Who is Little Bear?

The simple answer is that Little Bear is the main character in a series of children's books by the same name. It's also the beginning of our adoption email address and you may wonder why. There are several reasons for this. 

First, we chose Little Bear because it is a direct reference to the adventures of Little Bear in the children's books that we love. We shared this in a Facebook post back in September 2011. At that time we posted a link from Anita Silvey's Children's Book-A-Day Almanac when Little Bear's author, Else Holmelund Minarik, was honored on her birthday (September 13th). We shared this link with the comment, "We love Little Bear and can't wait to share these books and his adventures with our child. This is why we chose to include Little Bear's name in our email address."

Susan's childhood teddy bear along with our copy of Little Bear.

While this is the first reason we included Little Bear's name in our address, it's not the only reason. There were many steps involved in preparing our adoption letter. Choosing an email address was one of the first decisions we made when beginning our journey to adopt. It was important to us to choose an address which would convey some element of the interests we hoped to share with our child someday. 

Little Bear and his books had come up in our preparation for parenthood and adoption. Part of preparing was to write about what interested us as children and this sparked conversations about the books we loved as children. Another part of our preparation and journey has been visualizing the life we hope to have with our child someday. This includes thinking a lot about books we want we read, places we want to go, values we want to teach our child, and so much more. We decided LittleBearG was the perfect beginning for our email address because it brings everything together for us in a meaningful way.

Little Bear saying goodbye to his mother
before another adventure

As you may know, Little Bear has many adventures in the books including one adventure where he flies to the moon  and returns just in time for lunch. We love that he is open to the world, kind to his friends, and has a great sense of adventure. Little Bear's mother is very loving, patient, and kind as she nurtures and cares for him. Throughout his adventures she gently teaches him how to be good while encouraging him to be himself.

Some things never change. Susan's always loved Winnie the Pooh.

Our email address also has a broader connection to the children's literature we love and hope to share with our child. While Little Bear is one character we love, there are other great bears from children's literature including Winnie the Pooh, Paddington, and many others. Our choice of email address is a reminder that we love books and we hope to encourage our child to love books too. We will read to our child regularly and help him or her to explore the world of books and find favorites.

Posing with Winnie the Pooh on a recent trip to Disneyland

Our email address is also a reminder of our love for animals and our trips to the zoo. One of our favorite zoos is the San Diego Zoo and we've been members for several years. Susan always loved seeing the koalas there when she was a little girl and we both love seeing all the bears we can when we visit. The koalas are still there and the zoo currently has other types of bears including panda, polar, sun, and brown bears. 

Visiting the panda bears on a recent trip to the San Diego Zoo.

Hopefully we will soon be spending more time there observing our child's favorite bear (or other animal). We know there are other bears in the world around us. We can't wait to spot them with our child such as when we find a statue of a bear in the prehistorical Pleistocene Garden near the tar pits.

Mitch is always happy when he finds the bear statue near the La Brea Tar Pits.

Little Bear is also one of the nicknames we've had for our child as we've traveled on our journey to start our family. This is why it made sense for us to add the "G" for Glavas to LittleBearG. It was practical too since LittleBear was already taken :-)