Bureaucracy isn't a bad thing

We're at a bit of a standstill in the adoption process right now, hung up on the formalities of waiting for our long-delayed final home study report and the need to provide some additional photos to meet our placement agency's cookie-cutter profile templates. While it frustrates the hell out of me, I am comforted by the fact that these are merely hiccups and that the process we're following to bring Plus One into our family is a tried and true one with rules and guidelines and procedures to keep the expectant mother and our family safe legally. It's a far cry from the wild west of surrogacy as described in yesterday's New York Times:

Surrogacy is largely without regulation, with no authority deciding who may obtain babies through surrogacy or who may serve as a surrogate, according to interviews and court records.

I feel for all of the people involved in the process and am relieved that we elected to follow another path. I can deal with the bureaucratic nitpicking of whether the photos of us as a couple are suitably "formal" or not. Losing our child after going through the process of bringing her into our home and family? That is something I would not wish on anyone.

Creating our traditions

It's beginning to feel a bit more like the holidays as we decorated our Christmas tree today.

Despite being in a largely non-religious family, the Christmas tree was always a big deal in my family. We didn't actually do much with the rest of the religious side of things. Sure, we had a carved creche and the baby Jesus was never put into the cradle until Christmas morning but I made up for it by putting the trumpet-playing penguin there instead to fill the space.

We occasionally went to midnight mass but only if we were staying with my mom's mom, who was a practicing Catholic her whole life. The rest of us? We went because that's what you did when staying at my grandmother's house. When I was 14 or 15, I absolutely didn't want to go and my uncle took me aside and bluntly told me to stop being an asshole and go because it would make my grandmother happy. Besides, everyone told me, there would be loads of Christmas carols and it would be fun. It was horrendous actually and afterward, I seem to recall a few members of my family apologizing for making me go. I did of course get my revenge when, six or seven years ago, everyone was at my mom's house for Christmas Eve, my grandmother wanted to go to mass, and wanted my uncle to take her. He wasn't terribly happy about it and appeared to be trying to get out of it. So I very politely reminded him of a certain conversation he had with me twenty some odd years before. Beside, I told him, I'm sure it will be lots of fun.

The big tradition in my family was the trimming of the tree. We'd either get a a pre-cut tree at a local nursery or, for a really special time, go to a Christmas tree farm and pick out a tree that would be cut down on the spot, loaded on the car, and then we'd head home, usually after having some warm cider at the tree farm's little shed. When we got home, my dad would string the lights and then we'd all start putting on the ornaments. For many years, my father made sure to tie off the top of the tree to appropriately solid sections of the walls, doors or windows, a response to a rather disastrous intersection of me at age 4, the concept of climbing the tree, and the reality of gravity. You've never experienced a fully decorated Christmas tree until it's lying on top of you.

Anyhow, while it was something of a free-for-all on ornament hanging, there were some rules. For example, ornaments needed to be hanging freely, not resting on another branch. I recall my mother enforcing this particular one on a regular basis. Then we'd go to bed and my mother would stay up hanging the tinsel.

That was fine with me. Tinsel = tedium thanks to a further expansion of the rules. Not only did the tinsel have to hang freely but there couldn't be more than one or two pieces per branch. Neither I nor my sister had the patience for that and we'd end up with big silver blobs that I think drove my mom nuts. So we'd be allowed to hang a few strands of tinsel and then head off to bed. As a result, the morning after we trimmed the tree was always something of a revelation as we'd come downstairs to find a well-tinseled tree and my exhausted mother.

Needless to say, some of those traditions have slipped by the wayside. I'm pretty sure I've seen some "branch resting" ornaments on my mom's tree and she's given up on tinsel all together.

Tinsel of course was never part of the equation once I got my own place and started having my own tree (not to mention cats who were fascinated with chewing on the tinsel). And when Jennifer and I got engaged and had our first tree together, we quickly began to invent our own rituals, largely because trimming a Christmas tree was an entirely new experience for Jennifer, who was raised in a largely non-practicing Jewish household. For the first few years, she'd worry that she was doing something wrong. But that's the beauty of the thing. It's our tree, our traditions, our rules so anything goes.

In the intervening nine years, we've established our own set of traditions. I do the tree shopping, buying, and transporting. Jenn, while all for the concept of a Christmas tree, still experiences some qualms about using a real cut tree. However, like her unbreakable rule of "no TV set in the bedroom", I have a similarly non-negotiable position...no fake Christmas trees (except for the little one we have in the basement so we can have some Christmas lights down there).

After I set up the tree and haul it inside, I set it up and take up my father's mantle as "official stringer of lights". Once the lights are on, we begin to decorate. The first ornaments to go on are the new ones for the year as we traditionally buy each other a new, unique ornament as our first holiday gifts to each other. Then the star goes on (yes, I know some traditionalists say it has to go on last but once all the other ornaments are on, it becomes that much more difficult to do it without disturbing the other items) and then we delve into the rest of the wrapped and boxed ornaments.

It's like greeting old friends when we do this. We find our gift ornaments from past years and set them aside so that we can each rehang the gifts we were given. We laugh about the odd ones (the fat clear glass reindeer; the beheaded snowman -- just the head, no body, kinda creepy but we like it; the small shark's jaw that my uncle gave me years ago; the cheerleading moose) and try to remember who gave us the other ones. All the while, Christmas music is playing on the stereo so we're joined in our small family gathering by Glenn Miller and Mel Torme, Bing Crosby and Jimmy Buffett, and the modern renditions on the excellent "A Winter's Night" CD. And when we're all done hanging ornaments, a process that takes about 90 minutes, we turn off all the lights, turn on the tree's lights (please god let them not have a faulty bulb somewhere that kills a whole string), and sit together for a while on the couch enjoying the sight with the cats curled up around us before settling in to watch a Christmas special or two.

As we went through the process today, I found myself thinking more and more about these traditions and the others that Jennifer and I have established in our nine years together. We've had almost a decade for these traditions and patterns to evolve. We've created the routines, whether it's for a once-a-year event like trimming the tree to how we typically spend our weekend mornings. They're comfortable and easy now, like a pair of well-worn slippers as we've always been a family of two.

Despite having thought long and hard about it, I don't think I really have any idea of just how dramatically our lives, our routines, and our traditions will be changing in the coming year as we hopefully expand our little family from two to three. In truth, I can't wait.

I see my sister and brother in law with their kids and for years have been envious. Now, I watch them for tips and tricks. One of their Christmas traditions has been "The Elf on the Shelf" for the last two years. The elf made his first appearance of 2009 the morning after Thanksgiving when we were staying with my sister and it was wonderful to see the dawning realization on my four-year old niece's face when she saw the saw the elf smiling at her from a shelf in the kitchen. I am so excited by the prospect of sharing this with our Plus One that I almost went out and bought a copy. Of course, we'll be adopting a newborn so there's no real rush. However, the anticipation of being able to do that is wonderful.

Tonight we watched the 1970 "Santa Claus is Comin' to Town" with voices by Fred Astaire and Mickey Rooney along with the despicable Burgermeister Meisterburger along with the classic "Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer" as he discovers the Island of Misfit Toys (resurrected this year in a brilliant cell phone ad). I love the idea of introducing Plus One to these classics along with "A Charlie Brown Christmas", "It's Wonderful Life" and all of the other songs and shows and movies without which Christmas would feel somewhat incomplete.

But more than anything, I can't stop smiling at the thought of the Christmas traditions and the other traditions that Jennifer and I and Plus One will discover together. What's the fun of having traditions is you can't create new ones while passing along those that mean so much to you? Though truth be told, I'll be sorry to see the whole "sleeping in on weekend mornings" routine fall by the wayside.

OMG More?

We were done. We were sure of it. Everything was in. The home study report will be finalized this week or next. All the paperwork was submitted. We sent a CD of photos of everything imaginable in to the placement agency.

What do I discover when I get my e-mail today?

A request for 16 more photos!

Good lord!

We already sent in 60!

This is getting ridiculous.

It doesn't help that the samples of the additional types of photos they need are exactly the kind of photos we typically mock because they're so cheesy and so posed. I keep expecting to see one where someone actually went in and used Photoshop to add a silvery, sparkly starburst that just shouts gleam! to these people's teeth. I'm feeling like we should just go to the local Target, distract the employees, and abscond with all the fake photo inserts of picture-perfect couples that they stick in picture frames..

It looks like all family members will be dragooned into serving as photographers over the Thanksgiving holidays. Gee...that will be fun.

Sigh.

I think I'm just tired and cranky. Good practice for when Plus One keeps me awake all night, I guess.

Say cheese!

Thumb Twiddling 101

I feel like there's something I should be doing right now.

After months of effort to collect everything for our home study and then placement agency profiles along with lengthy discussions and musings, we're now simply waiting. Everything's submitted. It's in the hands of other people right now who are finishing the home study report, preparing our profile, etc., and we have nothing to do but wait -- wait to get the final report, wait to see what our online profiles look like, and then wait to see who chooses us and when.

I'm not very good at waiting.

My wife can attest to this. She has to restrain me when I get her a really cool birthday present and want to give it to her early because I'm so excited. I'm definitely (and unfortunately) an impulse purchase kind of person.

Having to sit quietly and wait while other people do their work around me? Nope, not so good at that. I'm also now faced with an entire week off as I take some vacation prior to the Thanksgiving holiday.

I wonder if I should start repainting our dark blue guest room something light and baby room-ish?

Loss and Gain

Dear Plus One,

I know you're out there and sometime in the hopefully not too distant future, you'll be coming home with us to our little family. We have a house filled with color and art and books and music and cats. Especially cats. We've always had cats and I expect we always will. We'll definitely be adding a dog or two in the future but might wait on that until you're old enough to help pick him or her out.

On our placement agency application, we made sure to indicate that we hoped you wouldn't be allergic to cats and dogs because we want you to experience the joy of having pets to cuddle with, play with, curl up and take a nap with. Our cats are a little on the older side now but they love us and we love them. I think you'll like them. I'm just so sorry you won't have a chance to meet one of them.

Annabel was the best cat -- warm, loving, gentle, occasionally crazed. She talked a lot, often with a chirr-upp! sound that I've never heard another cat make. And as she got older, she started sounding a bit like my crotchety great-aunt who barked out "I can't hear you!" in the silent hall during my grandfather's memorial service. But for Annabel, it was more like "Get up! I'm hungry and awake and you're not but you should be and by the way you need to be paying attention to me because I love you!" She did, of course, say these things at 4:37 AM in the kitty version of French because that's what your Mom always said she spoke.

Other times, it might have been a mournful howl when, as she got older, she'd forget where we were until we called her. Then she'd come trotting down the stairs with a happy look on her face and promptly curl up into someone's lap. OK, maybe the mournful howl might have freaked you out a bit but believe me, Plus One, there was nothing better than to have Annabel curled up next to you at night purring through her nose and helping you doze off.

I can only imagine the giggles that would have erupted from you as you watched her shift into psycho kitty mode, dashing around the house, using the back of the couch like a NASCAR driver uses the banked curve to make sharper turns, or pursuing, without successful, the dreaded laser pointer (activities that earned her the sobriquet "The Grey Bullet"). Then of course, she would have taught you to tumble and dance, her gymnastic gyrations on your mom's drafting chair serving as an excellent example of the values of flexibility and a regular stretching regimen.

Personally, I was hoping she'd help with the whole "OK baby, it's time to eat your dinner" process as she would calmly sit next to your chair, like she used to sit next to mine, in the hopes of snagging a piece of chicken, a bit of spare rib, or a few licks of sour cream (her absolute favorite). I figured she'd keep you distracted enough, using her Jedi mind tricks, to let us get some food into you without much of it decorating the walls or my shirt.

But best of all would have been the quiet times, when she'd curl up in her bowl on the kitchen table and doze off. We could have sat at the table with crayons or finger paints or bits of colored paper and worked while she watched us through slitted eyes to make sure we were occasionally paying attention to her (because it was all about Annabel) or that we hadn't wandered off, allowing her to snooze secure in the comfort that her people were nearby.

Sadly, Annabel was 19 and a half, which you will learn, dear Plus One, was very old for a cat. And sometimes when kitties are very old (and sometimes when they aren't), the time comes when they need to leave us to go chase mice and little red laser dots and lap up sour cream and curl up in someone's lap to keep them happy and warm and loved until the end of days. And when they're gone, we miss them because they are family, as much as me and your mom and you, Plus One, and all of your grandparents and cousins and dear friends.

It's OK to miss them. It's OK to look at the extra food dish and start to put dinner in it only to realize that there's no one to eat it, to sit at the kitchen table and realize with a start that the pair of grey ears and eyes that always peeked over the table top aren't there anymore, or to lie in bed and feel like it's empty because there's no grey cat curled up next to your head purring away in her sleep. It's OK to feel like there's a hole in your family and your life because there is.

But the wonderful thing is that we'll always remember her and love her and be able to laugh about her antics. We'll bring new pets into our family and we'll love them and they'll love us. You'll be able to crawl around after them or fall asleep next to them or shriek in glee as one of them licks red raspberry preserves off your face.

I'm just sorry it won't be the Grey Bullet. Because you would have liked her and she would have loved you.