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 :-)

Our Story, Part 2

A few posts ago, we told you about the early days of our relationship. That post ended with Mitch moving to Orange County, California in October 1999, and that's where we're going to pick up the story again.
 
The time after Mitch arrived was full of new adventures for us both. We were working hard building our careers, but we were building great memories, too. We started to create traditions, like finding our favorite Indian restaurant, Mother India, where we go on special occasions, and local businesses we frequent, like Brea Bead Works, where we've made good friends through the years.  We also began to explore some of the great attractions Southern California has to offer.

We had our first visit to Disneyland together in 2000, a visit that included Mitch's first ride on a roller coaster (the Matterhorn- and for the record, Susan is much braver than Mitch when it comes to roller coasters). A later trip saw our first, and last, ride on Splash Mountain (that drop at the end is a doozy!).

Yes, that's the two of us in the back of the boat.
We're both completely terrified on the final Splash Mountain drop at Disneyland.

While we've been back to Disneyland a couple of times since, another place we first visited during this time has become almost a home away from home for us, the San Diego Zoo. Our first visit together was on a cold and rainy Valentine's Day in 2001, and it would be impossible to count how many times we've been back. We cannot wait to come to the Zoo as parents and see which animals our child likes the most.

In between visits to the Zoo, we took trips to Santa Barbara and Las Vegas, and began to visit the museums of Los Angeles, such as the Getty Center, the Natural History Museum and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. On each of these trips, there was always the thought that someday we would be doing these activities as a family.

Taking a break in the garden on an early trip to the Getty Center.

Another long-time tradition started when some good friends introduced us to the LA Times Festival of Books.  Held every Spring at an LA area university, the Festival brings together authors, publishers, booksellers and readers from across the nation in a two day celebration of the written word.  We've gone almost every year since we learned about it, and 2012 marks the fourth year Mitch has volunteered to help run one of the panel discussion rooms.  We've seen some great authors speak, gotten a few autographs, discovered interesting new books, and made some fun memories.  That said, we know the best times are yet to come, when we can explore the many offerings of the children's area of the festival with our little one.

In 2006, we took our first trip together to the UK. Susan has some dear friends there, and while she'd been there many times before, being able to visit them together helped to bring our relationship even closer. We rode the London Eye, we visited the British Museum and the National Gallery, and even saw the Roman ruins in Bath. It was another wonderful experience that we added to our life together.

Mitch posing proudly at the entrance to the British Museum.

Susan enjoying Trafalgar Square outside the National Gallery in London. You can see Big Ben in the distance.

We went on a boat trip from Greenwich past the Millennium Dome and out to the Thames Barrier.
It was cold and windy, but worth it!

Mitch was delighted to see Roman ruins in Bath.

During these years, we had good times, we formed wonderful memories, and we found places to go and things to do that we're looking forward to sharing with our child. We had done all this feeling that we had all the time in the world.  But by late 2006, we had started to think about the next step.  What did we want the next part of our life together to be like?

In May 2007 Mitch asked Susan to marry him and she said yes. Yay!!!

In May 2007, Mitch proposed to Susan.  We had lived as two people in a committed relationship, but we hadn't really combined our lives as one.  The time had come to do just that and to move into the future as a family.


(Looking for the rest of the story? Here's part 1 and part 3.)

Are we there yet?

Nope, not yet. We'd love to tell you that we're patiently waiting for our chance to adopt, but you probably wouldn't believe us, nor should you. While we usually focus on a happy outcome and stay positive, sometimes we are sad, impatient, or doubtful about finding a match. How we're doing with the wait depends on which day you ask and sometimes on which one of us you ask. And then there are days when the answer changes, sometimes even more than once in the same day.

We've been "live" with IAC for almost eleven months. In reality this is not unusual, but we were sure we'd be changing diapers and craving sleep by now. Part of our impatience is because the wait to match isn't the first part of our journey. It's actually been four years now since we first began pursuing our dream to start a family. We began in March 2008, just a few months after we were married. All along we've considered adoption and we've been discussing this seriously since 2009.

The good news is that we've had a chance to learn a great deal about adoption along the way. We learned a lot from researching different adoption organizations, reading books and magazines, and following Facebook pages and blogs. We've also had a chance to meet many helpful people and make new friends along the way. We attend two adoption groups every month and interact with others who are waiting and new parents who recently adopted. These groups help us keep our perspective and we are filled with hope when we see newly formed families who recently adopted.

Several people suggested that we stay busy during the wait and that's exactly what we've been trying to do. We've been working hard, but we've also been pursuing our interests and having some local adventures too. We'll include a few highlights here and we always have more updates and new photos on our Facebook page.

Susan loves craft projects, especially making jewelry with beads. Luckily Mitch has always supported her interest and cheerfully accompanies her to bead stores. There will undoubtedly be little time for craft projects and bead shopping for a while once our little person arrives and that's fine with us. During the wait Susan continues to take classes at a local bead store, Brea Bead Works.  We even had a grand bead adventure when we completed the Bead Shop Hop in September 2011. It was fun to visit so many great bead stores, but even better to enjoy a four day road trip away from home exploring Southern California.

Susan finishing up after a class at her favorite bead store, Brea Bead Works.

Yay! We did the whole 2011 Bead Shop Hop. 29 bead stores in 6 counties over 4 fun days!

We also love visiting museums. Someday we'll be visiting these places with our child once he or she is old enough.  In the interim, we've continued to regularly visit our favorites including the Getty, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the Natural History Museum, and more. This has been even better over the last few months with Pacific Standard Time exhibitions going on at sixty different venues throughout Southern California.

Mitch happy to be visiting the Getty Center museum as part of the Pacific Standard Time event.

We also love spending time with family and friends every chance we get. We have so many great memories from the time we've been waiting, including fun times with our little cousins and even a trip to Disneyland with friends.

Halloween crafts with our young cousin Jake.

Hello from Disneyland!

Waiting to adopt isn't easy, but we know we're not alone. We're certainly not the first couple waiting to adopt, and we won't be the last. Luckily we are blessed with a network of family, friends, and acquaintances who continue to support us. We appreciate everyone who listens to us and offers kind words of encouragement. Thanks!

With a little help from our friends...

We are tremendously grateful for all the support and many kindnesses we have received along the way on our adoption journey. Many family members, friends, acquaintances, and even a few strangers have helped us and we truly appreciate this.

One of the challenges with open adoption is that we have no idea how or when we will find our child and become parents. This may happen through the efforts of our agency, the Independent Adoption Center. However, there's also about a 20 percent chance that it will happen through our efforts to get the word out. We're asking everyone for as much help with this 20 percent chance as possible.

While you may be thinking it's unlikely you or your contacts will know a potential birthmother, it's often a small world and we never know for sure what's going to happen. We put together a list of several things you can do to help us. It may be that only one or two items on this list appeal to you and we understand. However, if you'd like to help, please have a look at our list and see what you can do. 

• Share some of our new contact cards with friends, family, or anyone you think may be interested. You can email us and we'll arrange to get you some of these cards.
• Visit our new website at www.GlavasAdopt.com and share it with your friends.
• Download our adoption letter as a PDF from our website or online adoption profile and share with your contacts.

This is the front side of our new contact card.

• Follow this blog using one of the tools on the right side of the screen.
• If you are on Facebook, please like our online adoption profile. The like button is just under our main picture.
• Also, please like our Facebook page and check back for updates and new photos. You will need a Facebook account to like the page and comment/like posts, but you can check out our page even if you don't have (or want) a Facebook account.
• Share our online adoption profile and Facebook page with your network of contacts, either through Facebook or email. If you'd like to do this, but aren't sure how, then just let us know. We can help with instructions and suggested wording.
• If you see a post or photo you particularly like on the blog or Facebook page, please let us know by liking the item or commenting on it.

And this is the reverse side of our new contact card.

• If you have questions or feedback for us or ideas we didn't include here, please let us know. If you prefer you can always send an email to us instead of commenting online.
• Spread the word in person to your friends, your coworkers, anybody you know really.  

Even if there's just one thing on this list that works for you, please keep in mind that every little bit helps and we can use all the help we can get. The more people we can reach with our message, the more we increase our chances that we will find our child's birthmother and become parents. Thanks!

Our Story, part 1

One of the reasons we started this blog was to share more about us and our story. We'll start at the beginning and break break it up into a few parts with some other stuff between installments, so it’s not too much all at once. We think this will help you get to know us better, and will give you an idea of why we’ve chosen the path we’re on.

Our story begins in Amherst, Massachusetts in Spring 1997. Susan was a grad student at the University of Massachusetts, studying Art History. During this time Susan shared an office with another grad student, who was in a German class with Mitch. She thought that her friend Susan and her classmate Mitch would hit it off, and she was right. (Thanks CH!) She got us together for lunch one day, and a few days later, Mitch asked Susan out on their first date.  

One of the ticket stubs from our first date.

That date went long into the night and into the next morning, with us talking and laughing until the sun came up. We had so many common interests, it was like we were made for each other. Our next date was the same way, with us staying up all night sharing our ideas and our opinions. We spent as much time together as we could, and when we weren’t together, we were on the phone. Soon we were inseparable.

One of our favorite memories is of Thanksgiving that year. Susan’s family lives in Orange County, California, but many of Mitch’s relatives live in New England. We spent Turkey day that year with Mitch’s mom and grandmother, an aunt who lived in Connecticut, and an aunt and uncle visiting from Norway. It was such a warm and loving day, with all of us laughing and having a good time. Susan shared her mom’s cranberry bread recipe with Mitch’s visiting aunt, and his uncle said that day that Susan & Mitch should be together forever. (He was right!)

Photo booth fun!

As our love for each other grew, we started talking about what our future would look like. We wanted to be together, of course, but we knew we also wanted to share our love with a child. We’re both from small families, without nieces and nephews, but when we talked about our future, it was as a family, not just as a couple.

Susan got her Master's degree in Spring 1998 and moved back to California soon after. We had talked about both of us moving at the same time so we could set up our life together. However, Mitch wasn't quite ready yet and it would take another year before he made the move.

During that year, we visited each other several times. We celebrated New Year's Eve together in Cambridge, Massachusetts and attending the wedding of good friends in New York. On the West Coast, we visited Las Vegas, Hoover Dam, and Santa Barbara. We also spent more hours on the phone and exchanged many cards and emails. Our love was still strong, but we needed to be together for real. Finally, overcoming the fears that had prevented him from following his heart, Mitch packed up his car and drove out to California in Fall 1999. It was one of the best decisions Mitch ever made.

The two of us back in the early days.

You can read more of our story in part 2 and part 3.

One word you won't see here anymore

We've been thinking a lot about a recent post on the America Adopts blog that we read this week titled, "How Not to Begin a Dear Birthmother Letter".  This post challenges the convention many people use when starting adoption letters. It makes an excellent point about women faced with an unplanned pregnancy, in that a woman is not yet a birthmother until she makes the choice to become one. While some women will choose adoption for their path, that's not the path all will ultimately choose. This post is an important reminder that it is up to each woman to make the choice that's best for her and to make it in her own time.

As kids we all heard, "Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me." It's a great response back to the bully calling you names on the playground, but as adults we learn that language is much more subtle and nuanced than this. This taunt back on the playground is true in that words rarely have the power to inflict the same physical damage as sticks and stones. However, even words and phrases that are well intentioned or don't seem "that bad" can fail to convey what we truly feel and have the power to sting, hurt, insult and limit us.

Our adoption letter was the result of careful consideration and reflection, lots of editing, and many hours of work. We weren't entirely comfortable with the greeting "Dear Birthparent", and in fact, our earliest drafts left this out. We ultimately agreed to go with convention during the approval process as many potential adoptive parents undoubtedly do. When we first started learning about adoption it seemed like a term of respect. It certainly is for the many birthparents who place their child for adoption, but we agree with the America Adopts post that it's wrong to assume a decision has already been made by women (and men) still considering their options.

Learning new things is part of being human and it's one of the joys of life for us. We'll be the first to admit that we didn't know a lot about adoption before beginning this journey. We're still learning and try to learn something new every day. We also do the best we can to make changes when we learn new information. It was never our intention to cause someone looking at our profile to feel we had already made their decision for them by our word choice and we're so sorry if this happened.

Yesterday we made changes to our website, blog, and Facebook page to reflect our new awareness of this old convention. Soon we we also change the PDF version of our adoption letter. Our printed letters still have this salutation, but that's just until the next time we print them.

“To our future little person…”

This is how we began the introduction in a photo book called “Our Adventures in Waiting: 2010-2011” that we created for our child. You can see the photo book in the post below. We’ll share some of the text here since it is hard to read in the online version.

The introduction continues, “We’ve been waiting a long time for you. While we don’t know when you’ll join our family, we know you will be worth the wait and we’ll love you very much. This album is to show you all the things we thought about until there was you.”

The story behind the book is simple. Susan had a Shutterfly coupon which gave her the perfect opportunity to try creating a photo book. At first it was hard to decide on a theme for the book, but then we had the idea to create the book for our future child with photos that we took while we were waiting for him or her to arrive.

Before we decided to adopt, it was rare that we took photographs, especially of just us. However, we quickly realized we needed to take a lot more pictures in preparing for our adoption letter and Facebook page. Sometimes it’s been a struggle to take pictures, but we’re glad that we have them. We appreciate the family, friends, and even kind strangers who have helped us to take these photos.

The 8”x8” hardcover book turned out as wonderful as we hoped. It’s a pleasure to look at it and reflect on all the things we’ve done while we’ve been waiting. Many of the photos such as the ones at the zoo and the Orange County Fair are visual reminders of the places we’re planning to visit with our child. We can imagine him or her enjoying the pandas or the Ice Museum at the fair alongside us. And someday, we hope to share these pictures with our child so he or she will know how much we looked forward to his or her arrival and presence in our lives. We also plan to give copies of future photo books to grandma and our child’s birthmother (if she’s up for that).

The book ends with photos of us trimming our Christmas tree and the text, “Preparing for Christmas 2011 – hopefully you’ll be here next Christmas.” That’s our greatest wish for 2012.