I know, I know. Everyone – and I mean everyone – has that anecdotal friend who went through a decade trying to get pregnant and/or thousands of dollars in fertility treatments, and/or years of adoption efforts, only to wind up naturally pregnant when they least expected it.
As it turns out, I’m that anecdotal friend.
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Every foster parent hears this comment at some point, often from very well-meaning acquaintances:
“I’ve totally thought about being a foster parent too!… But I’d get too attached and the kid might leave.”
*Massive internal sigh.*
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Well, four months somehow blew right by me since my last post. Not a strong start to the year with my goal of writing at least once a month, but here we are.
Full disclosure: our family life has been a hot mess – sometimes in a fun and energizing way, other times in a depressing and exhausting way. I offer the following as honest examples of what we’ve been wrestling with. All of this has gone down since the last time I posted (and this is far from a comprehensive list):
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I’m excited to be bouncing back to the topic of foster and adoptive parenting today. This post has been a long time coming!
For those who were not aware, both of our sons were adopted from foster care. Parenting these boys has been the craziest and most amazing adventure in our lives (and our adventures have been many, if I do say so myself).
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Inspired by a lovely photo essay from my world-traveling bestie, I decided it would make me feel slightly less bummed about the poop fest that was this past year if I assembled something similar for myself.
In an effort to make this a positive venture, I have omitted photos of me at my office sweating in uncomfortable PPE, me wearing the same pair of stretchy pants day and night for weeks on end, and me crying in the garage with the lights off. But you can rest assured that all those things did happen, because this was 2020.
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First of all, thank you all for the very unexpected level of interest in the status of our trip to Europe, and all the money and points we had invested in that. I’m sincerely flattered that you care so much!
It will come as no shock that we are not in Spain as I type this.
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Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’re aware that much of the world has recently been under various degrees of stay-at-home orders, lock-downs, and quarantines.
The major disruption in our area has lasted about 6-8 weeks (so far). While this is far from ideal and not nearly as fun as being on a 6-week-long outdoor adventure, I’m pleased to report that our many years of backpacking, trail running, skiing, etc. in the great outdoors has left us better prepared for this than one might expect.
Here’s why:
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I’ve been getting a lot of questions about whether our international family megatrip will be canceled due to the ongoing Covid-19 crisis. And of course the question of how upset we are about it is heavily implied.
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The original title of this post was “You Don’t Have to be Great at Everything You Like Doing” but then I thought “Forget that. You don’t even have to be good – at all – at stuff you like for it to still be worth doing.”
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Happy Halloween, everyone! Okay, I admit it: I published this today mostly so I could use “spooky” in the title.
If you’re just here to find out what we keep in cash in our emergency fund: it’s $22,635.00. You may now go back to eating all the good candy out of the stash your kids brought home. But if you’re interested in more information on this topic, read on.
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