One of my close friends who is an artist, wrote essays on various things this past year. She self-published a small number of volumes to pass around and I got my hands on a copy, to my delight. As a surprise to me, she had written down her thoughts about Bec's adoption and put them in the book. Here is what she had to say:

Young friends and former students adopted an African baby. It is their story to tell and I will not trespass from the sidelines. Being at the airport to photograph and witness the arrival and welcome the baby was an incredible honor.

Not having had children of our own or having adopted, it is difficult to fathom the range of emotions and anxieties... more

Keeps Me Thinking Blogging for this site about fertility, infertility and adoption, always has my mind in a whirl. I haven't been in classes for a while, yet my blog has given me an opportunity to educate myself in different ways that I never would have explored on my own. I am already addicted to magazines, so this one source for articles was tapped in my spare time. As for the rest, I give thanks to google. Offering My Story/OpinionMy miscarriages and recovery were turning points in my life. They were some of the most traumatic and painful events that I had ever experienced. It took me a long time to be able to open up and share these events... more

Continuing on with my blogging reasons:

Connections with Others Being able to send people to my blog to keep up with dad's treatments, etc. was very rewarding. Instead of having to retell the same emotional story over and over, spending my sanity with every telling I was able to keep everyone informed through the written word. It was also helpful that everyone could access the info at once. Instead of having to think about who to call first, I knew that I could blog at 3 in the morning if I needed to and everyone would get the same... more

Thinking about the ending of one of my favorite blogs, I started to think about beginnings. If I can come up with reasons to end a blog, can I also think up reasons to begin one? Here are the top ten reasons why I keep a blog.

Documentation The first blog that I started was my personal blog a couple of years ago. We had just realized how sick my dad really was and I knew that I would want to document the journey of our family into the illness of cancer. I knew that my mind wouldn't be as sharp as usual, wouldn't remember details later on, and I wanted to have some sort of record to look back on during this time, so later on I could look back and possibly... more

I was reading an article today about recurrent miscarriages. In this article one of the experts is quoted as saying,

Dr. Stephanie Rhone says, "we find a cause for about 60-percent of our couples that we see. About 40-percent of our couples have unexplained recurrent loss, either because of bad luck, random losses or because there's something underlying. We haven't been able to discover yet or don't know how to test for."

The wording of "bad luck"... more

A situation has come up recently where my jealous feelings have once again emerged. Jealousy was a huge part of my life while I was dealing with my miscarriages, and I would hide in the face of it. I was ashamed. I was lonely and outside of many social situations (ie, baby showers) that I would have loved to enjoy if I could have put my jealous feelings aside. This time, as my jealousy became apparent, I decided to look into ways of dealing with it a little better.

I found a page on allaboutlifechallenges.org. Here were their suggestions that made sense to me:

Develop independence.... more

I was checking in with my favorite blogs last night, looking for some inspiration and also some updates on families that I know and I came across the following post from my friend, the blogger also known as Mary Poppins.

Good Bye The parrot on the end of Mary Poppins' umbrella has been squawking something about the winds changing. This morning, MP stuck her head out the window, and son-of-a-gun, the parrot was right. Perfect winds for a departure. Perfect winds for a happy ending and a happy beginning. MP will now snap, and her computer, keyboard, printer, and digital camera will hop into her carpet bag. She must hurry if she is to catch up with the children flying... more

I know that there is a quote out there somewhere that states that everything that can be created has already been created, or something to that tune. Well, I encountered this with today's post. I had the bright idea of researching and running a list of celebrities that have had miscarriages. Starting to do my search, I ran across, babyfruit. This blog is written by Aliza Sherman Risdahl and it has a list of celebrities who have miscarried. Some of her sources may be a little... more

Yesterday we finished our 3 month post placement visit with our social worker, Marilyn. As usual, it was enjoyable and went by so quickly. We are now one visit closer to being able to finalize our adoption in Washington state. As these visits are beginning to come to a close, I am realizing how fast this has all went.

Yesterday, Marilyn showed up right at 11. My kids seem to have difficulty keeping to a schedule while at home. Or should I say that I have a problem keeping them on schedule when they are home. I had just started to give them lunch. He was in his highchair and Ivy was using the potty. She then visited with Bec while I finished up with Ivy. Ivy then proceded to... more

After dinner tonight my friend Joan invited us to go swimming. The boys stayed at home while the girls went to the pool. Our friends Regen and Alexy went with us. It has been miserable hot the past few days and we jumped at the chance to get into the water. Although the time was later on in the day when the heat had cooled off, the water was perfect. Ivy swam and swam until her lips were literally blue. A wonderful way to end the night, especially for a Monday.

Coming home to write, I had water on the brain. Pool water, that is. I decided to ... more