150 Steps...In the Present Moment

I woke up feeling kind of grumpy this morning (oh, my lucky husband!) Went to bed too late last evening and had strange dreams all night. So I awoke feeling somewhat more tired than when I went to bed. Morning Grumpies. I have them when I don't sleep well or long enough or when I hit the sack too late or when my sleep is interrupted by a howling cat. Yes, we have a really old, barf-prone, howling-prone kitty. Annabel is turning 19 in just a few short months and we think that she has a bit of kitty-dementia. 3:30 in the morning apparently seems like a s good time to her to wake up to demand food and attention. Argh. It occurs to me this a.m. as I am working through my Morning Grumpies that I will not be able to indulge in my Morning Grumpies for much longer. I can't be grumpy with The Kid when she arrives. Our Little One should see only cheerful faces in the morning - faces full of love and happiness. Not a scowling face full of the Morning Grumpies. I'm going to ...

"I know you're not supposed to say this," says my friend J yesterday over the remains of burgers and  hotdogs  on our deck, "but every once in a while I can totally understand the concept of child abuse." He shoots me a wry grin. I laugh. We watch his children - daughter F (age 9) and son A (age 4) - play badminton with Chris in the backyard. He continues, "Sometimes they'll just aggravate you SO much you just want to pick them up and shake them really, really hard. But, of course, you can't DO that," he pauses while his wife E laughs and nods in agreement, "but then they'll come up, do something really cute and sweet, or put their little arms around you and give you kisses and tell you that they love you and it's all worth it." Good to know.

A few of my colleagues and I were in a meeting and chatting about the strange world in which we now live - the world of sharing one's every thought and activity with "the world" via blog, Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter. (Please note that I am SO not cool enough to send out Tweets via Twitter...I have opted instead to blog, which is apparently SO over....according to a New York Times article  Blogs Falling in an Empty Forest ...only 7.4 million blogs of the 133 million blogs tracked by Technorati were updated in the last 120 days....) One of my colleagues expressed confusion about Twitter, "I don't really understand what it is," he says. Another colleagues pipes up, "It's like micro-blogging. You get 160 characters and you send those out into the world. If you want to follow someone's Twittering you can choose to have it viewed on your computer or sent directly to your cell phone." "So, what exactly do you do on Twitter?" as...

Chris recently wrote a post on his blog  Walks in the Marsh  about baseball being a business. As much as we fans love to think it's America's Game or just a game or our favorite game...it is a business and it's not only about winning, but it's about money. As I'm sadly discovering - it's much the same with adoption. As much as we want to be excited and thrilled and overjoyed and all gooey and mushy by the prospect of increasing our family to Plus One and to hope that the people who are going to work with us through this process will feel the same way - ultimately, to them it is a business. One of my colleagues mentioned this to me in one of my very first conversations about adoption (conversations with someone other than Chris...) She says, "I didn't go the adoption route to make lifelong friends with the adoption people and don't think that you will either. For them this is a business. You can't ever forget that." And after yesterda...

Things may be changing in our lives at some point in the future. My wife, Jennifer, and I have decided to upgrade to Family Plus One by starting the journey toward adopting a baby. Over the course of our 8-year (and counting) marriage, family has occasionally been a topic of discussion but it always came down to two differing opinions -- I hoped to have one, Jenn leaned more toward the "nope, not gonna happen" side of the spectrum. As a result, it was something of a shock when, as my birthday gift, she told me that she was ready to consider it. Wow, things really do change when you hit 40! Since that particular barrier fell, she has thrown herself into the process wholeheartedly, debating baby names, coming home with baby user manuals, and  launching her own blog to record the journey . It's quite a change and in all honesty, one that I'd given up expecting to ever see. Now the research into the adoption process is well underway, initial inquiries have been made, ...

International adoptions - we discovered quickly - are immediately final. There is almost no chance that a birth mother will arrive on the scene when the child is three claiming to have changed her mind and want the child back. So I'm not surprised that quite a few people opt for this type of adoption and the accompanying security of knowing that the child they have spent so much time and money to adopt is theirs. Period. No questions asked. Done deal. When Chris and I first started this journey a while back, we were leaning heavily toward an international adoption for this very reason and because quite a few people we know have successfully gone this route. What we've discovered along the way is that international adoptions certainly have their share of difficulties including, but not limited to: travel expenses on top of adoption fees, travel visas, "gifts" for the in-country contacts and officials, out and out bribes in some countries, your trip being extended f...

So...what Chris and I have done so far to get us that much closer to expanding our family to Plus One: 1. Made the decision to adopt 2. Talked with friends, family and colleagues who have been through the adoption process 3. Met with a social worker from a  homestudy  agency in MA 4. Met with a social worker from an international adoption agency in RI 5. Searched on-line for other adoption agencies and sent away for informational packets 6. Set up an appointment via conference call with an adoption agency based in CA that specializes in domestic adoptions 7. Started this blog 8. Solicited more advice from friends, family and colleagues 9. Continue to have long conversations about domestic adoption vs. international (we're leaning toward domestic) 10. Started banking all of my salary to use for adoption fees and kid-related stuff And even though we've done all of the above (which feels like a lot already!) we've barely skimmed the surface of the process.  Oy ...