Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner

Last Friday Steph introduced me to stranger at home. She let me know he was there, but kept us apart. I just wanted to say hi and get to know him, but she didn’t think that was a good idea. Does she like him more than me? She seems to be keeping him close. Why didn’t she get this excited to see me?

She sat down with him in the living room. I tried to get close, but I was scolding for getting too close. So, not only is he stealing my attention, he’s getting me in trouble in my own house. Later he had out some things he had brought with him. I get in trouble again for checking them out.

This is where it gets really bad. She takes him upstairs by themselves. She tells me I can’t come up now. I hear strange noises, but I can’t get upstairs because she’s blocked the way. After a while, she reemerges with him, only he’s changed into new clothes. What was going on up there?

Now I’m getting really mad. I grab the chain he brought with, but before I can get far I’m caught. At least I’m getting some attention. Not for long though. He starts fussing around, and her attention goes right back to him. What about me? I’ve been here longer. This is my house! You didn’t ask me if you can bring him over. You can’t imagine what I feel when you go off with him and I don’t know what’s going on.

It gets late, and Steph takes him back home. When she comes back, I’m back to being #1. I enjoy the attention. She assures me that I’m still very important, that he’s just someone who needs help, but I can still smell him on her, and on the bed upstairs. I love you, but I’m more cautious than I was before.

Next time, let me introduce myself the way I need to. Make sure you’re just excited to see me, maybe even more so. Don’t shut me out, or I’ll shut you out. I’ll always love you, just keep reminding me you love me, sometimes my memory can be fuzzy, just like me.

-Quinton (as interpreted by Scott)

Last Friday we babysat, and it was quite the experience. He’s five months old and just the happiest baby in the world, even though he was sick with some congestion. Quinton so wanted to be close, just didn’t know what to make of him, but we had to keep them apart so he wouldn’t get too coughy. There was barking, some attempted toy thievery, and lots of jealousy. It took Quinton about 3.5 of the 4 hours to get to the point where he could tolerate the intrusion. It definitely taught us a few lessons, which we’ll have to learn from in the next month or so. – Scott

Divine Intervention

We took a class about adoption earlier this year. Each class was 2 hours and would start out with handouts that we could read through that explained certain aspects of the process. The rest of the class was made up of stories from adoptive parents. These stories were invaluable. They put a face on the adoption process. They were sad. They were happy. They were exactly what we needed to hear.

There were two big things I learned from them. One, each adoption story is unique. There is no planning it, because it will not turn out that way. The other was that it will work out the way it was supposed to work out. Some may call it dumb luck. Others may think it was destiny. We believe it is divine intervention. Anyway you see it, every couple who talked to us gave us the sense that their journey always led them to the child they were intended to parent.

Now, I don’t want to get to carried away with this, but I probably will. I don’t want to be the athlete who thinks that God really wanted his team to win the game (I prefer to picture Him just as annoyed as I was that Miami is playing for the NBA championship). I also feel that some things have really worked well for us.

Let me give you a couple of examples. We have to take 36 hours of classes from Ohio to be certified. Two classes happened on a Saturday when we were out of town. If we were unable to make them up in another county, we would have to wait until late August/early September to make them up. Luckily, our social worker was able to get us into the classes in another county.

Fast forward to last week. Our social worker tells us the classes we would have “missed”, ended up being cancelled due to instructor car trouble! Now there are class full of students that may have to wait until that August/September makeup to finish! Maybe we were intended to be done this summer? I don’t want to get ahead of myself though. Did you watch the latest season of Survivor? There was a contestant named Matt who believed that everything that happened to him was in God’s plan. He was marooned on Redemption Island, in which the last survivor there would rejoin the game. He won, or was not eliminated in every contest out there, something like 10 competitions. That is, until the last competition before the rejoin. Before that, I would have sworn God’s plan was for him to rejoin, why else win so many? You can’t get ahead of yourself.

Speaking of not getting ahead of ourselves, how hard is it to not buy every cute baby thing you see? We decided that we probably wouldn’t buy anything before we were fully approved. If you follow my wife’s Facebook page, you can see we failed at that mission. We were done in by the simplest of things. We knew what brand of stroller/car seat that we would buy. We find the stroller at ‘R Us, but don’t get it. We see the stroller at Burlington Coat Factory, and get it. Why? Because the pattern is called the Quinton. That’s right, we bought a stroller because its pattern was named after our dog (and various other reasons, but whatever).

Of course, there was the regret afterwards. Why did we purchase this now? Aren’t we jinxing ourselves? Maybe, I suppose, but the trigger was so innocuous, that it seems as though we were intended to do it. Fast forward again. One interesting fact came across in our meeting: 70% of our agency’s placements come from the hospital. 70%! Here I was under the impression that the likely outcome would be a few month adjustment period while waiting for the birth. Now, we may just have moments.

So, maybe we were intended to be ready, because we could literally be a month away from a child?! Or, maybe we’re just weak at not getting baby stuff. I don’t know. I just really hope that there’s a plan behind this all.