adoption

8 years

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birthday cake 7-19-14

It’s hard to believe our eldest daughter turns 8 years old today.  How is it possible she’s already reached this milestone?

We remind ourselves on this day that you are the light in our lives, you bring us joy and happiness, you do keep us on our toes and you are a wonder to watch as we see you growing into the strong, smart, beautiful young lady you are today!

It is not lost on us that our dreams came true on this day because of others and the decisions they made in choosing us to be parents. Everyday we realize how blessed we are to have our daughter. Each and every year we see our blessings grow watching her grow from a newborn. Now at eight, our conversations about her adoption story and our family have grown and her understanding of our family has deepened. We see you seeing us as part of your whole each piece of your family making you into one!

Happy Birthday to our beautiful princess! May your year ahead be as happy as your first 8 have been!

We love you to the Moon and back a Gazillion Times!! xxoo

“Everyone has a birth mother…”

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“Everyone has a birth mother some call them Mom and live with them; others know them and call them by name.” This thought shared to me by my eldest who will soon be eight years old.

Profound in my mind to say the least.

This conversation started as both our girls were asking both my husband and I when our “Family Days” are while driving in the car one afternoon.  (Our family celebrates each of our girl’s Family Day.  This being the day their adoptions were finalized and we  became their legal parents in the eyes of the family court system.  Each year on the anniversary of these dates we remember how we became a family and now that our girls are at an age to help celebrate they get to choose dinner plans for their day.)

So when are your family days they kept asking.  Well we actually don’t have a specific family day like you do.   For a brief moment they sat with that thought.  Our conversation continued with why we celebrate Family Day for them and why we actually don’t have one.  And then our oldest clarified out loud  so your birth mom is Grammy (husband’s Mom) and yours is Grandma (my mom) right?” and then the profound statement “Everyone has a birth mother some call them Mom and live with them; others know them and call them by name.” Yes that is so very true!

I sat there with a smile on my lips at this conversation, how smart she is how she connects  her story our family’s story and how profound she can be at times.  Then of course the conversation took a complete turn and on to the next thought, where are we stopping for lunch!

Mother’s Day for me is bittersweet …

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I want to wish all the REAL Moms I know a Happy Mother’s Day, each of you inspire me and to each of our girls’ birth moms I want to send my love to you for making my dreams come true and am so happy to share this day with you and our love for our daughters! ♥

Merriam-Webster definition

Bittersweet adj

1. :being at once bitter and sweet; especially : pleasant but including or marked by elements of suffering or regret

We began our journey to parenthood through adoption in 2005, and by some miracle we became parents in 2006 and again in 2008! It was a challenging experience to get from those days to today. The whole time while I wondered, when would it hit me that we were picked, that this baby was born, that we took her home, that we adopted her and were parents? Guess that day decided to show up… Bigger than Christmas and more meaningful than my birthday… and it happened twice! but I realize as my dreams came true there was another who made the choices and sacrificies to fulfill my dream and it was not something they had originally dreamed for themselves.

So it is on this day, Mother’s Day, that I have very mixed feelings … our girls have relationships with two mothers, the one who loved and cared for them for nine months and the one who loves and is raising them…and together we share the love of our daughters everyday!

I realized how blessed we all are, to first be a family and to call our girls’ birth families our family. I am thankful everyday that C and then S chose me to be the mother of their daughters.

Yes this is a pleasant day to be remembered as my daughters’ mother, but I know there are others who feel elements of suffering or unhappiness that they are not with their children everyday …

And here we are a family which means being there for each other during the fun and happy times, and the sad and unhappy so for that I wish all the REAL mothers I know a good day and hope they are feeling good about themselves!

do you celebrate your child’s family day?

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This is a question I see come up often in the different groups I am part of on the internet. Some refer to it as “Gotcha Day” while others like ours call it “Family Day”.

What is family day you ask? For us it is the anniversary of the day we sat before a family judge in court and officially became a legal family. Although both of our girls were entrusted to us at birth, there is a time period during post-placement that you are assisted with social worker visits to ensure all is going well and then the final report and documents are drawn up that will be presented in court. Here in California the timeline is about 6-9 months for the post-placement visits. For our second daughter it was shorter as we had adopted only 2 years before.

We received a court date for our local county family court and on that day friends & family joined us for each of our daughter’s finalization hearings. We pledged before the judge our love and care for our daughter as we had to their birth parents.

Our first daughter’s birth father himself is an adoptee. He was interested in how we would recognize our court date when it came. He shared how much he liked having his family celebrate and recognize his family day. We knew from his positive experience that this was something we would do as well.

Now that our girls are 7 and 5 years old, they like the recognition and celebration of their family day. We allow them to choose the way they want to celebrate. Usually a dinner out or something fun to do.

Our girls like to see the pictures that were taken with us and the family judge that presided over our hearing.

It is a reminder to all of us that this is how our family was formed. As I sit here today we are reminded that it is our youngest daughter’s family day. In May we will celebrate our older daughter’s day as well.

Do you celebrate or recognize Family Day within your own family?