Gratitude Blog

As you may have guessed from the significant LACK of blogging, not much is happening in our little corner of the wide world of adoption. As far as we can tell, our file is still at the Ministry for Education. Jeff, our Kaz program social worker, said that it's probably "sitting on the desk" of the person who makes decisions about which region we'll be assigned to. I'm trying very hard to be patient, which is not something I've ever been very good at.

That said, I've been thinking a lot about patience lately, and came across an article where the author described how selfish impatience really is. So I started thinking about what the opposite of impatience would be... the main thing I could come up with is gratitude! So here's my gratitude blog for today, as an antidote to impatience:

• I'm grateful for all the people who have helped and supported us in this journey - so many friends and family members who've been so enthusiastic and happy for us. Some of you have given me hope when my own hope was waning... so thank you for that.

• I'm grateful for all the folks at CHI who approach their jobs with such love and understanding, especially when they get bombarded with frequent requests for updates from impatient people like myself :^). I'm grateful for the folks at CHI who put in such long hours and bring so much thought and prayer to their jobs.

• I'm so grateful for all the new friends and aquaintances I've met through blogs and the yahoo groups. WOW! What a supportive community.... thanks, you guys! Thanks for being willing to share your stories and your insights. I can't imagine doing this without you all!

• I'm grateful for friends who are beginning to give me unsolicited parenting advice. I know this happens naturally to women who are pregnant. But having no "external" evidence of our "pregnancy" has made this a pretty surreal experience. If I was biologically pregnant, I'd be about 7 or 8 months pregnant by now...but being "adoption pregnant" is easier for people to forget. So thank you to those friends who are continuing to throw out bits of advice for us soon-to-be first-time parents!

• I'm SO grateful for friends at work who helped me successfully lobby my employer for a change in their benefits package: maternity leave for adoption cases! Yippeee!!!!

• I'm very thankful for the people who make Rody inflatable ponies (see pic below). I had never seen one of these until I went to City Sprouts in St. Louis (a cool kids store). Every time there is a young child in that store, he/she gravitates towards their little red Rody. They LOVE it... bounce on it, squeeze its ears, etc. So we bought one. Ours is black with yellow dots.
• I'm grateful for the avelanche of baby stuff that people have bestowed upon us... a crib, 2 car seats, a baby "backpack", a tricycle, 2 strollers, etc. It's pretty overwhelming. And I'm grateful for the offers of clothing and toys that have been made... we're just waiting to find out more about the size/gender/age of the kiddo. Believe me, one thing I can't wait for is launching into clothes shopping. I'm not a shop-a-holic, and I'm not obsessed with clothes, but there are just WAY too many cute things to pass up shopping opportunities for baby/kid clothes.
• I'm actually grateful for the waiting time associated with this adoption (going on 2 years now), because it's been a fabulous growing time for both of us... we have known each other for 18 years & been married for 11, but we've still learned so much about each other through this process.

So those are my thoughts on this last day of October. Happy Halloween, everybody! And stay tuned... more updates should be coming!