A bit more (cross-stitch) progress

2012 is going by so quickly! It's hard to believe that the last day of May is already upon us. We hope May 2012 has been good to everyone.

It's been a few weeks since our last progress photo so we thought a few photos of the cross-stitch project would be a good end to the month. Enjoy and stay tuned for more photos!

The B is for Bear block is still in progress, but you can now see the bear :-)

Detail of the Number 1 Bunny block

The Bear in detail with quite a few stitches left to do.

Visions of little bear dancing in our heads?

Some of you may be wondering if we've gone a little nuts. No worries, we don't actually have visions of a little bear dancing in our heads, at least not most days. However, there's not a day that passes without us thinking about our plans for a child once he or she becomes part of our family.

Sometimes we wonder how deeply other parents-to-be envision their child's life before he or she arrives on the scene. We're sure this must vary. After all, every person is different and there's probably as many answers as there are parents to ask. Surely if we asked enough people we'd likely find some parents planning to experience life with their child in the moment as it unfolds, while others think in great detail about the life they will share together.

It seems the longer you wait, the more likely you'll be to fully imagine life with your child. This certainly seems to be the case as we wait to become adoptive parents. Adoption can be a very quick process, even quicker than 9 months of pregnancy. In many cases though, adoption tends to be a longer road to parenthood for many people like us. After all, if we had gotten pregnant when we first began our adoption journey, our child would be well over a year old by now. Our journey has become an extended period to think about many aspects of life with the son or daughter we we hope to adopt. It seems like we've been involved in a very detailed process of imagining our child's life ever since we began drafting our adoption letter back in November 2010.

Some of the many books we've pinned to "Kid's Books We Love" 

This developed vision is largely because when we considered the task of drafting an adoption letter, we decided we most wanted to show the type of life a child would have with us. We opted to talk in our letter about specific places and experiences we planned to share with our future child including a couple particular book titles, "Winnie the Pooh" and "The Velveteen Rabbit". Our vision has become even more detailed as we spread the word about our adoption plans through social media channels like Facebook and Pinterest. We've had a chance to show everyone books that catch our eye, our favorite animals, local places to go with kids, and many activities we think will be fun for us to do as a family.

Sometimes this process isn't easy and makes us sad about what we're missing since we're still not parents yet. For instance it can be hard to reflect on kid's books when we have no idea when we'll be reading them to our own child. However, the process of imagining life with our future child has been beneficial in so many ways.

1. We hope our vision will help a potential birthmother to learn about us and the life we plan for her child if she chooses to place him or her for adoption with us. 
2. Sharing our vision helps us to stay positive and keeps us focused on the future. 
3. It's a great opportunity to recall and rediscover what we loved as kids. (And lots of fun too!) 
4. Developing our vision is also a great learning experience. While the wait to adopt is longer than we hoped, we have learned so much about kids, parenthood, adoption, and much more. 

Susan loved the Little House books as a kid, but will our child? 

"The Wind in the Willows" was one of Mitch's childhood favorites (and still is).

It might seem like our vision is a required list of some sort - to read, to do, to make, or to buy. As we develop our vision, we're the first to recognize it is not set in stone. How could it be? There is one key person missing from the process and that is the child who will ultimately join our family. As we think, dream, post, tweet, and pin, we are keenly aware that we have no idea whether this child will be a boy or girl and no clue as to what his or her interests will be.

We love animals, but Mitch particularly likes the takins...

and Susan likes the red river hogs, but which animals will our child like best?

The real adventure will begin when we become parents and explore the world together. We'll find out which animals, books, toys, etc. are most interesting to our child. Discovering places and sharing new experiences together as a family is when the fun will begin and we understand (and hope) that our vision for the future will shift as we go. This will be the best part and the one we are looking forward to the most. There may be a few things we've pinned on Pinterest that we might miss sharing with our son or daughter, but we know there will be something even more meaningful for us to experience together instead.

April showers bring May flowers

Okay, it's a bit difficult for us to say too much about April showers in Southern California. It seemed like we got several this April, but in general they are pretty rare. April can look very bright and sometimes can be quite warm here. However, even here there's usually still a feeling of preparation and growth. This April was no exception as we updated our adoption home study, ordered more adoption letters, and discussed how to handle our wait now that we've reached the one year mark.

Right now the landscape on the road we are traveling to become parents through open adoption seems very much the same and even monotonous at times. It feels like the wait is getting harder now that we're solidly past the one year mark. Participating in some of the same things that we did last year when we were newly waiting, such as the Festival of Books and the MS Walk, seems to have been harder this year. Please don't get us wrong. We are glad to do the things we've always enjoyed doing. However, the reminder that we are still doing them childless is weighing heavily on both of us right now.

The good news is that we are ready for the next steps of our journey and we're making plans for the road ahead. We're more prepared than ever to bring a child home, even through a last minute placement. There are good wishes, prayers, and help from so many people in our lives. It's probably feeling like a long road to everyone who knows us too, and we appreciate everyone's continued support.

And of course the cross stitch continues too. While also probably not at the pace we hoped, there is some progress.

The bunny block is done and the outline is forming for the letter "B" in the next block.

A journey of a 1,000 miles...

...begins with a single step, as the wisdom goes. We're somewhere on our adoption path, but we don't know exactly how far we've traveled. One of the challenges of adoption is that it could happen at any time. While this is exciting, it can also be frustrating. Are we near, are we far? There's no way to know exactly which step we're on or how many miles we will travel on our journey before we get there.

Luckily, there are some ways for us to keep ourselves on track. Susan loves crafts and has been keeping busy with various projects during our wait. For the last several weeks she has been working on a cross stitch birth record for our future child. 

Susan working on the first of the ten blocks. It's the number 1 with a bunny.

This project is also a long journey, but one with clear indications of the progress made. The finished piece will be 12" x 9". There are 6 letter and 4 number blocks around the border. Each of the 10 blocks is a solid 40 x 40 stitches or a total of 1600 stitches per block. The whole piece will eventually have about 18,400 stitches, not including the back stitches to outline elements in the piece and write out our child's name, date of birth, and birth weight.

A work in progress! You can just make out the bunny.

As you can see, Susan hasn't yet finished even 1 block and still has a long way to go. Sometimes we ask ourselves which will happen first, finishing the cross stitch or adopting our child? Of course we hope to adopt first. We know if that happens first this means it will probably be years before the cross stitch gets finished, but we're okay with that. Working on the cross stitch while we wait is almost meditative and helps keep Susan calm and focused. We both look at her steady progress and remind ourselves we're on way and we will get there.

Zoo Alphabet Birth Record designed by Cathy Heck, www.dimensions-crafts.com

Books, books, and more books!

The 2012 Los Angeles Times Festival of Books was this past weekend and we want to reflect on what this local event means to us. Enjoying ourselves at the festival has become one of our favorite traditions. We first went about 10 years ago. It still amazes us that we hadn't heard of it until friends from the East Coast brought the event to our attention. We met up with them at the festival that year and had a great time checking out the many booths from a wide variety of publishers, local bookstores, and other organizations. 

We loved the Photosaurus booth at this year's festival. 

We had so much fun and quickly realized that this was a perfect event for us. We've gone almost every year since our first festival. Susan's mom and a friend or two often joins us and we always meet up with our East Coast friends whenever they can make it out here. During our ten years of festival going we've found many favorites. For instance, it's always fun to check out the Museums LA booth for the latest information on exhibitions and free days at the local museums. Mitch always looks forward to picking up free copies the Santa Monica Review and the Penguin "What the World is Reading" sampler each year. We both love checking out the Getty booth for great books at special festival prices.

Susan and her mom discovered the Jane Austen Society at the festival last year and this has become a new favorite booth to check out. The ladies there are kind, charming, and encouraging of everyone interested in Jane Austen, even if you haven't read any of the books. This year Susan met Syrie James, the author of "The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen". While Susan hasn't yet read this book, she had a nice chat with this delightful author and is looking forward to a quiet afternoon with her book in the near future. 

A new find at the festival this year. Susan can 't wait to read it!

A few years ago Mitch also made the transition from attendee to hard worker at the festival. He volunteered as a bookworm (manager) of the mystery writer's room for three years starting in 2009. He had hoped to be a bookworm again this year, but unfortunately he wasn't able to because of scheduling. At one point it looked like only Susan would go to the festival this year with her mom. Luckily Mitch's schedule for Sunday cleared at the last minute so we spent the day together and met up with one of our friends. 

Mitch happily meets up with Susan after a day of volunteering at the 2011 festival. 

Sometimes people wonder why we are so passionate about the festival, especially now that it has moved to USC and seems to have more traffic, less parking, and greater challenges than ever. We love it as a place to check out new books, authors, ideas, organizations, and people. It's an annual reminder of our love for books and an inspiration for the year ahead.

Past festivals have been a wonderful opportunity to see many authors we like including Jared Diamond, Sarah Vowell, Julia Alvarez, Lisa See, Ricky Jay, and many others. We've had the chance to hear them speak about their latest books and had them sign many of these books. We've also had the somewhat startling experience of discovering that there are one or two authors that we didn't care for in person even though we liked their books. (We'll hold back their names).

It's also a great chance to discover new authors and their books. The festival includes many author panels, usually with 3 or 4 authors. We'll often choose a panel because we are familiar with one author and then are inspired to read the others after hearing them speak. For instance, a few years ago Susan learned about Muriel Barbery's "Elegance of the Hedgehog" at one of the panels with Lisa See. Susan also discovered author Susan Kandel in one of the panels in Mitch's mystery room a couple of years ago. She enjoyed Kandel's character Cece Caruso in several mysteries, most in "Dial H for Hitchcock".

We've found other books we love by checking out the many booths at the festival. Many are hosted by smaller publishers or local organizations and we've found some great books while browsing there. Two of our favorite finds are related to kid's books, "What to Read When" by Pam Allyn and "The Read-Aloud Handbook" by Jim Trelease. We've enjoyed reading both of these books and can't wait to use some of their ideas and book suggestions someday as we encourage our child's interest in reading.

One of our favorite finds from the 2010 festival.

There's even been a couple of authors who sounded wonderful to us at the festival. We couldn't wait to get home to check out their work, but unfortunately found it wasn't for us. Luckily we started with books from the library. Again, we won't give names. We respect everyone's reading taste is different and they may be authors you might really like.

Working on the giant crossword at this year's festival. 

Our eyes are also very open to the future we hope to share with our child. The Festival of Books always has a large and vibrant children's area with many fun activities throughout the weekend. The children's stage always includes lively readings and performances with children's book authors. There are characters that interact with the kids and this year's festival even included Scooby Doo and the Mystery Machine. The children's area always looks like so much fun and we can't wait to explore it with our child. 

Stopping for a quick photo in the kid's area at the festival.

The booths with kid's books contain perhaps the most tempting items for us at the festival. Every year we always find at least a dozen kid's books we want to buy for our future child on the spot. It's quite a challenge to resist all these fun books, but we try to keep in mind that it will be even more fun to pick books out together with our child once we adopt. Of course that said, we had to give in to temptation just a little bit. We found the book below at the Natural History Museum booth and it just happened to come home and join us waiting for a future little person to read it.

After all, what better subject for a book than dinosaurs?

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.)