Baby's Room

Both Fawnda and I have been feeling that we must be getting close to receiving our long-awaited referral. During our home study process, we were told that the wait time for a Korea referral was 5 months, and our home study was finalized on March 6th. This time frame might have been extended since then, but we are still optimistic that we are getting close!

This feeling of being close has renewed my sense of urgency in getting the baby's room finished. That's been put on hold for a couple of months as we have turned our focus to our yard (in my defense, it's hard not to want to be outside when you live in Minnesota and it's finally nice outside!). Anyway, my projects this weekend included priming trim and removing a much dreaded border. This year marked our house's 45th birthday, and I'm sure that border had been up for at least 44 of those years. At first, I thought that taking the border down would be easy, and I might even have some extra time to float in the pool this weekend, but just like every other project in our house, I totally underestimated the amount of energy required. For starters, I'm pretty sure that this border had been adhered to our wall using the same type of glue that NASA uses to bond the heat shield to the Space Shuttle. Armed with only a spray bottle of Dif and my handy scraper, I was much like a kid taking a sling shot to a gun fight. I found that my only saving grace in this project was a faulty layer of paint underneath the border. As a matter of fact, I was able to take my scraper, catch some of the paint with the corner of the tool, and peel sheets of paint off the wall, which took the border off too. Has anyone else seen or heard of anything like this? Our walls started out with a grey paint color, and they are now white. This activity was much like peeling skin after a bad sunburn, and it definitely took much longer than I had anticipated.

Fawnda had to work this weekend, so I spent much of that paint-peeling time all to myself, which provided a lot of opportunity to think about this child coming into our home, and about my burning desire to be an awesome dad. For us, going the adoption route has been incredibly rewarding, and I feel that many of the things that we have gone through should be required for all parents, but we've had our difficult times too. I was reminded of one time about a year ago when we were still going through the infertility treatments, and weren't telling very many people about our struggles. One of the ladies at my work had just had a grandson through her 17 year-old daughter who was a junior in high school. This lady brought her grandson to a work event that Fawnda and I were at, and she brought the baby right up to the two of us and chided us with "So how long will it be before you guys have one of these?" I know she was kidding, because I hadn't informed anyone about what our intentions for children had been, but the first thought that popped into my head (after trying to shield Fawnda from this lady and the poor, innocent child), was "what, a bastard child? hopefully never. . ." As I sit here today, I must say that I'm ashamed that this thought even popped into my head, but I can honestly say that I remained polite: I smiled and did the "Minnesota Nice" thing (changed the subject).

I've also been thinking about how our culture seems to be generally kid-friendly, and it seems like everyone has their usual responses to seeing a child. Here are some of the responses that I have caught myself saying, "He looks just like his dad", "She acts just like her mom", "He's got his dad's laugh", etc. etc. Sometimes I feel sad that many of the "usual" sayings won't be said of me and my child, but I find comfort in the fact that we will find our own. For example, we might be able to say, "he/she likes to draw just like his mom", "he/she is good at math just like his dad", "he/she likes to swim just like his mom", or "he/she is brilliant just like his dad" (okay, so maybe I went a little too far there using my creative license, but it makes me smile so I'm leaving it in).

I could go on and on about the things that I thought about while peeling paint this weekend - both the things that make me excited about being a future dad, and the things that still make me a little sad. Even so, there was definitely a recurring thought about my work at hand, and that was, "wish YOU were here!"