A Small Forest

Fredrik is out of the country, and I'm managing Kysa and Lexi alone for a week. We're all doing great, especially with the help of our amazing babysitter, Natalie, who comes for a couple hours a day to let me go to yoga. Sanity helps.

Gladney sent us the dossier manual and the application manual (hundreds of pages) which I somehow managed to print out juggling baby and dog. I also took out a small forest in the process. So sorry Mother Earth....we'll try to make it up to you by using 7th Generation Diapers (you know we REALLY tried cloth).

So I sit here, watching my baby who will wake up any minute now and need my attention, and eyeing the mountain of paperwork someone will need to complete to bring our baby boy home. And this isn't just name and address and why do you want a baby paper work....it's serious FBI, US Embassy, dot your i's and cross your t's, thank you very much paper work. yikes.

Nowhere on the application did it ask for a haiku, a silly song, or an essay on chakras. I'm screwed. Fredrik, come home soon.

OK, people...I'm bucking up, ending the procrastination, closing this post and going to snuggle with Kysa and the small forest/adoption manuals on this rainy night. Diving in.

Jumping into the Canyon

What just happened? As Allison said, "I think we just entered the matrix"... yes, yes we did.

We just finished our phone orientation with our Gladney contact, Debra. She's great. Of course, in the midst of this 20 minute call Lexi decides to bark at the neighbors and cause trouble, the phone battery dies after a long day of conference calls, and we eagerly await our food delivery order from Black Bean Co. The only calm soul in the room was sleepy Kysa in Mommy's arms... she's sooo supportive of us finding her baby brother!

That said, we are undoubtedly standing on the edge of a canyon. We look. We see it. It is beautiful and daunting. And, we decide it is still best to jump in it. It is deep. It will hurt. It will take time to reach bottom. It will take more time to climb out the other side. But the stories we can tell will be vast. The experience unique. The views spectacular. And, we will have our baby boy.

Here's to jumping into canyons with eyes wide open!

/ fredrik

Dear Sister

Dear Sister-

The sparkles and confetti of celebration are settling. My thoughts these last few days have been constantly on how our lives are changing and will be changing. I hold and nurse my daughter, and think of how life will change for her when her little brother arrives maybe a year from now. I hold her a little more closely now that I know she won’t be the baby forever…

As friends mentioned upon the announcement of our intention to adopt, the molecules are indeed swirling. I feel as if we have conceived a child in our hearts, and I know with confidence someday we can tell our son he was planned and loved even before he was conceived.

Despite all the positive things we’ll be able to tell our son someday, all the ambitious hopes and dreams for his future, and all the warm feelings of our own good intentions we are indulging in, I know on the other side of the planet you may be struggling. Doing the vague adoption math, we can guess you may be pregnant, or close to getting pregnant. Perhaps you already know you’re pregnant, perhaps you have no idea, or perhaps like me…you knew immediately and are already sick and fatigued and weary with child.

I try to imagine you, and right now you are a cast of characters in my mind: mother, daughter, sister, friend, wife. I think of you as a young teenage girl finding herself in a difficult situation, a mother with too many mouths to feed, a woman victim to violence, rape, HIV/AIDS, hunger, abuse, a woman who may have lost or be loosing her beloved husband, a woman without a home. I think of you, and you are always beautiful, strong, brave and proud. I think of you. I think of you…

I think of you while I fold laundry. I think of you while I drive my car. I think of you while I cook dinner for my family. I think of you and want to look into your eyes, sit with you for a while, hold your hand and tell you everything will be O.K. But I don’t know that everything will be O.K. for you, and this haunts me.

Today in yoga class, my teacher, Jeffery asked us to dedicate our practice to someone else, to offer up our efforts. This type offering is a common practice in class, and most of the time I offer up my efforts to my daughter, Kysa…her name never being far from my lips or thoughts. The last week or so I’ve been dedicating my practice more specifically to my children…born and unborn. Today I dedicated my practice to you. Your face, the one I imagine, appeared to me and there was no question that every breath of my practice would be offered up to you.

I left class and driving across the bridge, suspended over the water, I was still thinking of you and it dawned on me that the one thing I CAN do for you is offer my practice to you every day during this process. Every inhalation and exhalation will be in your honor, every drop of sweat will be shed on your behalf, every hand pressed in prayer lifted for you, every backbend my heart will open for you, and every forward bend I’ll bow to your pain and effort. I’ll think of you when poses become uncomfortable and I want to come out and stretch my legs or release my fatigued muscles. I’ll remember that you don’t have a choice to step out of your discomfort.

I can only hope that in some small way my thoughts and actions will travel along Indra’s web to you like small pearls of comfort in the weeks and months ahead. I don’t know if we will ever physically meet, but I will hold you in my awareness and meet you on the mat daily. And on the mat I will honor the cosmic link to you, the other mother of the son we are both yet to meet.

The divine light in me bows to the divine light in you.

Namaste.

First stop on the Hurry Up and Wait Express

It's Friday, exactly a week after we mailed off our application. We had hoped that we'd have at least completed the orientation by now. I contacted the agency this week and we can't go forward with the orientation until they've processed all the information from our application. Fredrik and I both thought we'd be able to get through the paper work in a timely fashion, but I'm now realizing that it probably has very little to do with how quickly we get our end of the paper work completed.

I really hope we're able to do the orientation next week since Fredrik will be out of the country the following week. Time seems to be flying by, I can see how quickly three weeks could go by and nothing happens. Tick tock.

Other news, I survived my first week of being dairy free and have decided to take it a step further and venture into vegan land....meaning that I'm cutting out meat. I know most folks usually cut out meat first, and then dairy...but I've never been one to do things in order. So far so good. I feel great, and we even ordered pizza tonight (the satsang cheeseless at D'Allesandro's is awesome). I'm giving myself a 3 month goal to start. After three months I'll reassess how I feel, unless it affects my ability to breastfeed Kysa and I'll make immediate changes. Yes, my decision to go Vegan does have something to do with the adoption...I'll explain in a later blog. For now, let's just say it's a combination of medical guidance and attention to ethics.

I also taught my first prenatal yoga class at the Charleston Birth Place this week. It felt great to rejoin the work force even in a small way. It was also sweet to teach something that I feel so passionate about in the place where Kysa was born. Great baby vibes!!!

Kysa's new tricks this week include reaching more and more, squeezing faces, hugging and snuggling her face into our necks when she's tired, sticking things in her mouth, laughing at mommy when I fake cry, and testing the boundaries of her vocal strength. Our kid is loud.

Until next time....C'mon Gladney, we're ready for orientation!!!

Hey little man, it's me... Dad

It's an interesting feeling, now that we have the ball rolling, to realize that you could in fact be conceived by now (or perhaps in the next couple of months). Yet even though you are over 7,000 miles away, somehow we already feel a connection to you. I really mean that.

I think about adoption and it's easy to wonder, how will I relate to you? I've never been mistaken as Ethiopian... although, one of the most famous Swedes living in the USA is "Swedish-Ethiopian-American": Marcus Samuelsson, the head chef of Aquavit and other restaurants in NYC. No pressure. Still, I can't help envision a conversation you and I may have some years from now.

You: "Why am I different than you? Am I really part of this family?"

Me: "Yes, of course. Just like you, I was also born in another country on the other side of the ocean. I came from a magical cold country up north, you came from a beautiful warm country around the equator. Just like you, I came to this country at a young age. Your Mom and I found each other, that's when we started our family. Then came your beautiful sister Kysa. Then we planned for and found you. Now despite where we all came from and how we look, we are all part the same family."

We are already an international family, and adopting you will make us so much more international. What a beautiful thing, when what this world needs more than anything is global understanding, appreciation, tolerance and love.

While I know it'll still be a while, can't wait to meet you little man...

/ fredrik

Begin here.

Every story begins somewhere, and ours begins with dropping an application into the mail. Or does it begin with me as a teenager watching Oprah, and falling in love with a family that adopted a little girl from Russia? I was so moved in fact, that I announced on the spot one day I would adopt a baby from another country. Sure, teenage girls say silly things and make unkept promises, but that announcement has haunted me for 20 years. Until today.

Today Fredrik, Kysa and I drove across the Ravenel bridge from our downtown Charleston home and dropped an initial application form in the mail to adopt a BABY BOY from Ethiopia!! While we know this is only the beginning of a heap of paperwork and many months of waiting, it felt so good to get the ball rolling. We are committed emotionally, spiritually, financially, wholly.

This step puts in motion years of discussion Fredrik and I have had about having an even more international family. Fredrik being a Swede, and both of us with incurable wanderlust, we want to open our hearts and home to a child from across the globe. We've been blessed to experience so fully the beautiful, natural birth of Kysa and now we seek the experience of having a child via adoption.

Fredrik and I believe in "chosen" family which sort of opposes the statement that "blood is thicker than water." Both of us coming from small families, our friends and community have become our extended family over the years...we have many "chosen" brothers and sisters who live all over the world. We look forward to growing our family with the support of these worldly and international aunts and uncles, and of course the family that's been so caring and supportive over the years.

The logistics: We're looking ahead to 4-5 months of paperwork, then 8-10 months of waiting for a referral, and then another 3 months until travel and pick up. There will be 2 trips with hopefully one month in between. Our little man should be approx 6-9 months old. So the earliest we could have babe in arms will be approx Nov'11 and the latest approx March'12. We're telling ourselves that it could be two years for sanity's sake.

and so we begin.
la familia!!