Winner!

We have a winner for my blog-a-versary giveaway!

And the winner is...

Congrats!! Julie and her husband received their referral for siblings earlier this month! Julie, please email me so we can hook you up with your new Common Threadz shirt!

Thanks to all who played. This was a fun way to end the day.

Hopefully our call comes soon because we are all getting a little bummed out around here.

Including this little girl.

Blog-a-versary Giveaway!

Tomorrow is my one year blog-a-versary! To celebrate I decided to do my very first giveaway. As some of you know, Damon and I started a team with the non-profit, Common Threadz, to raise money for shoes for orphans in Africa. I think Team Buster has a pretty nice ring to it. We have raised enough for 126 shoes so far! Our goal is 150 shoes so we are very close. Common Threadz also has some really great t-shirts and the money from the shirts goes to a variety of things like a school uniform for a child or to feed a child for a month. The winner of my giveaway will get to pick the short sleeved shirt of their choosing from Common Threadz.

You could pick this one:

OR this one:

Or even this one:

Or whatever you want. I own two already and they are very soft and comfy. All you have to do is leave a comment by Wednesday at 6pm EST and I will enter you into the drawing. This will be a fun way to continue to help Common Threadz and the children they support. (And maybe Team Buster will get closer to our goal.)

Happy Blog-a-versary to me and love to all of you!

Nothing. Yet.

Nothing yet. Bummer. I feel badly because when we were lower on the list I promised that I would do a good job keeping the blog updated once we reached the top. I now understand why it is so hard to post when you don't have referral news to share. I am actually starting to feel like we are disappointing people because we don't have news. I hate disappointing people.

I realized that I forgot to mention that on Saturday we hit the 8 month mark on the waitlist! On my lunch break today I decided to do some scientific research. I checked the blogs of the families ahead of us that recently got boy referrals under 8 months of age and both of them got their referrals after waiting 8 months and 12 days. Both. Isn't that weird? For us that would be next Thursday. We'll see.

I got something in the mail today from my mom and my mother-in-law. Very sweet. My mom sent me three books. Two of them are Ethiopia travel books and the other one is, I'm Chocolate, You're Vanilla. Love that she is helping me build my own personal library. My mother in law sent us a very thoughtful note and included a photo she took of Damon and me last summer. Damon's mom sent him a postcard in college almost every single day. She was truly devoted. Damon has kept all of them. Not many people send letters anymore so it feels like such a special treat. In this letter she told us how she and her friend were talking about child rearing and she was reminded of a quote from that book, Everything I need to know I learned in Kindergarten. She found it and decided to share.

"You will never really know what kind of parent you were or if you did right or wrong. Never. And you will worry about this and them as long as you live. But when your children have children and you watch them do what they do, you will have part of the answer."

These two will be parents someday. Someday. The plan is to make our parents proud. Because I hate to disappoint people.

Maybe Tomorrow

No news. Oh well. With each passing day we have to be getting closer and closer. For about the past week or so before we go to bed either Damon or I will say, “Maybe tomorrow.” On the surface it may sound a little depressing but I actually think it is just the opposite. It is all about hope. Tomorrow is still a real possibility. I do get bummed around 6pm each day because I assume if the call hasn’t come by 6pm then the hope for that day is gone. But when we go to bed the hope for tomorrow starts all over again.

A little over a year ago, I read a book that my mom and sister recommended, A Hope in the Unseen by Ron Suskind. The author followed one student, Cedric Benson, for several years and chronicled Cedric’s life in the inner city as he tries to make the best of one of the worst public school systems in the US. I won’t ruin it for you but if you read the back of the book you do learn that Cedric perseveres and makes his way to Brown University. The title of the book is based on a conversation he had with a particular teacher in his high school. This teacher pushed and encouraged him to dream big despite the obvious obstacles. Here is the conversation:

"Hebrews 11:1," says Mr. Taylor. "The substance of faith is a hope in the unseen."
"NO. Wrong--you messed it!" Cedric laughs. "It goes 'Faith, the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Man, Mr. Taylor, you always getting 'em wrong."
... Then he turns the botched line over in his head and hears his giggle echo through the empty hallway. A hope in the unseen. Sort of a pocket-sized version of the original, and not really a religious phrase he decides, but one you can definitely take with you. [pp.49-50, Broadway Books, 2005]

This is really what our journey to parenthood has been about as well. It has been a hope in the very much unseen. Nothing concrete has happened over the past few years that would lead me to say with certainty that I will be a mother. All I have had to cling to was hope and faith that this mystic thing called motherhood would actually be achieved. I have dreamed about this face that I can’t see and cheeks that I can’t squeeze and a belly that I can’t give raspberry kisses to but there is hope that someday all those things COULD happen. I haven’t lost sight of that.

Maybe tomorrow or the day after tomorrow or...

Toss up

I found out last night that we are now NUMBER 1 for a girl too. It could actually be a boy OR a girl. Do you know the song Tradition from The Fiddler on the Roof? I keep hearing that song in my head except instead of the word tradition I hear anticipation. It.is.building.

Do you ever wonder how men and women manage to communicate on a daily basis? Yesterday Damon and I had a very amusing conversation via text. It is clear that I have crossed over into Crazy Town and think about our referral call every moment of every day. Damon apparently is not yet a resident of Crazy Town. So yesterday I had a particular moment of frustration and texted Damon.

Crazy lady: "Why won't my phone ring????"

Mr. Fix It: "Is it on vibrate? Turn it off and then on. You do that by holding down the button."

Crazy lady: "I meant why hasn't Mary called me. I am impatient. I do NOT have a phone problem. You are so literal."

Mr. Fix It: "Oh."

Yep, that is Damon and me in a nutshell. It was reassuring when I polled the other adoptive moms at the ETSS meeting that night about what they would think I meant by, "Why won't my phone ring?" They immediately knew I was referring to THE call. Amy's wonderful husband asked me if I dropped my phone in a cup of coffee. HA! At least Damon and I are not alone. I try not to succumb to stereotypes but sometimes we just fall right in to them.

I got a new pair of shoes over Easter weekend. Here I go with the stereotypes again. I am actually not really a shoe person but for some reason when my mom comes to town I usually end up with a new pair of shoes. Typically we go to DSW and I'll get a new pair of trail shoes or some cute flip flops. This year my mom and I had our eyes set on something different.

We both got a pair of TOMS Shoes in honor of A Day Without Shoes. Damon and I still have our team at Common Threadz and to date have raised enough money for 125 pairs of shoes for orphans in need! We are working towards 150 pairs so we are almost there.

Here is the LINK to donate $10 for a pair of shoes in honor of A Day Without Shoes.

Hopefully my next post will an exciting one!