Parenting

in her little girl voice she asked

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“Where do I belong?”

It was not too long after my birthday and the fun surprise visit from our little’s birth mom.  She seemed suddenly unable to know who or where she belonged in our family.

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My heart knows where she belongs with ALL of us as we are all family.  I spoke with her trying to get her to explain how she was feeling.  Trying to answer her questions and emotions.  Letting her ask and speak before reassuring her that we are all family.  That we all love each other and explaining how our family came to be.  How S chose us to be her parents. How we love S and we love her. How she can love S like we do and does not need to choose who to love.

But I’ve come to realize that it’s not just me she needs to talk about this. My husband and I have reached out to our community in search of a child therapist to give our daughter a safe place to speak all her feelings and emotions.  We never want her to feel divided or unsure where she belongs and so it is with that belief that we will find her someone to talk to.

I hurt for my little girl.  I cannot imagine what she feels in this situation we can only find ways to be there for her and allow her the space and place to work this out.

the last few days

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a lot has happened in our family over the last few days/week.  Our beloved Cody Bear passed.  He was nearly 14 years old.  Our girls are sad as we are too. They did find a shiny penny over the weekend and are sure it’s from our Cody up there running around over the rainbow bridge with our Molly.

My oldest daughter’s 3rd grade teacher shared that she too is an adoptee. This turned into a wonderful discussion learning about her life, her reunion with birth family and how an adult adoptee feels.  I love that she shared this knowing our two girls were adopted as well.  My daughter was there in the room during this conversation at the end of the school day.  It was one that I followed up with her in our car as she, her sister and I headed home.  How did they feel knowing a beloved teacher was like them, adopted at birth?  Hearing her life and love for the family that raised her and the relationships she now has later in her life with her birth family.  Without over prodding my girls, I wanted to see what they understood, heard and thought about learning this information about an adult they know. I think we will need a few more days or weeks to process.

Adoption seems to be the “it” subject of our week.  Yesterday we learned a classmate of my older daughter’s was adopted as well.  She from China.  I again followed up the conversation with my daughters in the car on the way home from school.  Wasn’t it interesting to learn a classmate came to her family in a similar way?  This girl’s mom recently became a friend of mine on facebook and had read my posted links of this blog learning about our family’s story.  I don’t want to overdue the conversation with my girls, but how great is it to learn more about the people in our lives through school that have similar family stories!

Adoption is a part of our lives and it is our family story.  It’s something that comes up in conversation within our family often, sometimes just our two girls talking with each other about their families and our family.  Sometimes it’s their planning out their future lives.  They’ve shared with me they too want to adopt a baby into their lives when they are older.  I think is wonderful and shows me how normal our family lives are that they want to have a family in a similar way.

Time and again I realize you never know when or who you will meet that will have a similar story and share it with you.  I appreciate the honesty of people sharing their stories with us. It give us more to talk about and appreciate the life we have and for our girls to have others in their lives with families just like ours.

Thankful for family

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thanks·giv·ing (thngks-gvng)
noun
1. An act of giving thanks; an expression of gratitude, especially to God: a hymn of thanksgiving.
2. Thanksgiving – Thanksgiving Day.

grati·tude (grat′i tood′)
noun
1. a feeling of thankful appreciation for favors or benefits received
2. thankfulness.

fate (fāt)
noun
1. the power or agency supposed to determine the outcome of events before they occur; destiny
2. a. something inevitable, supposedly determined by this power
b. what happens or has happened to a person or entity; lot;

family photo collage adoption

November and Thanksgiving especially brings out many emotions…thankfulness, gratefulness, love, happiness and gratitude. Have we always felt like this at the holidays? Does everyone feel the way we do now? I can think back to holidays when we were trying to have children and I am pretty sure we were not feeling much happiness and gratitude but what changed for us?

Back in 2005 we had come to a place of unknowns knowing that the one thing we wanted most was to be parents. After trying on our own and subsequently fertility treatments with no success it became for us about being “mom” & “dad” and not needing to be pregnant to get to there and realized adoption was the path we needed to take to become a family.

Our journey to parenthood was not the original one we planned but we see that this is how it was meant to be. Now here we are the proud parents of two beautiful girls! and now have a very large extended family that combined from each of our girl’s families!

All the twists and turns were made easier with the guidance of the wonderful professional, Ellen Roseman,  we worked with who helped to prepare us for the relationships we share with each of our girl’s birth mothers, birth father’s and their extended families. We know that our children cannot have too many people in their lives who love them and it has been our blessing to have our family expanded so seamlessly.

So most especially at this time of year, we feel enormous LOVE and GRATITUDE for those who chose us to be parents. We realize their decisions demonstrate the true meaning of unconditional love and we will always share an important and unending bond with them.

We LOVE our girls unconditionally and are raising them to appreciate the selfless gift of adoption as much as we do.

There are many other bloggers participating in BlogHer’s National Blog Posting Month.  Click here #NaBloPoMo to read more, Enjoy!

Thankful for childhood traditions

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Today the excitement to see what the Switch Witch brought them had our girls up early! And with fall back on our clocks it was even earlier ~5:30 AM it’s going to be a long day.

But it is this family childhood tradition that I love that woke our girls up at that hour.  I sit here wondering now that they are 8 and 6 years old, how much longer will their beliefs in these childhood traditions be?

switch witch 2014

At Halloween, we have the Switch Witch, who comes the night after Halloween and takes your candy and leaves a present in its place.  Our girls are allowed to select a piece of candy for their ages and the rest is taken by the Switch Witch. Which is great for my waistline!

balloon fairy

At their birthdays, we have the Birthday Fairy.  This began when our oldest was turning 3 years old in an effort to have her sleep in her big girl bed all night,  The birthday fairy started by coming on the night before your birthday for you to wake up to a room full of balloons on your birthday!  Each of our girls look forward to this for their birthdays every year!

earl 12-5-12

We added our “Earl” the Elf on the Shelf about 4 years ago.  Adding to the excitement of the Holidays our Elf, Earl, arrives the day after Thanksgiving.  From the first year our girls have enjoyed waking to comb our home to see where the mischievous Elf has landed to watch them and report back to Santa.  There have been one or two occasions where we the Elf movers have forgotten to give Earl a new place to sit.  But we have THE BEST cover story!  Earl didn’t want to report to Santa that night giving you a chance to correct your behavior another day!

Our girls also love the more traditional childhood traditions of Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. The excitement that each of these traditions brings to our girls lives is amazing.  I hope for their beliefs to continue for many more years.  I realize it’s just a matter of a classmate or someone to dash the spirit and belief for our bubble of these traditions to break.  For doubt to creep into their minds and for the spirit of these traditions to change.

As I sit here today I hope for more time, more time for the excitement to continue with true belief of these childhood traditions.  I know we will be able to continue on in the spirit of the tradition but I don’t think it will be quite the same!

There are many other bloggers participating in BlogHer’s National Blog Posting Month.  Click here #NaBloPoMo to read more, Enjoy!