D'oh!

I completely forgot about ICLW. I forgot to sign up and now it's too late. But maybe that's OK - I'll do free form ICLW and post and comment when I can. Feel free to leave comments (or not) if you like.

We are moving along right along with all the adoption stuff. Mister went to the doctor for his physical, and we are so close to being finished with the profile book. We're still working on the closing few paragraphs and then that's it. I can't believe we're really this close. (Of course, this is before I have to wait up to 3 years or whatever. I'm sure after years of waiting being "this close" will seem funny.)

This weekend, Mister and I are going to my aunt and uncle's 25th wedding anniversary party. My uncle is my mom's youngest brother, and he was a very young uncle. He is 13 years older than my older brother, and 16 years older than I. When we were very little, we had a teenage uncle! Kind of funny. (It's not really that funny, I suppose. My uncle was born when my mom was 12, and so my mom was 25 when my brother was born and 28 when she had me. Not that unusual at all, really.)

At any rate, we're going to my uncle's party. My mom wasn't really close to her family, so we didn't really see them all that much, and I'm not sure I've seen them since my mom's funeral.

None of my brothers are going; they all have other things they're doing. So it's just me and Mister and my dad. I still feel weird about going though. Just because I haven't seen them in so long. And because I haven't seen them in a long time, I really hope this party won't turn into a "when are you going to have kids?" spectacular. Because while I can write my little paragraph up there about how much progress we've made on this adoption, we still have no idea when we are going to have kids. And we're not "out" about this adoption AT ALL (like no one except the people who wrote our reference letters knows) so I won't even tell them how much progress we've made.

But, the good news is that on the way home from my uncle's, we are stopping to see our friends who had a baby recently. I think she's like 7 weeks old or something. So I'm kind of psyched about that. Knowing that I will get some baby cuddles is going to be the carrot on the stick to get me through this (probably very boring) family party.

6 Pages Left!

First off, is everyone's profile 20 pages long? I looked at some online and they were like 6-8 pages, so when our social worker said that for our agency, most people's are 18-20 pages I resisted the urge to have a temper tantrum and scream, "THAT'S SO UNFAIR!!!"

Either way, Mister and I have 3 more pages to write each, so 6 pages in total left. I'm pretty psyched. I have to write about Mister, like what I love about him and why he'll be an awesome father. He has to write one about me too. Then we each have to write about our respective families and then we each are writing a page about ourselves. I think on my page about myself, I'm writing more about biographical information, things like where I grew up, what I like to do, how I feel about teaching and I'm writing less about why I think I'll be a good mother. I'll let Mister cover that, because frankly, I have no idea. It's kind of weird.

So 6 pages left - about me by me, about Mister by Mister, about Mister by me and about me by Mister. Then we each write a page about our families and we're done. We're finishing this weekend. And from there, we're on our way.

Oddly, Mister and I had one of our very first conversations the other day that was actually about parenting and what it will be like when we have a baby.

:-D I just said, "when we have a baby" like it's really going to happen!! Yay. Sorry. Back to my story.

One of our dear friends had a baby about 6 weeks ago, and she posted something on Facebook about how she thinks the baby has acid reflux problems because the baby cries so much. One of her friends commented on that post and said, "Yeah, that's awful. We thought that about (whatever her own kid's name was) too. She just cried for like 6 months and then it got kind of better."

So here's the thing - we love our friend, and so automatically, we love our friend's baby. It sucks that her baby might have reflux. I hate to think of a tiny 6 week old baby just being in pain and crying a lot. That makes me sad. It makes me sad to think that my friend has to watch her baby be in pain and not know how to help. That makes me sad.

But then there's this other part. This part of me that reads that FB comment and wonders, "Wait, they just cry for like 6 months? And then it gets kind of better?"

So that's what Mister and I were talking about - what the hell do you do? They just cry for 6 months? How do normal people handle that? I am patient, patient, patient. I have a master's degree in teaching small children. I've been the big sister, the babysitter, the teacher, all feeling like I'm preparing myself for that "someday". But let me tell you. I'm patient, yet I get annoyed when the dog scratches the door to go outside for the 2nd or 3rd time in an hour. I'm always like, "WTH? I just took you out. You need to go out again?" I'm patient as anything, but I recognize that I have limits and annoyances.

Mister, well, he doesn't think he's patient at all. I think he is more patient than he gives himself credit for. He's patient with me, and he's patient with the dog. He gets impatient when people at work bug the crap out of him, but I don't think how you behave at work is necessarily the same as how you behave with family.

But yeah. So they just cry for 6 months and then it gets kind of better? Kill me now. Oh wait. I'm signing up to do this. On purpose.

I don't know, man. Are we insane for wanting to do this? I figure somehow babies turn 7 moths old and everyone has a baby, so somehow it works out. I'm banking on it.

Yeah, so I've been blogging about babies who cry and I've written 0 of my 3 pages. And really, worrying about crying babies when I haven't even finished the profile, well that's kind of putting the cart before the horse. I guess I'd better get back to work. Because we're finishing this weekend. I'm sending the final draft to the social worker on Monday. For realz.

Another puzzler

I've gotten the early seasons of Grey's Anatomy from Netflix.

I'm in a tough spot - I really like characters and the stories. Did I ever tell you I'm afraid of doctors, blood and needles? Like pathologically afraid. I can't even watch it on TV. So I watch Grey's by turning my head mostly.

There was just a train wreck on Grey's Anatomy and a guy ran through the door holding someone's leg. I almost puked.

Here's my solution - I watch it on my computer and put it in the background. I surf the web and just listen.

But the question remains, why do I even like this show? Seriously. I think something is wrong with me.

Why Is It?

I found out yesterday that a friend of a friend has started a photography business. I saw some of her pictures, and honestly, meh. She's not that good. Of course, this affects me not at all in my life. She lives several states away and takes maternity pictures and pictures of people's babies. So this lady's photography business is no business of mine. I get that.

But this bugs me.

Here's the thing. In my mind, if you're going to charge people for something, you ought to be able to provide a service that they can't do for themselves.

And if I were going to start a business, it would be either a bakery or photography. Those are 2 things that I'm really good at. Like good enough that people could pay me to do them and I wouldn't feel like I'm taking their money.

But if I were going to start a business, I'd want to be even better than I am now. I'm one of those "strive for greatness" kinds of people, and I'd hate to do it if I couldn't do it well.

In kind of an unnecessarily snarky way, when I looked at this person's pictures the other day, I thought to myself, "Hmm. I hope they didn't pay her a lot for those! They're just kind of mediocre."

It's weird - because really, what do I care if someone gets ripped off by paying a mediocre photographer? No one's paying me to take nice pictures, so it's not like she's taking away business or that she and I are in direct competition for maternity photos or whatever. But I know that if I took just regular pictures like that, I wouldn't be posting them on a website advertising my business either.

I just think there's a difference between being able to take OK pictures of your own kid and charging other people for mediocre pictures.

I don't know. Just kind of a dumb rant. Don't mind me. But make sure that if you hire a photographer that she's excellent and not mediocre!

Even Larger Victory

I heard back from the domestic adoption program manager. She also agreed that I had an awesome first draft of our profile, and that there were only small changes that I should make.

I'm still working on the other sections, but I may start playing on Shutterfly one of these days and start adding some pictures to accompany our "awesome" text!

What a week this has been.

Large Victory

Our social worker wrote back to me about our profile book. She said it was an awesome draft and that she loves it. I'm really almost done with our book! I need to write more about our extended family and holiday traditions, write a little bit more about each other and take a few more pictures, and we'll be ready to work on the layout.

I'm psyched. It's funny, because like I said the other day, if fingerprints really take 10-12 weeks, we could be waiting until Thanksgiving before our profile could even be able to be shown. And even then, it's not likely to be fast.

But I don't really care because progress is progress. And this week, we made HUGE progress.

Small Victory

I was able to send a draft of our profile book to our social worker and the domestic adoption program manager today. I'm smiling so big right now! I'm not getting ahead of myself here - I know it's not finished, and it's just text, no photos. But this is a big step. I've written almost all of the text and we'll see what they say. I feel great to have even finished as much as I have.

What's cracking me up is the fact that I sent the e-mail to both of them, and they're both out of the office this morning. I know they probably *are* both actually just out of the office on official business, but it's funny to me to think that these 2 people who work by themselves in this satellite office are both out on the morning after a long holiday weekend. (Not that it's any of my business where they are - I don't really care if they come to the office today or not.) Clearly, if I worked only with one other person in a generally quiet office anyway, I'd also attach an "out of office" reply to all my e-mails the morning after a holiday weekend too. I just wonder if they know that the other one is also out. A has in her e-mail, "if this is an emergency, please call B." Meanwhile, I also received B's out of office reply at the exact same time. D'oh!

But hey, why not, right? It's a gorgeous day, and one of the advantages of being unemployed is that every single other person (except perhaps my social worker...) is at work or school today. I'm going to enjoy myself! Because our profile is mostly written!!!! Woo! Off to the post office to mail our fingerprint forms. We're for real now.

The Good, the Bad, and the Sentence You'll Never Hear

It's been a busy week, which is really why I didn't post much. But some cool stuff is going on, so I'll give you a rundown.

The Good

1) Mister and I went to an annual fair in our neighborhood. We had heard about it in other years, but never went. Now, we live so close that we can walk! I love living in a neighborhood where we can walk places. Even if it is to the church fair 2 blocks away. There's not much else within walking distance around here.

2) Mister and I got our fingerprints done for our background checks. (There is actually some news about fingerprinting in each section of this post, so stay tuned.) We heard the Sentence You'll Never Hear while we were at the police station getting fingerprinted. Mister and I are both big rule-followers, very law abiding citizens. We don't really hang out often in police stations, so going to the police station early on a Saturday morning provided us with lots of conversation fodder for the day! And the officer who did our fingerprints was very nice, probably because he's usually fingerprinting thugs. I'm sure it's always fun when you get to do your job to normal-seeming people.

3) I saw 2 of my brothers this week. One of my brothers who lives in Boston came down to visit the brother who lives in NYC, and he stopped in CT for lunch with me. Then yesterday, Mister and I went out with the NYC brother and our sister-in-law for brunch and a museum trip. I love going to the city and despite being very close, I don't go often enough.

4) Saturday was a very relaxed kind of day, and Mister and I just hung out together. I love days like that. We just enjoyed each other and the beautiful weather. We didn't really even do anything memorable.

The Bad

1) When I spoke with the social worker at our agency, she said that fingerprints are taking 10-12 weeks to come back from the FBI. That's Thanksgiving. Boo!!!!! I don't think we can have our profile shown until after our fingerprints come back. So my fantasy of buying a Baby's First Christmas 2010 ornament is probably not going to happen. Which is kind of a bummer.

2) Working on our profile book is slow slow slow. Of course, once I realized that we can't even be shown until Thanksgiving probably anyway, well that slowed me down further. I think I'm going to send what I have so far though. I figure if I've written it well, I won't need to change it anyway. And if I have to change it, then I'll need more time to do the changes. So I'll send it to our social worker this week and just explain that this what I have, that I'm not done. Perhaps being in the revising/drafting process will help motivate me to do more and faster.

The Sentence You'll Never Hear

Before we went to get our fingerprints taken, I called the police department to check that there would be someone there to do them. I got the voicemail that lists all the things you need to do/bring to have fingerprints taken. The message said it costs $5 per person for fingerprints. Well, you could have knocked me down with a feather when the officer said the following sentence.

"Oh, these fingerprints are for an adoption?"

"Yes, they are."

"OK. Well fingerprints are free for adoption - you don't have to pay for that."

Wait, what? Did someone just tell me that there's something involved in this adoption with no cost whatsoever? Amazing. It was only $10 that we didn't spend, but holy moly, how about that? Kind of makes me want to go back and do them again!!