Cassie is also sleeping better and so are we. She still wakes up several times a night, but we've developed a system that allows us to each get a little shut eye every night. So that's what's going on with us. While we'd love to be home, we're also not too excited about the prospect of heading back to the cold of winter. Our friends and family have been hit very hard with storm after storm. We're hoping Mother Nature gets all the storms out of the way before we head home so we don't get stuck in an airport for a few days. Fingers crossed!
Cassie is now 18 days old and thriving. We're still in Florida waiting for court orders to apply for her passport. She's growing like a little weed and is now 6 pounds, 5 ounces. Everyday is a new discovery with our little girl. Surprisingly, we haven't killed each other living in a hotel room, 24/7. We try to get out and enjoy a little bit of sun everyday. We've also had a few family outings, which has helped keep us sane. :-) It's a bit of a challenge since it's flu season and we want to avoid crowds, so we've kept our outings to outdoor public places. So far, we've visited the Florida Everglades and got to see real alligators. It was really weird being a few feet from an alligator without any kind of fence separating us. We've also visited a few parks and went for several drives. Cassie likes the car when it's moving... Not so much when it isn't. Lol Last Sunday we attempted to go to an outdoor market, but it was a big fail. I had been looking for a farmer's market type place in the hope I could buy some local artwork. Sunday we went to the Lincoln Road Market in South Beach. I should have clued in that it wasn't really our speed when the words south and beach were paired, but apparently I was suffering from mom-nesia. South Beach is known as the place to be if you want to party! It was quite the spectacle of loud Latin music, skimpy bathing suits and dogs-as-accessories. We stood out like a sore thumb and the market itself was more a series of upscale restaurants than the grass roots market I was imagining. The thing that struck me the most was just how many people sat at restaurant tables with their dog.The dogs weren't lying at their feet either... they had their own chair and often their own meal. I felt like I was in a whole new world. We couldn't help but laugh at our predicament. At least now, when Cassie is a teenager, she can say, "yeah, I've partied in South Beach".
Cassie is also sleeping better and so are we. She still wakes up several times a night, but we've developed a system that allows us to each get a little shut eye every night. So that's what's going on with us. While we'd love to be home, we're also not too excited about the prospect of heading back to the cold of winter. Our friends and family have been hit very hard with storm after storm. We're hoping Mother Nature gets all the storms out of the way before we head home so we don't get stuck in an airport for a few days. Fingers crossed!
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Since we announced our adoption a few weeks ago, we've received a lot of questions. Most of the questions are similar to what any parent to be might hear: When are you due? Do you know if it's a boy or a girl? Have you picked a name? How are you feeling? Then, there are the questions only adoptive parents get: Where is the baby from? What do you know about the birth parents? Will you be there when the baby is born? When are you travelling? Will the birth mom/parents want contact after the baby is born? How do you know the birth mother is telling the truth in regards to her health? Aren't you worried the birth mother did drugs, smoked or worse? Often, people are surprised when I don't have an answer to many of their questions. No, I don't know much about the birth parents, I don't know if we'll be there at the birth, I don't know when we will be travelling, I don't know if the birth parents will want contact after the child is born, I don't know if everything I've been told about the pregnancy is accurate or not... I'm not even sure of the due date. In fact, you could say we are entering this adoption rather blindly. But you know what? We're ok with it. No matter where the baby is from, what his/her history might be, whether the birth mother drank alcohol, smoked, did drugs or worse, whether the birth mom wants an open adoption or not, that baby still needs parents. That's the bottom line. We need that baby as much as he/she needs us. When you choose adoption, there is one thing you can be certain of: you aren't in control of the pregnancy or the child's history... and this is something you need to accept from the start. It's hard for so many people who have had biological children to understand... They can't imagine not knowing when the next medical appointment is or how much the baby is measuring or when the EXACT due date is (We currently have 4 due dates spanning a month!). It's a challenge for people around us as well. Your boss wants to know when they need to replace you, your parents want to plan a shower and your friends want to be supportive but have no idea how. So you spend days, weeks and sometimes months apologetically answering: "I don't know" and getting very quizzical looks. Friends and family have tried to be helpful by suggesting solutions: can't you talk to your agency? Can you ask the birth mother? Can't you talk to the doctor following the birth mother? The thing is, when you get a match you tend to turn into a 16 year old girl who desperately wants a boy to like her. Except the boy is the birth mother and you are so scared she will change her mind that you willingly go into it blindly. You don't want to ask to many questions for fear of scaring her off... you don't want your agency to ask too many questions because you want to respect the birth mom's privacy. It's all a very delicate balance. So that's where we are today... trying to accept that somewhere in the world there is this wonderful woman willing to give us the most amazing gift and all we can do is close our eyes, take a deep breath and hope for the best. :-) Our virtual 5K is finished and it was a huge success! A big thanks to Chelle for all her wonderful work! Our friends and family... and even complete strangers, managed to raise $2,100! I'm in awe of the grand total! With this latest boost we've surpassed the halfway mark of our fundraising goal! Wheeeeee! In a little over a year (we launched our website on November 18, 2012) we've managed to raise $5,152 of the 10,000 we are hoping to reach. I'll be honest, when we created the fundraising section of our website, I never thought we would even come close to our goal. The fundraising page was plopped in the website in the hopes of getting a few donations and to track our Etsy sales. It's incredible what you can accomplish when you have such supportive friends and family. A lot of people have been asking if we have any news on a new match but not much has changed. We are patiently (or often impatiently) waiting to get the infamous call. It's been four months since our failed adoption and we haven't stopped thinking about getting the next call since. I'm hoping the upcoming holidays will help keep us busy so we can get a little reprieve from the constant hoping. Actually, I've been thinking lately that a call right now wouldn't be to our advantage since the Holidays make travelling more expensive. I keep trying to convince myself I DON'T want a call until the New Year, but we all know we would jump no matter when the call comes in. :-) In the meantime, please consider a Christmas gift from our Etsy Shop. We've got pet ID tags, belt buckles, key chains and jewellery. You can check out our entire collection here. I'm also available for photo shoots. Unfortunately, I don't have any weekend spots left for before Christmas. However, if you have a flexible schedule (like a nurse :-)) I might be able to squeeze you in during a weekday. Two days ago Pierre arrived from work with some news. I had been sleeping all day after a night shift so he asked me if I was awake because he needed to talk to me. I thought he was going to tell me not to forget to plug in the laptop (since I had forgot to plug it in)... but instead he told me the most unexpected news: our agency called. They had a potential match for us and wanted to know if we wanted to be considered. Officially, we weren't back on the waiting list. If you recall, we wanted to wait a few months to get back on our feet financially, so this was very unexpected. Pierre didn't have much information. The birth mother was due for a c-section in two days and it was a case of "I didn't know I was pregnant"... or at least, "I didn't know HOW FAR ALONG I was" and everything was moving very fast. My reaction wasn't what I had expected it to be... I was overwhelmed and confused. Were we ready? We could be parents in two days! Of course, I had to work in an hour so there wasn't much time to discuss. We called the agency and they had already shown our profile to the birth mother. I guess the decision to present our profile or not was out of our hands. The social worker was meeting with the birth mom at that exact moment and they were waiting for her decision. We couldn't do anything but wait now. If she chose us, we would make the decision whether to proceed or not at that point... but in all honesty, we were torn. :-( We weren't even close to where we wanted to be financially and we were still getting over the last failed match... but this was potentially our child! How could we not say yes! The next morning the agency called to tell us the birth mother had chosen another family. I was sad and a little relieved since the decision was taken out of our hands. The call from the agency brought up a bunch of new emotions. Did we really want to wait longer or would we be ok if we added our names to the list again. Was it too early? Would we be able to make it work if we put our name back on the list and got picked tomorrow? It was a discussion we needed to have... but then, something AMAZING happened! A bunch of my friends were secretly planning a fundraising event for us! Spearheaded by the amazing Michelle, they were planning a virtual 5k race. It was a virtual race because my friends are spread all over the world. The premise: pay a $20 entry fee, get a race bib, run/walk/bike/swim 5 km over the course of the next week and then take a picture with your race bib to post on the facebook page. I found out about the fundraiser last night while scrolling through facebook. Apparently some 30+ friends had been planning this for a while! At first, I didn't know WHAT was going on! Once I caught on, I started quietly repeating, Oh my God... and then I was screaming OH MY GOD! ( I think I scared Pierre). I tried telling my dear friends how much their incredible gesture meant to me, but it was difficult to write a cohesive sentence through streaming tears. Plus, I was running on two hours of sleep from my last night shift! So today, I wanted to tell you a bit about these amazing people. You see, this group of girls are not your typical friends. In fact, I often refer to them as my "imaginary friends", although they are very real. I met many of these girls over a decade ago on a website. I realise it sounds super nerdy to have internet friends, but read on and you'll understand a little more about our special relationship. Some of the girls, like Michelle, I've met and have frequently hung out with, while others I've never met in person... but all of them know more about me and my life than most people I see every day. We met on a Canadian wedding planning website that no longer exists. Many of the girls are still married, some are now divorced, some remarried and some, like me, never ended up marrying the person they were planning a wedding with over a decade ago. After the wedding planning was over, a core group of us continued to keep in touch and a few discussion boards were born from our need to stay connected. What started out as discussions on bridesmaid dresses and corsages, eventually turned into real life issues: family, kids, work, loss and triumph. Together we have seen each other through the good times and the bad. We've welcomed so many babies into the world and ugly cried when a child left this world much too early. We've virtually held each other's hand through divorce, infertility, financial crisis, life altering accidents and illnesses and loss. We've cheered each other on through first races, difficult pregnancies, professional accomplishments, educational challenges and first dates. We've cried together, we've laughed together and occasionally got drunk together! :-) Many of the girls have met up with others when travelling to other provinces, some even got together in Vegas while a few more hung out while they happened to be in Paris at the same time. When we got our first match, I couldn't wait to tell my girls. Their reaction was ELECTRIC! I can't think of a better word... their excitement was palpable and the tears where real when the adoption fell through. All I can say is, one day I will be showing them pictures of my child and all over Canada (and around the world) there will be woman crying of joy with me because they've read every post and been there every step of the way. There is something so liberating about being able to write out your feelings knowing an entire community of women have your back. Most people have trouble understanding how I could be so close to women I've never met, but to me, it's irrelevant. The way they have rallied behind Pierre and I with this fundraising event is proof that friendship comes in many forms. Because of THEM, because of their efforts, because of their generosity, because of their compassion, because of their love, Pierre and I have decided to get back on the waiting list. I love you all so much... regardless of the financial contribution, you have given me hope again. Here's to third time's the charm! It's been a month since we got the call and I think, for the most part, we're ok. We both tend to be emotionally level-headed in a crisis (which comes in handy when you're a nurse), so I generally don't freak. I really have yet to freak out, in fact. I've cried... but there hasn't been any ugly crying. I think it's partly my personality and partly because we went into this match knowing there was a risk of her backing out. About one in five birth mothers back out after they have been matched (either before or after baby is born). Everyone around us was "bouncing off the walls" excited and, although we were thrilled, we kept our emotions in check. We've been hurt too many times to just let the emotions flow. We're both back to work and back to the normal routine. Returning to work wasn't as bad as I expected it to be. I get teary-eyed when someone asks how I'm doing with that "poor you" look, but after that moment has passed, I'm ok to talk about it. Right now I have short waves of hurt, mixed with frustration. I'm both sad and angry that the match has thrown me for a loop. Before the match I was mentally prepared to wait another year. I was ok with the wait. I knew our dossier was with the agency and nothing was required from us until we got our match... and that wasn't going to happen for quite some time. Then, we got the call and everything went crazy. We were getting a baby soon! When it fell through, I didn't want to wait a year anymore. :-( It's like this failed match set me off balance. We were told we could get back on the waiting list as soon as we're ready… and emotionally, I think we’re ready, but it’s not just about emotions. Our agency has told us that once we are back on the list, the wait likely won't be long since our profile is more open that most. That being said, we also took an unexpected financial hit with the failed match. This means we need to consider the monetary repercussions of getting back in the game. Ideally, we would have to wait another four months to be more financially secure, but that feels so far away. I know four months doesn't seem like a long time, but when your baby was so close to your arms, it feels like an eternity. After discussing it at length, we have decided to wait two months before going back on the waiting list. Two months is the halfway point between me wanting to be on the list TODAY and Pierre wanting to be more prepared. It's a compromise... what marriage is all about. :-) In other news, we found out our provincial home study has been approved for a child or sibling group under the age of 14. YAY! Now we are truly in the ultimate waiting period. However, I know that with the province the wait could be infinitely longer... as in, it could be months as much as it could be years. When we received our match last month I felt so unprepared. I wanted to read all the books to get ready but there just wasn't enough time. I know I should pick up some books now, but it's so hard when you don't know when you'll have a child and have no idea how old he or she will be. We could have a newborn just as much as we could have a teenager. It's a little crazy, huh? So that's where we are today... waiting to see who we will find at the end of our red string. |
Follow our blog:ContributersDanielleI'm a pediatric nurse with a passion for photography and all things crafty.
THINGS I LOVE: Creating my own happiness (at 31, I left my career in marketing to become a nurse), my awesome husband and family, my hilariously cute dogs, sarcastic and dry wit, making lists and lots more! PierreI'm a departement manager for a commercial construction contractor
THINGS I LOVE: My wonderful wife; my two dogs; reading and learning about dog behaviour, dog psychology and dog language; finding great deals at auctions and flea markets. Archives
June 2015
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