Back on Track (aka Mileage Monday #3)

I so gave in to the dramarama last week. But today, I am feeling much better about, well, everything. S and I had a great weekend, which included some of my favorite things: sleeping in, laughing with my girl, frozen yogurt, and walking/running outside without feeling like I'm going to melt into a puddle of sticky humidity. Yay. It was good. Much needed and much appreciated.

Thanks to a strained calf muscle I had to take it easy on the running. I did walk my miles on the days I didn't run, but as a purist, I just can't count those.

Miles run this week: 4.25
Miles run since our profile went live: 14.65

PS
We watched Fish out of Water on netflix and I give it an enthusiastic two thumbs up.

Inviting Tragedy

Waiting is hard. No joke. I guess in the back of my mind I thought we'd be picked fast. Super fast. And now it's been 2 weeks of waiting and it feels like 10 years and I get down thinking about how long it really could be. But that's not what I meant to write about.

S and I know a few couples who have gone/are going through this process. And one of them recently completed a successful placement. And they posted a picture of themselves with their new baby. They are SO HAPPY. They have these huge smiles and happy, exhausted eyes, and a beautiful baby nestled between them. And it made me so sad. It made me sad for the birth mother and birth father and their families sitting in some other room, with their hearts broken. And it made me feel a little awful inside to want something so bad that is going to cost someone else a broken heart.

The other thing I've been talking to S about is that it makes me sad (and frustrated) that I can't protect our future peanut from the loss and heartache of their adoption. You want to protect your kids from hurt and pain. And I hate it that on the first day of their little life our peanut will experience loss.

I know the world doesn't revolve around me and clearly me wanting to add children to our family does not directly cause loss and heartache. And that there's lots I can do, in the way I parent and in the way I work to maintain peanut's relationship with his/her birth family, to make the situation a positive one. And I truly believe in the benefits (to the children and to the birth parents) of open adoption. But sometimes it all just makes me a little sad.

Mileage Monday (#2)

The waiting is hard. I'm obsessed with the little red light on my bberry, hoping it's an email from a birth mother every time. But really, I've just learned that I get way too much junk mail. Certainly I need to let go and live my life because I can't keep up this level of obsession for months...or years.

S and I had a rough weekend. Fighting like we haven't fought in a really long time. And the fights were pretty much about nothing. Hurt feelings and semantics. I guess that's not nothing. It's more that they were avoidable if either of us had been up to really listening and really caring. But we weren't. Maybe the sugar crash after the adoption profile high? Maybe scardy cats of being close to actually getting what we want?

But we did run. And I have a huge nasty blister on my heel to prove it. I also have some new socks, so hopefully the blister will be short lived.

Miles run this week: 6.0
Miles run since our profile went live: 10.4

Mileage Mondays (except today is Tuesday)

S and I are fully and legally cleared to adopt. Our profile is up in the open adoption arena and now we wait for someone to pick us. Every time my phone rings I about jump out of my skin. We don't know how long the wait will be. Three weeks? Six months? Two years? We so hope the wait is short.

In order to pass the time, and to shrug off the last of that post-wedding-fat-and-happy, ttc-i'll-blame-it-on-hormones, and just plain old there's-no-excuse-for-it weight gain, we've decided to be runners. We also figured it wouldn't hurt to be healthy and in shape when the kid finally does show up. We hear they are a lot of work. (And just as an FYI, we're starting from zero. We're basically turning off the netflix, putting the ice cream back in the freezer, and hitting the pavement.)

So, instead of counting the days that have passed since we've been waiting to adopt (I think that has the potential to depress me right over a cliff), I'm going to count the miles I've run. Every Monday (except today, which is Tuesday) I'll update the tally.

Starting from our "go live" date, 8.12.11.
Miles run this week: 4.4
Miles run since our profile went live: 4.4

Approved! Approved! Approved!

We finally did it. Our paperwork is approved, our hard copy letters are where they need to be (oh, did I not tell you the part about how the printer shipped our letters to the wrong house...3,000 miles away???), and our profile is online (as of the evening of 8.12.11)!

WE ARE SO EXCITED!! It took us 9.5 months to get here (wait, who's counting?) but our smiles couldn't be bigger. We are officially available! The wait to start the wait is over!!

We had a wonderful celebratory weekend together, sharing the news with friends/family and just basking in the possibilities of it all.

What's next? A few distractions to pass the time. More on that tomorrow....

Swag

Brendan over at EasyCanvasPrints.com asked if I'd review their product in exchange for a free print. They make canvas wall art. The idea is, you upload your photo and they create a personalized piece of artwork.

I chose a photo S took at the beach in Tel Aviv. S is an amazing photographer. She's never taken a lesson and we have an average old camera, yet she always manages to take striking photos. But on to the review...The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful.

The Good: The EasyCanvasPrints.com website is super user friendly. They even provide inspiration (if you want it) and you can pretty much order any size canvas. The print I received is true to the original photo. And it is so nice to have a piece of art in our home that is personally meaningful, capturing one of our very favorite shared memories.

The Bad: My only complaint is that you can see the frame behind the canvas. I think they could easily solve this problem if they stretched the canvas a little tighter or provided some sort of backer.

The Beautiful:

Gorgeous, no?

Book review - #3

The BlogHer folks are at it again. You can check out my review of The Kid by Sapphire here.

Has anyone else noticed...

...that there is an inordinate number of red headed babies born to lesbians? It all started when we watched Making Grace on Netflix one night a year or so ago. Their baby's red hair is even noted in the movie synopsis: "Baby Grace is born on time with bright red hair (a trait known to neither family)". And not to spoil the ending, but Grace is not the only red head they end up bringing home. And ever since then, they keep seeming to appear in my little slice of the world (on blogs, in real life). Not that it means one thing or another, but I find it interesting given how rare the trait is in the general population.

Blogger comments/Agency comments - *updated*

Jersey over at the woes of a barren lesbo found the magic cure for the recent Blogger commenting debacle. Go check it out if you too are lost in a maze of comment verifications and log in screens.

Steps left before we are added to the wait list (which is more like the please-give-me-patience-because-I-feel-like-I've-been-waiting-for-years-and-this-is-really-just-the-start-of-the-process-list):

1. Email agency to confirm approval only to be told that we are missing two pieces of paperwork (done!)
2. Hand deliver two pieces of paperwork, one of which is a checklist to guide us on our paperwork journey (seems like we should have received this *before* we completed our paperwork, but - done!)
3. Receive the news that we will be officially approved by the end of the day and cleared to order hard copies of our "dear birth mother letter" (that was yesterday - still not done) (done!)
4. Order letters (done!)
5. Sign letters and mail to distribution center
6. Confirm distribution center receipt of letters
7. Agency switches us to "active" and our website goes live

I'm a list maker and this makes me feel slightly less like throttling someone over at the agency better.