but she just got a dozen of these for Christmas. What else do you get for a baby when mom has a meticulous system for hand-me-downs?
Knock Knock
x-posted at the old blog
I don’t know why, but every child must learn to tell a knock knock joke. I think that it must be a prerequisite for reading. This is Olivia’s:
Mom: Say, “knock knock.”
Liv: Knock knock.
Other family member: Who’s there?
Liv: Radio not…
Mom: Wait! Say, “Radio.”
Liv: Radio.
Other family member: Radio who?
Liv: (30 seconds of silence)
Mom: (elevated eyebrows of encouragement)
Liv: Radio not! Here I come!
Everyone: (exaggerated giggling)
Adoption
Most people who know me know that my father adopted me when I was 2. I have always had my biological mother, so I wasn’t traditionally adopted, but I do know how it feels to love someone who is chromosomally different from me in every way as though we were flesh and blood.
I just got home from visiting my dad. We drove the three and a half hours to spend the weekend with him and my step-mom and her mother. On the road home, at 9:30pm, I brought up to Rob that I want to adopt our next child.
This went over like a ton of lead balloons. Not because Rob doesn’t want to adopt, but he’s so practical. Adoption is very practical, inasmuch as you have to actually apply and be accepted and adopt a real live child. Adoption is unlike pregnancy, in that it can absolutely never happen by accident. It can’t spring upon you when you’re not prepared. But if you only see it as a practical matter it would never happen. Much like you are never all the way ready for your first biological child, you can never be fully ready to adopt.
I, on the other hand, see adoption in a very (not to sound gnostic) spiritual way. I have a serious connection to a child who I will never carry, and likely does not yet exist. So to me all the practical things are just the hoops we’re going to jump in order to get to what Adoption really is, a child I somehow already love. Most people have no idea what that feels like.
It’s probably a good thing that we don’t see Adoption in exactly the same way. If it weren’t for my idealism it would never happen. And if it weren’t for Rob’s practicality we’d be head over heals with the process today, regardless of the fact we have a newborn and a toddler.
So. Now we’re talking about it. This is a break-through post for me. It’s something I am afraid to talk about, since once you start talking about something idealistic it becomes subject to reality and becomes something that might not happen. So I’m not going to go into to many details. But this might become a frequent topic for me as we explore the idea more as a family.
We’re getting our feet wet.