Noelle Dreams & Beyond

I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle on the milky way, They stretched in never-ending line Along the margin of a bay: Ten thousand saw I at a glance, Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. The waves beside them danced; but they Out-did the sparkling waves in glee: A poet could not but be gay, In such a jocund company: I gazed--and gazed--but little thought What wealth the show to me had brought: For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils. -- William Wordsworth

What follows is the original essay I submitted 2-5-17 to the producers of LTYM-Raleigh/Durham. It was much longer than they could allow in the show and had too many similarities to another candidate's piece, so they asked me to condense and modify it a bit. I did so without hesitation to be part of their amazing program. I'll share the more polished version I read that night, but I wanted to share this one first as I think it offers (what I hope are) teaching moments that are particularly relevant right now. ------------ Nine years ago on a rainy Friday afternoon in early March, I was at work training my replacement in an RTP office when I received a long-awaited surprise—a call from Wake County Human Services containing a life-altering question, which was in essence, “Are you ready for motherhood?” A quick answer was required, so as soon as I hung up, I managed with jittery fingers to dial my husband at work. He’d already been contacted, and we were equally stunn...

It's been a long, difficult decision, and we haven't made it official yet, but we are planning to pull out of our China adoption process. Amazingly, the CCAA has reached May 18, 2006 in log-in-dates, which is just over a month away from our LID. I suspect that if we stayed in the program, we'd be matched with a child in another 6 months or so, which means we'd be traveling to pick up our third child within the next year. Considering we began this process in January '06 that now feels really soon, and ironically this is the main reason we're pulling out. It just doesn't feel like the best thing for our kids, who will only be 3 and 2 next year. Adding a 1-yr-old to the mix feels incredibly overwhelming. I imagined having a big family, and when Caleb and Evan were born, we still intended to add a third. But what feels right these days - and what feels most sane - is to see our family as complete. I want to be a good mom. I work at it every day. I don't know...

cc is officially ours. Knew he was from the moment I laid eyes on him. So very, very happy it's finally done. Here is our beautiful boy, Caleb! And here is baby sister, Evan. This is the first time I've even opened my blog since that last post this summer. Crazy! No guarantees anymore I can keep this up. The only reason I can post right now is that Evan is actually sleeping WITHOUT ME!!! Almost never happens at night. She's actually going on two hours without me right now. AMAZING! And speak of the devil...there she is! Gotta go!

Posting pix is all I have time for these days! Hope you enjoy... (Note regarding a previous post: To go private, I have to enter the email addresses of everyone who wants to continue viewing the blog. Until I can find the time to do it I'm just going to upload pix of cc that preserve his identity in keeping with the foster care regulations. We are well on our way to adoption, but it could take quite a bit longer simply because of paperwork backlogs, and I would certainly not want to jeopardize anything. In the meantime if you haven't already let me know, please email me or post a comment if you'd like to maintain access to the blog. Thanks!) Happy Girl Strawberry Pickin' Easter Bonnet A Very Good Nana

The most amazing thing happened on this date one year ago - our son found his way to us. cc, we celebrate you today and every day. You are an incredible gift, and we love you with our whole hearts. Thank you for the immense joy you have brought to our lives just in your first year of life. We feel so lucky to be your parents, and we look forward to all that is to come for our family. cc celebrated his first birthday last Tuesday, and we had a super fun party for him on Sunday. We had a birthday cake decorated with a puppy dog and balloons from Whole Foods that was beautiful and delicious, and we had 50 balloons that provided quite a bit of excitement for the kids. Those in attendance were all the little ones from his neighborhood play group, some of our dearest friends and their children, all the grands, several aunts and uncles, and cousins Savannah, Byers and Stacy. We took lots of pictures and video (who knows when it will all be downloaded and organized) and made some great ...

Evan Rose arrived Tuesday, February 17, 2009, weighing 6 lbs. 14 oz. and measuring 19 3/4" long. Life is BUSY and beautiful. I will post more soon.

I'm now just over a week away from my due date, which is Valentine's Day. Miss Evan Rose will be here very soon! We feel ready, though we still need to do a few things like install her car seat. As of today I'm riding around with a towel in the seat in case my water breaks. I seem to be having a little trickling of amniotic fluid, which is exciting, but I guess it could be awhile yet before I actually go into labor. While I'm pretty uncomfortable, I'm enjoying these last days of pregnancy. We have prepared cc as best we can. How much can you really prepare an 11-month-old? We just give him lots of tlc (nothing different there) and his dada now sleeps with him every night on a twin mattress in his room. We figure we'll each sleep with a child for awhile. No biggie. We attempted forcing him to sleep alone a few months back, but it just didn't work. None of us were getting sleep, cc seemed traumatized, and we decided it just wasn't worth it. I r...

Just wanted to check in and say happy new year to anyone who happens to stop by. We are in the final stretch to the arrival of baby #2 with only 6 weeks or so to go. It's really hard to believe. We don't even have her room ready...actually we haven't even started yet! cc just keeps us so busy, and these days when he's sleeping or his dada has him, I'm sleeping. Just SO TIRED and so much to do! cc will be 10 months old in 2 days, and he continues to amaze us with his skillfullness. He's been walking behind a push toy ever since my mom gave it to him a few weeks ago as if he always knew how. He'll actually try to turn it when he runs into something. He occasionally says bye-bye and attempts to wave, and his fine motor skills get better every day - this requires me to keep the tiniest grains of dirt off the floor unless I don't mind him ingesting whatever he picks up. (We try, but our house just isn't that clean.) We have him sleeping on a tw...

I plan to post a pregnancy picture soon. Just wanted to say hi until then... I think November has been even busier than October! We have lots of projects in the works, such as the baby-proofing we didn't worry about until cc began crawling a few weeks ago. We also have a nursery to do and Christmas shopping and baby shower planning and the usual stuff that goes along with having a home and a family. I am forever sleep-deprived, especially since cc is in our bed again. (More to come on that front...I simply cannot let him cry it out as much as everyone keeps suggesting it.) I also want to say biggest congrats to our friends who recently got their referral from China!!!!

I just loved that part of President-elect Obama's speech Tuesday night. I think this is an extraordinary time for America, and I feel so proud. I truly hope we can finally come together. I do believe that if anyone can unite the country, it's this man. I went to church today. I attend a Unity church, and for those who don't know it's not your average Christian church. We celebrate the life of Jesus as the great example rather than the great exception, and we recognize and embrace universal truths taught by other great religious traditions in addition to Christianity. We both meditate and pray, we celebrate diversity and the connectedness of all beings, and we are made up of both Democrats and Republicans. As a congregation we're definitely more left-leaning, but our minister does not use the podium to politicize. After all, we are a UNITY church. However, today our minister took the opportunity to celebrate the leap our country has made in electing Barack Ob...

I just commented on a friend's blog that I don't have even a sliver of time to post to my blog, which is completely true, but I figured (at the risk of irritating my husband, who is probably ready for me to come back downstairs and co-parent again since I've now been on the computer for an hour) I would take just a few minutes to simply say GO OBAMA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! For my kids, for the country, for the world. What an exciting day. And I'll also share that cc is wonderful and beautiful and oh so challenging. He's cutting teeth (has been for months, I swear, and those first bottom ones still haven't broken through), not sleeping well in his crib anymore so he's back in bed with us at night and often in my arms for naps, which means I can't accomplish anything, he cries when I walk out of the room every time, unless Chris is here or we have a visitor, and he grabs EVERYTHING within his reach, which then goes in his mouth if he can help it. He's almo...

Yes, Chris and I found out that cc will be getting a sister in February! We honestly couldn't believe it when the ultrasound technician gave us the news a couple of weeks ago - due to the multitude of men in Chris' family. A few people have pointed out to us recently that this really doesn't have anything to do with determining sex, so I've only been misinformed about this for the last 15 years or so! We've always thought we'd have boys if we were able to have kids biologically. Funny how life happens. We feel incredibly blessed and excited about having a boy AND a girl, who may be followed shortly thereafter by another girl! Yes, we're still pursuing our China adoption, and as you can imagine these days we're OK with the wait. :) We're thinking she'll come to us in 2010, but as always we really have no idea when. I can't believe I'm halfway through my pregnancy. We have so much to do before this little girl makes her grand entran...

I usually reserve this blog for updates on my family, adoption and fostering topics, and parenting miscellaneous, and sometimes I use it just to journal. So why you might ask have I decided to post something political? I happen to think it's extremely relevant to being a mother and to my children's future. I hope you'll keep reading... I grew up in a small, rural community that was very racially segregated and still is today. There was a large countywide public school system that was predominantly black and a very small, private K-12 school, where probably 98% of the white kids went, myself included. My parents said the education was better there, which certainly brought up questions for me, such as why the whites got to have a better education. (Later in a college education course I heard my school referred to as a "white flight" school, a phrase that was foreign to me until that time and has haunted me ever since.) While the county was largely black, I ha...

I can finally breathe a sigh of relief. This is the first time I've been pregnant beyond 13 weeks, and now I'm over 14 weeks. I still have some nausea, fatigue and headaches, but it's all getting so much better. We've had several ultrasounds, and things are looking great in my belly - we've already counted fingers on this tiny baby! We'll find out whether it's a boy or girl in 4 weeks, and I can hardly wait. Most are betting it's a boy, and that's what we always figured it would be because of the literal sea of males in Chris' family. Either way, we'll be thrilled. I've chosen to have my prenatal care at the local birth center, which is a half hour or so away, and that is where I'll give birth with the assistance of a midwife. I feel really good about this decision, and Chris does as well. I have a number of friends who have given birth there and had wonderful experiences. I believe the baby and I are in very good hands. I h...

I have several pieces of very happy news: First of all, we are getting closer and closer to becoming cc's forever family. Recently our social worker said for the first time that we are being considered for his permanent placement. Hooray!!!!!! Chris and I squeezed each other's hand so hard when we heard this. What a relief. We're almost there, cc! Another exciting turn of events is that cc has begun sleeping through the night recently. He doesn't do it every night, but if he wakes up it's around 4am after having been asleep since about 7pm, and so we've gotten some good solid sleep by this point. If he wakes up before 5:30am, we're able to give him a bottle and then he'll go back down until 7am or so. If he wakes up around 5:30, he's often up for a couple of hours. So I actually can't decide which I prefer. I'm not exactly a morning person, though having a baby certainly forces you to try to be one. Either way, he's doing so we...

I'm so excited for my dear friend Nesha and her husband Tod. They are on their way (or perhaps are already there!) to pick up their son, Minh, from the orphanage he has lived in for the first year of his life in Vietnam. It's been a long road since they got their referral last fall (and an even longer journey to adopt - they're on the same China timeline that we are). They've watched Minh grow in pictures, and now they will see him in person for the very first time. I can just imagine what they're feeling - their hearts must be bursting wide open. Wow. I can't wait for them to come back home! I wish I could give them all hugs right now. If you'd like to follow the remainder of their journey to adopt Minh, check out their blog here .

Check out this great website: The Soft Landing They sell baby and children's products that have all been confirmed with each manufacturer to be free of Bisphenol-A (BPA, which is in some baby bottles and other plastic items and has been in the news of late-finally!), phthalates and PVC. I've been wanting to find some nontoxic teethers for cc, and I found out about this website today through my Co-op America newsletter. Perfect timing! I've just ordered way too much stuff, but I couldn't help myself!