Tuesday 5: Of Birth Parent Letters and Holiday Hip Hop

1. Every six months we send pictures and a letter to our adoption agency for Laura Ingalls Wilder’s birth parents. Finding the pictures is fun. I enjoy the stroll down the last six months of memory lane. She stood up. She had her first Halloween. There was her first birthday. The letter is much harder. At the request of her parents, ours is a closed adoption. I have her parents’ names, ages, and a brief, worry free medical history. That’s it. I actually know more about the friend of a friend I met at a Christmas party last weekend. It is momentous, massive, heart breaking, breath stopping, and amazing to think that complete strangers gave us their baby. All that is true, but when I try to put it on paper every six months, in a letter that may never even be opened if her birth parents never decide they want contact, it always seems insignificant. 

Thanks for your baby. We love her more than anyone can possibly imagine. She is almost ready to walk.

            Love, 

          The complete strangers you trusted with your most precious gift, The Intrigues

2. The other day, the three older Little Explorers were roughhousing like something out of the Thunderdome, if the Thunderdome was louder and less organized. I was a little worried about Laura Ingalls Wilder, but I looked over and she was inside the pack and play with her face smushed against the mesh sides, watching it all in complete safety. It was kind of like the nets they put up at Nascar races to keep people from being hit by tires, only the pack and play was protecting her from flying Little Explorers and couch pillows, mostly.

3. It’s a wonder more spousal homicides are not directly related to whose turn it is to get up with a crying child. Not that I’ve ever contemplated offing The International Man of Intrigue in the middle of the night. Well, not in the last 24 hours, at least. 

4. My friend recently saw a picture of Amelia Earhart all dressed up at a dance party birthday. She was surrounded by friends, equally made up and sparkly. This prompted the friend to ask what a group of divas is called. Her vote? A Distraction of Divas. I think it works.

5. Tonight was Gertrude Bell’s holiday program at school. She actually had a big speaking part. After the acting portion, the kids performed a dance to LL Cool J and Naughty By Nature songs. I’m still trying to figure out if her teacher is super hip or I’m super old.