Feb 27

Dear Control Freaks of the World,

After a recent roadtrip which included multiple trips to McDonalds I have realized that many of you congregate at your local Golden Arches. I’m not sure why. I would have thought people such as yourselves would have higher standards, but whatever. The point is, your attempts to subvert the accepted line structure at fast food establishments are totally obnoxious.

McDonalds is set up with a system. A system which customers are expected to follow. It’s simple, really. The restaurants generally have several lanes which may or may not be staffed. When you enter the restaurant you are expected to pick a line. You may or may not pick the fastest line and you pretty much suffer the consequences of your choice. Pick the line where the newest pimply, hungover teenaged employee is struggling to enter orders into the computer and you end up waiting a long time. Guess what? That’s life.

The fact that you may draw the short straw does not give you the right to commandeer all the lineups and force all your fellow patrons to get in one line to advance as a cashier becomes available. You may wish that’s the way it worked, but you may or may not have heard that you can’t always get what you want. True story. I looked it up.

You should be faced with the irrationality of your behaviour when you have to explain your line-up philosophy to every person who walks in the door while passing moral judgment on everyone who challenges your authority, lest each person try to avoid your long lineup and get in a different line, as would be LOGICAL. You should realize this is not the right course of action. But I recognize that your need for control has polluted all rational thought which is the only reason I’ve refrained from starting a fistfight during our several recent encounters, even though I am strongly convinced that a punch to the face would bring many of you back to reality.

Get over yourselves.

Love,
Shannon

Feb 17

Dear Chosen Child,

This is the first of what may be many letters. The beginning of what will very likely be a long and excruciating and completely unconventional kind of pregnancy. We have been thinking and dreaming about adopting since before we had your brother and sister but only in the past few months have we begun actively proceeding towards that end. As we begin to discuss details and paperwork and plans I spend more and more time dreaming about you. And then it hit me…

You are very likely not even born yet. We expect to wait several years for a referral and with the age limit we have set, it is most likely you will be born in the next 6 to 18 months. We are planning for a child who has not yet been born to a mother who will eventually decide to give you up. Somewhere a woman is pregnant, or will be very soon. Somewhere she is, or will be, feeling and thinking…I don’t know what. I can’t pretend to know. But she is, or will be, carrying you. So I can’t help think about her and be grateful for her and hope that you will keep enough of her inside you to help answer the questions you will no doubt have some day.

Somewhere, you will be born this year. On a day I won’t know and a time I won’t realize. My heart hurts, knowing your dad and I won’t be there right from the start but that’s going to be a fact of our relationship. Your beginning will be special. You will touch other people’s lives before you touch ours. But you will be in our hearts from the beginning, before we know you.

Right now I feel somewhat overwhelmed by the paperwork involved in getting permission to wait for you. But the fact that this road will eventually lead to bringing you into our arms is giving me the motivation I need.

Meanwhile, I think of you and I think of the mother who will carry you in her body while I carry you in my heart. She and I are connected, and always will be. It is heartbreaking that for you to come into our family she will have to let you go. But it is beautiful, too. I promise you this, we won’t forget her.

Maybe it sounds like I have a romanticized view of this process. Believe me, I am doing my best to understand the realities of adopting. I know there will obstacles while we wait, challenges when we meet, hurdles as we bond. But I am choosing to believe that even though we are sacrificing witnessing the first few years of your life by taking this path, it will be worth it in the end to know you. I believe it will be worth it for you to be a part of our family.

Holding you in my heart until then,
Mommy

Feb 10

I haven’t mentioned it yet but I’m happy to say that we have received our acceptance  from the Saskatchewan Ministry of Social Services to pursue adoption. It’s probably the most painless step of the whole process so not so much a big accomplishment as it is actual evidence that we are headed down this road for real now!

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Our next step is an interview/meeting with our social worker which will happen in a few days. I am not totally sure what that meeting will entail. Talking through our adoption plan, discussing the homestudy, what else? I’m not clear. But after that meeting I think we will be cleared to begin the homestudy process which is a big part of the dossier we will send to our chosen country.  Now THAT I will be nervous about! Nothing like putting your whole life and family under a microscope!

In other news, Kieran seems to be coming to grips with his own mortality. Yes, that’s right. My three year old is having an existential crisis over the fact that he will die someday. Not everyone approaches teaching their kids about death in the same way. We have always taken a very honest, but age-appropriate approach.  Avery encountered death at a very early age when her uncle died of cancer. We explained the concept as best we could at a 2-year-old level. She listened, processed, discussed, and moved on.

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But the perils of having an older sister well-informed about the concept of death means a certain three year old boy has been perhaps given information at a time and in a way that he was not prepared for. It almost certainly does not help that she told him the other day that if he watched too much tv his heart would stop beating! Nothing like a little Grim Reaper with your morning cartoons!

I’ll tell you one thing. Comforting a weeping child who is afraid of dying is no picnic. Thus far, distraction has proven to be the most effective technique. We discuss the things we’re going to do tomorrow, next week, and when he grows up. It’s the only thing that seems to work at this point. I’m sure time and maturity will help. Until then, we are trying to focus on life around here!