150 Steps...In the Present Moment

A lot of folks have been asking, "So, when will you actually get The Kid?" So, here's the deal on that...there is still a LOT that has to happen before we become Plus One... I still need to get fingerprinted by our local police department (the only hours in which to take care of this task...Thursdays 10:00-noon and 1:00-2:30) we're waiting on the letter from the bank stating that we can afford The Kid I have yet to request a letter from my workplace we're waiting on letters of reference from friends  also still waiting on an FBI clearance confirming that we are not terrorists or members of the Most Wanted list Chris and I need to submit all of our paperwork - once received - to social worker M social worker M needs to write up her report (the Home Study) stating that we are fit to be parents we need to submit our application to the adoption law firm after applying to the law firm then we need to write our profile materials profile then needs to be p...

If you're new to "In the present moment..." I'm referring to the Sarah who appeared in a post called  Becoming a mom...for Sarah . You can also read the comment she left me at  Becoming a mom...a new idea . I have no idea if Sarah ever returned to visit here again, if she saw the post that I wrote for her way back when, or if she has made any decisions about pursuing motherhood with her partner. I think of her often. It's strange and funny how life can change. How things that you thought were never possible suddenly become not only possibilities but actual realities. A little more than a year ago if you had asked me if I was ever going to be a mom I would have given you a firm "No" in reply. Not a "No" born out of no interest, but a "No" born out of fear and anxiety. And here we are today...in the middle of an adoption! Even a few months ago, when I told Chris that I had changed my mind and wanted to start a family wit...

*Warning*...graphic description of a mammogram to follow.  If my doctor yesterday had the personality and bedside manner of a potted plant, the mammogram technician (I have no idea what these folks are called...) today was a...I don't know, but she was the complete opposite of the Potted Plant. All smiles and full of information and offers to answer any and all of my questions. She walks me back to the changing area and tells me to take off everything on top and to put on the very stylish (not) short royal blue smock that ties in the front. Once this is accomplished she ushers me into the room where the mammogram contraption lives. "Is this your first mammogram?" she asks in a perky voice. "Yup. My very first," "OK then. I'll just explain everything as we go along and if you have any questions at all you just ask away." Terrific. Much more informative than the Potted Plant. Now if you've never had one of these things done to y...

OK, so my new doctor has the bedside manner/personality of a potted plant. She is efficient to the point of...well...she is in and out of that examining room in 6 minutes flat. I have no chance to ask any questions. I won't know if I "passed" my physical until  sometime  next week when the Potted Plant mails my required form back to me. After my appointment it's off to the lab down the street to have blood drawn. Luckily I have not eaten any breakfast because one of my tests is a 14-hour fasting test for blood sugars...not that I knew I was supposed to fast because the doctor's office neglected to tell me that when I made the appointment. I just didn't have time to eat breakfast. The one really good thing about my appointment (aside from the fact that I didn't faint when I had my blood drawn...yes, I have actually fainted in the past...) is that the Potted Plant gives me a prescription for a mammogram. Even though I already have an  OBGYN , when the ...

No. I'm not talking about the Olivia Newton John song (although apparently one of my friends on  Facebook  had that rolling around in her head for days and days...and now you will, too...) I'm talking about a real physical - like at a doctor's office. Like the thing that I'm getting done in two hours. Urgh . As I've mentioned in previous posts, I'm 41 years old and not exactly svelte. These last few years of fund raising have seen my stress level - and my eating habits - go a bit crazy. I'm not looking forward to this doctor's appointment. And seeing the number on the scale. And learning my current cholesterol level. (Please be good! Please be good!) Sigh. But the adoption folks say I gotta get it done...so I'm getting it done. Blood work ( aaaiiieeeeee ... needles!!!) and all. Gotta make sure I'm healthy enough to raise the  Schmoopie . "Let's get physical - physical!! I wanna get physical!!..." Wish me luck...

Yet another in our unending string of home study paperwork arrived today. According to the Attorney General of Rhode Island, Jennifer has no criminal record. Now we're just waiting on my state criminal background check. Hopefully they don't find the paperwork from that embarrassing 1992 llama smuggling incident...

I'm tired. Just signed off from  Facebook  saying that I was heading to bed, but the truth is that I only arrived home from work and hour ago...so while I'm  tired , I'm still a little wound up from working my ridiculously LONG day and, thus, not actually  sleepy . This is one of the things that I worry about when the Little One arrives. Insomnia. I've struggled with it for much of my life. If I'm in bed before 10:00 p.m. or so I'm usually in pretty good shape to sleep the night through. Even 10:30 is OK. But once I get beyond the 10:30 mark (it's now 10:35) there's a good chance that I'll get a second wind that will wake me up for hours and hours. What if The Kid is a night owl? It's taken me YEARS to get to a place where I actually sleep well most nights. What happens when the Little One needs to be fed at all hours? Will I actually be able to get back to sleep? Am I going to be one of those Zombie Parents who stumbles through eac...

If I didn't know the adoption was real and going to happen...now I know. My husband canceled his subscription to the Sunday  Times . ( That'd  be the Sunday  New York   Times  for any non- Times  readers out there...) I just about fainted when he told me yesterday. This may not seem like a monumental thing, but if you know Chris then you know that one of his great pleasures in life is hanging out at the kitchen table on Sunday morning reading The  Times . So to cancel it... I would have thought that he'd cancel  Entertainment Weekly  or  Newsweek before bagging The Times. "It's really expensive," he tells me with something akin to a shrug, "and I read a lot of it on-line anyway." The thing is that we've been in something of a state about money these days. When it was Just The Two of Us...no problem, we're doing very OK. But now that we're going to be Plus One there's life insurance to consider, diapers, formula and baby-...

I was looking at some adoption stuff online today and came across a website put together by a group of mothers who gave up children to adoption and who firmly believe that they were coerced and manipulated by the adoption industry and adoptive parents. Here's what these ladies have to say about me, my husband and other prospective adoptive parents: Just like a sexual predator  looks for vulnerable women and youth to exploit,   reproductive predators  hunt for a vulnerable expectant mother so they can persuade or pressure her to give up her baby...They might be your doctor's receptionist, your sister-in-law, your highschool counsellor, or the nice neighbours next door. What they have in common is that they want your baby. Wow. That's pretty harsh, don't you think? The authors of this particular website indicated that reproductive predators (apparently that'd be me and my husband) will use among other methods: manipulation, coercion, lies, fraud, pressure,...

Since beginning our adoption journey, I'm amazed at how many people I know or meet who are touched in some way by adoption. By and large, they've also been wonderfully open about their experiences and willing to share them with Jennifer and me. These stories show up in the most unlikely places. On Friday, I called our insurance provider to discuss our life insurance. In doing so, I mentioned to the agent on the other end of the line (I'll call her "Rita") that we needed some new information as a result of our planned adoption. "Really? I'm adopted," she said. "No kidding," I responded, both interested and rather surprised that a complete stranger would volunteer that information. What followed was a fascinating 15 minute conversation about her experiences and views. As it turned out, Rita, who was born in 1951, didn't find out she was adopted until she was 40. "It was a different time," she explained. "Records ...

Social worker M made her inspection. After giving her the grand tour of the house, we sat out on our deck where we fed her fruit and chatted about this, that and the other thing...mostly to do with the house and the adoption. M left at 6:45 p.m. The house was (and still is) quite clean and, aside from the fact that the temperature during the home inspection was only just shy of what it must feel like on the surface of the sun, the visit went extremely well. Apparently we passed our home visit. We passed! Chris and I are breathing huge sighs of relief. Relief! Have I mentioned that we passed??? That M said this seemed like it would be a great place to raise a kid??? That she was impressed with the gardening we've done and the changes we've made to the house??? We passed!!! So now we just have to get the rest of the paperwork done and submitted in the next three weeks or so. (Oh yeah - and actually apply to the placement agency.) We're one big step close...

OK, everyone was right. We really didn't need to stress today's home visit. M showed up, we gave her a tour of the house (it was pretty quick...our house isn't that big), and then settled down out on the deck (cooler than the interior of said house) for a chat about how things were going in the adoption process. Not a white glove in sight. I didn't even turn on the lights in the laundry room to display my well-mopped floor. Instead, we ran down the remaining paperwork and committed to having a final meeting to hand everything over for her review in 3 weeks. It feels good to have a finish line for Phase 1 in sight. Plus we got a nice clean house out of the deal...except for the two baskets of laundry that were artfully obscured on the far side of the bed, but who's counting? All in all, a good day.

This is the e-mail I received today from social worker M in regards to our impending home visit tomorrow: I wish you would quit cleaning!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I read a little of the blog yesterday, and meant to email you last night, but I got side tracked. Whatever you have done is ENOUGH!! Its  tooo hot! Go take a walk by the water. She added as a P.S.: I haven't looked in  anyone's  closet in 20 years, and I don't do basements, attics or garages. Oh dear... Does putting away two baskets of clean laundry count as cleaning?

Even as we work on our home study, we've been making plans to apply for our actual adoption placement. One element of this process is choosing all of the options available on the "menu". Not only do we consider what requirements we have (no family history of allergies to pets, for example) but also what our preferences are in terms of gender, race, etc. Of course, those options carry with them an additional fee but this isn't really a process that lends itself well to skinflints. With that in mind, we coincidentally received an e-mail today from our contact at the placement agency we expect to be use. It read, in part: We currently have a larger amount of birthmothers coming on board with us and the intake calls on the birthmother side for the last several weeks have nearly doubled from the same time last year so we anticipate lots of birthmothers in the next couple of months. We are therefore encouraging more adoptive couples to begin their adoption journey now ...

Apparently we didn't need to stress and don't need to scrub down the house any more. Jennifer received the following e-mail this evening from M, the adoption counselor conducting our home study: I wish you would quit cleaning!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I read a little of the blog yesterday, and meant to email you last night, but I got side tracked. Whatever you have done is ENOUGH!! Its tooo hot! Go take a walk by the water. She added as a P.S.: I haven't looked in anyone's closet in 20 years, and I don't do basements, attics or garages. Of course, being a somewhat obsessive person when it comes to things like this and careful not to leave anything to chance when it's this important, I did indeed go scrub out the tub this evening. But that's it. Really. I'm serious.

My mother-in-law S is OK. I don't mean in the sense that she's OK - like an OK person, OK personality, OK looks... I mean...she's OK in that she is apparently cancer-free. Cancer-free. OK. The good news came this evening via the phone. Chris gets on the phone and not two minutes later tells me to pick up. S is on the other end of the phone. Crying. My heart rate goes up with my first thoughts being, " Omigod , what's wrong? Who's in the hospital? Are The Girls OK? Something happened to P." It's amazing the terrible, fearful thoughts one's mind can conjure up in the space of just a second or two. "We saw the surgeon today," says a tearful S, "and they did the full scan and there's no cancer. The chemo did its job." I can hear Chris sniffling and crying upstairs. My eyes fill with tears, too. S isn't totally out of the woods yet. There is still a surgery to be gone through, healing time and then rad...