Where were you five years ago?

Five years ago this weekend, our collectively lives changed forever.

Tomorrow marks Anna’s 5th birthday, a big milestone for sure for our oldest charge.

As some of you know, prior to starting the blog, I had thought (and still do) about writing a book about the whole adoption process. This is from one of the initial chapters that shares what was going on before this young girl moved into our home and our hearts.

It has a rather abrupt ending, as there is a rather long couple of paragraphs that follow that don’t really deal with preparing, so hold on and wait for part two next week.



We thought we knew what we were getting in to when we started the whole adoption process. As teachers, we had worked with our share of kids of all ages so nothing really seemed to be an issue to us. God were we ever wrong.

Right after we met with Anna’s Mom and knew it was a match, we decided to ramp up our efforts and start getting stuff for our newest family member. We had heeded the adoption book’s advice and kept the hoarding and nesting down to a minimum. We had felt the pain of a birth mom changing her mind, so we didn’t want to set up shop and then have to take down everything if things changed. We decided to support our local toy store, the Toy House, a place that has been in Jackson for many years. Their signature wrapping paper of multi-colored balloons has delighted generations of young Jacksonians. We knew that they had a baby department, and unlike some of the big box places in town, their staff actually know what they are doing. So we had dinner, a few drinks to steel our nerves, and headed to the store. It was a Friday night and we were a few weeks away from Anna’s birth. Our former church had decided to have a shower for us, so they recommended that we set up a baby registry at the Toy house so we didn’t end up with 20 copies of “Goodnight Moon” or worse yet, a Raffi CD. We walked around the baby area with a glazed look on our face and finally a woman came up and asked if we needed help. We told her what we were doing, and she asked us what we actually had at home for the baby. As mentioned, we kept our purchases to a minimum, so we only had a few things:

• An MSU teddy bear

• A collection of baby tattoos

• A flannel shirt from Baby Gap

We shared our pathetic list with the woman, and the look on her face said: you are sooooo fucked. We knew we were in trouble. She sighed a heavy sigh and showed us how to use the bar code zapper/registry thingie. She asked us if we had any bottles.

Nope.

Any bibs?

Nope.

Any diaper containers?

Nope.

She shook her head and started zapping things like she was at a shooting range. We reminded her that we only had the bear, tattoos and flannel shirt several times and she mentally sized us up each time. Who were these two clueless idiots? Why were they having a kid? WHO ALLOWED THIS?

More later!

Enjoy your week and send birthday wishes to Anna on Saturday.