be honest, it's hard sometimes. This city isn't particularly "friendly" and I think white culture in Seattle especially tends to give people "space." That is a nice way of saying that I haven't observed many white parents at parks talking to anyone they don't know and while there are usually both white and black caregivers and kids at the parks close to our home I cannot recall ever seeing them talking to each other. Likewise, while J is often approached by AA kids that we've never met and asked to play, I can't remember a time that a white child has come up to play with her at the park. I can't help but wonder if these are connected - kids observe that their parents don't cross racial lines and so they don't either. I figure that it is important for J and S to see me and Andrew talking with, befriending, and socializing with black people. This means people we know well and have established friendships with and just being neighborly at the park. What I do, the way I behave is part of creating opportunities for my child to make friends. (Oh and bonus, it's pretty good for me too.)
Paying Attention to Race: J started daycare this past September, something that we put in the works last March. When we were looking around we wanted a few things: local, affordable, small, and diverse. It came down to two places, both small, local, and affordable. But one had diversity in both caregivers and kids. So we chose that one - J isn't the only black kid at daycare, or the only adopted kid, and she also sees her race reflected in the caregivers there. There is a story that some people like to tell about "not seeing race/color." Families who adopt transracially can't afford to tell this story. Giving my girls opportunity to make friends that share their race and ethnicity means that when we are making choices as a family about where to invest our time and energy - whether it is choosing a school, daycare, neighborhood to live in, park to go to, extracurricular activities to try, etc. - we are going to need to consider whether or not that investment of our time, energy, and money is meeting this need for our children. It doesn't always trump everything else. Church, for example, is a particularly tricky one for us given my professional goals. But it needs to be the most important consideration sometimes. This isn't always comfortable, not for me and not for others. But my girls deserve these opportunities, and if I'm always comfortable they could lose out.

When I was a kid my friends were kids that lived on our block, went to my school, and went to my church. Of all those friends there is only one that I can remember who didn't share my race or ethnicity. I don't think this was the healthiest of all possible environments for forming my racial identity, though it is a fairly typical one for a white child to experience in our culture. I grew up completely unaware that I too had a racial identity and a racial culture that influenced both how I perceive myself and how the world perceives me. There is absolutely no way that my kids could end up with the experience I had. Even if Andrew and I were the only white people they knew, my daughters would read magazines and books, watch television, and look at billboards. This item on the TAC bill of right's is about the right each child has feel normal in their own skin. That is a journey, for anyone in any skin it is a journey. Each child has the right to have some peers as they grow and figure it out for themselves, friends who are the same road they travel.

The real question

noreply@blogger.com (Alissabeth) — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 04:57:00 +0000

There is a question I have been dreading ever since we decided to adopt again. When I found out that baby S might be ours and really started to think about what it meant to adopt kiddos who share a first mother I started to think about the question again. And we had S for what seemed like five minutes before someone, I think it was the woman at the front desk of the Residence Inn we were staying at, asked it.

"So they're sisters?" She asked. "Real sisters?"

"Yes." I replied with a tired smile and kept moving toward the continental breakfast.

It happened again on the flight home. We had landed and were packing up the kids, me fumbling to get the Moby wrap back on and the baby in it and Andrew trying to hold S while blocking J's exit. The flight attendant from our section stopped on her way toward the front. "They've been so good," she said. "So I have to ask - are they sisters?"

"Yes" I said, looking in some confusion at Andrew who was doing his not-looking at the stranger talking to me thing.

"That is so sweet," she replied and turned to go. But then she stopped a couple of rows up and shouted back with her southern drawl "I mean REAL sisters, honey?! Are they sisters for reals?!"

I get it. And I think that even if my daughters didn't share a genetic connection to each other as long as they were both brown skinned we'd be getting this question. But I don't like it. I like it the least of any question that comes our way and in the past two years I've been asked plenty of rude questions by well-meaning and curious strangers. It comes with the territory and that's what it is.

The answer is many times over yes. Of course they are. They are real sisters because Z is their first mom. They are real sisters because Andrew and I are their parents. Either of these would make their connection "real." That's not why I hate the question. I hate it because there is a presumption underneath it that this stranger has the right to know something personal about me and my children. And that "real" is the same as "biological" which is narrow to say the least. And I hate it because if I give out this information there is almost always a even more intrusive follow-up question or comment that is disrespectful to my children's first mother. I hate it because even now there are little ears and eyes watching me answer, learning from my responses, and pretty soon they will be wondering why people ask their mommy this question but no one ever asks their Auntie M the same question about their cousins Sweetie and Cub.

Mostly I hate it because while I know what the answer is, I don't have a response to the question that I am happy with yet. I want them to be proud of all the ways that they are sisters. But I don't think it is okay, and I don't want my girls to think it is okay, for any stranger who looks at us to ask for personal information about how we and they came to be together.

This is one of the tensions of the kind of family that we are. And I thought I was pretty good at dealing with it, that I had my responses ready and my feelings about the occasional insensitive comment in hand. But this really bothers me. Why, you ask? Maybe that is the real question.

My sweet baby J

noreply@blogger.com (Alissabeth) — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 00:34:00 +0000

Two years old!

noreply@blogger.com (Alissabeth) — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 21:30:00 +0000

It's cliche to say it, but also quite true - I can hardly believe that yesterday my sweet baby J turned two. We're feeling pretty mellow this year, and limited our celebrations to family this time around. Grandma threw J a breakfast party at Grandma and Bobo's house, and there's our toddler chowing down on her birthday blueberry crumble, wearing the family birthday hat. She had a great time playing with her cousin T who is ten months older than J and best of all - no one got bitten. Yesterday Andrew and I woke her up with Happy Birthday, which she didn't seem to love judging from the satisfied "all done" she delivered when we finished. We then presented her with her first dollhouse, which she has been playing with obsessively ever since.

At two years old J has lots of words and is working on sentences. (Her first sentence was "poo-poo all gone.") She is fascinated with bathroom stuff but not quite ready to commit to using the potty on a regular basis. Her favorite song is "Now" by Mates of State because she loves to sing the chorus, a string of now-now-now-now-nows that I am pretty sure she thinks are nononononononos. I suspect saying no that many times is something she finds empowering. She surprises me constantly with her willingness to help with baby sister, even when I need her to help by skipping a story at bedtime or forgoing a cuddle with me because baby needs me. She will even interrupt to say "Mama! Baby up!" (pick baby up) if she feels I am not meeting S's needs properly. It's adorable.

Happy birthday lovely one. You're amazing inside and out.

hugging on a delighted S

Two months old!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Alissabeth) — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 02:53:00 +0000

S smiling at big sister.

My baby is two months old today! (or, likely yesterday for many of you reading this in the morning tomorrow) We're so so completely in love with our darling second-born it's nuts. This also means she has been with us for over five weeks. I remember now how quickly it seemed like J hit her first milestones because we came in a little after her beginning - with S it seems even quicker. But it's every bit as sweet.

working it at the gym

She is smiling now, and cooing up a storm during her happy times. S is so much more alert than the noodly and, I think, somewhat shell-shocked little infant we met in early September. She is content to sit without being held for longer stretches - yesterday she played on her baby gym happily for almost 45 minutes while big sister orbited around her and I folded clothes. (the ones behind the gorgeous babies in that photo above.)

So internet, I have a question for you on this, the occasion of my second child's second month birthday, just days before the day my first child turns two years old. You may have noticed that I haven't been posting all that much since S came into our lives. This is, of course, totally normal given the insanity of two under two and whatnot. But I'm finding that while I don't lack material I do lack focus. So here's my question - what do you want me to write about? Are you more interested in posts about our space and how it's changing or our experience of it is changing? Or plan vs. reality posts for second baby? Or reflections on adoption and how my views have changed or not since this second one? Or just general updates? Or do you have a question for me that you've been wondering about and would like me to answer? Comment and let me know - I'll try to get to everything anyone requests. I know that most of you out there who read don't comment, which is completely fine with me. But if you're inclined now would be a good time!

And let's end with comparison photos of the girls! I find myself often looking back through our photo archives to find pictures of J that match up with where S is now and looking for similarities and differences. It is an amazing thing, and something that in all of the options Andrew and I explored for family building never really made it into any plan: children who bear a familial resemblance to each other.

baby S, two months old and smiling at Daddy.

Baby J, same age and also I think looking at her Dad.

Place Holder

noreply@blogger.com (Alissabeth) — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 22:54:00 +0000

I have lots to say, internet, really I do. But somehow finding the time to say it here just hasn't been happening. I may jot down a note or two to remind myself "hey - write about this thing later" but that's been as far as I've been able to get the past few weeks. Which, I remind myself, is just fine. There is school, new internship, and of course new baby to adjust to. Someday, hopefully someday soon, I'll tell you all about how daycare is going for J and why we chose to send her there twice a week, what exactly we're doing to adjust to a fourth person in our home and the neat new ways we are flexing our space to make our home make sense with two growing kiddos, and all the amazing stuff I'm being exposed to through my independent study readings in Child Theology and Kierkegaard (yes, I'm still working on Kierkegaard).

But for now I'll put a place holder here, and just be newsy and brief. I'll even use bullets!

All sorts of people have come to call in the weeks since we got home with our S, but one of the very most important is almost here - Nana! My own sweet mama is driving here as I type and I can't wait to have her around for the next week. I have been dreaming of this.
J is almost visibly maturing, right in front of me, and I think I have the combination of growing into her new big sister role and her two days a week at daycare to thank for it. Her vocabulary is exploding and her social skills are growing, too. I'm so proud of her.
S is gaining weight and already not so much the floppy newborn we met just four weeks ago. It's so fast!! She is helping me work through a whole new set of Plan vs. Reality blog posts in which I write about how we had a plan with J for _____(eating/sleeping/whatever), and we did it and then afterwards we said "man, if we have another kid we are going to do x, y, and z differently!!" and then S came along as was all "yeah - I have a different plan for that thing you thought you were going be so much better at. Suckers." Maybe I'll call it Plan vs. Reality vs. Revision vs. New Reality SMACKDOWN. It'll be awesome you guys.

And now some photos, so that you feel like there is something worth looking at in this post!

Baby S, not quite grabbing but seriously considering it!

This, friends, is what happens when Daddy tries to help J hold the baby while also taking a picture. It's my favorite picture today.

visitors welcome. (photos by Jenny J)

noreply@blogger.com (Alissabeth) — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 04:51:00 +0000

Adjusting to life with two kids under two years of age is busy, my friends. If I had to take a quiz on what exactly has happened in the week since we got home I might not pass it. Blurry. It's all very blurry. Which means that while there is plenty to blog about (I think) the time to do it is scarce. Also, S has made it known that she is what my neighbor Shanon calls a "body baby." That is, she likes to be held at all times and very effectively communicates her displeasure when she is not in physical contact with another person. This means she is a fantastic snuggler. But blogging whilst holding a baby is a bit challenging. We'd be lost without the Moby wrap! I can blog sometimes at night, if Andrew is home, or when grandparents are over, or at times like this when J is asleep and little S has slept in her daddy's arms long enough to be put down for her long snooze in the bassinet before her post-midnight feeding.

There have been some hard moments, times when I have just had to sort of laugh, thinking how I would have pitied myself if former-me happened to walk past our window and hear S's urgent hungry cry combined with J's louder imitation of that cry (maybe she thinks she is helping, or simply sympathizing?) while I scramble to get a bottle together with a baby in my arm and a toddler pulling on my leg.

But just this morning S smiled at me, and started to really coo and gurgle. And this afternoon J "held" her sister for almost half an hour, talking and gently gently kissing S's forehead while the baby slowly blinked at her big sister and then fell asleep in J's arms.

My visitors keep me sane on the long days when Andrew is at work. Neighbors stopping by just to check on us, friends and family bringing meals and sticking around to hold the baby while I feed or change J, or to play with my big girl for a while so I can do laundry, dishes, diapers, whatever.

Jenny stopped in last week, a favorite visitor at anytime but this time with a camera in tow. I love my girls, and I think you can see they're off to a very good start on loving each other.

wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings

noreply@blogger.com (Alissabeth) — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 23:45:00 +0000

We had hoped to leave this morning for Seattle, but our clearance came through too late, so we will be heading home tomorrow morning early. I have enjoyed this trip to Atlanta much more than the last one - Andrew is here, we know what we're doing with a wee baby, and our hotel has a pool. I was so grateful last trip to have Nana (my mom) there to help me adjust to motherhood, but it was an adjustment. This time I'm already a mom with many of my own opinions about how to do the whole baby thing - and the confidence to implement them. This relaxed attitude has pervaded this trip for me. All that being said, and despite the fact that I'll miss the sunshine, pool, and daily cleaning and linen service, we are more than ready to bring our girls home. We bid sad goodbye to Grandma(Andrew's mom) this morning, left to only imagine how much easier the trip home would have been with her help.

There won't be a visit with Z this time. I'm totally fine with this - it is not my decision or my place to have an opinion on when she "should" see the girls or us. I feel grateful that she reads the letters we send, and there are no words for the immense emotions I feel when I consider her decision to entrust us with baby S. We pray for healing and peace for her and remain ever open to contact as and when she is ready. I conveyed (through Debbie) that we understand and want to follow her lead here, but will continue to send letters and pictures regularly and remain open to any reciprocal communication. When the girls are a little older we will begin to travel to Georgia regularly for family vacations and there will be more opportunities for visits with their first mom.

Both of these decisions/events -waiting for permission to leave GA and Z's choice not to have a visit - have me thinking about how much adoption is teaching me about letting go of the things that are not mine to decide or control. This is hard, especially when it comes to my children and what I believe is best for them, but a good discipline to engage in, not to mention just the way life works. There are so many people involved in our family building who are not J or S's parents, and another person who I've never met who is also their parent. I can't control what these people do or make them decide what I want or in the way that I want. Controlling them is not my job. My job is to let them do the work that is theirs while doing the best I can at the work that is mine, in this situation the work of mothering two amazing people to adulthood. It some ways it sucks (other people don't have to wait for someone else to tell them they can travel with their kids!) and it other ways it's pretty clarifying.

The cool thing about knowing that I can't control stuff that's not mine, even if I want to, is that I don't have to waste energy worrying about that stuff. Last trip to Georgia I fretted, worried, chafed and cried over not being able to come home with J when I expected to. This time I've just been making up lists of my favorite things about being here - not least of which has been the chance to take a week of just us-ness (plus Grandma) before we fly home to the many welcoming arms waiting for us there.

There would be no us without (all of) you

noreply@blogger.com (Alissabeth) — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 01:01:00 +0000

J is sputtering down to sleep in her pack n play, all of her stalling tricks deployed and nothing left but to bite the bullet and go to bed. Andrew is sitting behind me on the red couch that my friends and family on facebook must be completely tired of seeing in pictures by now, whispering sweet nothing into tiny baby ears. And I am sitting at the computer thinking about all of you out there. Yes, you - the ones who do and don't read this blog, our family biological and chosen, the urban tribe of folks I know in real life and here in this world of type and photo: the people who love us in all the ways you do. It is impossible to count them.

You are our family: my mom who traipsed all over figuring out how to wire money to our account so we'd have enough for "everything" with our early baby, Andrew's step-dad who immediately booked us a hotel, and his mom who arrived today to help out with everything. Andrew's dad and my parents and our siblings who waited with us, and rejoiced with us when we found out that she was to be ours.

You are our neighbors - news spreads like wildfire in our building and all week as we prepared and waited baby things kept showing up outside our door. One day it was a bag of newborn clothes, the next a moses basket. Someone brought us a bassinet and there are more clothes and diapers waiting there for us when we get home.

You are my far away ladies - the three of you out there - whose ridiculous generosity and unlimited willingness to share my joy and pain I rely on more than you'll ever know. Maybe. You're all pretty darn smart so, maybe you do know.

You are the bloggers who are brave and honest about your experiences with parenting, adoption, race, and life who educate me as I make big decisions in what can feel like dangerous territory.

You are the invaluable cloud of support that we find ourselves at the center of in moments like this moment - who text and call and answer calls and post lovely jubilant words under facebook photos and announcements and read these words I write and just love us so very well in all the big and small and visible and invisible ways that you do.

So I am thinking about you and it occurs to me that you - all of you - are a big part of why there is an us. I know without a doubt that I bring my girls not only into the little family of Andrew and I plus them, but that because they are ours they are also to some degree yours. You are part of what makes our us so good. We wouldn't be the same without you. We wouldn't be us without you.

So thanks. We love you, too.

The Long Story

noreply@blogger.com (Alissabeth) — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 01:05:00 +0000

The long story of our Baby S, or I should say my long story because this is my story of how she came to be with us and no one else's, started this past February or March. We had gone ahead and applied for one of the last available adoption grants with WACAP at the end of 2010 and were stalling with the paperwork. Our not-so-secret hope was to procrastinate as long as we possibly could so that J would be at least two years old when we were matched for baby #2. So there we were, applied, accepted and procrastinating when I started to think a lot about Z, baby J's first mom.

Andrew and I had decided before ever re-applying that the only matching agency we wanted to work with was the one in Georgia that we had adopted J through. (for an explanation of how our WACAP program worked, see the FAQ that was the very first entry on this blog) I had a lot of reasons for wanting this: it was familiar, our children would share a birth state making trips to the homeland more efficient, and finally I wanted to give Z a chance to see J. I've never met Z, but I knew from a few emails to the agency in GA that she had been picking up the letters and photos we were sending. Initial paperwork had indicated that she wanted to see J again someday. I thought if I started talking about it letters then maybe she would have time to think on it and perhaps be ready.

The more I thought about Z the more I realized how little I knew about her. I had been afraid to ask many questions when we had gone to GA to pick up J, it just seemed like my focus should be on my new baby. But I had some wonderings - inconsistencies in paperwork about her and whatnot. I decided to set up a phone call with Debbie, the social worker in GA who spoke the most often with Z. I told Debbie that was just going to ask her the questions that kept coming up for me, and I asked her to let me know what the appropriate boundaries were - to tell me if I was straying into territory that wasn't my business, or that Z wouldn't want me to know.

I learned a lot from that phone call. Most of it isn't my stuff to tell here on this blog. But the pertinent thing I learned was that Z was pregnant again, and while she had not decided what to do just yet she was considering relinquishment. Debbie was under the impression that she had just found out about the pregnancy which, by our calculations, meant she was due sometime mid to late fall.

So that's the unbloggable thing I referred to here.

Because of when you are reading this, you probably are able to guess the end of the story. But I want to be clear - I did not at that moment, or even afterward, assume that we would be adopting Z's baby. In fact I worked pretty hard not to assume it. I felt a lot of things in the months between then and now, all of it pretty confusing. My heart broke at the thought of J having another family member out there in the world that she didn't know or see. My heart broke at the thought of Z losing another child. But my feelings weren't the most important thing - the most important thing was to be ready should Z need to place and supportive of her if she didn't. We accelerated our plans with the goal of being ready to adopt by fall. Z stopped calling Debbie and picking up photographs. About a month ago Debbie emailed me saying that maybe Z wasn't pregnant after all, that she really thought she would have heard from her if she was.

Of course, she was wrong. Z was pregnant, and further along than any of us knew. S was born full term on August 17th and a few days later Z decided she needed to give her up. When I got the call last week I was completely dumbfounded - I think I actually said "oh no!" It's the only phone call in my memory that made me feel physically dizzy. I suddenly had to sit down.

So we scrambled and waited all at once. S was still in the ten day waiting period when Debbie called to tell me about her. She normally doesn't do that, but she knew we would need time to get ready. It was a hard wait, despite being unexpected. This baby looked so much like my J, I felt so connected to her already. It was hard to remember that she wasn't yet ours.

But the days passed, and here she is. She is Z's daughter, our daughter, and J's sister in more ways than one. I still have Z on my mind, how could I not with two of her beautiful babies forever in my heart and my life? Salome is darling, sweet, already different in some ways from her older sister and yet eerily the same. We've spend so much time the past 24+ hours marveling at her and at our two girls together. No adoption happens without something in the world going wrong - but looking at them it feels infinitely right that they are together. So we are doubly, triply, infinitely blessed. J and S will grow up together. I get to be their mom. It's overwhelming and amazing.

And I think it is about time I met their mother. We are hoping for a visit while we are here - Debbie is helping us with the coordination and details. I won't push, but there are a few people working to make it happen. I know without an atom of a doubt that my girls' first mother loves them completely. It is my hope that we can go forward together, as she is able.

In the meantime, hello family of four! I always thought that our second child would be a boy - the name I had picked out, M, was a boy name. But this - this is beyond anything I could have thought up or asked for. She is perfect, lovely, and everything I've ever wanted. (plus now I don't have to decide about circumcising anybody!)

Thank you so much for your love and support! Our adventure is only beginning...

Sisters and daddy, hugging it out.

Turns out someday is now!

noreply@blogger.com (Alissabeth) — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 01:36:00 +0000

So guess what? Remember back, oh, last post on this very blog? When I said that "someday" when we had a baby J would share her room? Or even way back when I told you that we were planning to adopt again, and I said that fall was the soonest we could possibly be matched? Well, turns out I was wrong about fall and someday was, well, it was today! Meet Salome, our gorgeous perfect new daughter!

There is a long story and a short story here, and I'll do my best with both. Although it is evening, and we are in a Residence Inn outside of Atlanta and Andrew is sleeping in one room with J because something went bang and frightened her and I am waiting with bated breath for my darling sweet new new baby to wake up hungry any second. (whew!)

Short Story: Salome was born August 17th, and the agency called us about her on August 30th. We did some serious scrambling, and as soon as her ten days were up - which was yesterday morning- we got on a plane. We drove out to her care home this morning, signed papers this afternoon, and now here we are a family of four. Amazing!! It feels like it all took about as long as it took me to type this - a whirlwind.

The long story, actually I changed my mind. The long story is going to get a post of its own. But now you are caught up, internet. Salome is here, rejoice!!