30 Amazing Minutes

Sometimes that's all you need.  All you need to regroup, feel good, get focused, and calm down a crazy three year old that hasn't seen you all day.

I work Tuesday's and Thursday's and Georgia is a maniac when I get home.  My sitter Kate always laughs when I come through the door and the universe twists the crank on the jack-in-the-box that is Georgia one last time and she comes popping out of her box like a lunatic that has been caged all day.  Kate swears that she is calm and quiet and sweet all day and the minute she hears the garage open all hell breaks loose.  And I believe her.  I experience it on the days I don't work and daddy walks through the door.  It's like this realization that 'mommy hasn't been here all day and we need to make up for it' hits her.  She wants to run around shrieking, dumping out toys, rolling on the floor, and just generally acting like a maniac.

It's really relaxing to come home to.

And, I'll confess......I frequently turn on a show at these moments as an antidote to her insanity.  I know it's not really what she wants--she wants my attention--but I'm just too spent sometimes to bring her down with what she really wants--mommy time--and instead rely on Doc. McStuffins to work her magic.

And then things resume as they should and the house is peaceful and in working order.

But today, I wanted to make sure Georgia knew I was excited to see her.  As excited as she always is to see me.  I knew that if I gave her an amazing half hour of mom time it'd probably do the trick as well better than the good old stuffed animal doctor.  I'm talking a full half hour of completely focused Georgia time, in her room, with her toys; not me squeezing in five minutes of play in between getting dinner on the stove, a load of laundry in, sorting through the mail, or picking up my room.  A half hour of solid play can sometimes feel like a year.  If you're a mom and you deny that, I have one word for you.  Liar.

Playing outside--no problem for me.  Letting Georgia turn a twenty minute grocery shopping trip into a three hour archaeological dig--easy and enjoyable.  Teaching her how to do a project--sign me up any day. But playing vet, or baby, or Wizard of Oz--any more than fifteen minutes straight with no interruptions and I turn into the jack-in-the-box.

But today I was going to do it.  When I asked her what she wanted to do she responded, "Make-up and bows!"

Jack-pot.  I have been waiting for years for someone to put make-up on me and play with my hair.  My sister can vouch for me.  I still ask her to comb my hair whenever we're together. I don't care if I end up looking like Lada Gaga when she wore a meat dress to the VMA's--when Georgia wants to play hair and make-up I'm in.  I get to lay down and have someone fuss over me and it's just so...........relaxing.  Seriously.  I mean it.  Teach your kids how to put bows in your hair and brush your face with old eyeshadow and powder.  You might even fall asleep.

The point here?  Sometimes, as moms we work ourselves up into this guilt frenzy (and I'm not totally against mom guilt) and we believe that if we haven't planned a veritable carnival in our living room for our kids it's not good enough; they don't feel loved enough and we must be lazy moms.

But really--sometimes thirty amazing minutes of smearing eyeshadow and old powder on your moms cheeks and lips and shoving pink sparkly glitter bows into her hair (that by the way.....Georgia says is blue? super.) will do the trick.  And it's not to say that you can punch the clock for thirty minutes and you're out all the time--it's to say that sometimes..........quality over quantity does what you need it to do for your crazy maniac....and yourself.

So here's a challenge to myself and all you other moms.  Set your timers.  Shut your computers.  Keep your phone in your purse.  Thirty minutes at a time.  Practice makes permanent right?  Pretty soon you'll be playing Wizard of Oz and you'll look at the clock and it will be tomorrow.

Please.

But in the mean-time, arm your kid with a blush brush and let 'em go to town.  

You know it's a good day when.......

• Every time you ask someone to pee they do it happily, without crying. 
• And.....they do it quickly.....instead of the twenty minutes of sitting and squirming on the toilet they've had a penchant for lately. 
• And even better.......no accidents in the pants. 
• There has been no crying about things like a fuzz on an apple slice, a stuffed animal that won't fit into a shoe, me throwing away a scrap of paper that was seemingly trash but was in fact a letter to the Scarecrow, or having to endure mommy listening to Gotye instead of Disney Princess Party. 
• You dye away your gray hair. 
• You both wear polka dots to a birthday party. 
• G is so excited to give away the birthday present she picked out all on her own. Makes me cry mama tears.  (Those are the kind that are always lingering behind your eyelids, threatening to spill out without a moments notice......at an insurance commercial, a cute magazine ad, watching your daughter get excited about doing a project with you, and really just about anything that wouldn't have made you cry in a 1000 years prior to having a child.)
• You find a way to work your mint green chandelier earrings into yet another outfit. 
• You wear blue eyeshadow. 
• You let your daughter watch Charlotte's Web and she doesn't even realize that Charlotte dies......phew. 
• Your husband has to clean up the cat puke. 
• You (kind of) feel caught up on laundry. 
• Your husband brings you home a doughnut from his weekly doughnut date with the G. 
• You find a J. Crew bracelet on clearance for $14. 
• Your daughter eats a whole box of macaroni and cheese on her own......and wants more.  Maybe that's just more disturbing than good.  
• You actually get pictures of your daughter and and she's looking at the camera. 

It's the little things, right?  

Happy Weekend...............and thank you all so much for the e-mails, shares, Facebook messages, and comments about my last post.  I can't tell you how awesome it is to meet so many new people through this blog who love adoption, believe in it, are passionate about it, and who want to shout it from the roof-tops that it's the best thing they've ever done--both adoptive moms and birth moms!  I love you all! And I can't wait to get to know you better!

Public Enemy #1.

So, I don't write a lot about infertility here and my experience with it.  No particular reason really, it's just not a part of my life now, and hasn't been since I started this blog.  I mean sure.......it's a part of my life in that I was never able to get pregnant and I'm assuming I still can't--actually, by my own actions I'm making sure I can't, but it's not a part of my life in the way that it used to be when I was running back and forth to the fertility specialists, shooting up in the bathroom, popping pills that reduced me to panic attacks on the highway if someone passed me or honked at me, and writing one check after another that I now feel was the equivalent of burning $100 bills one after another.

Can I get an "Amen" that that is over?  For good.

But it's true, I did all those things.  I spent more hours with my legs in stir-ups than Sea Biscuits jockey and gave myself shots and went under the knife all in the name of "trying one more thing" in our attempts to get pregnant even though no one could ever tell us why we weren't getting pregnant.

It's easy for me to tell you now why I couldn't get pregnant, however.  It's a one word answer.

Georgia. 

And I am so thankful.
So thankful.
I mean that with everything in me.
Georgia would not be mine had I gotten pregnant.  And sure, it's easy to say, "but you would still have a baby--and you wouldn't even know the difference--you'd have a baby."

But it wouldn't be Georgia. Not my Georgia.

Had I known what I would experience with adoption and knew what it would really feel like during the five years we tried to get pregnant I believe I would have flushed those Clomid pills down the toilet, and sold my left over Valium from the little slice of hell, known as a hysterosalpingogram, on the corner.

But I know that there is no way to know what you learn through a situation ahead of time.  Sure, you can read other people's accounts, you can talk to friends you know that have gone through it, you can talk to specialists, and you can try and force yourself to believe it's okay.  But.......most of the time it's just a matter of experience.  Like everything else in life.

The funny thing though is that most girls I know who are working their way through infertility treatments don't really want to talk to us adoptive moms.  We're kind of like public enemy #1 when you're traveling down the road of conception.

We're this beaming light of failed fertility treatments, drugs that don't work, and the ultimate last resort........adoption.  We represent this heavy decision of, "should we keep trying or give up?," we make people face that gut wrenching internal conflict that poses the question, "can I really be okay with raising a child that is not biologically mine?" We are the end of the road.  And really we're the end of a fork in the road that people don't really want to veer down when they first start trying to have a baby.  No one really wants to hear from us; how Clomid didn't work, how ovulation shots did nothing, that an exploratory surgery only resulted in losing five pounds during recovery, that IUI's were a bust, and that IVF was just too much to bite off (at least it was for me).

And I get it.  I one hundred and fifty percent get it.

I'm pretty sure I probably felt like this too--even though now--hindsight has convinced me that I didn't.  Whatever, it's a liar.

I write a lot about adoption and I know it comes across like butterflies and rainbows and fairy dust.  And now......four years into it.....most days I honestly feel like that.  But, I'm honest.......it wasn't like that from the very beginning.

It was a big step.  It was scary to make that first phone call.  I wasn't even convinced that I wanted to go through with the adoption until the night we got a phone call from our social worker telling us that a set of prospective parents wanted to meet us (eight weeks before Georgia was born). I cried after every single one of our adoption education classes at the agency we'd chosen--I hated those classes and they made me angry that we were even in this position; it wasn't fair.  I remember almost becoming physically angry when I heard a story about someone letting their daughter be a flower girl in her birth mom's wedding; it smacked of irresponsibility and unhealthy boundaries.  I got to a place that I was honestly okay if Chris and I never had children.  The idea of adoption was too hard.  It felt......as I said above.........like a last resort.

And like a light switch, when we met Georgia's first parents, everything settled into place.  It was a like a rush of fresh air that allowed me to breath evenly......for the first time in six months.......and really in five years.  I finally understood why all those adoptive moms talked so irritatingly incessantly about adoption and how "great" it was.  I knew that I'd never have to feel that bitter taste of failure again every month when I knew we weren't pregnant.  I knew I'd never again have to chart my temperature, mix a magical fertility concoction and give myself a shot, take drugs that made me feel crazy, wake up every night with hot flashes, cry when someone else announced they were pregnant or complain about morning sickness, and mostly......I was relieved that I could stop driving myself crazy wondering if we were really doing enough to get pregnant.

Overnight I stepped quietly across that invisible line.  Where on one side you're trying to get pregnant with all that you have (literally) and you share a deep camaraderie with every other woman doing it with you, and on the other side you've become a symbol of last resorts, lost hopes, broken dreams, and the fleeting thoughts you had when you first started trying to get pregnant, "adoption's not for me."

And that's okay with me.  I know it's not how I feel today.  In fact I couldn't be more thrilled to be on the adoptive mom side of the line.  I wish more people in this world had the chance to experience it.  It's been more fulfilling, heart wrenching in a good, good way, eye opening, life changing, worldview expanding, and just plain more amazing than I ever imagined the road to parenthood could be eight years ago when my husband and I started trying to become parents.

I don't write this because I am bothered that women who are struggling to conceive kind of look at adoptive moms like a sort of force field.  I write it because I understand the feeling.  I've had it.  I believed it.  And I was terrified of getting there.

But I'm here now.  I'm way here. And it's kind of like another pair of pink shoes.  I didn't know it was the route my map would take me.  But baby........I am over the moon that it did.  It's like discovering the best little local place to eat along the scenic route that I never would have found otherwise....but once you've been there it gets under your skin and you just can't shake it.....you crave it.

And if you're like I was four years ago..........and you end up getting to adopt a child I'd bet you a million bucks, pretty soon,  you won't ever remember feeling like choosing to adopt a child was a hard decision.  You'll feel like it was what you were made to do.  And anything else........wouldn't even feel like........you.

Things that made me happy today.

Just a quicky--in and out.

I discovered some great new {'almost' free} phone apps for photos and had to give 'em a whirl (Instaplus & Phonto).

So......our day in pictures.......and coincidentally, or not so coincidentally....."Things that made me happy today."

Phew.  I'm tired.

On Open Adoption

Dear Future Adoptive Moms,

What you thought you believed about adoption, what you swore you believed about adoption, what you were unwavering on when it came to adoption...........it's all about to change.

And when it changes, it will be this force that crept into your psyche, seemingly overnight, and it will feel like it's always been this way, like what you believe now is what you were so rock solid on before, even though, it's in fact, just the opposite.  You'll deny that you ever thought open adoption was scary, risky, strange, politically correct, or for someone else.

You'll be irritated at others when they express doubt about what you're doing, how you're doing it, why your mind-set is changing, and why they can't just 'get there' with you.

You'll start to feel like anything else would be unnatural, like writing with the opposite hand, driving on the other side of the road, or sleeping on a different side of the bed.

When you start the adoption process it will feel like open adoption is chasing you, threatening to defeat your will, about to over-take you, sucking up your determination about the process and then...........when it catches you........

You'll realize that it was never trying to beat you.  It was trying to catch up with you.  It wants to help you maneuver  through the rest of the race, give you a purpose for continuing to work hard and win, and to help you see adoption in its most pure, loving, and sacrificial light. It will make you a champion for open adoption more than you ever thought possible.

It will make you an adoption freak. You'll want to wear a pro-adoption sandwich board wherever you go so that people know to ask you about adoption, so that you can tell them how it changed so many lives and how it has expanded your family in more ways than simply giving you this amazing gift to raise and love beyond words.  It will make you want to march into high schools and demand to know why they aren't doing more to encourage their young women and men to make adoption plans, it will make you righteously angry when you hear people say about girls who do make adoption plans, "adoption is the easy choice.....keeping your baby is taking responsibility for your actions," and it will make you feel like you're a member of one of the coolest clubs in town........the adoptive mama club.

And open adoption will cement for you the fact that being a mom is one of the most important things you can ever do.  Because you're doing it for more than just you and your child; which alone is enough.  But you're also doing it for someone who chose to give their child something they weren't able to provide just yet, you're doing it for someone who gave one of the most painful gifts I can imagine giving, and you're doing it because you were literally chosen to do it by someone else and you yearn with the deepest parts of your soul to do a good job because it's the weightiest assignment you've ever been tasked with by another human being.

So get ready future adoptive mom.  Get ready for your thoughts to be ripped from your head, torn into pieces and stomped on the ground.  Get ready to admit that what you "knew" to be true and right and your way when it comes to adoption isn't really true or right or your way after all.

It's fantastic--that moment when you know what you actually believe.  What you'll stand for now.  And what you can't imagine thinking any other way on now.

At least it was for me.

And get ready for one of the most amazing experiences this life has to offer.

Oh.....and don't forget to get your adoption freak flag made.  You'll be waving it high in no time.

Maggie