08/22/2011

Two weeks ago…

 

Mike just got back from China, still pretty jet lagged.

 

When he is traveling, I save all the newspapers for him. I get all my news from the online so don’t usually read the papers. I was grilling up some steaks with this amazing coffee and spice steak rub from William Sonoma.

 

I had just made us some Kettle One vodka martinis (I don’t mean to be all brand name dropping, but I want to remember every detail of the evening that we decided to make a family)…. so… Kettle One Martinis… we had only had 2 sips and I was watching over our steaks and Mike was reading last weeks paper…

… and then he hands me a page and says simply "Let’s adopt these boys".

 

He hands me the page and in it show two brothers ages 11 and 5. Blond hair and blue eyed. The oldest looks exactly like me when I was 11.

I said "okay"…

 

He didn’t believe me. Said "ya right, we couldn’t be parents"…

I said "why not?" We are financially secure and would make amazing parents.

We talked about briefly and the basic idea was…. we would be an incredible parenting team. We have stable marriage, am financially secure, and have a the room both in our homes and our hearts to welcome and child or children into our lives.

 

The next morning Mike emails me and asked if I was serious about having a kid. I replied with " …all joking aside, I think we would make amazing parents. We love each other and could spread that love to a family. We could change one of these kids lives…"

 

Or something like that….

 

He forwards me an email…. He had cut the article out of the paper and wrote and email to the adoption contact listed in the paper

"… we are very interested in adopting these children. Can you advice on how to adopt them, or in the case they are already adopted, any children like them".

 

The lady that responded said we would have to go through house state (Oregon) Department of Human Services and gave the number for the general info line.

 

 I called the phone number she had listed, and quickly got our name on the rolls and assigned a "certification officer".  I met with her the next night and she went over the process and gave me the paperwork to fill out.

 

Holy shit… it’s happening.

 

Turns out we may not get those two particular brothers as the certification takes minimum 6 months before we can start looking at possible placement. But it started the conversation… and…

 

Mike always said "I’m to old", he’s 14 years my senior… he’s now 46 (I’m 32)… what he was really saying was "you’re not ready to be a father"… and I wasn’t. It was his way of protecting himself. He’s is going to be an amazing father. He is affectionate; loving; and compassionate. He is going to be an amazing father.

I had always written it off as we were never going to have kids… but looking back now, I should have seen the signs that he wanted them as well. How could I have been so blind?

Mike had asked me several times in arguments… "if we have kids, you can’t be so lazy…" or… "…if we had kids, we couldn’t just go out of town"… you know; stuff like that. In my head I thought "well, we don’t have kids and we won’t have kids… why are you saying this?"

 

I didn’t get that he was pseudo testing me. He was testing the waters. He thought I didn’t want kids, and wasn’t ready. He was right one one account. I wasn’t ready…. but I did eventually. Of course I wouldn’t mention it as I thought he didn’t want them…..

 

(moral of the story… bitches communicate!!!! Don’t assume.)
 

As simple as an off hand comment about a article in the newspaper can change your life.  We are fully committed to being parents.  How so much can change in the course of one conversation in the heat of a summer afternoon.

 

Even a year ago… I wasn’t ready. I always saw myself as eventually being a father… but I just wasn’t ready. I am now.

 

(Sorry if this isn’t exactly linear, but hey..;. that’s how my brain works)….

 

I am finally mature enough to be a Dad. Mike is ready to be a Dad…. and we started the paperwork.

 

So this is gonna be the next… well who knows… it could be as little as 6 months and as long as…. well, till there is a perfect match…

 

We filled out our (huge) stack of paperwork today. Bitches be all asking some person frigging questions… down to how often we have the hot and nasty sex. The answer of course is as much as possible. Okay… not as often as we would like… like gets busy… but at least twice a weekend. 🙂

 

So here is the next year of our lives: 30 hours of parenting classes ( first class is this Tuesday night!)…. then home study. Which is the social worker (her name is Erin and I already met her when she went over the paperwork…. I’ve already charmed her, and she will love Mike) looking over our whole house/life and deciding if we are fit to be parents (we totally will be)… then it’s wait time. Waiting for the match.

We want more than one… sibling groups as their called… preferably boys. What would we know about raising girls?

 

Who knows what the future will hold?  What I do know is that we are ready to devote every fiber of ourselves to loving and nurturing and raising our children to be amazing human beings.

 

We are lucky.  We are secure.  With money.  With love.  With life.  We can change the life of a child(ren).  

 

Every step of this journey is going to be scary and exiting.  It’s going to be the most significant thing I do in my life.  

 

We are going to make a family.

 

I can’t believe it… I never thought this was going to happen… but once we started down this path there is no doubt that this right.  This is what we were meant to do.  

 

ps:  This has been a community I have invested and loved for almost ten years.  I realize I’m going to need it as I enter the most challenging and exciting stage of my life.  I hope to get the support I need.