Mutterings and Musings on Mommyhood

2012-01-17T09:36:00.002-05:00

My baby is 10.5, 5th grade, and for now, all things are moving smoothly for her. She constantly amazes me with her poise, wit, and musical ability. She can write the most amazing stories full of evocative prose, interesting characters, and hand-drawn illustrations. She seems to be comfortable with her adoption story for now--she has a warm and loving relationship with her first father, and a perplexed yet accepting understanding of her first mom's abscence. Braces, impending puberty, and all the social interactions that are supposed to define a girl this age are in full swing. She's amazing and I can't imagine my life without her as my daughter.

And here the focus changes. Just as I can't imagine my life without my daughter, I can't imagine my life without my mom, either. But that is what I'm going to have to do. Last week, she was diagnosed with lung cancer. We have yet to learn stage, exact type, prognosis, treatment or palliative plan, or anything, but reality says it's going to be a long, painful year--if we're lucky enough to have a year.

And again...

2010-01-23T18:10:00.003-05:00

No dinner company tonight. Mitzie and her boyfriend cancelled, once again, at the last minute. No real explaination this time, just "really busy." Sigh.
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She hinted as maybe after February 4th, but I won't be telling BabyGirl about it until there's a knock at the door next time.
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My poor Sweet Pea was in a foul mood all last week, with lots of shouts of "Nothing EVER goes the way I want it to!" at the smallest disappointment. It's funny though: her acting out was at school this time, rather than at home as it usually happens. At home, aside from minor skirmishes, she's been practically angelic. She expressed her gratitude frequently. After screwing up something (picking up dog poop, not cleaning her breakfast dishes, etc.) rather than throwing a snit, her response was, "You're right. I forgot. I'll take care of it right away."
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Was she being especially sweet with us because she was trying to "get back" at Mitzie? Was she worried that if she acted out, would we make an adoption plan and send her on to someone else?
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One of the worst parts of being a parent by adoption is never really knowing if certain behaviors are adoption-related or just kid-related. I hate that part.

Sigh

2010-01-17T12:17:00.006-05:00

It's been pretty quiet here for the last few months. After getting a good dose of courage from Barb over at http://www.kaldiboo.blogspot.com/, I decided to try once again to bring BabyGirl's first mom back into her life.
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We texted a bunch of times, BabyGirl sang a Happy Birthday video on my cell phone and we sent it over, Mitzie and BabyGirl have texted back and forth. After a doing this since Thanksgiving when Raoul gave us Mitzie's latest cell phone number, we took the plunge and invited Mitzie and her boyfriend over for dinner. BabyGirl got excited, made plans, cleaned her room (!), created special artwork; Mr. Handsome and I planned a lovely meal. We were all looking forward to seeing them tonight.
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And she cancelled this morning for what seems like a reasonable reason. But still.
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It's so heartbreaking for BabyGirl.
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Her behavior has completely gone to hell and it'll be that way for the next few days as she processes her disappointment and pain. In the quiet moments, we'll get to talking about what's really bothering her, but until then, she's going to be a giant pain as she feels this new pain so acutely. We'll cut her slack because she's got a lot on her emotional plate right now, but we still, nonetheless, have to hold her to behavior standards.
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My heart breaks for the both of them: for BabyGirl who feels rejected and betrayed again, for Mitzie who just can't seem to step out of her own pain and disappointment to reach out to the extraordinary girl she helped create.
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Hopefully, our rescheduled dinner for next weekend will happen. Fingers crossed.

Doing something good

2009-10-15T14:50:00.003-05:00

My friend Kelly over at www.mochamomma.com works at a school at which many of the high schoolers are struggling in many way. The girls are limited to purses that are smaller than a piece of paper because of safety issues, no one can carry a backpack.
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Because many of the girls simply can't afford buying a decent purse, she's organizing a Small Purse Drive. She will collect small purses that are in good shape and then sell them to the girls for $5.00, or simply give them to the girls if they can't spare $5.00.
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Please, start looking in your closets for small purses that haven't seen the light of day in forever and dust them off. Kelly is working out the details as to where to send them, how to make a PayPal donation, etc. so stay tuned.
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In the meantime, go read Kelly's blog and dig out those purses to get them ready, ok?

When it rains

2009-09-27T11:03:00.002-05:00

So, just as we're getting settled into the idea of not having our AJ back, our beloved Bouvier des Flandres dog, Am. Ch. Amron's Zora from Eatonville, died unexpectedly yesterday morning. The emergency vets worked hard to bring her back from two cardiac arrests and to rectify an unknown abdominal issue, but to no avail. The feelings of loss hang heavily over our house.
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Zora was only 9.25--our last Bouv was 14 when he died--so Zora's death is completely out-of-the-blue. We always said she's the dog against whom all other dogs will be judged, meaning, that while every dog has its own personality, we'll always look back on Zora as the one great, perfect dog for us. Protective without being threatening, dignified, smart, well-behaved, and very well loved, she was a really good dog.
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Zora helped Mr. Handsome and me through the loss of our three babies, she watched over BabyGirl as she came and stayed, she kept me safe when Mr. Handsome was on his extended business trips, she provided a quiet presence and dignity. And she kept the backyard free of squirrels.
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She will be greatly, greatly missed.

August

2009-08-22T14:10:00.002-05:00

Well, it seems like grandma is going to keep all three of the kids.
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Of course, she hasn't said anything to us either way about it, but Foster Care Woman said she can speak with authority and say that AJ ain't coming home to us.
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I'm really disappointed, heartbroken, and heartsick about losing him again. And, truth be told, I'm also really relieved since taking on an emotionally/physically/possibly-mentally damaged 4-year old really wasn't on my list of things to do right now. Of course, if he'd come home, we'd take him into our arms and do our very best for him because that's what parents do; nonetheless, we also know how much work that would take.
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At least one thing is good: living the life of open adoption (BabyGirl and her daddy are at her first-mommy's family reunion this afternoon) has given us plenty of opportunity to hold two conflicting emotions at the same time!

The latest latest

2009-06-17T19:09:00.009-05:00

From LawyerFriend:
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Peggy's sentencing was today. Judge Brown sentenced her to two
years of probation in which she must pay: $68 in state fees,
$60 victim's fund fees, $960 court supervision fees, $728 in
court costs, and $650 in attorney's fees. She must continue
her employment. She was sentenced to 1 year in the
Washtenaw County Jail (credit one day served). She may serve
the sentence over a period of thirty weekends and if she does
so, the balance of her sentence will be suspended. She must
also serve either 80 or 180 hours of community service (I am
not sure which number the judge said) which will entail her
telling various groups about what she did and the repercussions
of her actions. If she violates any term of the probation she
could face prison time.
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For the first time since I have been following this case, I actually
heard Peggy speak. She said that her parental rights had been
terminated (the way she described it, the termination of her
parental rights had been an "unselfish act of love" for her
children--as if it had been her idea). She said she had ended
her relationship from AJ's father. She is taking parenting/anger
management classes and volunteers at the Hope Center . She
cried openly when describing what she had done to AJ and to
the relationship with her children generally. I gathered that
there was, on her part, some expectation of no jail time. She
explained to the judge that if she were jailed, she would lose
her job as (I think) assistant manager at White Castle and
"she would be right back in the same bad situation as before."
Apparently Peggy’s attorney stated that jail time was not
warranted because there were no “serious or permanent
injuries” involved. The prosecutor then rebutted this with a
reading of AJ's injuries aloud in court: acute and chronic subdural
hematomas consistent with shaking, broken ribs ([the injuries]
2 weeks old at the time of treatment), pelvic fracture ([the
injuries] about 10 days old at the time of treatment), a broken
arm--a total of 8 broken bones altogether which a doctor
described as being like "torture". A couple of people in the
courtroom actually gasped when the list of injuries was read.
I think this played a big part in the judge's decision NOT to
waive jail time. The prosecutor said that AJ was in therapy
and didn’t want to talk about his mommy.
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This matter seems over for a while—I am not sure if Peggy
will ever be able to have her parental rights reinstated. I
think it’s safe to say that if she screws up probation, she
probably won’t. I am sorry you guys didn’t get AJ, but
let’s just hope Peggy’s mother stays healthy long enough
to raise the kids.

I asked specifically if grandma stated she was going to adopt them, but haven't heard back yet.

What little I know now

2009-06-17T16:45:00.002-05:00

All I've heard so far is from Court Woman:
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"I heard she released her parental rights as well. She said her mother was going to adopt the kids…I hope you can file a competing party petition if that’s the case."
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But she didn't say "as well" to what!
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Grandma is taking the kids to South Carolina on a vacation/family reunion tomorrow so that should give us time to figure out the competing party petition thing--if that's what we want to do.
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I just wish there was some resolution to this whole thing already. I'm tired.

Hmmmmm

2009-06-11T09:38:00.004-05:00

CourtWoman said, in response to a question, "that won't be an issue...since [Peggy] isn't going to have the kids." (italics mine)
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Well, they're going somewhere safe, anyway. That in itself is a relief.

Whew! ONE thing settled

2009-06-09T20:04:00.003-05:00

As of 8:30 tonight, the Supreme Court has declined to hear the case against Chrysler's sale to Fiat.
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At least ONE thing in our lives is settled! My tummy is unknotting just the weensiest bit. Of course, that is no promise of continued employment, but at least the company won't get pieced out.
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Now, only one more major thing to be settled. Next Wednesday. I hope. I hope something happens either way. I know how I'd like it to end, with AJ coming home to us, but any closure will be welcome at this point. I'm getting a little frayed around the edges and Rescue Remedy just ain't taking the edge off anymore.

Holding Steady

2009-05-29T10:02:00.002-05:00

Our paperwork is in, we've taken the classes, and our CPS worker is grinding through her part of the licensing process. Maybe a month, she said.
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Peggy's sentencing is June 17, and I still don't know any more details on to what she made her plea.
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The CPS worker said, based on a meeting she was in yesterday, that she thinks the grandma is going to keep AJ. Sigh.

Guilty plea!

2009-05-07T09:38:00.004-05:00

Peggy plead guilty yesterday, sentencing will be on June 17th. I don't know what that means, for sure, but I'm feeling hopeful for the first time in a while. Can't let the hopeful feeling stick around too long, though, because that only makes it worse when my hoped-for outcome doesn't happen. It's a very tricky balance.
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LawyerFriend wasn't able to hear anything yesterday in court since it was all at the judge's bench and they had the sound machine on. He did learn that Peggy is to be in Family Court tomorrow on the paternity issue.
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Thank you for all your good thoughts, prayers, and support.

Oy vey

2009-04-27T21:09:00.002-05:00

Peggy's brother was just arrested for posession of marihuana (as it's spelled in our county's court records), and grandma is in court with her ex-husband. At least maybe this "upstanding" family would be seen as less of a good home for AJ, should it all come to that, and regular-old mildly-dysfunctional us would seem like a really nice place for him. I have my fingers crossed, anyway.
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Postponed. Again.

2009-04-19T11:03:00.005-05:00

Looks like it's rescheduled for Wednesday, May 6, according to the county court's website.
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Peggy's Facebook for the first postponement day was, "Is Saying God Thank You 4 All You Did 4 Me 2Day.."
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Grandma's was, "is very sad today.... :(" followed by "and it just keeps getting better..." the next day--she has a wonderful capacity for irony and that's how I read this second update.
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We've been out of town and I haven't heard from LawyerFriend on what actually went down.
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Whatever is going to happen, those babies need stability to know they are in their forever homes--either Grandma's or ours. This is getting more and more awful as each month grinds on. As more time passes, Peggy has more time to "demonstrate" that she's making improvements in her life; unfortunately, she's making the same "improvements" she said she was going to make at the time we lost AJ. I half have it in mind to just call the prosecutor's office and tell them just where I stand, but I don't know if that would be helpful for the babies or for us. I'll have to ask LawyerFriend his opinion on that idea...

Felony Pretrial Postponement

2009-04-08T19:29:00.003-05:00

Yup. Another week. Next Wednesday now.
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LawyerFriend said Peggy was represented by a law student (?) who immediately asked for an adjournment until next week.
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Sheesh.

Felony Pretrial

2009-04-08T08:41:00.002-05:00

Peggy's pretrial hearing is scheduled for this afternoon at 1:30.
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I'm asking--begging--for any and all prayers/karma/blessing/good thoughts go to the prosecutor's office that they have sufficient evidence to mount a solid case against her, that they conduct themselves with integrity, and that they follow both the letter and the spirit of the Constitution.

Happy Birthday, AJ

2009-04-06T19:06:00.002-05:00

You're four today! How can that be? How can you be four already? We never stopped celebrating your birth, the fact that you ARE.
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I was remembering watching you be born, the slow-pokey doctors not coming even though we'd told them a number of times that you were on your way. How my bff, a nurse-midwife, had pulled on her gloves and was getting ready to catch you because you were coming whether or not the doctors were. I remember feeling small and vulnerable witnessing the miracle of your birth. I remember all that beautiful black hair and your incredible set of lungs as you took your first breath and let out your first yell.
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I remember the honor of having a sleep-over with you at the hospital since Peggy didn't want to stay and I didn't want you to have to be alone. We wore our Family Jammies--these goofy South African/Keedo flannel jammies with wild animals all over them. Mr. Handsome and BabyGirl were wearing theirs at home while we wore ours at the hospital that night. I didn't sleep much because I kept waking to check on you.
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In the morning, the rest of the family came to collect us and take us home. You didn't have to move into our house to move into our hearts. You were always there and you will always be.
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Happy Birthday, Little Man. We love you and we miss you.
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XXX,
Mommy

Postponement

2009-04-01T08:28:00.003-05:00

Since AJ's father is not the man Peggy always said he was, Peggy has been compelled by the juvenile court to provide a list of potential names of the father. She was scheduled to return to juvenile court last Friday (3/27) to divulge those names.
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Unfortunately, the judge was out that day and it has been postponed until May.
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Next Wednesday, 4/8, she's scheduled to return to civil court for a pretrial hearing on the felony child abuse charges. My LawyerFriend has volunteered to attend for us.
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LawyerFriend, using his keen sense of snorting things out, also discovered that Peggy was in court on ANOTHER issue on 3/15, responding to a charge of driving with a suspended license. Turns out that event was in January 2008 and were finally coming to trial. $150 fine and she's back on the street. Well, she apparently never got off the street despite having a suspended license. What irks me is that she was driving illegally when she had custody of the kids.
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And, lastly, I learned that while AJ will turn four on 4/6, the little brother will turn one on 4/11. Her felony pretrial trial is snuggled right between their birthdays.

Go figure

2009-03-18T10:02:00.004-05:00

Grandma just friended me on Facebook. I never would have seen that one coming. I'm not sure what to think.
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***UPDATE***
After accepting it, I got to thinking. I sent an email yesterday, not via FB, asking if she intended to do that and to please let me know since the Grandma I friended didn't have a photo or any other details beyond the most basics.
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When I hadn't heard anything by this morning, I sent another email saying that there was another Grandma out there with a photo and wall posts and evidence of activity that led me to know this other person was really her. I de-friended (un-friended?) the photo-less Grandma. If it turns out the photo-less Grandma is her also, we can look at re-friending.

Pretrial hearing date

2009-03-15T14:12:00.004-05:00

Peggy has a pretrial hearing on Wednesday, April 8, at 1:30.
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According to my trusty google search, a pretrial hearing is "a meeting with the judge that happens before trial, if the parties have not come to an agreement by that point. Usually, the judge tries to get a sense of how the trial will come out and nudge the parties to compromise along those lines." Another site says, "Your lawyer and the DA are trying to see if this case should go to trial or plea bargain out."
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While I hope my lawyer/friend/spy finds a job of his own as quickly as possible, I sure hope he's free that day. It would be interesting to be there, just staring her down and giving her the evil eye.
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AJ turns 4 on April 6th, three days after BabyGirl turns 8, and three days before his own mother faces the judge for beating the living daylights out of him. BabyGirl's birthday will always be intertwined with AJ's, since we just scored a perfect parking space at Zingerman's for a post-preschool celebratory 4th birthday lunch with Grandma and Grandpa when Peggy called to say she was at the hospital in labor.

Catch up

2009-03-13T09:39:00.012-05:00

Wow, did we have a great week in San Diego! We got to spend lovely time with our Dearhearts, got to meet their newest daughter, provide distraction when Mrs. Dearheart had to return to work, visited the ocean one afternoon, and squeezed in a trip to Disneyland, too. It was a very nice distraction.

Until I got the email from the grandma expressing her "very upset" feelings at me. In the past, I'd asked her to share her social workers' names with me. She said she wasn't comfortable with that at that point. Ok, I'm good with that. I also told her that we feared, should he/they need an out-of-family placement, they could end up in the System and then we'd lose them, so I was going to find out what we needed to do to not let that happen. So, we got the foster care paperwork rolling.

The hitch was how to reply and be conciliatory while still standing firm in the decisions we've made.

Oh Grandma, I'm so sorry for such a big misunderstanding. No, we are not trying to "swoop and snatch" and I did contact CPS, but certainly not to "inquire" about the case. I have respected your wish for privacy. I hope I also made it clear to you, though, that we were going to do what we had to do to let CPS know that we were interested in adopting him/them IF Peggy's rights were terminated and IF you opted not to parent. I think I've explained our fear that he/they could be thrown into the System and we'd never have the opportunity to bring him/them home, if that was what was needed.

I called the general CPS number and was passed to FosterCareWorker; whether or not she is working with you, I don't know nor did she indicate either way. I gave a general explanation of the situation--asking no questions about the case, only what
we should do if an out-of-family placement became necessary. I did not use
your names and, as far as I knew, she didn't know of the case. She said that to present anyone's name to the court, they need to be licensed foster parents because IF parental rights are terminated and IF "the grandma" chooses not parent, he/they will be placed immediately with other foster parents from the pool and it would be very, very difficult--if not impossible--to move him/them here at a later point. I don't know why she would have said that I was inquiring about the situation because that is absolutely not the case.

I am doing my best to respect your privacy as much as possible. I'm not going to the public hearings. I'm not questioning friends who work in the court system. I'm not emailing you everyday. I do understand that this is difficult for your family, but please understand that this is difficult for my family, too. We have never stopped loving AJ, we have never stopped considering him the missing part of our family--as BabyGirl said, "since he left, there's been a hole in our hearts." When you told me that Peggy had been beating him to the point of potential brain damage, neural hematomas, and multiple broken bones, it was nearly as painful as when the judge initially found Peggy to not be an "imminent threat" and ordered him returned. No, my family may not be facing potential jail time, but we have our own kind of hell over all this, too.

I am on your side on this, whether or not it feels like it right now. I absolutely defer to you when it comes to this situation, something I've tried to make clear to our CPS contact. But I was also not going to miss the opportunity to potentially bring our little boy home simply because I didn't make a phone call to ask for some general information. Again, I am sorry for the misunderstanding.

I haven't heard anything back from her yet.

And then there's the matter of Peggy's most recent court date, the pretrial hearing in criminal court on February 24. Much to my surprise, Peggy opted not to admit and plead guilty to the charges, she's opted to have a jury trial. Apparently, she thinks she can beat the charges (awful pun intended). I have not heard if that trial has a start-date yet; nonetheless, she has a return to juvenile court to divulge AJ's real father's name or provide a list of potential fathers on March 27.

In the meantime, reference requests have gone out (thank you!) and we've begun our largest mountain of paperwork. We're going to schedule our classes for May--the next available dates.

This may all be for naught, but, again, we'll know that we've done what we can for our little guy.

Foster Parent paperwork

2009-02-18T10:44:00.003-05:00

The meeting last night wasn't too bad, mostly a list of how to be nice to foster kids. And the start of the paperwork.

Paperwork Part 1 won't be too bad, easily knocked out by the weekend. Mr. Handsome is getting his fingerprints taken tonight, I get mine on Friday. Once those, and some other paperwork are turned in, THEN we get the Big Packet of Paperwork to complete.

No worries about our San Diego trip getting in the way!

Morning in court

2009-02-17T11:23:00.003-05:00

Here's what we know:

Not knowing AJ's paternity is an issue (no surprise). The court will compel Peggy to reveal his identity or provide a list of possibilities at another juvenile court pretrial on March 27.

Child Protective Services has opted to let the criminal charges play themselves out before they go forward with terminating her parental rights.

Peggy has to deal with two courts: juvenile court at which CPS presents their evidence, makes recommendations as to the children's "best interest," and can request termination of parental rights; and criminal court at which she has to respond to the felony child abuse allegations and can end up in jail.

She has her criminal pretrial hearing on Feb 24. She is facing two counts of felony child abuse: 1st degree (...if the person knowingly or intentionally causes serious physical or serious mental harm to a child,...punishable by imprisonment for not more than 15 years), and 2nd degree (...omission or reckless act causing serious physical harm, knowingly or unintentionally commit an act likely to cause serious harm regardless of whether harm results, or knowingly or intentionally commit an act that is cruel regardless of whether harm results; punishable by no less than 4 years). Our attorney friend has graciously offered to observe that trial also.

Peggy didn't show at the trial this morning because she was "in custody" at the criminal court.

The guardian ad litem (GAL) said AJ's doing well, is gaining weight, is wearing a foot brace, and that he recommends a psychological evaluation for Peggy.

Tomorrow

2009-02-16T19:15:00.002-05:00

Well. There's a court date tomorrow at 9:30. I don't think it's the criminal abuse case, I think it's the juvenile abuse case--two separate issues. I believe tomorrow the court will begin the process of terminating Peggy's parental rights to one or all three of the children. A friend will be attending and taking notes for us. Despite how much I'd like to be there just to totally piss her off, it's just not the right thing to do. So I'll have my cell phone at the ready, waiting for the moment he calls.

Don't know if she actually did turn herself in on Friday on the criminal charge, but I do know that she was out and updating her Facebook page by Friday night.

My tummy's in knots.

We have BabyGirl coverage for tomorrow from after school to after-karate-and-into-bed. We will begin the next mountain of paperwork and red tape. Thing is, after so many adoption placements, I'm not really too torqued up about yet another homestudy. That's good, I guess.

the Latest

2009-02-14T12:07:00.002-05:00

I learned from CourtWoman last week that on Friday at 10am, Peggy was to have turned herself in to the police on a criminal child abuse warrant. I don't know if she did or didn't but I'm watching the local newspaper closely to see if they say anything about it.
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A friend will be attending Peggy's preliminary trial on Tuesday to take notes and report back.
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I also learned that the man she identified as AJ's father, has been proven by DNA to not be the father. This is the man who told her she "owed" him another baby because she "gave away this one." This is the man who denied paternity all along. This is the man who had an infant daughter with another woman the same time AJ was born. Well, at least that's one piece of the puzzle that we won't have to deal with.
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We begin our foster care licensing procedures on Tuesday night. We're both really mixed-up as to what we want to have the end result to be. Is the older daughter--the one who is abusive to AJ after watching it happen for so long and the one, frankly, I never liked from Day One--a deal-breaker if the kids are kept as a package? What about the father of the little one? He says he wants him, but does he or is he posturing? What if Chrysler goes bankrupt on Tuesday when they have to talk to the government again, and what if Mr. Handsome loses our only source of income? What then? What if AJ is damaged beyond repair? Are we really willing to take on that challenge? Are we really willing to take on both boys? A damaged 3.75-year-old and an infant? At our ages? What are we, nuts?
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What we do know is that we won't be allowed to make any choices or get any more information unless we've jumped through the foster care hoops. So we fill out the paperwork, get fingerprinted, and submit all kinds of legal documents, and we jump.

Roller Coaster

2009-02-10T19:47:00.002-05:00

After speaking with the prosecutor last week, I was in despair because her recommendation was to get started with foster care licensing muy pronto since she couldn't even present our names to the court until we were licensed. All the places I called about getting licensed were not holding orientation meetings until March and state law prohibits letting them even give out applications prior to attending an orientation. I figured we were out of luck, once again this little boy's life screwed by The System.

Today, though, I finally spoke with a Department of Public Health foster care licensing worker who told me she was holding an orientation on, you guessed it, Tuesday February 17, the day on which Peggy goes back to court. We will be at the orientation, get our paperwork that night, then start filling it out the next day. With luck and hard work, I can get it done by Thursday and the worker can come inspect the house on Friday so BabyGirl and I can fly to San Diego to be Nannies to our dearheart's Super Children. Wish us luck on surmounting the mountain of paperwork.

Before I managed to talk to LicensingWorker, we started to update our old adoption paperwork, just in case that would be sufficient state approval for the prosecutor. Today, I learned it wouldn't be sufficient, so that's at least one mountain we don't have to climb.

LicensingWorker said that expediency would be important, but that it didn't sound urgent; nonetheless, we're feeling pressure to do right by this little boy even if The System doesn't.

A glimmer

2009-02-04T11:28:00.003-05:00

I emailed our old social worker (who no longer works at that agency) last week about the AJ situation. She suggested we get a transcript of the trial from four years ago and share it with the current prosecutor, so I spent some time on the phone trying to figure out how to do that.

On my second phone call to the court system, after I introduced myself, the woman replied, "Oh, I hoped I'd hear from you!" Not only was CourtWoman familiar with the current issues, but she was also involved with our trial before. She'd kept track of Peggy since Peggy was involved in the juvenile court system herself as a young person. CourtWoman's disgusted with Peggy, and told me that any sane person who temporarily lost custody of her children would be out doing whatever she had to do to ensure the return of those children. But not Peggy. Nope, Peggy is out going to bars, hanging with various men, and possibly losing one of her two part-time jobs.

Anyway, when I first got on the phone with CourtWoman and heard how she responded to my name, I started to cry and I got the shakes. I'm still shakey. It just seemed so nice to have her be glad that we were involved. She also said she and the head of our old agency did a little happy-dance together when AgencyLady reported to her that we'd been in contact with her.

The CourtWoman was able to give me the names of the Child Protective Services caseworker AND the name of the prosecuting attorney, since the grandma wasn't comfortable with sharing any names. I have a message in to CPS, and am gearing up my courage to call the prosecuting attorney.

CourtWoman told me that the people working the system are so fed up with Peggy that they're going to ask for her parental rights to be terminated at the first hearing on February 17.

Holding steady

2009-01-21T10:29:00.002-05:00

No news on the meetings with Child Protective Services and the foster care social workers yesterday. It's hard not having information when that's all I crave right now. I hate not knowing.

I hate not knowing what's going on. I hate not knowing the extent of his injuries. I hate not knowing if we'll even have the opportunity to say "yes" to our Little Man again. I hate not knowing if that's what we'd say if it were a possibility. I hate not knowing. Hate it, hate it, hate it.

All these questions

2009-01-15T10:06:00.008-05:00

This morning, Mr. Handsome and I both woke up after sleeping fitfully.
.
We agreed to consider considering adopting our son should he become available for adoption. There are so many questions about how much damage has been done to him. The grandma told me it was a borderline torture situation. I'm 45, my husband is about to be 48. Are we able to take on a potentially severely damaged little boy? My husband--the only income earner--works for Chrysler and who knows how long that will be around? Is it fair to our daughter to take on this challenge? I'm sure, if a child were born to us with all these potential complications, we'd love him and raise him to the best of our abilities--but he wasn't born to us. We do have a choice. I don't know if voicing my concerns and hesitency is politically correct or not, but they're mine and they're valid.
.

Heck. I'm just getting my own life back again now that BabyGirl is almost 8. I'm on a museum board, I'm working on a book of local architecture, I'm loving being a room mom at her school. Am I nuts to even think about taking this on? Our life is pretty good, the three of us, why would we even think of adding this huge complication? We always said that if we had to parent a screwed up kid, that at least we wanted to be the ones doing the screwing up, not having to clean up someone else's mess. And here's a mighty big mess that needs attention.

But part of me also thinks that I really don't have a choice, either. He was my little boy for 124 days. What's a mom to do?

The worst came true

2009-01-14T14:11:00.010-05:00

Almost four years ago, when we were in court on our last day with AJ, we read a six-page statement to the judge. One small sentence stands out, "We worry about the end-results for AJ if it turns out that she decides [parenting] is too much."

It was too much. For the last 3+ years, Peggy has been physically abusing my precious and perfect little boy, and only him. After he "fell down the stairs" and had a seizure, he was taken to the ER then sent home a few hours later. A few weeks later, he had another seizure and was taken back to the ER. They got suspicious. Aside from the two bleeding neural hematomas, there was evidence of 7 or 8 rib fractures, an arm fracture, and a pelvis fracture. His little body was covered in bruises. He spent four days in Pediatric ICU during which he slept most of the time. He has delayed speech, is very thin, has a slight limp, and can't walk any great distance.

Peggy has been charged with child abuse, and all three of her children have been removed from her custody. They are living with, and in the legal custody of their grandmother, for the last three weeks.

Peggy said that he got the brunt of her anger because she couldn't connect with him. The grandmother had suggested over the years that she return him to us. She adamently refused every suggestion that had anything to do with us.

The 9-month old's baby-daddy says he wants custody of him, but he has no job, no place to live other than Peggy's, and no means to support a child. The older daughter, who witnessed the abuse now mimics the abuse she saw her mother dole out on AJ and has since become abusive to him.

"We worry about the end-results for AJ if it turns out that she decides [parenting] is too much."

Sinking heart

2009-01-13T19:54:00.003-05:00

A couple times a year, AJ's grandmom and I email each other. No biggie, it's just part of that scab I can't stop picking.

She'd been on my mind and heart lately so I emailed a very generic message: "You've been on my mind, I hope all is well with you and yours."

She wrote back today that she now has custody of my AJ, his older sister, and his less-than-a-year-old brother. She said I should call her.

I'm feeling too much to actually do anything. Of course, my mind immediately goes right to we-can-get-our-son-back, then crashes into the reality of him being 3.75 years and not our son. He's got these two siblings, would I even want to contemplate taking on the 3 of them? Hell, I don't even know what the situation is with them, why they're with their grandmother, or anything. Part of me says to just stop picking that damn scab. What's done is done.

But I can't stop my heart from loving that little boy I rocked to sleep every night for more than 120 nights.

My bff Pam says she doesn't think I should call. Then she said that if I really felt calling was the best thing for me to do, she'd sit with me quiet as a mouse while I did. (How cool is that for a friend?)

Our Mighty Dream

2008-11-05T14:22:00.001-05:00

Langston Hughes wrote, in part:

"Let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again."

Our mighty dream is back. My brown child can see other brown children playing with their puppy on the White House lawn. America's children will see a black man as president and it'll be no big deal. Our children will remember being dragged out of bed in the middle of the night because this is That Important; when they're older they'll understand its importance.

Breathing again

2008-09-26T08:56:00.003-05:00

It's 10am and Mr. Handsome is still employed! Unfortunately, three of his direct-reports aren't. One of them was called at home last night so he wouldn't have to come in at all today. Everyone is breathing easier over that fact.

I, of course, had a major nightmare last night in which the employee came to our house and held me hostage all day. Mr. Handsome suggested I not be at home at all today, which would be fine except for the fact that the painters are beginning this morning and I need to be here for them. Maybe it's best the house is crawling with men today!

Nonethless, my husband still has a job, for which I'm thankful. We can breath again. For today, anyway.

***Update***

The engineer of concern left a voicemail on Mr. Handsome's machine at work promising not to do "anything stupid." It's all been quiet over there, and he was good about calling me every once in a while to let me know everything was ok.

Stretching

2008-09-25T09:03:00.004-05:00

I'm pretty tightly wound in a lot of ways. I'm a perfectionist. I'll research any subject within an inch of its life. I relish the minutiae of the obscure . If there's an odd fact to be recalled, I'm your girl. I read a lot and I know a lot of weird stuff.

My daughter, on the other hand, ain't. I've been practicing my deep cleansing mommy breaths lately as BabyGirl worked on her presentation poster for Careers Day tomorrow. I've done my very best to let her lead, with my direction, and she produced a lovely poster on being a meteorologist.

But the pictures were crooked! But a word was misspelled! But she did a drawing that she didn't like in the end so she just scribbled it out! But, but, but!

(Deep cleansing mommy breath.)

But she was happy with it. But she was pleased with her effort and the final result. But she's proud of her work.

And I have to learn better how to be happy with it, too. And to be pleased with her 2nd grade effort and her final result. And to be proud of her work.

It's a real struggle sometimes, as a parent and as a parent by adoption, for me to remember that I am not her and she is not me. I struggle sometimes with letting go of my own expectations appropriate for a 40+ year old professional geek and expectations appropriate for a 7-year old 2nd grader. I'm humbled by the huge growth this little person requires of me. It's good to grow and stretch.

I hope I just don't hyperventilate in the process.

Holding my Breath

2008-09-24T09:42:00.003-05:00

On Friday, Big Changes are coming to Mr. Handsome's company, namely, a 12% cut of salaried staff. As of now, his job appears to be relatively safe, thankfully, but I know that at least one of his direct-reports is getting cut.

Mr. Handsome has been very stressed about this, understandably, and last night I found out why his anxiety was so high: if a particular engineer gets cut, there are real concerns about whether or not he'll be able to keep it together or if he'll go postal. He's been known to behave erratically and he has lots of guns.

I was stressed about the potential life-changing events before, but knowing Mr. Handsome's additional concerns has me even more in knots. I told him that he owes it to everyone to make sure the local police are notified that there may be an issue; he couldn't live with himself if he didn't contact the police and something terrible did happen. Mr. Handsome and this particular engineer have worked together for years, most of them with the engineer as my husband's direct report. I'm afraid for him. I'm afraid for the engineer. I'm afraid.

Cyber Stalker

2008-09-11T10:14:00.000-05:00

I’ve become a cyber stalker. Not the scary kind, but the kind who just keeps tabs on someone who wouldn’t want tabs kept on them. Not very often, once a month or so.

I’ve sunk so low that I have created a fake Facebook account and say I’m in the same network as AJ’s mom so I can see her rather open Facebook pages. Some questions have been answered for me, like from where Peggy came up with is unusual middle name (one of her FB “sexy friends” has the same name).

Other than that, though, I’ve learned she has had a third child and is possibly pregnant with a fourth (status: “BOY O BOY.... Wat Have I Done!?”) and she refers to AJ as “my stupid ass lil man,” she’s cut off his incredible curls, and considers a bottle of Jim Beam an appropriate de-stresser after a day with her kids. She also has an entire online album of herself flipping the bird. Lovely.

I do get to see photos of him, though. The fact that he smiles in some of them gives me hope that his life isn’t as bad as his grandmother has led me to believe.

Kind of pathetic, I know. Like a scab I can’t stop picking and making it bleed all over again.

Oh my!

2008-09-11T09:31:00.003-05:00

My friend the BabyCatcher has me inspired to begin writing again. Well, her and the fact that BabyGirl is back in school and I have some time again.

Riding to school yesterday, my 2nd grader piped up and said wistfully, "I wish we could see Mitzie more." Me too, Sweet Pea, me too.

After writing last year about considering a change in our wills to remove her from the line of guardianship, then her magically appearing (well, dropping off a birthday gift when, unbeknownst to her, we were out for the evening), we haven't seen nor heard from her again. Sitting at the traffic light, I could check BabyGirl's face in the rearview mirror to see if I could get a clue as to her inner thoughts. All I saw was sadness.

"Do you think she's working all the time and that's why she can't see me?"

No, Sweetie, I don't think she's working that much right now, I could answer truthfully since Mitzie's dad told me she'd quit another job. Know what I think it is?

"What?"

I think it still hurts her heart so much that she wasn't able to be your everyday mom that she's afraid of feeling that kind of pain, so she just kind of avoids putting herself into a situation where she won't be able to ignore how much it hurts.

"Huh?"

Remember after we lost AJ and how sad I was for so long? Remember how some days I just cried all the time?

"Yeah. You were really sad. I'm glad that's over!"

It's not really over, though, I've just learned how to live with the loss better. Sometimes, it hurts as much as it did the day he left, sometimes I even forget he was part of our family, sometimes it's just like I've got a little splinter someplace that's a little annoying but not too bad.

"Really?"

And I'm absolutely terrified that we'll run into AJ sometime like we ran into Audrey's dad that day at the grocery market. I'm afraid seeing him would hurt my heart just as much as it did back then. I can understand how Mitzie would be afraid of feeling her pain, and it's got to be much worse since you grew in her and everything. Any of this make sense? It's kind of grown-up stuff...

"Sort of. No."

The important thing, BabyGirl, is to know that she loves you with her whole heart, she loves you and misses you. It's just too hard on her heart right now for her to see you right now. I know this because she's your mother and that's how mom's feel about their babies. We can only pray that in time, she'll find her way to see more of you.

"Uh huh. It's sure a good thing that we have Raoul, isn't it?"

Oh yes, my Love.

Didn't see that one coming

2008-07-05T10:23:00.003-05:00

So BabyGirl and I are at the grocery store, picking up a few things for our trip to Baltimore and DC. She's lazing in the main part of the cart and I've got a few things in the childseat. We come around a corner, and a gentleman about my age pulls his cart out of the middle of the aisle. I say not to worry because there's plenty of room in the aisle.

He, an African-American man, then notices BabyGirl's Sisterlocks (http://www.locks4life.com/ that's her on their home page), the amazing solution to all our hair woes, and strikes up a conversation. That he'd ask about them is not unusual because Sisterlocks are relatively new in the midwest and they're gor-ge-ous.

After a second or two, he asks, "Don't I know you?"

Well, yes he knows me. He sat in my living room and asked me to raise his daughter. He held my hand as she was being delivered. He told us he and her mother thought Mr. Handsome and I were the best ones to parent Audrey at this point in their lives, and they really wanted Audrey to have a sister like BabyGirl.

So I answered, "William, it's Mommela." If a really dark man can blanche, he did. BabyGirl wanted to know what was up and I could only say that this was Baby Audrey's daddy. "No, she's Naida."

BabyGirl and I then zoomed for the next aisle whereupon I hauled her out, abandoned the cart, and had a good long cry in the car. I can never go back to that grocery story again. After three and a half years, it still hurts as much as it did the night he called and said they wanted her back.

BIG DISCLAIMER: I fully support his right to parent his own child! I'd never deny him that right and I actively work to safeguard firstparent's rights.

But it still hurts like hell.

Cancer sucks.

2007-09-09T18:46:00.000-05:00

Childhood cancer sucks. Cancer sucks. Period.

Our friend Superhero Ari is in the second year of his three-year chemo treatment for acute lymphoblastic lymphoma. He's doing well, although the recent death of an age-mate has shaken him and his family. Please watch the video and do what you can to help. I sure wish I knew how to embed it, but, well, I don't.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGS4yE5v9rM

I am a rock

2007-09-03T10:38:00.000-05:00

BabyGirl was recently introduced to Simon & Garfunkle. Their music is great for long drives when she needs to rest but won't put up with lullaby music--enough vocal and musical variation to be interesting, yet smooth enough to be soothing.

She requests "I am a Rock" over and over. You know, the achingly sad one about someone who's been so deeply hurt by love that he lives surrounded by impenetrable walls. The one that sounds so nice, as long as you're not listening to the words.

But she is. She's listening to the words. Intently.

I get the song because I've been hurt by love that deeply. I get the song because I'm 43 years old and I've been around the emotional block a time or two. She's six, and as far as I know, still thinks boys are kind of goofy alien creatures.

There's been only one great loss in her life: not being raised by the ones who created her. Can a first-grader intellectually understand the Primal Wound? I doubt it. Can a first-grader feel the pain of that loss? I'm sure she can.

So we listen to it over and over. And my heart aches for her pain that I'll never fully comprehend, that my magical mommy kisses will never be able to fix.

A winter's day
In a deep and dark December
I am alone,
Gazing from my window to the streets below
On a freshly fallen silent shroud of snow.

I am a rock, I am an island.

I've built walls
A fortress deep and mighty
That none may penetrate;
I have no need of friendship, friendship causes pain,
It's laughter and it's loving I disdain.

I am a rock, I am an island

Don't talk of love,
But I've heard the words before;
It's sleeping in my memory.
I won't disturb the slumber of feelings that have died
If I never loved I never would have cried.

I am a rock, I am an island

I have my books
And my poetry to protect me,
I am shielded in my armor;
Hiding in my room, safe within my womb
I touch no one and no one touches me.

I am a rock, I am an island

And a rock feels no pain
And an island never cries.

Some days are just (almost) perfect

2007-08-20T20:38:00.000-05:00

Last Saturday, we had "family reunion" on the big kitchen calendar. My Norwegian/Swiss relatives are in Wisconsin, Mr. Handsome's Romanian/Jewish kin are in south Jersey. Nope, not our sides of the family, we were going to a reunion of our daughter's multiracial/African American/Eritrean side of the family, most of whom we'd never met.

What a treat it was. It was so great to have all these folks take one look at BabyGirl and exclaim, "We know who made you! She's written all over your face!" They're right, too. BabyGirl has Raoul's smile, but everything else is Mitzie. So many folks knew her from the photos proudly shown around by Mitzie's dad, one even asked specifically about a particular dress she wore in one (which made BabyGirl beam because it's her favorite dress e.v.e.r). The only thing that would have made the day perfect would have been to have Mitzie there herself.

When we got into this open adoption, I was terrified of the whole thing, the uncertainty, the unknown, the fear. But, we were certain that open adoption was the best for our child so we held our breath and jumped in. Oh, how glad I am we did. I am so thankful that we didn't let ourselves be overwhelmed by the fear of the unknown, that we trusted that tiny voice that kept telling us we could do it, that it would all be ok in the end because that's what's best for BabyGirl.

On the way home on Saturday, I watched BabyGirl in the visor mirror. She sat silently, lost in throught, and smiling to herself. When she seemed to be less in her own thoughts, I asked how it felt to be with all those people who are her relations.

"Good, Momma, it feels really good in my heart."

That's all I need to hear. I can't imagine not letting her have this in her life because I was too afraid of it.

Sometimes it's just overwhelming

2007-08-06T14:00:00.000-05:00

I know I've been gone for, like, months. I'm the Marketing/Publications manager at BabyGirl's school and trying to work with her home has been challenging. But I'm not here about me. I'm here to ask for prayers/thoughts/good wishes/karma for friends.

My best friend's dad had been in hospice at her home until his death a month ago. As an only child with both parents now dead, she's feeling lost and alone. Her husband, an active alcoholic who hasn't lived at home with her and the two kids for over a year, waited just one week after the funeral to inform her he wanted a divorce. She's a mess.

Dear friends of ours were part of the Pfizer debacle here in Ann Arbor and had a forced relocation to San Diego. In theory, San Diego sounds great, but they and their 3 kids are living in an 800-square foot two-bedroom rental because they can't afford to buy anything until the wife is working again. She's a nurse-midwife who was just hit with a personal lawsuit over a birth outcome that didn't go as well as anyone wanted; the investigation firm hired by the CA hospital said she never graduated from college or nursing school. They're stressed, far away from everyone who loves them, and nothing but nothing has gone right for them with this move.

A dear, dear friend has Fifth's Disease, normally not a problem for small children, but potentially very serious for adults with potential auto-immune complications. It appears her immune system will be affected and she may end up with lupus or rheumatoid arthritis.

About two years ago, a college friend, Jackie, died from ovarian/uterine cancers leaving her four children motherless. Her husband, another college friend, is an itinerant pastor. Before she got sick, they served as missionaries all over the world and were beginning to explore returning to Africa for a multi-year posting. He and the kids were turning that dream into a reality with a placement to George, South Africa and they were fundraising in preparation for a fall departure. Their house burned down last weekend taking with it the albums, photos, and momentoes they had from Jackie.

So, here I am. First real post in a long time and I'm asking for something from you. Please keep Pam, the BabyCatcher, Kristen, and the deTombes in your thoughts. Thanks.

School starts again Sept 4 and I'll be back more regularly after then.

Open question to the adoption community

2007-06-16T15:10:00.001-05:00

Our former adoption agency has invited me to be one of the prep group speakers.

For parents by adoption, what do you wish someone had told you before you adopted?

For firstfolks, what do you wish prospective adoptive parents knew?

For better or worse, I want to know. Bring it on.

Another quickie

2007-06-10T16:25:00.001-05:00

BabyGirl's school doesn't do report cards, they have portfolio-based assessments, instead. Here's BabyGirl's page from her human body unit. Mind you, these are dictated verbatim by Kindergarten Teacher Extraordinaire. The artwork is original.

Quick quote

2007-05-21T09:44:00.000-05:00

Our fridge got very, very sick last Monday and the repair guys couldn't come out until last Friday, leaving us without a fridge for those five days. Refrigeration has been a common topic of conversation at our house, needless to say.

My mom, who grew up on a farm in Wisconsin during the late 1930s and early 1940s, told BabyGirl about not having a fridge when she was a child. Grandma shared about her ice box and the Ice Man coming to deliver ice every couple of days. More exotically, her aunt didn't have an ice box but rather had a trap door in the kitchen floor that led to a small root cellar into which cold items were kept.

BabyGirl's comment:

Well, isn't that something! My teacher doesn't even know about that and
we've studied the Middle Ages.

(The fridge blew a $40 part that has to be ordered so I bought a little dorm fridge as a stand-in until the big fridge gets repaired in a few weeks. Inconvenient, but still much cheaper than a new fridge!)

Rats!

2007-05-09T19:15:00.000-05:00

Just when I thought I was laying low enough, I went and got employed. This is totally getting in the way of reading blogs and goofing off (and doing laundry and cleaning up the dust bunnies that are about to unionize under my bed and having a snack ready when BabyGirl comes home from school).

I'm afraid I've got to step out for a few more weeks. Wouldn't you know it, right when Mother's Day is coming up and I've got a lot on my mind and heart about it.

Work is filled with putting out fires left by my predecessor (Mar, the woman who wondered if it was worth the effort to parent a "child who wasn't her own," see below) and in figuring out a plan to get BabyGirl's little school back on marketing track.

Happy spring!

(Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to be asked and, in this dreadful economy, any job is hard to find. Ask my brother.)

Paragraphein rocks it out

2007-04-28T10:13:00.000-05:00

We've always told BabyGirl that adoption is one of those things in life that's both happy and sad.

While we're happy that she's in our everyday family, we're sad that she's not in Mitzie or Raoul's everyday family; we're happy that she has us as her everyday parents, we're sad for her that she doesn't get them as her everyday parents; we're happy for us that they asked us, we're sad that they were in a position in which they felt they had no choice but to ask.

We always try to make it ok for her to have conflicting feelings about our adoption, that both feelings are true and honest, even if it's confusing to hold multiple conflicting emotions at the same time. Life is like that: conflicting, confusing, and legitimate.

Paragraphein expressed this dichotomy eloquently. Go check it out. Read it slowly and thoughtfully. It's worth your time.

http://paragraphein.wordpress.com/2007/04/28/relinquishment-vs-adoption

mixed up order

2007-04-27T15:14:00.000-05:00

Oooh, go look for the Family Tree Assignment. I just posted it but it's showing up as the second one. It made me cry happy tears right in her classroom!

All unsettled

2007-04-25T12:22:00.000-05:00

This whole VirginiaTech/BabyEvelyn/AJ'sGrandmom/UnemployedBrother thing has me completely unsettled. I'm not sure why, but I've decided to take all of the books from my office and put them in boxes. Then I think I'm going to rearrange. I don't know. For now, I just want to get the books down and cleaned out. And there are a lot of books. A lot.

The thing is, I have no place to put the multitude of boxes so rearranging around them will be very difficult.

What was I thinking? This is just crazy of me. The thing is, going through this exercise isn't making me feel like I'm in more control of my environment, just dusty.

The Family Tree Assignment

2007-04-25T09:47:00.000-05:00

I knew it was going to happen sometime in BabyGirl's education, I just didn't expect it to happen in kindergarten. This month's theme at school is Trees. You know, trees: types of trees, identifying leaf types, ecology, growing seedlings, Earth Day, leaf prints, etc.

I just didn't expect they'd cover family trees, too.

Knowing this school, it doesn't surprise me, but I wasn't prepared for it. I didn't have an opportunity to do the adopted-family-tree talk provided by Adoptive Family Magazine, I didn't get to research e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g there is to know about family trees and adopted families, then try to get my 6-year old to understand it all. In fact, I didn't even know they were doing family trees until I walked in earlier this week.

Of course, BabyGirl handled it all with her usual aplomb without my coaching, angsting, or interfering.

Right there, in the leaf portion of her tree, she had four circles--labled Mom, Mom, Dad, and Dad. Off to the side were BestFriend and her husband, below us grown-ups were BabyGirl, BestFriend's two kids, and my parents. My favorite part, of course, is how she showed from whence she came.

I like this Nike ad re: Imus

2007-04-20T12:31:00.000-05:00

From the Sunday 4/15 New York Times, Sports section page 5.
Mostly white space, small Nike swoosh in the bottom right corner, about 12-point type size, all left justified.

Thank you, ignorance.

Thank for starting the conversation.

Thank you for making an entire nation listen to the Rutger's team story. And for making us wonder what other great stories we've missed.

Thank you for reminding us to think before we speak.

Thank you for showing us how strong and poised 18 and 20-year-old women can be.

Thank you for reminding us that another basketball tournament goes on in March.

Thank you for showing us that sport includes more than the time spent on the court.

Thank you for unintentionally moving women's sport forward.

And thank you for making all of us realize that we still have a long way to go.

Next season starts 11.16.07

Heavy heart

2007-04-18T19:27:00.000-05:00

Oh, this whole tragedy surrounding Baby Evelyn weighs me down, it fires an anger so intense I don't know what to do with it, it makes me ache in so many ways. I wanted to post on it as part of the blogger blitz but the weeping kept getting in the way. I know the fear and the pain her prospective adoptive parents are going through, but I also know what the right thing to do is, and keeping Evelyn certainly isn't it. I know how much they want to pack up the car and leave, no forwarding address, no cell phones, to just disappear with this child whom they love deeply and intensely. I have no doubt they'd die for her, just as any parent would. I know how much they want to believe that what they're doing is "in her best interest." I know how hard it is to lose the child(ren) you thought you were going to raise forever. My heart goes out to them. But the whole situation is just so incredibly wrong. It never should have gotten to this point. The child must be returned to her family now. Period. End of discussion. But the tears will go on for a long, long time.

AJ's grandmother invited me to get together with her in early May. She says she has lots to share about him, about how she'll be taking guardianship of AJ's older sister, about how my little man's life is a hard one. She said that AJ's mom apparently always intended to reclaim him once he was sleeping through the night, that she'd planned to do that with his sister. I'm afraid of what she has to tell me, I'm afraid I can't not go. I'm afraid of the pain I know I'm going to feel.

My brother is still unemployed and his little girls are getting that haunted look in their eyes because they know something's up, something big and bad. His last bout of unemployment lasted a long, long time.

So many things are weighing on my heart, I feel old and heavy and tired tonight.

Don't bother with me today

2007-04-13T15:33:00.000-05:00

Go read here.

http://newflowerblooms.blogspot.com/2007/04/on-grieving.html

It's better said than I could say.

Abebech, my hat's off to you on this one.

A Girl Like Me

2007-04-08T09:17:00.000-05:00

Vote for A Girl Like Me at http://www.cosmogirl.com/entertainment/film-contest-vote. As the white mom of a multiracial Eritrean/AfricanAmerican/Cacasian girl who, at 5 told me that white princesses are more beautifuler than brown princesses, this video hit especially close to home.

And let's help get this woman a $10,000 scholarship while we're at it.

Go vote. All the cool kids are doing it.

*******UPDATE********

There was this on the cosmogirl voting site:

"CosmoGIRL! and Take Action Hollywood announce our Film Contest finalists.
"We have determined that the online voting has been corrupted as a result of one or more instances of tampering with the voting process by users. As a result, none of the online votes will be counted, and we will submit all three of the semi-finalists to our panel of experts for final judging and selection of a winner."

What's up with that?

Good news and bad news

2007-04-04T08:07:00.000-05:00

Good news first:
When we got back from 2nd night Seder last night, there was an unexpected, pink, sparkly package on the porch for BabyGirl.

Would you believe Mitzie and her boyfriend had stopped by with a gift? You should have seen the look of pure joy on BabyGirl's face when we read the card. Heck, you should have seen the look of pure joy on my face when we read the card. BabyGirl hugged the card tight to her heart and said, "This is absolutely definitely going in my treasure box." She's absolutely definitely right.

But wait! There's more! There were two messages on the phone, one from Mitzie and one from Raoul, wishing BabyGirl a happy birthday.

When we did a little birthday gig last weekend with BabyGirl's best buddy, Lulu, who was born on April 1st, I said my own wish as the girls blew out their candles, and this momma's wishes come true.

And the bad news:
My brother, one of the legion of working poor, was laid off yesterday. His wife is a hair dresser who works part time, he was a technical writer. They have two young daughters, 4½ and 2. He was given $3,000 which would cover his COBRA medical coverage for 5 months. The contract technical writer he helped hire a year ago got to keep her job because she costs less than a salaried employee.

He went through a spell of unemployment just before my sister-in-law found out she was pregnant with their youngest, but managed to find a contract job that turned into salaried. He said he was just beginning to feel like he could breathe again, and now he got kicked in the gut. Again.

My brother is one of the nicest guys I know. He's also one of the smartest guys I know but he was always hampered by some severe learning disabilities. Of course, we're old enough that schools didn't know from learning disabilities when we were coming up. He spent most of his school years being told he was stupid and that he didn't try hard enough. He even had his 2nd grade teacher tell him that he didn't deserve to have survived his 1969 open heart surgery because her daughter didn't. He did some college but didn't finish.

Nothing, nothing has ever come easy for him, and yet he's still one of the nicest guys I know. It was just starting to look like life was smoothing out for him a little and now this. They have no financial cushion, they have no retirement funding, and I'm sick to my stomach with worry for them.

It just breaks my heart.

Happy Birthday, BabyGirl

2007-04-03T13:11:00.000-05:00

At 7:35 this morning, the time of her birth, after BabyGirl came in to my bed for morning snuggles and I sang Happy Birthday to her, we talked about Mitzie and Raoul.

We talked about how they were happy she was born, but sad that they weren't ready to be her everyday mommy and daddy. I told BabyGirl that one of the things I think is the most special about April 3rd is that Mitzie and Raoul were her everyday parents on that day; they were the only mommy and daddy she had right then.

I've deliberately not asked Mitzie or Raoul about their hospital experience because I want them to be able to tell it to her, I want it to be their information to give to her rather than something she learns from me then confirms with them. I told her what little I know about her birth (6 hours of labor, 7:35am, 12 days early). I told her April 3rd is their special day, and that April 4th is special to me because that's when we met.

BabyGirl, in her wonderfully perceptive way, said, "I'll bet Mitzie didn't want me to come out and be born because then she couldn't be the mommy anymore." I told her she just might be right about that, and that some of her may always want to crawl back in to keep being Mitzie's baby. And wanting that, I told her, is totally ok. Then she got bored with me and wanted breakfast.

Mitzie and Raoul are heavy on my heart today. Knowing how much I miss AJ gives me only the littlest hint of how hard it's got to be for firstfolks. And missing him can be crushing.

Early April is hard

2007-03-29T11:38:00.000-05:00

BabyGirl turns 6 next Tuesday, April 3.

It's a milestone I both celebrate and mourn because 6 means she's getting big, and it means she's not a little girl anymore. It's the end of an era. And because we've stopped trying to increase our family, I'll never get to parent a little girl again. Ever. She's done being a little girl and I'm done being the mom of a little girl. While I truly look forward to being the mom of a big girl, it sure was pretty great being the mom of a little girl. I celebrate how really cool she is, her curiosity and imagination, and what a neat kid she is. I can't wait to see more of who she's becoming.

And AJ turns 2 next Friday, April 6.

That's a milestone I can only mourn. It's another birthday we'll never celebrate with him, it's another year that we've missed him, it's another reminder that he's not our son.

BabyGirl said she wants a brother or sister for her birthday instead of gifts because a sibling "would be the bestest gift ever."

I think I'm going to go cry now.

Go figure!

2007-03-23T09:01:00.000-05:00

The day after I posted about changing our wills, guess who popped up. Mitzie!

I'm actually relieved because she indicated that she's feeling stronger and wants to be more involved with her daughter and with us, and that means we can set aside our will-change for now. Not that I want to avoid making any decision, I just didn't want to make that decision.

She said she went back to the agency for a counseling session and that it's helped somewhat. My heart goes out to her: just a few years after BabyGirl was born and she was beginning to really deal with that loss, Mitzie's big brother was killed in a hit-and-run accident by a retired Detroit police officer who then fled the state. WHAM! Another loss of a significant person in her life. She didn't really deal with either loss and that's made involvement really painful for her.

She said she's going to continue with counseling and that she's working toward reuniting with BabyGirl. I can't believe how happy I am that she'll be a part of our everyday lives, that BabyGirl will know her deep in her heart, that Mitzie is beginning to work with the losses in her life. Mostly, I'm just tickled that those two will have each other.

See? I'm not that great after all.

2007-03-12T08:24:00.000-05:00

A while ago, the Queen of Spain's son was asking about death http://queenofspainblog.com/2007/02/26/go-to-jail-go-directly-to-jail/#comments. She'd just had an operation and was in the hospital for a few days, her child developed a vague feeling of anxiety about death and being left alone. She asked for advice.

BabyGirl was experienced with the concept of death after we lost 5 loved ones (she even invented a song that went "when you're dead, you're dead, but your sprirt stays to looooove us"). We've talked about death a lot. I told the Queen what we do at our house, one thing was to make sure our wills are up to date and to let BabyGirl know that we've talked with people who have promised that she'll never be alone, that she'll always be taken care of, and that the judge knows about these plans. (BabyGirl is familiar with the importance of the judge from having to go see a judge about losing AJ, so we just went with that rather than explaining wills and trusts and attorneys.)

Back when BabyGirl was new, after she was legally our child, we wrote our wills so that her firstfolks would have, for lack of a better phrase, right of first refusal, should Mr. Handsome and I kick it. Mitzie first, Raoul second, then our dear-heart amazing-parent friends third (who are already as committed to openness as we are so there's no chance that BabyGirl and her firstfolks would lose each other). When BabyGirl was little-little, we thought this was right and appropriate that they would have the opportunity to raise her.

But we're not so sure about that anymore. Raoul, absolutely. He'd make a great full-time father for her--for any child lucky enough to be his. He and BabyGirl have a close relationship even though he lives down South and we're in the Midwest. Heck, he even flew up specifically join her on her first day of kindergarten! We have no qualms about him having the opportunity to be her daddy. We're confident that, if he chose to take on the responsibility, he'd be great at it.

Mitzie, though, not so much. We'd hoped she would have pulled her life together a little more by now. We don't see her often, she doesn't answer emails/calls/letters, invitations are ignored, and BabyGirl is not really comfortable with her. Despite living less than a mile from kindergarten, Mitzie was a no-show for first day of kindergarten pick-up.

I'm to the point now that I'd like to amend our wills to revoke her opportunity to be the mommy, because I'm not comfortable with this near-stranger, who is our daughter's firstmom, raising her. We don't know her values or plans, employment is sketchy, and we just don't know her like we know Raoul. Of course, our wills will always state that Mitzie and Raoul will always have open contact with them, no matter what.

Nonetheless, am I being a bad open adoption parent, or a good mommy? Can the two be reconciled in this case?

"For my two moms"

2007-03-11T10:54:00.000-05:00

There's been a lot of conversation on the blogs I read about what to call the various parents in an adopted child's life.

I've chimed in occasionally with what we do here. BabyGirl calls Mitzie and Raoul by their first names and says that they're her birthmom/dad or her firstmom/dad. I admitted that when she said they're her "real parents," I had a bit of a wobbly feeling. That one hit a little too close to home that, indeed, she didn't grow in my uterus and Mr. Handsome's sperm didn't kick-start my egg.

But, I added. It's not about me. It's about her processing her own story of how she came to be and how she came to be a part of our family. We've always believed that, as parents, it's not our job to do what's easiest or most comfortable for us, it's to do what's right for her. Period. Have I always been successful at living out that credo? Not always, but with regard to her relationship with Mitzie and Raoul, yes. I'm trying to remember that she's only 5 and she's doing her best to figure out some mighty big ideas. And if she wants to call them her real parents, I'll adjust and learn to celebrate that, too, because, after all, they're as real as we are.

So yesterday morning, she came charging into my home office with two folded pieces of paper saying, "These are for my two moms." She made beautiful portraits of us. Mine is hung up already and we put Mitzie's in the mail right away. I know she'll cherish it as much as I cherish mine.

Mitzie, with her lovely hugs-and-kisses top and a crown.

Me, a floating head.

Fashion Evolution

2007-03-04T11:52:00.000-05:00

I like to sew. I especially like to sew Halloween costumes for BabyGirl. When she was three, she started her passion for princesses and fairies and all things pink. I asked, why be a princess when you can be a queen, so for Halloween when she was 3½, I found the most wonderful double-faced satin that is pink on one side and orange on the other (she already had the cutest pair of orange patent leather mary-janes). Et voila, a Queen Esther dress sized large enough to wear the next spring to the Purim carnival at our temple.

The next autumn, two weeks before Halloween when I was knee-deep in black fleece trying to whip-up a lightening bug costume, BabyGirl received a come-as-your-favorite-princess party invitation. By that point, she'd discovered the Disney animated Cinderella and her best buddy Lulu had the store-bought blue Cinderella dress. She wanted to go as Cinderella. There was no way I was going to pay for the blue dress, so we came to a compromise: I'd retrofit her Queen Esther dress to look like the dress the mice made for Cinderella in the Disney movie. Deal.

Well, it's Purim time again. BabyGirl has sprouted another couple of inches, and the old Esther/Cinderella needed another face-lift. BabyGirl wore the latest incarnation of her dress this afternoon for the Carnival, but I think this is its last public showing since the bodice is getting too tight and there just isn't enough fabric to add yet more length.

Bless her heart, she says she wants to donate it to children who don't have any play dress-up clothes. We always say that it's a good thing we're raising her right because she just turns around and teaches us right back.

A new look for BabyGirl

2007-02-20T20:24:00.000-05:00

NEWS FLASH! The other front bottom tooth came out just a few days later! That Tooth Fairy is glad she bought a half-dozen of those fancy-schmancy gold $1 coins.

It was like this before school, totally creeping me out.

After school, BabyGirl was sportin' a whole new look! I heard the Tooth Fairy laid in a supply of those new gold dollar coins...

For those who've followed the hair saga, this hairdo consists of mommy-supplied double-stranded flat twists done on an angle from left to right in the front, the twists held with mini butterfly clips, then the rest a mass of the most gorgeous ringlets, curls, and a few snarls.

Hair salon disaster

2007-02-13T09:59:00.000-05:00

BabyGirl's long-awaited, eagerly-anticipated Very First Ever hair appointment was yesterday at 2:30. It was awful.

Because this was primarily a braiding salon and not a full-service salon, I pulled her out of school right before lunch to do the wash and comb-out. I sectioned and braided her hair into thick plaits so all they had to do was undo a section and make micro braids without too much pulling and tugging.

We got to the salon at 2:30 and were met by a bunch of blank looks. The owner of the salon, who was supposed to do BabyGirl's hair, wasn't there and hadn't left any notice with the rest of the loosely-organized staff about us coming in. They called someone and the woman came in after about 10 minutes. I should have followed my instincts and just rescheduled but, since I'd already taken her out of school (and that certainly wasn't going to become a habit), I felt obligated. Lesson learned.

When the new woman finished heating up then eating her lunch, she promptly undid all the thick braids I'd put in, fluffed BabyGirl's hair into a giant knotty afro, then got to work on those tender hairs at the nape of BabyGirl's neck. After the first two braids, I told her they were too tight against BabyGirl's scalp and they had to be looser--enough to stick a pinky in so she doesn't develop traction alopecia. The woman, who never even introduced herself, said she'd do them looser, although under protest. She didn't.

By the time the 4th braid was in, I could see the tears welling in my baby's eyes. By the 5th, I called it quits. She was trying to be so brave. She leapt into my arms and sobbed right there in the shop (this from a child who'd rather do anything than cry in front of people), not wanting to get down for a good 5 minutes. We packed up our stuff and went home, holding hands all the way, both of us feeling terrible.

We came home and spent the next 2 hours carefully picking out those 5 tight, tight braids and trying to comb through the rest of her hair. By then, we were both just done with hair for the day so I just put her in two big puffs and we'll come up with a style this weekend. A total of 6 hours of hair related activities for two puffs; what a waste.

I'm much more traumatized by the whole thing. I feel like I led my precious baby into a lion's den, I feel like I should have followed my instincts and left before anyone touched her head. I'm just glad I stopped it when I did, that I did protect my baby (eventually), that she slept well last night (unlike me) and seems ok now. I'm glad we'll never go there again.

Damn those Rice Krispies people

2007-02-08T23:45:00.000-05:00

For every one of our babies, I've chosen two songs to sing to them as they fall asleep, songs that are near and dear to my heart. While I love that each of them have had something special just for them, I'm also now left with old favorites that are now inextricably linked with the loss of those babies. I can't hear the songs without the aching, empty-arm heaviness washing over me.

AJ, the one of the four we were most certain would be our child forever, got the two songs I'd saved, hoping to sing them to my child some day. I knew better than to do it, to use my two most favoritest songs; I knew his birthmom still had options. I knew he might not be mine forever.

But she kept saying, for weeks and weeks, months and months, that she was certain of her choice, that she wasn't going to change her mind, all the while continuing to be given baby showers (unbeknownst to us at the time) while we got him through his first cold, clapped when he managed to sit up by himself, received his first smile, laughed with him as waves washed over his little piggies, reveled in that first wonderful time he slept through the night... We became a family as the months passed; I sang him the songs I'd saved since high school for my future babies.

So, AJ got my two most favorites: Over the Rainbow and Wonderful World. Not the traditional versions, but the version by Israel Kamakawiwo'ole with his gentle voice, sweet ukelele, and haunting opening bars.

And now every time Kellogg's hawks their stupid cereal, I have to hear it again. It hits me like a punch in the chest every time. Every damn time.

Listen here (sorry for the inelegant link but I'm not wise to the ways of the internet):
http://www.npr.org/templates/dmg/dmg.php?mediaURL=/asc/perfectsong04/20041123_asc_listeners01&mediaType=WM
I like it with the Windows Media Player ocean mist visualization; it looks my tears.

Childhood magic vs. reality

2007-02-06T09:52:00.000-05:00

BabyGirl's school has themes for each month around which all the lessons revolve. This month's theme is literary genres.

Here's part of an email from her Kindergarten Teacher Extraordinaire:

During the month of February, the Lower School is
exploring literary genres. Teachers have chosen a
genre to study with their class. I have chosen Folktales.
As a bridge between January [African American history]
and February’s themes, last week we read from More
Tales of Uncle Remus: Father Adventures of Br'er
Rabbit, His Friends, Enemies, and Others as told by
Julius Lester. This week we will be reading from: The
People Could Fly: American Black Folktales retold by
Virginia Hamilton.

Last Friday, we had a preliminary discussion regarding
the difference between fiction and nonfiction. After an
explanation of the categories, I showed the children
books and they told me if they thought they were fiction
or nonfiction. When I showed them a Disney version of
Winnie the Pooh, a debate erupted. Some children
thought it should be fiction and others insisted that it
was nonfiction. The reasoning for it being nonfiction was
that several children had “seen” Winnie the Pooh
“for real.” Cinderella was also nonfiction because several
children had seen the real Cinderella at Disneyland.
Despite convincing arguments from both camps, no one
budged from their original stance. Hopefully, the rest
of my examples will be less controversial.

Any guess who instigated the debate? That would be my BabyGirl.

Despite her familiarity with basic literary genres, she's adamant that Pooh and Cinderella are nonfiction. And I just don't have the heart to disabuse her of that notion. That kind of childhood magic has such a short shelf life, I just don't have the heart to hasten its end.

Gratefully, Kindergarten Teacher Extraordinaire didn't get all I'm-the-teacher-and-I-know-all-the-answer-y (which would have been totally unlike her). Instead, she simply commented that BabyGirl--and the others in her camp--had a good point, and let it go at that.

Respect for the brevity of childhood magic, respect for different points of view, modeling the behavior I hope BabyGirl continues to develop.

Oh, Molly

2007-02-01T09:43:00.000-05:00

Molly Ivins, I'll miss your words, your humor, and your point of view. May you rest in peace.

Being BabyGirls's mommy is a waste?

2007-01-29T10:52:00.000-05:00

On Friday, I chaperoned BabyGirl's field trip. I drove a minivan full of children plus the school's new Marketing/Admissions person, Mar.

Mar’s young, in her 20s, very well-educated (she’s working on a PhD in Educational Policy, has an MS in social work, an MA in history, and is thinking of picking up a JD in her spare time); first-generation American whose parents came from Jamaica; and passionate about children, education, and social welfare. Since Mar’s new to our area and hasn’t made it to that museum yet, I invited her to come with us, and, well, I was assigned to drive FIVE kids and needed another grown-up to manage the chaos.

I like her. She’s young, idealistic, and working hard to meet the goals she’s set for herself to make the world a better place. She reminds me of me when I was her age: focused and driven on education and career.

In the blizzard-slowed hour-long drive, we talked. Mar mentioned that some of her friends are starting to marry and begin families, and that she’s not interested in any of that yet. I reiterated that her focus on education and career are fine (not that she needed my affirmation), then she said that she wonders if, in 10 or 15 years, she might regret not having started a family yet. I mentioned that there are lots of ways to make a family; that it’s about being a parent, not being pregnant; there are children in need of families; and that medical science can work wonders.

Her response? That my point about being a parent vs. being pregnant is poignant but that:

"It seems like putting all the effort into a child who isn’t your own is a
waste."

This, from someone with a Master’s Degree in Social Work and working at my daughter's school, was disheartening and a little alarming.

I don’t think she knows I’m a mom-by-adoption, and I wasn’t about to get into a big discussion on the validity of parenting-by-adoption because the car was filled with BabyGirl’s school friends. But I still find myself getting torqued up about it.

Pink Curtains

2007-01-11T10:14:00.000-05:00

I know the building because BabyGirl and I drove them to the hospital when labor started. I know the windows because I helped her down the stairs between the contractions.

Driving past the apartment complex where Baby #3 (Audrey, to us) lives with her parents, I saw that she has new pink girly curtains in her room. She'll be two years old in a few weeks.

Why does it still hurt so much? It's not like she was with us for very long--only 4 days. Why do I still feel the need to look at those windows?

When I "interviewed" BabyGirl for the big letter to her firstfolks, one question was what she wished for the world. Her answer: that everyone could have a brother or a sister...

It's official!

2007-01-10T14:12:00.000-05:00

My consulting business is up and running--legally. I've been consulting for a while, informally and without registering with the state, but, as of 1:27 this afternoon, I made an honest woman of myself.

AI is an official business providing architectural research, architectural history reports, National Register nominations, Historic Structures Reports, Section 106 Reviews, and restoration consulting. Now, all I need are some business cards and enough clients to keep myself busy while BabyGirl is at school. I can begin advertising now that I'm legal so that should help with the clients, I hope, and the business cards are in process at a local print shop.

I'm excited and scared to death at the same time. This is real grown-up stuff and I haven't been a real grown-up for over six years. I have a surprising lack of self-confidence especially knowing what all I accomplished when I was still working full time.

I once read that Harriet Tubman once said that when she got scared (and she had a helluvalot more to be scared about), she just "put her scaredness under her feet and stood on it." Since I haven't worn high-heeled grown-up shoes in the longest time, I should be able to balance on my giant bubble of scaredness pretty easily in my sensible mom-shoes. I hope. Even that feels a little tenuous right now.

Just keep breathing, just keep breathing...

What to say?

2007-01-02T14:15:00.000-05:00

A couple of times a year, I handwrite a loooong letter (10-15 pages) to BabyGirl's firstfolks filling them in on the mundane and every-day details of her life. Everything from her current fascination with fairies and princesses to how we selected her kindergarten to her favorite colors and how she fills up time during the day. I take notes over time to make sure I get the details right, and I try to help them to feel like they're a little more involved in her parenting.

We keep the original in BabyGirl's memory box and send copies to her firstfolks. No one else gets to see these letters--not that there's anything incredibly private in them, we just want the letters to be special for just her firstfolks, not some big distribution list; after all, if they'd been able to be the mommy and the daddy, they'd already know this stuff. Right?

It's about time to get going on a new letter. I wonder what, specifically, firstmoms and firstdads would want included. I have no idea if anyone other than me is reading this, but I'd love to hear ideas from the firstfolks out there. What would you want to know?

I'd send her cash if I could...

2007-01-02T13:54:00.000-05:00

I'm about the biggest law-abiding geek there is. Especially when it comes to children. But if I knew how to find a momma and her twins, I'd send them money since she's already spend nearly a half-million dollars to get her babies back.

Surfing for new blogs to follow, I came across http://away2me.typepad.com/ and was incensed to read two articles from two newspapers. 10 hours after signing adoption placement paperwork for her twins, their momma changed her mind. Within the laws of Florida, she was entirely within her legal rights, and the children should have been returned to her immediately. The babies are 17-months old and still living with their potential adoptive parents. There's so much wrong with the whole thing!

http://www.heraldsun.com/durham/4-803325.cfm and http://www.newsobserver.com/102/story/525742.html

My heart goes out to the momma. I'm angry at the potential adoptive parents for not returning the babies ASAP. I'm furious at a legal system that would allow this to happen. I'm anguished for a culture in adoption that makes this an all-too common story.

Christmas time is here

2006-12-24T11:52:00.000-05:00

Well, it’s not the picture I had in my head but it’s still pretty darn good. Better, even.

No, when I was a girl, teenager, or young woman, my picture of my future included a handsome husband, two adorable moppets who were the exact synthesis of the best of the both of us, a beautiful Christmas tree covered with family-made and heirloom ornaments, and lots and lots and lots of Christmas lights. The real meaning of Christmas would be celebrated with reverence and little regard for commercialism.

I’ve got that handsome husband, but all the rest is different. One adorable (when she’s not making me crazy) African American/Eritrean/Caucasian moppet who looks nothing like Mr. Handsome or me, plus three other babies who are not ours but are still ours, a pewter menorah with a full compliment of candles, and not a decorated tree or twinkly light in sight.

No, it’s not the picture I had, my fantasy future. Instead, I have a wonderful reality with a husband who loves me and whom I love, a daughter we adore, and a season filled with family, tradition, and, most of all, love. What more could I hope for? Not a single thing.

Oh shit.

2006-12-17T16:24:00.000-05:00

BabyGirl and I were at a birthday party yesterday. In the din of the 5-year olds dancing to traditional music from India, another mom pulled me aside. I like this woman. I've known her since infant Gymboree. She's a nurse-midwife, aka, the BabyCatcher.

A client of hers had been in the process of adopting an infant who, coincidentally, the BabyCatcher happened to deliver a few months ago. The potential birthmom also had a 10-month old at the time. NewBaby goes home with the potential aparents, everything looks like it's following the plan. Birthmom asks aparents if they'd want to adopt the older child, too. They hesitate, but don't say no. Birthmom says never-mind and reclaims NewBaby shortly before her consent hearing leaving the devastated aparents wondering what the hell happened and vowing to never try open domestic adoption again but rather go international instead, because there's no chance for a change of plan.

Now, mind you, I'll always be the first to protect a woman's right to choose to parent, I'll always be the first to stand up for truly ethical open adoptions. This is in no way a rant or screed against potential birthmoms who change their minds--for whatever reason. I whole heartedly believe that unless a woman comes to the decision without coercion or pressure, the adoption shouldn't happen. Even if the change happens at the last minute, like ours.

This isn't about that situation, it's about what the BabyCatcher said next:
Would you and Mr. Handsome consider them, now 4- and 14-months old, since the mom is still talking about adoption?

Immediately, a whole list of questions come to mind. How much real and helpful counseling has this woman received? There must have been something that was causing her to hesitate about continuing with the adoption plan in the first place, was it an uncomfortable relationship with the prospective aparents, some look they gave each other? Were they starting to exclude and marginalize her already? Was it because she really wants to be the mommy and shouldn't make an adoption plan at all? Was it because she needed a way to call the whole thing off without feeling too guilty for putting them through the pain of losing the baby they started to bond with? Afterall, it's got to be easier to be angry at someone than to feel guilty? (Hey, that last one is just me, I'd like to think that moms have some compassion for devistated, shell-shocked, and heart-broken prospective aparents after a change of plan.)

And not to ignore the issues that we still have at our house! I'm almost done selling all the baby stuff (to the tune of nearly $500 so far, thankyouverymuch). Do we want to get back into the baby business again--and with two of them? I just started a consulting business and landed my first paying client. Could we put BabyGirl through all that again; heck, she still calls AJ her brother and mourns losing him. Could we somehow manage to not take the babies until parental rights are terminated and still make ethical choices and decisions that we could explain with integrity to them? (Throw in something about having cake and eating it.)

I almost wish the BabyCatcher never asked. It's too hard to have to go through these decisions again. We're out of the pool and we're ok with that, sad but ok. But I still miss babies and I'd always wanted more than one...

Am I really ready to be done expanding our family?

2006-11-27T13:56:00.000-05:00

Thanksgiving--the good part

Putting on a traditional dinner this year seemed too overwhelming to me. So I didn't. Instead, we ordered up six pizzas, made a big salad, and had pie for dessert. One of the beauties of this plan is that we could invite lots more people, spend lots less money, and I could actually enjoy it rather than be exhausted.

Ever since BabyGirl came home, I've always had this dream of a huge Thanksgiving dinner with our family--all of it--around the table. Invitations have been made; her first families never showed. This year, I didn't have the heart to deal with BabyGirl's disappointment since her first mom was a no-show at a special school day just a few days earlier.

With the switch to the pizza idea, I felt a little better about trying one more time. We issued invitations and didn’t let BabyGirl know.

And a miracle happened:

FirstDad came. We got some time to show off school work and for them to have some quiet together. FirstMom, her dad, and his girlfriend came. And FirstMom’s boyfriend, too. It was a little awkward for FirstMom and FirstDad to be together again, but they did it for BabyGirl.

And BabyGirl got to sit on the sofa between them, all snuggled in, and getting loved up.

And one of my grandest dreams came true. I am so grateful to them, for so many reasons.

2006-11-07T15:16:00.000-05:00

November 7

Go vote. All the cool kids are doing it.

My Rapist

2006-11-03T21:06:00.000-05:00

Every week in the New York Times Sunday Magazine, there’s a short piece for the Lives section. On 10/29, the piece was "My Rapist" by Maureen Gibbon. In short, the protagonist deals with the emotional fall-out of reading the engagement announcement of the man who raped her when she was 16. About half-way through, she writes:

After I left at 17, I never lived in my hometown again. When I
returned for short visits, I rarely left my parents’ house. I felt
as uncomfortable and vulnerable as I did when I was 16. But
that was another gift my rapist bestowed—agelessness.
Because I think so frequently of that night in April 1980, my
teenaged self is still strong inside me. Because of my rapist,
I’m forever young.

My daughter’s birthmother, Mitzie, was 16 when she became pregnant, 17 when my daughter was born. We saw Mitzie a lot when BabyGirl was really a baby, before she and Ramone broke up. We haven’t seen her much at all in the last couple of years despite repeated invitations and close proximity.

In an effort to understand her journey more, I emailed a blogging birthmom looking for insight. This blogging birthmom is being effectively shut out of her son’s life by his parents, while we feel like we’re being shut out by our daughter’s first mother. Anyway, she suggested that perhaps Mitzie is kind of stuck in her late teenage-hood, even though she’s nearly 23.

And that got me thinking how much like a rape losing one’s child to adoption might be. There isn’t really a choice in either situation, both are events that stays with the victim for her lifetime, both result in the woman losing a part of her soul.

Yeah, yeah, we all like to say that adoption is a choice. But was it really a choice for her, for them? I’m confident that our agency counsels pregnant women and couples well because Mitzie told me how they had her go to the store to price diapers, formula, clothes, and all the gear babies require. They helped her work out a budget. They helped her sign up for all the assistance programs for which she was eligible and to get a part-time job so she could finish school. They helped her work out a way to ask her mother to help raise BabyGirl, they even helped her to ask Ramone’s mother for help. They explored all the options and angles to make it possible for Mitzie and Ramone to be the mommy and daddy, and I’m grateful the agency made them go through those steps.

But was adoption really a choice for them? They didn’t have any family support—emotional or financial—for raising her, their two part-time jobs and public assistance wouldn’t cover the bills, both families said they’d have to find new places to live. To choose means to select from a number of possibilities; pick by preference. They didn’t have the luxury of a real choice, the decision they made was not their preference. They didn’t choose to make an adoption plan for BabyGirl, they just didn’t have any choice not to.

…Because I think so frequently of that [morning] in April
[2001], my teenaged self is still strong inside of me.
Because of [losing] my [daughter to adoption], I’m forever young.

And sometimes maybe being young means blowing off dates, not returning phone calls, and ignoring the letters. We desperately hope she’ll come back around sooner rather than later. But how hard it must be to look into the faces of the ones who have the one thing she’s always wanted: a family with her daughter.

And how do I explain this to a five-year old who wants to know why Mitzie never comes to see her?

2006-10-26T21:10:00.000-05:00

Love, love, love that kid

1. She's learning to read and write in kindergarten and loving it.

2. Sometimes, I just grab her up and smooch all over her face and tell her that I'm squeezing in so much love she'll never, never be able to forget how much she's loved.

3. Last week, BabyGirl was busy on a secret project and, at dinner, presented me with this beautiful card:

I love you
too much
to forget
Love Lea xoxoxox

2006-10-25T10:06:00.000-05:00

This is a tricky grief.

I don't know how to do this one.

How do I grieve the loss of a son who was never really mine, but who still holds a place deep in my heart? How do I grieve for someone who isn't dead? Will I ever stop looking into the face of every little boy his age trying to see his big brown eyes and his light-up-the-room smile? Will I ever stop feeling his heaviness on my shoulder when he was asleep? Will it ever stop ripping my heart out when BabyGirl asks when the next baby is going to come stay with us, even though she knows we're out of the adoption pool?

2006-10-24T11:14:00.000-05:00

Our family of Three (Seven, really), parts 1 and 2

Before BabyGirl became our daughter, we'd had another placement. It was pretty much a no-brainer that this situation wasn't going to last. The 19-year old mom had been living with his 32-year old father since before they conceived him. Her teenaged heart had her life with their child all planned out and it was a nice vision. At her 8-month medical exam, she learned that she had an STD then subsequently learned that it was from her boyfriend who'd been tomcatting around and, by the way, he already had a child for whom an adoption plan was made. She freaked, broke up with him, moved home, and essentially decided that if the baby wasn't around, she could just forget the whole thing. He was with us for four days. We'd named him Langston to honor Mr. Handsome's Uncle Lou and for my favorite poet, Langston Hughes. Now he's Deon and growing up in the next town over.

Four months later, BabyGirl was born. She stayed, and we're family forever and ever. Amen.

2006-10-23T12:27:00.000-05:00

I'm selling all the old baby stuff.

Our AJ is never going to come back to us.

He's some other little boy now, at 18-months old.

I wonder if this pain will ever end.

2006-09-18T10:21:00.000-05:00

I listened to the terrific radio show This American Life, hosted by Ira Glass from WBEZ in Chicago, last weekend and found myself in tears, pained, and very afraid. The show itself was about unconditional love and featured two stories about parents and their children. One story was about a child who was adopted from a Romanian orphanage at age 7 and came home with severe attachment disorder, among other things; the other was about a family with twin sons, one of whom who has severe autism, and the parents' struggle over that child's institutionalization.

Ok, what got me, though, was the introduction to the show. Here's a portion of the blurb from the show website:

Hard as it is to believe, during the 30's and 40's
a whole school of mental health professionals
decided that unconditional love was a terrible
thing to give a child. The government printed
pamphlets, warning mothers against the dangers
of holding their kids, and even a mothers'
organization endorsed the position that mothers
were dangerous – until psychologist Harry Harlow
did a series of experiments with monkeys that
proved the whole idea was insane.

What Harlow did was to take brand new baby monkeys away from their mothers and put them in cages with substitutes. Some were metal mesh cylinders with bottles of food, some were covered with soft fabric and no food. He was testing the prevailing theory that attachment comes from feeding so if that's all there is to it, the baby monkeys would hang with the food-mommies and not the cozy-mommies. Nope, they'd spend almost all of their time with the cozy-mommies, and leave only to eat or explore. If the cozy-mommies were removed, the baby monkeys were anxious and didn't play; if the cozy-mommies were there, the baby monkeys were confident and soothed. Ok, cozy trumps food. No surprise (anymore) there.

Then he upped the ante. He made the evil-mommies. Mommies that shocked the babies, mommies that were spiked to poke into the babies and make them jump off, mommies that had really scarey faces. And here's the part that stabbed me in the heart: Those little baby monkeys returned over and over again to be shocked or poked or scared over and over again; they cooed, they cajoled, they did everything our precious little human babies do when they're trying to get our attention. They did everything they could think of to try to fix the broken relationship with their mommy-figures.

And what does this have to do with me and my family? We haven't seen BabyGirls's birthmother but twice in the last three years despite repeated plans (she's a no-show), emails, phone calls. She lives only a few miles away.

My fear--my gut-wrenching, reduce me to a quivering mass of mommahood fear--is that my beautiful baby will internalize that broken relationship and do everything she can think of to fix it. Does that mean my baby might be more likely to try to identify with her birthmom by also getting pregnant at 16? Might she be more likely to make spectacularly bad choices when it comes to schooling and men (aside from BabyGirl's birthfather who is a gem amongst men) to be a little more like her birthmom? Can I love BabyGirl unconditionally enough, support her enough, to help her through her teenage-hood and come out the other side reasonably healthy and whole?

2006-09-14T09:47:00.000-05:00

Love Thursday

I don't know who started this one but I like it so I'm going with it. Every Thursday, a post or photo that exemplifies love in all its many forms.

Here's BabyGirl and me at our fancy Going to Kindergarten lunch and tea with BestFriend and BabyBestFriend. We all wore dresses and ate salmon crepes, then tea and homemade vegan DingDongs afterwards. Lovely!

2006-09-13T09:43:00.000-05:00

The Lunch Lady

Today's my first day as Lunch Lady at BabyGirl's school. I'm generally a pretty quiet person, I generally prefer quiet environments, and I generally prefer to be inside. So, of course, I had to sign up to be the Wednesday Lunch Lady because it made BabyGirl happy.

And what does this entail? Holding down the kid-induced chaos of two lunch periods (11:30-noon, noon-12:30) and outside play time with the entire school! Gee whiz, the things I'll do for that kid. The idea of all those little hooligans swirling around and yelling in the little lunch room, followed by outside time on this, our third rainy day in a row, is a little intimidating. But since I have BabyGirl convinced that I'm a Brave Momma, slayer of monsters and relocator of spiders, I'll go and find the joy in their abandon. Then I'll come home to my empty house and have a cup of tea in the silence.

Post Lunch Lady Update
What in the wide wide world of sports was I thinking? I'm sure I'll work into it but with the rain--that started the minute the little rugrats were supposed to go outside, mind you--it was an "inside recess" day. I was assigned to keep an eye on the kindergarten room into which about a zillion kids ran because the best toys are in there. One boy took off, then lost, his hearing aids (the better to not hear me, my Dears); a girl somehow managed to scrape her thigh and then hiked her pant leg up to her crotch to display the wound; a kindergarten boy wanted desperately to build stuff with the big guys but didn't know how to join them and had a little melt-down (hooray for the big guys who figured out the situation long before I did and invited him in); BabyGirl declared herself "the helper's helper" and didn't leave me. Ok, ok, I secretly dug the last part. It was good to see her in the middle of the day.

I was missing her so much yesterday that I got all teary at the grocery store yesterday when I saw a mom and her child tooling around the aisles while pushing the pint-sized kids' shopping cart. When the kid careened into my shopping cart, the mom apologized and I nearly burst into tears! She thought it was sweet.

2006-09-11T12:39:00.000-05:00

Get this one from Dear Abby:

DEAR ABBY: Four years ago, during my freshman year in college, I gave birth
to a beautiful little boy. His father and I made the joint decision to place him
for adoption. Thankfully, his adopted family keeps me involved with his life by
sending me pictures and frequent updates. I have no regrets about my decision.

I am soon to be married to the most wonderful man on Earth. Recently,
during our premarital counseling, the question came up concerning how we would
tell our children about the son I had. After discussing this issue further, my
fiance and I agreed that we would like our children to know about their
half-brother from their earliest memory. Our problem is, we don't know how to
tell them in a way that will not upset them, confuse them or scare them. Any
suggestions? -- JESSICA IN SOUTH CAROLINA

DEAR JESSICA: I do not agree that your children should be told "from
their earliest memory" that they have a half-brother who was adopted by another
family. It will be easier for them to understand when they are older, and you
are talking with them about the facts of life and the consequences of
unprotected sex. They need to be able to engage in a dialogue with you about it
at a time when they can fully comprehend your honest answers. Please consider
what I have said.

Whaaaa? Did she just tell this woman that her son, her firstborn child, is a consequence??? Like a time out or getting grounded? Losing use of the car or no TV? I mean, here is a woman who made an adoption plan with the support of the baby's first father, who is in contact with her son, and stated right out that she has no regrets, looking for a little direction on how to maintain her integrity with her future children and ABBY TELLS HER THAT HER PRECIOUS CHILD IS A CONSEQUENCE? Is anyone else as annoyed as hell at this one? And that condescending "Please consider what I have said" at the end? Sheesh!

Boy, is this Abby woman out of touch. Should these future children never be told of relatives who live far away and may never meet them? Out of sight, out of mind?

A simple, "You're my second baby, but the first one to whom I'm the mommy" is a good opener followed by "I wanted to be able to give Junior all the things your daddy and I can give to you, but I was too young then and couldn't care for Junior as well as I wanted him cared for. Madge and Julio were ready to be parents so they adopted him and became his mommy and daddy. I'm ready to be a mommy now and nothing is going to change for you and me and Daddy." That's pretty much what we told our daughter and she's understood her story from her earliest memory without emotional scars or undue stress.

And shouldn't a child be taught the basics of "the facts of life" from their earliest memory, too? But it's equating her first child with a consequence that really pisses me off.

Here's my letter to Dear Abby:
Your response to Jessica in South Carolina, a birth mother who was looking for guidance on how to tell her future children about her first baby, was way off base, and, frankly, insulting.

To equate her child with a consequence akin to getting grounded, a time out, losing use of the family car--or, worse, as a cautionary tale--is downright wrong. Every child is a miracle, no matter how they arrived on the earth.

Understanding that their mother had a previous child for whom she made an adoption plan will never be "easier to understand" when they're older because the information will be sprung on them. The only way for it to become a simple fact of life is to know it from their earliest memory.

In normal conversation Jessica can say something like "You're my second baby, but the first one to whom I'm the mommy" is a good opener followed by "I wanted to be able to give Junior all the things your daddy and I can give to you, but I was too young then and couldn't care for Junior as well as I wanted him cared for. Madge and Julio were ready to be parents so they adopted him and became his mommy and daddy. I'm ready to be a mommy now and nothing is going to change for you and me and Daddy."

That's pretty much what we told our daughter whom we adopted and she's understood her story from her earliest memory without emotional scars or stress.

When a child knows something from his or her earliest memory, it's just normal; when a big piece of news is laid on them as a warning against sex (and you assumed that Jessica and the baby's father didn't use contraception when they could have become pregnant from contraception failure), it becomes a scandal.

As a mom-by-adoption in a very open adoption and after many years of studying and researching contemporary adoption related issues, I can say with some authority that you're just plain wrong on this one. Please consider what I said.

Write to her and let her know how you feel: http://www.uexpress.com/dearabby/dearabby_form.html

2006-09-02T19:36:00.000-05:00

I didn't even THINK of this

Oh dear, with the onset of kindergarten in just a few short days, I have to begin packing a lunch for BabyGirl. Holy tomato! While I love to cook, I seem to have a hard time just getting dinner on the table for us, how am I going to get dinner on the table AND keep BabyGirl fed at school? Thankfully, a google search on "school lunches" and "brown bag lunch" gave me some ideas. Nonetheless, I'm hoping her brand-spankin' new pink and flowery insulated lunch bag with coordinated flowery Thermoses (Thermosi?) will be enough to keep her interested in eating. Fortunately, this is a short week and Thursdays are bagel day (with cream cheese and chicken noodle soup), so I have to come up with something for only three days.

This is not a child who eats quickly. No, she's practically forming her own branch of the Slow Food movement. There are days when both Mr.B and I have been finished with our dinner for upwards of a half hour and she's still poking away at it. We're at the point now what we just announce the end of dinner (after a count-down) and we get up from the table. Dessert is reserved only for Friday nights--to enhance the sweetness of Shabbat and to un-link the "how much do I have to eat to get dessert" issue.

Last week, Best Friend and I took our daughters to a tea and dessert to celebrate their kindergarten-hood. Best Friend had to get home by a particular time to relieve the babysitter, and she couldn't just leave since we'd all driven together. There was BabyGirl taking her own sweet time with her dessert (homemade vegan DingDongs). I finally said, with a wink, to just put large pieces in her mouth and swallow them whole to which she replied, also with a wink once her mouth was empty, "Hey, do you want to have a trip to the emergency room?" Best Friend and I just about fell out on that one. I'm going to miss that girl when she's at school for 6-hours a day.

2006-08-19T09:35:00.000-05:00

Guess who's coming to breakfast

I sent an email to some important people letting them know a very auspicious event will occur on September 5: BabyGirl begins her new life as a kindergartener. I asked them to send a quick note to her to be read that morning letting her know how excited they are for her and that she's loved. Almost immediately, we got a phone call from her firstdad, who now lives in the South (we're in the Midwest) for engineering school. He booked a flight and will be home for her first day of school. How great is that? Wonderfully great.

This is a guy who loved school, who loves the girl he helped create, and has always been as involved as he could in her life. Had his life circumstances been different, he would have been a terrific dad to her; if he has more children in the future, they will be very blessed to have him. Anyhoo, we're just tickled to pieces that he'll be able to join us for breakfast that morning and will join us on the ride to school to see her off.

I was thinking of hosting a small champagne brunch for the other playgroup moms whose babies will also begin kindergarten that same day. I saw it in RealSimple magazine and I like champagne; it seems like a good way to celebrate/mourn our new status as moms of school-aged children.

2006-08-11T07:35:00.000-05:00

Huh? What was that you said?

I knew it would happen one day, I just didn't expect it would happen at 5 years, 4 months, and 8 days.

BabyGirl woke up early in a pissy, hungry mood because she hadn't bothered to eat lunch or dinner yesterday. For whatever reason, there's not much else that gets me so pissy as a kid who doesn't eat then complains of hunger. Anyway, as I was saying, "put more eggs on your fork and eat them" for the millionth time, she hit me with it.

"I wish Firstmom and Firstdad were my parents."

Now, we have a very open adoption, we see them as frequently as we can, and they are very much in our lives even though we don't see them all the time. Before our daughter became our daughter, the agency had us talk about our fears about parenting by adoption. Hearing my teenager spit out those very words was the second thing on my list (right after a birthparent reclaiming their/our child before the consent hearing--something that happened 3 times).

I must say I responded well. I didn't get upset, I didn't hyperventilate, all I said was, "I'm sure they seem like much more fun right now, don't they?" and kept on reading my NYTimes. Most remarkably, it didn't even phase me! What do I think this means for me? I must be really confident that I'm her mommy, Mr. Handsome is her daddy, and that we're a family.

Aside from the crappy, pissy way the day started, it was a pretty nice way to start out her last day of daycamp.

2006-08-10T14:18:00.000-05:00

Beautiful, beautiful book

I was just re-thumbing through one of my new favorite books, Soul Sanctuary: Images of the African American Worship Experience, by Jason Miccolo Johnson. It's wonderful.

http://www.soulsanctuarybook.com

2006-08-10T09:08:00.000-05:00

Daycamp, Day 4

So BabyGirl is off at daycamp, it's after 10am, and I'm still sitting here like a lump. Spun through the tv channels only to realize there's still nothing on, then found the energy to break that spell. So now I'm wasting time on the computer. What I should be doing is taking a shower and getting ready for yoga at noon. I'm simply at a loss with an empty house or how to motivate myself as a grown-up and not a mom. Does that make any sense?

I quit work about a year before BabyGirl came home and managed to amuse myself pretty well then, but I was in graduate school (again) so I had something productive to do with my time. I finished that second master's in April 2005 (three weeks after our 4th baby came home) and now I'm adrift with my 6-hours of daily solo time this week. I'm actually glad daycamp is done tomorrow! I've defined myself as a stay-at-home mom for so long, I'm not sure what my grown-up self-definition is anymore. I think I know, but I'm pretty terrified of stepping out there again. I opted to leave my former industry to train for one I actually care about, so, in the unlikely event that I'm able to find part-time work in my new field, I'll be the new kid. At 42.

So I ask, how does a reasonably-intelligent formerly-working woman begin to become a grown-up again, separate from my baby bird who is quickly getting ready to leave the nest? After all, next month is kindergarten, next year is college, right?

2006-08-09T09:31:00.000-05:00

For better or worse...

... I'm jumping on the blogging bandwagon. Why on earth, you wonder, does the blogosphere need yet another stay-at-home mom yakking about how cute/smart/amazing her kid is? Because I haven't found any blogs that address the kind of changes going on at our house these days.

So what's up here? Here's our family in a nutshell: Mr.B is 45, works hard to take care of us, and is an even better dad than I guessed he'd be when we got married. I'm 42, used to work in the auto industry but quit as soon as I could even remotely rationalize it under the guise of trying to get pregnant, now I stay home with Her Cuteness and try to stay one step ahead of her and her shenanigans. We've been together for almost 13 years, married for over 10. It's pretty darn great--except for the part when we're confronted by our own human foibles, of course. And then there's BabyGirl. Frankly, she's the most remarkable little girl I've ever met. She's five, smart, kind, curious, strong, and beautiful. We have a great open relationship with both of her firstparents, a first grandparent on each side, and are slowly meeting more of her first kin. It's unspeakably wonderful.

Mr.B and I did four years on the infertility merry-go-round: me, no eggs; him, wacked out sperm. Together, there's no way we can make a baby. You've seen the infertility blogs, you know how hard it is, I don't need to elaborate now. Two cycles of donor egg/ICSI/IVF resulted in only one fertilization, known as Hercules, who slipped out of my uterus when we weren't looking. We became committed to open adoption, had a little boy placed with us who was ours for two days, then met our daughter a few months later in April 2001. Last year, we tried again. In January 2005, a little girl was ours for four days, then in April, a little boy was placed with us. He was with us for 16 weeks (that's 112 days). I'm sure that whole ugly situation will be covered here at some point...

So what's our deal now? Baby Girl is gonig to kindergarten next month. I'm at a loss as to what to do with myself as a stay-at-home-mom-to-a-child-who-is-no-longer-at-home-full-time. Feeling adrift seems to sum it up. And since we've decided to be done with trying to build a bigger family, everything BabyGirl does becomes infinitely more poignant. On September 5, when Baby Girl goes off to kindergarten, my first and my last baby will be going to school. I hadn't quite expected that, the plan was that we'd have two kids, that I'd have a chance to be a mom to a little one again. Anyone else feeling at a loss like this?