Family | Health and Insurance

Mommy ponders

Lately, I’ve been thinking about Button even more than usual. Perhaps it’s because we are getting closer and closer to meeting him or maybe it’s because we know he’s getting older everyday and that means he is becoming more of a little person with every moment. It reminds me of the song “Maybe” from Annie where she is singing about her missing parents and she says, “Betcha he reads, betcha she sews, maybe she’s made me a closet of clothes! Maybe they’re strict as straight as a line… Don’t really care As long as they’re mine!”

Well, you know, it’s kind of like that… except in reverse.

I wonder if my son is left handed or right. Does he eat carrots or spit them out? Is Button afraid of the dark? Does our son love bathtime or is he one of those kids who hates it? I wonder if he is shy or a “never-met-a-stranger” type of kid. Is our son one of those boys who can’t resist throwing each and every ball he sees? I wonder if Button loves to be read to. How many words can our son say? Does he suck his thumb? I wonder which of his biological parents Button looks more like. What does his laugh sound like? Most of all, I wonder when will we get to meet our son?

I lay awake at night thinking about these things but I know that, while discovering the answers will be so very special, they won’t really change anything for us. Whoever Button is – he’s already ours.

–Rosemary

Fun, Fun, Fun!

Brian left today for a conference. I never fully bother to understand the ins-and-outs of his work related life but it’s something… medical. Normally, I mourn his abscence like a Bronte character but this trip is different. The best friend is coming! So while Brian is lounging by the pool in San Antonio…er…um… I mean working super hard to learn stuff while trapped in the ballroom of a luxury hotel I will be taking a few days off work myself and ferrying my old college roommate around to see the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains. In all actuality, we will probably just stay up too late talking, get lost on Skyline Drive, spend most of the weekend laughing at nonsense and eat about a hundred pounds of creamcheese while watching movies we’ve already seen but I can call that “seeing the sights” can’t I? Can’t I??

So, dear ones, I am taking some time off from the old blogosphere in order to have a little much needed FUN and celebrate Thanksgiving with my favorite man on earth once he comes back to me. I wish each of you a very blessed home and a grateful heart!

Love,
Rosemary

Introducing Button

It has been a very busy month but we are finally back! We’re happy to “see” everyone in blog-land and get all the latest news from our favorite adoptive families around the world. As far as our news goes: We were very blessed to receive Button’s 12 month update from Holt. Of course, he is 15 months old now but we are thrilled to get the info even if it is 3 months outdated. Marissa, our adoption advocate, was such a doll and sent it to us the day before Thanksgiving so we were able to share new pictures of our son with our families for the holiday. That meant so much to us and we were very grateful for her thoughtfulness.

Now I know you are wondering if we are going to share those pictures with you. Well after much deliberation, we finally decided that there was just no way we would be able to keep our adorable kiddo’s face off this blog for perpetuity so we decided to go for it. Here are the best of the rather grainy, completely blurry, yet totally amazing pictures of Button!

He is obviously walking like a champ at 12 months!

This is the first genuine smile we’ve seen in all his pictures and we notice that it looks like he has been bribed with a nice piece of candy. 😉

Babies!

I recently saw a preview for award winning director Thomas Balmes new documentary Babies and I absolutely could not resist sharing it with all of you! Believe me when I say that we will be the first people in line to see this film when it is released on April 16, 2010. I think it is a really amazing effort at helping people to recognize the incredible beauty of children everywhere regardless of race. I also think it speaks to an interesting concept – it is possible to lovingly parent a child without a Bugaboo stroller and an army of plastic accesories.

Babies simultaneously follows four infants in Namibia, San Francisco, Tokyo, and Mongolia from birth to their first birthday. Please enjoy the unbelievable cuteness of this trailer:

Survival Checklist

What have I personally learned about adoption so far? Almost nothing since I am not yet actively parenting a child. What have I learned about surviving the adoption process? Hmmmm… a pretty good bit. I’ld like to know what you guys have learned too! Tell us your tips for getting through. Here are some of my favorites though:

“Rosemary’s In-Process Survival Checklist”

Make copies, in triplicate, of everything. Including your dog’s rabies certificate.
Do not attempt to diet – it is futile. Do not hang out with people who are dieting. Do not even remain friends with people who are naturally thin.
Understand that if you hang new curtains, change your hair color or allow your nephew to camp in your backyard for the weekend your homestudy will have to be updated. At your expense.
Whatever “they” told you all this would cost – that figure is incorrect.
Only hang out with fun people, only do fun things, only see funny movies. Laugh as much as possible.
If the people in your life refuse to see how constantly difficult this process is, if they refuse to help you celebrate humor at every turn in the road, subtly let them know you’ll be back in contact when all this is over.
Eat, drink, exercise, make love, laugh, travel, shop, redecorate or whatever else you need to do to affirm life. Be kind and loving to yourself.
Pray, say affirmations, meditate and journal but, no matter what, do not loose touch with that inner voice or higher power. The Whisper you hear telling you to put one foot in front of the other may be the most important part of this journey.
Be nice to other people because they are going through hard stuff too. Our adoption troubles are not the only difficult thing to ever happen to anybody during this time.
Pick up at least one new hobby, preferably two, because the last thing we need is free time. Try to make it something you absolutely won’t be able to do after the baby comes home. Celebrate this time because even though we want to wish it away it will never come again.
Adore your partner! They are the only other person who knows what it really feels like to wait for “YOUR CHILD” so share the experience as fully as possible.
Do something you have always wanted to do and never made time/money/courage for. Make sure that you can look back on this season as more than just a pergatory period.
Even though the house is empty and you are desperate to give love – resist the urge to get a puppy mere months before bringing home a high impact toddler. If you do get a puppy though please call me so I can come over and play with yours. Brian says I can’t have one.
Babysit for everyone you know so that in a year or so when Junior is comfortable staying with other people you can start raking in the favors.
Read, read, read. We can’t ever read too many adoption books, blogs, chatrooms, and articles.

Boy, Button, Mouse?

We were looking at some of Button’s paperwork recently and we were noting a major cultural difference between America and Thailand. On his official paperwork it carefully notes his astrological sign. On the Thai zodiac, which is very similar to the Chinese zodiac with some small differences, Button was born in the year of the mouse. This is also sometimes called the year of the rat (like the chinese zodiac) but on his paperwork it clearly says, “xxxxxxxxxxxx year of Mouse”. I don’t know if the two words are simply interchangeable in the translation to English from Thai or if they are actually making a differentiation between the two, but as his Mother, I prefer to think of Button as “year of Mouse”.

For those of you who don’t know, the legend of the zodiac is thus, On the Buddha’s last day on this Earth he invited all the animals to meet with him but only 12 came. To reward them he named a year after each of the twelve. More recently in Thailand, it is believed that everyone should make a pilgrimage at least once in their lifetime to the Temple associated with their birth year. Anyway, this is what the internet tells about the Thai Zodiac predictions for the year of the mouse 2008:
“The Mouse character is industrious, disciplined, eloquent, shrewd and meticulous. There downfall can be in a selfish, obstinate, scheming and vindictive manner. The temple associated with the year of the mouse’s holy pilgrimage is the Wat Phrataht Sri Jomtong, in Chiang Mai. “
Of course, all predictions aside, we are just waiting to see what kind of an individual our little (boy, button, mouse) turns out to be but we are awfully excited to get to know him!!
–Rosemary

Fantastic Folks

Looking back on our adoption journey so far I would definitely say we have learned a lot, made some mistakes, and we will do some things differently next time. But the one thing I am so grateful we have done is that we made every effort to get involved in our adoption community. We have loved getting to know people (virtually and physically) in our adoption chatrooms, blogs and support groups.

Of course, it’s simple human nature that we aren’t going to always like everybody in the various support groups available to us (maybe even most of them) and there will be tons of opinions to disagree with and, inevitably, there will be that one woman who wants to prostelytize for adoptive breastfeeding the whole time. The important thing to remember though is that no matter how similar or dissimilar our personalities may be we have, arguably, one of life’s most defining experiences in common: adoption. Thankfully though we don’t have to see eye-to-eye in order to offer love.

I feel very blessed to say that while I no longer have access to a real live adoption support group I am so lucky to have the fantastic folks from our Holt Intl. chat room and all my adoption bloggy buddies. Just recently when we were so discouraged over not getting a travel date a fellow adoptive mom, who was returning to Thailand for a visit with their daughter’s foster parents, emailed me to say that she would make room in her suitcase so we could send Button a care package. Can you imagine what that meant to us? She knew what that would mean because she has stood in this place.

Be gentle on yourself and make the time to meet and develop friendships with people who can relate to what you, and your children, are going through. Trying to do all this alone would be too exhausting. I’m so grateful for all my “adoptive mom friends” – we don’t have to agree on religion or gender profiling – we just have to know how to be there for each other.

A great big thank you goes out to Ben, Becca and Kailani for taking our love, and a teddy bear, to Button!!

–Rosemary

The Protector

Recently we watched another movie by Tony Jaa of Ong Bak fame. This one is called The Protector and it released in America in 2006 but I am only just now seeing it. The Protector cutely debuted as Tom-Yum-Goong in Thailand (named after the sweet and sour soup).

In this martial arts classic Tony is chasing an evil crime syndicate who have stolen his elephants. Yes, his elephants. Oh well, they also killed his father but that is definitely played as the lesser concern. It’s a pretty classic kicking and punching movie but it does explore some interesting themes. I really enjoyed the scenes from the main character’s childhood featuring a beautiful little Thai boy interacting with elephants amidst some amazing backdrops. I also thought it was very interesting to learn later that one of the main reasons Jaa made the film is because his family raised elephants when he was growing up and he wanted to do something to raise awareness for the plight of Thai elephants being abused and mistreated. He actually used to practice some of his early martial arts training with elephants just like his character in this movie. Very cool, Tony!

One thing I can promise you though: You will spend the next week tip-toeing into rooms, sneaking up on your partner and screaming “Give me back my elephants!” Extra points if you can scream it in Thai.

–Rosemary

The Best First Book Ever

Well, it is book review Wednesday but I have been very busy with work and out-of-town company so I have to admit that I haven’t found much time to read this week. But we do have a fantastic book review for this week! All of us prospective adoptive parents need to read a million books and it can be rather exhausting so it’s fun to remember that we also need to start collecting books for the little people we are expecting. This week we got a wonderful reminder of that when a fantastic package arrived from Button’s Grandmother a.k.a. Duchess.

We were delighted to discover that she had shopped around for a collection of Brian’s favorite childhood books (big hits in my family too): Richard Scarry! We especially love The Best First Book Ever, which is just such a perfect classic and everyone should have it. I can’t wait to spend an afternoon with my son searching these perfectly illustrated pages for Lowley Worm. Do you remember?