Some more nostalgia

Alan emailed the caseworker yesterday to ask if the background check had come in yet (since it had been 11 business days and she said it takes 7-10 business days), but not surprisingly, we haven't received a response yet. So rather than waste time SCREAMING, i'll post something a little more positive.



Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Dear Kiddo,

Sorry it’s been so long since my last letter (a week and a half). Your dad (to be) and I got our info from the Department of Children’s Services about becoming Resource Parents. Resource Parents include Foster Parents, Adoptive Parents, Respite Parents, etc. It was very good information and I’m really grateful that we’ve begun the process.

I shouldn’t be looking at the photolistings of waiting children yet. It’s far too early, and most if not all of the children on the site will be adopted (hopefully) before we finish our training and home study, etc. But it’s sooooooo tempting! There are so many great kids on the site that it’s hard not to look. I wonder with each and every one if they might be you. Or if they will get the great mom or dad that they all deserve. I hope beyond hope that they will find a great home and will be able to grow into happy, fulfilled adults (but not too soon!) one way or another.

Sweet little one, I want to tell you again how much I love you! Once you come to live with us, life will never be the same for any of us, and hopefully that’s a wonderful thing! Change is really scary, to kids as well as adults, but change can be very good just as it can sometimes be bad. I hope that this major change will turn out, over time and adjustment, to be a good one for you, and I hope that it will teach you to embrace change, to challenge your comfort zone, but I also know that it’s easier said than done.

As I write this, Spring is arriving. The weather is getting warmer, and the days are getting longer, and the flowers are blooming. I think we had a little bit of a late Spring this year, and even in mid-April the daffodils are swinging their merry little petals in the wind and feeling happy to be alive, bringing a feeling of hope to all of us mere humans. This makes it easier to be hopeful about change in general, although I couldn’t be happier about adopting you.

This seems like a good time to tell you again how much I already love you. They say that when a mother gives birth, she feels overwhelmed with love for her new baby. Some people worry when they look at adopting a baby that they won’t feel that rush of emotion for a baby they didn’t carry in their own womb. Others worry that they couldn’t feel that way about a child they adopt who isn’t a baby. I can tell you that that is in no way true, at least for me. I already have overwhelming love for you, because you are the child that God intended for Alan and me, and we believe that with all of our hearts. There will be times in your life when you feel like no one loves you, or maybe that no one could possibly love you. Just always remember that we picked you! Out of all of the children who need homes in all of the world (and sadly that number is very, very high), we chose you, and maybe even your other brothers or sisters. And we chose you because you were exactly what we needed. And remember, we chose you for who you ARE, not for what you do. You don’t have to worry that if you don’t behave yourself or if you make a mistake that we won’t love you anymore. Our family is forever.

Okay, I have a confession to make. I often call your dad “The World’s Only Perfect Man”. Perfect men, in theory, don’t make mistakes. But everyone makes mistakes, even perfect men. So your dad does sometimes make mistakes. But that doesn’t make him imperfect. He is absolutely the World’s Only Perfect Man, for me. He was meant for me and I was meant for him, and you were meant for us. No amount of mistakes will ever change that, and don’t forget it. This makes you “The World’s Only Perfect Kid.” Really! It’s true! When we make a commitment to you, it will be forever.

Again, I wonder what you will be like. Will you love pizza? Will you eat broccoli (don’t worry; we don’t eat it often as we don’t like it either)? Will you like chocolate? Will you watch sports with your dad or will you ride horses with me? Or maybe you’ll do both, or neither, and that’s okay, too. We want you to be your own person, with your own personality. One thing I’m sure of is that you will have personality! We hope you will respect our personalities as well, because we certainly have a lot of it! The voices your dad makes, our stuffed animals and their personas, my quirks, etc. You can be as much or as little like us as you are or want to be, and we will love you for it! We hope that we will have the wisdom to see the difference between matters of personality and expression, and matters of health, safety, and security. We will do our best to protect you from things that may damage your health, safety, or security. Like if you hang out with kids who do drugs or who are in gangs. That is very serious stuff, and we want to protect you from it. But if you want to get your hair cut a certain way or wear certain clothes (even if they’re UGLY!), we will try to respect that, within reason, and allow you to express yourself your way. After all, you are ours because we fell in love with your personality! Why would we want to change it? (Something I’ve never understood about women who try to change their husbands, but I digress…)

I remember being a kid, and all of the thoughts I would have about the world. Some of them were surprisingly deep. I hope that you will share some of those with us. Somehow as we get older we stop thinking as much, or as deeply, and I miss that. It’s probably because when you’re young, everything about the world is so new and exciting, but when you get older, you’ve experienced so many different things that you’ve learned to accept them without questioning them. I hope you will question things, because that’s how you learn, and it’s also how you bring about change for the future. Inventors are people who challenge what they know to be true. Like the people who knew that humans weren’t meant to fly, that humans didn’t have wings and couldn’t stay aloft in the air, etc. These are the men and women who created airplanes, and, my personal favorite, hang gliders! Not that you have to be an inventor. I just hope that you’ll be an independent thinker.

Well, sweetheart, I’ve talked and talked this morning and I’d probably end this now or it will become a big long book.

So Happy You Are Mine (SHYAM)!
Mom