26 and 3

Howdy Blog!

It seems ungodly early this morning, but that is because I'm so tired that I creak when I move. The Birth-Nerds are snuggled neatly in the guest room bed. The Spousal Unit is un-tucked and sprawled across ours in a mess of dog and cats (see post blog post "Paper" for example). As for me, as is usual, I have been up since before the sun was twerkin' its ass crack up over the horizon.

The Birth-Nerds came this weekend to see the nursery, which is now mostly finished. What a process! If you ever decide you want to make yourself just a little crazier, choose a loverly chevron pattern for an accent wall in a room.

First you paint a basecoat. Then, you measure to find the center of the wall where it meets the baseboards and you place a dot with a pencil. Then, you measure six inches up and place another dot. You repeat this process until you become frustrated with your spouse for disappearing into their cell-phone while you strain your eyes. To express your frustration, you unleash a "silent but deadly" which starts a brief flatulence war that ends up chasing you both out of the room temporarily.

Next, you measure 10 inches to the right of each dot and you place another dot. You do this for each original dot moving to the right across the wall. Next you do the same for the left until you realize you should be using a level because thus far you've fuct everything up and have to back way up. At this point you argue with your spouse for a few minutes over the best way to accomplish the remainder of the project since you both have the best idea. Finally, you give-in to your spouse because you realize that he makes your dinner and think, much like the dog, you don't want to piss off the person that fills to food bowl when there are much bigger squirrels to chase.


At last, you connect the dots with this magnificent blue tape that doesn't delaminate your basecoat and also doesn't work worth a shit. You paint your stripes and remove the tape and then spend several hours after correcting each line by hand anyway. When all is said and done, you have a beautiful wall like the one pictured here. You stand back from it to admire your handiwork and think (despite numerous indications of ineptitude through the process), "Damn, we're good"!



I digress. In the old days, I thought I was cursed. I'd have a vision
of whatever, and know it was a good vision. Quite independently, I'd try to bring my vision to life. Often, folks would get hung-up on the process wondering what the hell I was up to. It wasn't until later in life that I realized that these pieces of bone and meat and wriggling muscle that we flap together while blowing air through them were useful in communicating vision with other people. That's when I decided to use this feature and learned my first word, "Dada".

Since then, speaking, writing, art, music, touch and all sorts of other modalities of communication have served me well as diapers to catch and deliver my cerebral incontinence to the masses. So it is strange to find myself in a position where there is a vision, but no words. That is where I am now.

 

When I hold the Neice, Kinley, or envision holding Elle, no words seem to sufficiently articulate how retarded it makes me feel. I am a nurse, a Master of Business Administration specialized in Healthcare Management, a Senior Executive Director, a skillful artist and a spouse of 13 years. I have served on industry political roundtable's, been in press and print, and have an IQ of 139. Despite all of this, Baby makes me feel so "special" I should be taking a short-bus to work!

My vocabulary reverts to that of Luca's. I neglect communicating with other humans. I lose my "big-picture" powers of objectivity, and processing power shrinks to a sphere the size of about 2 feet or less. I just LOSE everything for a half-witted, small hairless monkey, and am happy about it! Dare I say HAPPIEST about it!! (!!!)

So, now having experienced the stupefying power of these tiny hairless monkeys, I have decided to
study it while I am not helplessly trapped in its adamantine grip! Perhaps there is a way to harness or replicate this power in the stock market. At present, our tiny hairless monkey is 26 weeks and three days developed in the maturation chamber. I notice that the calendar that Maternal Birth-Nerd sent me says, "Sun, Oct. 06 - Day 185, 26 wks 3 days: Baby has a strong grip". Indeed.

Research indicates that after 26 weeks, entering the antepartum or

perinatal period, the chances of survival outside the womb have increased exponentially to a rate of greater than 90%. As such, we have put together a flashy habitat to distract the creature which will soon include wireless camera monitoring systems. This will allow me to study and monitor her from another room of the house where hopefully, she will have less of a diabolical sway over me. It is my hope that I can uncover her secret power and find a way articulate and replicate it.

Until then, I will continue to pour over the existing research. In the meantime, you can click here to see photos of the laboratory nursery thus far.

Quick Update

I've just realized that I'm already turning into one of those parents who embarrasses their children by showing compromising photographs. The difference is, that I am particularly talented in the strategy department!

HAHAHA! Elle, one day you will read this blog and see a picture of your toochie in the previous post. Although you will probably be able to hack into any piece of technology by then, I will not give you the password so that you can delete it unless you promise NEVER to date anyone I don't approve of, never to appear on a "Girls Gone Wild" dvd, always eat your vegetables and avoid addictive substances.

Due

Dear Blog Fans,

Please accept apologies for the long over-due update. Things have been STRAIGHT-JACKET NUTS of late. So, despite disappointing twos of fans, my attention was allocated to more important things like sleeping and being regular. If the Spousal Unit and myself weren't vegan, we'd be eating that Jamie Lee Curtis yogurt and harvesting stray sheep to count. Do they even still make sheep?

When last we spoke to ourselves, we'd just been found by our Birth-nerds. Since then we've spent quite a bit of time together. For reasons I will refrain from going into, we are no longer with the Independent Adoption Center. We have opted instead to pursue the remainder of our match with an attorney who is a pretty awesome chick!

We can offer one bit of important advice. When researching an agency (should you decide to use an agency) choose CAREFULLY. No amount of online research no matter how thorough can substitute for a conversation with a sufficient sampling of existing and former clients. DO NOT just speak with people the agency puts you in touch with! Instead run your fingers through the cesspool that is social media and drag up the real dirt. I can also say, that in some strange world should we decide to have a second child, we will not be returning to IAC.

In other news, the birth-nerds (birth-parents) came to spend a weekend with us here in stock-yard country. As one does when one is facing the unknown, the imagination ran wild until their arrival. What if they weren't who they said they were? What if they were really Transexual-Nazi Eskimos on a genocidal mission to kill us in our sleep and skin our pets to line the walls of their igloo-tanks?!? As it happened, neither proved to be the case.

The Paternal Birth-nerd is quite the geek, more laid-back, and finds humor in odd places just like we do. The Maternal Birth-nerd and maturation chamber for the Progenal-Unit is a big fizzy bottle of ADD goof-juice with just a little bit of froth under the cap, much like myself. Oh, and yes, I made up the word "progenal" because I can, and it is the only thing that fits in my mind.

After a hearty vegan breakfast of 'bacon'-maple, blueberry, and banana-nut waffles, we traipsed about town for a bit of nerdy fun. After a bit of shopping, we went to the Main Event where we enjoyed tons arcade games and the Maternal Birth-nerd and I rode several virtual reality rides. This was of course prior to learning that such rides are contraindicated for pregnant women.

Apparently, much like those cheap infomercial inventions that scramble eggs while still in the shell, too many jarring movements can be harmful for the baby. While I worried initially, I eventually decided that we'd just avoid them henceforth and be understanding if the baby came out with those plastic googely eyes like those found glued on cheap stuffed animals.

After several hours of game-play and winning something in the neighborhood of 40,000 arcade tickets, we decided to trade them in for a small plastic toy like something you'd buy at the Dollar Tree. We also went to a place called Storkvision. Apparently we now have the technology to peer inside the maturation chamber and see what's growing in there prior to birth. Now while you might be tempted to think this process involves stirrups, a wetsuit and a flash light, they actually do everything from outside.

Upon our arrival we selected a package which promised to allay any fears we may have had that it was a chest-burster like the one from Spaceballs growing in there. We were escorted to a dimly-lit room with soft green walls and paintings of what looked like babies underwater. Initially, I thought this was rather morbid since they all seemed to have their eyes closed. It seemed like it would have been much more pleasant had the babies in the paintings been smiling broadly and waving from inside the womb. At the very least they could've been painted panning their hands across the amniotic sac like a mime trying to get out of an imaginary glass box.

The Spousal Unit, Paternal Birth-nerd, and myself took a seat on the sofas in the room, while the Maternal Birth-nerd climbed atop a padded table off to one side and raised her shirt to reveal a large bulging belly. The woman waiting in the room next to the table tucked a towel around the base of the belly and proceeded to squirt a big pile of hair gel on her abdomen. This seemed entirely unnecessary to me as there was barely any peach-fuzz on her stomach.

Then, the woman stuck a corded wand into the hair-gel and smeared it around. The large flat television hanging on the wall behind her lit up and I waited nervously while swirling monochromatic images slid across the screen. Suddenly, I became aware of a whooshing sound much like the Enterprise NCC-1701 makes when initiating warp-speed, only this was repetitive and rhythmic. It wasn't until I saw what resembled P-waves, QRS complexes, and T-waves ticking across the bottom of the screen that I realized I was listening to a tiny heartbeat.

I thought, "O M G! There is something alive in there! There is a baby alive in there! I MUST PROTECT IT!" It was as though I was overcome by some visceral impetus to stand over the belly with my head low, back arched, and teeth-bared while emitting a low growl and glaring at anyone who came near. Much like Luca who has done this once or twice with the cats, I quickly began wagging my tail and putting my ears back in submission to the beautiful sound.

Then I saw a foot on the screen. I knew this must've been a human foot as it had no opposable big toe. Then a leg, a spine, and what looked like butt-cheeks. There was no tail, so that was good too.

The wand-worker kept wiggling the maturation chamber and pressing in different spots. Now although I haven't practiced nursing in quite a while, I am still well-acquainted with human anatomy and could tell she was trying to hone in on either baby-balls or tiny-toochie. She kept apologizing as the baby kept hiding the business. 

Now, as a gay guy, I am normally find vajayjays quite reprehensible and think they look a good bit like tarantula faces. Ok, so I don't have that big of a problem with them, I am a nurse and have probably seen more of them than any straight man could ever dream of seeing. Still, they look like tarantula faces.

 So I was the tiniest bit surprised at the level of joy I felt when the wand-worker woman seemed to find her target and said, "Well, you know us girls can be a little shy", and the screen displayed what appeared to be the smallest vajayjay in the world! HOORAY FOR VAJAYJAY!

Who would have ever thought? Thirteen years ago a timid dorky kid handed a goofy rebellious kid an ash tray just to be nice. Who would have ever thought we'd end up our own little Borg collective. Moreover, who would have ever thought there would be another human added to that collective, much less a female of the species.

Now our love will live on. It will overflow and spill into a little girl who will one day share it with others, perhaps a child of her own. In any case, I have all I need.

HOLY SH!T

Two words: HOLY SHIT!

If you've been keeping up with the blog so far you know that we've done our research, been schooled by our adoption agency, coughed up some cash, been through the rigors of home study, created a "Dear Birth-Parent Letter", and been approved to adopt a newborn infant of the human persuasion. What you may not yet know is that on August 14th 2013, at 8:47 am, we received an email that has forever changed our lives. What follows is the story that comes after this paragraph.


Routine 
So much like any other morning, I suddenly became aware of the fact that I was awake and meandering through the kitchen in search of caffeine. I realize I am awake of course because one of the sadist, dictator-felines entangled in my path is amusing himself by attempting to trip me to a bloody-faced death on the cold tile floor. The Spousal Unit forgot to set-up the coffee gizmo to anticipate my need to keep down the blood levels in my caffeine stream. I grapple for a few moments with the idea of navigating the delicate process of coffee-making but in the end surrender to the complexity of it all; opting instead to defer to the Spousal Unit's superior brewing prowess.

As I wait, incapacitated and sprawled across the sofa, half-watching the spirited morning-doers read irrelevant minutia from teleprompters with unsavory grins of sunrise duplicity, I hear a BLESSED sound! The delicate swish of the coverlet and sheets being tossed aside as my savior casts off the shackles of sleep and is resurrected from his memory foam grave. I take a warming comfort in knowing that he will soon anoint me with a cup of the life-giving, hot, black nectar of the Colombian dark-roast gods!   

With the fire stoked, it wasn't long before I was able to drag myself toward the bathroom, stopping by the closet on the way to stare perplexedly into a sea of clothing only to be frustrated at the complete and utter lack of ANYTHING to wear. One shirt is too stiff, another too soft, another too shirty, and there is far too much color to choose from! One is charcoal, another is dark graphite, another is warm black, another is cool black, then new black and old black and after a good 15 minutes of staring, it's all just so overwhelming I opt to brush my teeth instead and try again later.

Grasping the Sonicare I discover that the pull start is a little sluggish so I clean the corrosion from the spark plug and add some starter fluid. Once running, the device turns the inside of my mouth into a frothing Whirlpool Deluxe polishing each tooth to a Cascade-like shine while blowing back my gums like Marilyn Monroe's skirt. Despite the device's herculean vibration it still seems to take a solid ten minutes for my mouth to feel clean.

On to the shower I go, grumbling to the reflection of myself as I pass by the mirror. AH! At last! Waking waters rush over my face and wash the night-glue out of my eyes so that I can see my hair disobey later in the mirror. Later, with body dressed, pants pressed, and that one weird hair that grows extra long from my right eyebrow plucked, I'm ready to face the day!   

Ready  

After wading my way through what must have been a parade for Idiot Commuters United, I arrived at the office. I prepared to attempt to motivate the department heads with my candor and charm for just long enough to get them out of my office so I could fart in private.

As our Sales and PR dude dished the daily low-down I happened to glance over and notice an email alert blinking on my phone. Thinking it was probably just another one of the incessant daily deal emails that flood my inbox on a daily basis, I reach to delete it when I noticed that it was an email to our open-adoption gmail account. Since up until that point the majority of emails to the account had been responses to questions I gave it a look.

What I read in that email, those heavy-weight words, literally knocked me out of my chair! I stood up so fast that the back of my knees knocked my chair into the credenza behind my desk. I read again with my mind racing and my whole day being thrust into one of the most vivid, technicolor moments of my life. The cat to the right seems to capture my state at the time that I read: 

"Dear Byron and Jonathon,

I would like to write to you and introduce myself. My girlfriend and I are interested in putting our baby up for adoption, and we liked your profile. [We]...are both really new to the adoption process and don't know much about it, so we wanted to write and start talking...

If you would like to know more and/or are interested, please write back."

Like with any nerdgasm, I began to hyper-ventilate. Bear in mind that I was jumping up and down, gasping like a geek in front of a room full of people who consider me their leader. My butt clenched so hard that any semblance of the aforementioned desire to fart in private had to have flown back to the recesses from whence it came. The department heads panicked worrying that their fearless leader had suddenly become the victim of some dormant extra chromosome being activated.

When finally I'd mustered the breath to speak the only words that came out were "BIRTH PEOPLE, PHONE", while pointing at the touchscreen and subsequently dropping it! I ran out of my office, through the conference room and into the lobby calling the Spousal Unit and attempting to avoid choking on my heart which had somehow found its way into my throat (probably the fart pushed it up there). Although he is normally capable of grounding me in such states, it turns out that he too was totally useless. All he could say on the other end was, "I know! I don't know!?! I KNOW"!

It is hard to describe the feelings that flew through us. Initially, panic. Then doubt. We had only been in circulation officially for 14 days and they said that kind of thing doesn't happen! They said we'd wait 8-12 months. Was this a test? Was someone playing a prank on us? SURELY this couldn't be real. Only, it is.

That night, we spoke with our birth-family for the first time. We worried they wouldn't like us for a whole host of reasons. Maybe they wouldn't like the way we looked. Maybe our values would turn them off. Would they be serious about their decision to place or would we invest our hearts and souls in a fool's endeavor?

As fears usually are, ours were baseless. To protect their privacy at this stage of the game we'll refer to our birth-family as Dick and Jane. Talking to each other put us right as ease. As it turns out there is a perfect reason why we only waited 14 days. Fate.

Dick and Jane are so much like us it's a little creepy. Jane is playful, hip, and just irreverent enough to be charming. She is a generous soul, funny, and enjoys cooking. I suspect that to say she has any one particular interest or hobby would be foolish, because like me, she has a curious heart and wants to see, try, and do new things all the time. She's down with open adoption, and confident because she's already done it. 

 

Dick is funny too, he has a dry sarcastic wit that if you're not careful he'll slip past you. He seems to have a servant heart, feeling truly gratified by helping and making a difference in people's lives. He's a gamer, a fellow-nerd, open-minded and tolerant. 

We've talked every night since our original call. The feeling they give us is sort of hard to describe. It's kind of like a cross between immense gratitude and the warm, slightly cautious excitement of bonding with someone special. They even coined a name for us which we JUST LOVE: "Nerds-to-be".
 

It almost still seems a little surreal (tearing up a bit here). How could we be so blessed? I know there will be fun times, challenges to face, emotional times, an even happier times than this, but we feel so happy, so moved, that  the doors to our hearts have truly opened to our new family.  

 

 

P.S. Look out for Bianca. She's kind of wild and crazy. LOL!  ;o)

Paper

Howdy Blog!

Today has been one of those days. It's like flying through the day in a tornado of tasks, where the world is so busy everything smushed between sitting in morning and evening traffic seems like it happened years ago. An alternative explanation for the blur could be that I am really rowing on the mother ship and life is but a dream implanted by a group of aliens hidden in the tail of an approaching comet. As this is unlikely and might make me sound as though I should be restrained by a butch, hairy-armed psychiatric nurse named Helga, I shall concur with the former. Suffice it to say, Monday.

The blur tends to creep up on occasion when I'm short on rest. As it happens I lack a lot of bed-wealth. Between the Spousal Unit, the canine, and the two tyrannical feline despots, I am limited to sleeping on a strip of mattress real estate approximately 3 millimeters wide. Now you may have occasion to think I am exaggerating, but to illustrate the sleeping habits of the Spousal Unit it may help to think of genetic experiment crossing a giant sleeping spider monkey with the flopping traits of goldfish out of water. Note the photographic evidence (left) wherein a jumbled mess of bed linens, flesh, fur and niece are sprawled across the bed like butter and syrup on pancakes.

Yes, the blur can be maddening and is usually a sign that the time for a break from the tornado is fast approaching. The blur is typically dealt with in a number of ways. You may find some of these great tips work for you.

VACATION! And while I welcome a relieving respite from my little wire wheel in the hamster cage, I also love my work. Leading a large, diverse, and amazing group of people warms my soul. They all keep me in check. When they notice that the bags under my eyes contain sufficient enough skin for Louis Vuitton to start a new luggage line they'll hound me until I take vacation. I love them like family and sometimes even want to kill them like family.

ELECTRICITY! While I've never personally utilized this tip, I can imagine that a strong jolt from a light socket would

PAPER! Paper has unique and mysterious properties. That is why the ancient Egyptians stole the technology from the aforementioned mother ship while its passengers built the pyramids. IMHOTEP, IMHOTEP (look it up, it means "We come in peace")!

Now we have experienced the magical properties of paper before. In 2000 the Jonathan became the Spousal Unit. In those days I worked as a nurses aide and we lived in the ghetto where you could scarcely make it from the apartment to your car without some seemingly desperate fellow offering to trade you a fully dubitously loaded Wal-Mart gift card worth $300 in exchange for $100 cash. While I admired the tenacity and hood-logic of these fellows, their business plan contained fundamental demographic targeting flaws; inasmuch as we probably wouldn't be living in the ghetto if we had $100.

One night we sat in the floor of our apartment with one unlit candle, two lit candles and a couple of rings. We played "Into Dust" by Mazzy Star, tied our right hands together with the drawstring out of a pair of sweats, lit the unlit candle with our two lit candles, exchanged rings, and read vows to each other. This was our REAL wedding day and it was a meaningful as anything (aside from our laughing at each other's clumsiness during the whole thing). It's interesting to note that all we needed then was each other, and the same holds true today.

In 2008, California a shift in cultural idiocy and for a LIMITED TIME ONLY we could do what everyone
else did. By then, we were making more money (imagine going from driving a hoopty with spray paint to a new ford). Since we could afford it, much like anyone buried under a mere mountain of debt at that time, we jumped on a plane to San Diego. Although Jonathan nearly fell of the wing a few times, we were able to land safely. We were married in the courthouse there and spent the days after in one of the most surreal states I've ever experienced.

What was different? Well for starters, there were a lot more people with long hair. Secondly, when people started approaching us at the courthouse we half-expected them to be carrying pitchforks and torches, but instead, with a glimmer in their eyes (this could have been from medicinal marijuana) they told us they were happy for us. So what was the difference? The PAPER.

I can't explain it. Don't care to. It is one of those things that is so sublime that nothing but direct experience will provide understanding, but that piece of paper, that so many people take for granted was like the grail to us. Much like Indiana Jones, we had to go through a number of booby traps to get it.

Paper has given rise to wars that have scarred nations because of the words written on them. Paper has ended wars because of the signatures of dignitaries scrawled across dotted lines. Paper has swept lovers off their feet, and even replaced the terribly uncomfortable corncobs that use to populate the outhouses of the south. Paper is a magical thing, indeed.

So yesterday, when I'd emerged from the blur to find an email with a digital version of a piece of paper, it's no wonder why I cried, felt so moved, and came to experience our journey to parenting as so much more REAL than before. See the last part of the paper below:

Dear Birth Mother

First, some background thoughts.

As it happens with open adoption, the birth-mother chooses the adoptive family and the adoptive family sort of chooses her. Most of the information the cerebral sponge has soaked in like documentaries, websites, blogs and so on seem permeated by this emotionally tumultuous aura of heart-twisting drama. That's understandable, but I have a habit of taking most media with a grain of skepticism. Some may say that is cynical, but can anyone really argue that any form of publication can substitute for direct personal experience?

TV and news and everything we look at is geared to a market of some kind, and the incredibly personal and subjective experience adoptive parents share with their birth-mom and child is unlikely something that can be captured in a 30-minute reality show.  Everything is sensationalized these days. Our adoption could be a tear-jerker, or it could be a romantic comedy. Only time, and not what everybody else says, will tell.

Now to the foreground thoughts.

Adoptive parents have to write a "Dear, Birth Mother Letter". Basically, this is a letter that tries to capture the essence of your family. No, that doesn't mean the letter is scratch-and-sniff, it just means that it is the primary means of conveying your personality to prospective birth-moms. Birth-moms who are interested in placing their child with an adoptive family sort through these letters (hundreds of them) and pick one. Then the relationship begins.

When we first learned about the letter we thought it would be fairly easy. After all, I can type. Then they imposed limits. Word limits, photo-requirements, structure, color, blah blah blah. The entire process can be summed up as follows:

1. Complete cerebral incontinence on the subject into a Word document.
2. Submit to the seemingly self-important Dear, Birth Mother Letter "expert" who sorts through it looking for little nuggets of personality gold like a child convinced that there is something of intrigue reachable in their nose if only they can get their finger deep enough.
3. Rinse, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat.

After you've poured your heart out on paper and had it nit-picked apart enough times, then you can add photos and design. Now as it happens, the Spousal Unit and myself are both fairly skilled with design software and have made our share of money designing print campaigns, ads, and websites over e-commerce platforms (ie. OliviaRiegel.com). However, given the fact that I am graduating in August with my Master of Business Administration in Healthcare Management, and leading multiple healthcare facilities through the summer, we opted to hire a designer for convenience.

We went with "Our Chosen Child". Joanna was a welcome relief in the letter process. She was responsive to our preferences and choices, timely and compassionate. Her value cannot be understated! She took the text of our letter, got to know us as a family through phone conversations and a really innovative use of pinterest, and added the visual elements to our letter that will really bring our personality to the fore.

Here is a link to the results of our collaboration the letter speaks for itself. Dear, Birth-Mom

Getting Fit

So we'd decided to become parents through the IAC. Next they had to determine if we would make fit parents. 

The Spousal Unit and myself are both male and human (in case you were confused by our picture). In other words; gay. We couldn't help but wonder if there was some sort of gay parent closet we should have been looking to hide in. As it turns out, the people whose opinions really matter anyway, feel exactly as we'd hoped they would; that we're as nutty as we ever were and will make the best parents ever!

Although the world has mostly moved on from the formative days of school-aged ostracism and bricks being thrown at one's head by cowboy kids more concerned with fashion than your average drag-queen, some folks still seem to take issue with "the gays". Some of the adoption agencies we researched weren't even open to the idea of same-sex parents. Never mind what the American Psychological Association says, or the  American Academy of Pediatrics says, or the American Medical Association says or the Child Welfare League of America says. 

IAC seemed to have their poop in a group, so we gave them our trust and enough money for a new car. During the two-day workshop we were given a three-ring binder. In the old days, before google, we had these giant books called encyclopedias. The IAC client binder is the adoptionprocessopedia.

I did a lengthy paper in grad-school half-grounded in neuroscience and half in business and the differences between the management brain and the leadership brain. While you needn't be bored to death by my nerdom, it will be helpful to understand that I have more of the leadership brain, while the Spousal Unit has more of the management brain. So as usual, he went about setting the appointments, pulling the pertinent information and keeping things on schedule, while I worked on communications, research, strategy and design.

Three essentials had to happen before we'd be in circulation where birth-parents could find us:

1. Home Study

2. Make a "Dear Birth Mother" letter.

3. Create an online profile at iheartadoption.org

Simple enough, right? HA!

To prepare for the homestudy we'd need DPS clearance. I suppose they want to be sure we don't have Snoop-dog hydraulics on the car which have been proven to cause brain damage. We had to be finger printed for an FBI database. This must've been to confirm that we are not aliens in skin suits. 

We both had to get letters from our employers to verify that we aren't broke. Duh! Weren't they paying attention when we wrote the check? We had to present health history forms and get complete physical examination by our doctor including vaccines, blood-tests, TB tests, and statements that our child will not grow up to be a frothing wild man/woman after being raised by wolves in the north wild because we suddenly keeled over while on a camping trip shortly after adopting. 

Then we had to fill out paperwork on who we expect our kid to be and how we will raise them, discipline them and so on. We had to recall everything from our childhood and how twisted or not-twisted our parents were raising us. I kept waiting for some intriguing, repressed false memory to surface but, less interestingly, I really did have great parents.

Even though Texas doesn't recognize our marriage, we had to write the courthouse in Cali to secure certified copies which were over-nighted to the agency and then lost by someone in the office, later to be found again (I understand this because I frequently do it with my head). Proof of insurance, tax returns, our child-rearing proforma budgets, drivers license, auto insurance, birth-certificates, pet records, photos of the house and on and on. It may not seem like much in a few paragraphs, but everything has to be current up-to-date and so on which sometimes turns what should've been one appointment into three.

We started the adoptionprocessopedia on March 1st. 2013.  This past Tuesday, the 25th of June, we finally got to the actual home study part. Lisa, a social worker from CPS came to the house for a lengthy interview. We didn't know whether to expect a nazi-nun with laser eyes of questioning and pointing stick or a hemp-wearing earth-hippy reeking of essential oils and wearing dirty velcro sandals. 

As it happens, Lisa was neither of those. She made us feel totally comfortable and fit right into the warm and comedic aura of our home. The home visit was basically a recap of all the paperwork, making sure that we had two fire extinguishers, all plutonium out of reach of children, and no sweat-shop of umpa lumpas in the attic.

We haven't heard back from her findings yet, so it could be that she left the house with a fake smile and drove screaming in horror all the way home, but she did say that she thought we were going to make wonderful parents. Although it was a pleasant experience I was relieved when she'd gone, but that is only because we'd had spaghetti squash the night before, which makes any situation during which it is inappropriate to pass gas slightly uncomfortable.

Despite the home study being a pain in the ass, I have to believe it is worth it. Although I'll never know what it is like to be pregnant, I'm sure it comes with its own set of pains. It is worth it because it seems like it would provide birth moms with a measure of comfort knowing that her adoptive family of choice is well-vetted, and she deserves that sense of security.

Guess we're certifiably fit to be parents, and that's pretty cool.

     

Firsts

Tahdah! A blog is born.

Firsts are strange things. They can be horrendously traumatic to the point of reducing grown men to quivering piles of terrified goo like those left behind in the dark forest by the Cowardly Lion. Firsts can be sensible, like a single helping of pie and foregone seconds to avoid feeling like you should be whipped for your carte blanche pastry depravity. They can be wonderful too, like the first time Luca, our Labrador daughter figured out that her farts come from her and was no longer startled by them. We were so proud.

Hopefully, this makes a great first post in a blog about the road to becoming a first time parent and adopting our first human child. 

Maybe this is a blog just for me and the Spousal Unit (Jonathan). Maybe it's for another adoptive parent or perhaps a birth-mom. While I have no idea whether or not anyone will ever read the incoherent ramblings of a daddy-wannabe, I figure, much like the average Facebook user, that everyone wants to know my business. 

After all, I can't be any less important than that YouTube kid who got a gig as a correspondent because he was so torn-up about Brittany Spears. Why not, I say?! Surely the journey to being a dad is more important the ever-prevalent duck-lipped self-pics taken by folks in front of bathroom mirrors that seem so popular these days.

In any case, the story is worthy of being recorded. If nothing else, it will have merit as a memory-aid when I'm a 100-year-old great-granddad sitting in my chair with my pants up to my chest making strange sucking noises as I try to clear my lunch from my dentures. Well, up under my chest, since by that age even men have to move their breasts aside to clean their navels. 

Like so many other ideas I have in life, this blog was a bit late to come to fruition. I tend to have a million ideas a minute, only half of which make it out of my skull. Of that half, a small fraction end up on paper while the rest end up lost on folks who have difficulty navigating the muddy landscape of my thought process, much less the complex, but delicate social architecture that is conversation. I digress.

SO, time to catch you up. This whole journey started in a long time ago when the Spousal Unit and myself started talking about his inability to carry a child as a solution to our desire to bequeath the first future Intergalactic Supreme Overlord to the world. Despite his uterine ineptitude, we were both determined.

At first we considered renting a womb. Since the dude at Enterprise seemed convinced that they only rent vehicles, we looked into surrogacy. Too scary. Too expensive. Plus, we imagined, there were bound to be surplus numbers just sitting on the shelf, maybe even tenderly used.

That's when we began researching adoption. Whoa! The amount of information and misinformation swirling around the almighty google  was staggering. We did our research and decided on open adoption. Then on an agency. First we had to travel to Dallas for the initial informational session. As it turns out this was a fruitless step for me because when sitting before a speaker I seem incapable of hearing anything but the teacher from Charlie Brown. I have the auditory attention span of a hyperactive squirrel marinated in Red Bull.

We came home, did some chatting, read up a bit more and scheduled the second trip; this time to Houston for: AN INTENSIVE 2-DAY WORKSHOP!!! I put that all in caps because anytime the word "intensive" is used to advertise I imagine the announcer at a monster truck rally shouting over the loudspeaker. Incidentally, there was some shouting, but it was a dramatic reenactment of the starvation scene from "Gone With The Wind". When we arrived at the hotel, one of us was hungry and the other wanted to skip dinner and go to bed. As God as my witness, exhaustion-induced theatrics ensued!

The next morning we made it through the Houston traffic (a level of traffic that made me wish I was driving a tractor through Beijing instead). Filled with anticipation over what kind of crystal-grippin, hippy weirdos would be joining us for the TWO DAY INTENSIVE, we were surprised to learn that the folks there were just as pleasantly domesticated as we are. In addition, there were FOUR gay couples and only ONE opposite-sexed couple. It was a royal flush.

Yeah, really! In Texas, the shame state; and I always thought Brokeback Mountain was sci-fi.

We learned a lot, signed our contracts, paid a lot of money, and made our first parenting decision - open adoption.