A picture says a 1000 words but what if you're not in the picture?

Finally, after three weeks of long days, late nights, and full weekends of work, we managed to find some time to get some work done on our placement agency profile materials. In doing so, we made a discovery that may not be terribly uncommon – in the process of selecting the myriad photos required (I'll let my wife explain what is expected of us), we suddenly realized how few of the thousands of photos we've taken since we got our first digital camera 7 years ago actually have us in them.

What will you find in our photos?

Cats
Lighthouses
Our gardens
Rocky promontories with crashing waves
Cool Building
Family members
Christmas trees
Cats
Fascinating stuff in museums
Our friends
Our friends' kids
Wildlife
Interesting creatures at the zoo
Renaissance fair performers
Before and after photos of the inside of our house
Did I mention cats?

Notice anything missing? It would appear that we've been so busy taking photos of other people, places, and things that we neglected to take many pictures of us. And those that have been taken recently? Most were shot on our trips to Maine, which means that yours truly presents a stylish image usually set off by a baseball cap, tshirt, and cargo shorts. Too cool for shorts? Jeans then.

Needless to say, we scoured iPhoto and have come close to identifying enough photos. Still coming up short, we did the next best thing.

We called for help, sending e-mails to people we know regularly take photos at family events in the hope that they have some good action shots to share with us.

Otherwise, it's the tripod and self-timer for us tomorrow!

Oh...and did I mention cats?

We've tried to instill a love of reading in our cats but they prefer audiobooks

Lost weeks

After the excitement of completing the home study, the adoption effort ground to a halt, not as a result of any problems but simply the intrusion of the rest of our lives. October is a hellacious month for both of us with regard to our jobs, a convergence of multiple events, accelerating projects, and long days. As a result, we've made virtually zero progress in preparing our profile materials for the placement agency.

It's frustrating to have reached this point only to come to a screeching halt to deal with other things. It doesn't help that we've both been getting home so late from work lately. Forget about writing our birthmother letters or even writing brief entries in this blog...we barely have the energy to say hello and spend a few precious moments together before passing out at night and then waking up and starting all over again. Today was a grey cold Saturday tailor-made for working on the profile but I instead spent it at my desk working on work because there just doesn't seem to be time during the week to get everything done.

Something will need to change in the future. I'm not going to work so hard alongside my wife to bring a child into our lives only to never see them because I'm at work until 10 or 11 at night. I see my co-workers and I wonder how they do it. Some seem to spend all their time at work and not much with their children. Others are committed to their jobs but also make sure that nothing gets in the way of being a part of their children's lives. I think I prefer to be the latter as I just don't understand how the former can do that.

Of course, we have to find the time to complete the process but first I think I need to get some sleep.

A name that reflects the journey

Naming kids is tough. Do you go classic? Clever? Make something up? Something you don't usually associate with the name of a person?

I'm leaning toward a name that reflects our adoption journey. After all, if Gwyneth Paltrow can name her daughter "Apple" and Penn Gillette can name his daughter "Moxie Crimefighter", is it so wrong to consider naming our little one "Paper Work"?