So help me if you can, I've got to get back to the House at Pooh Corner by one...

Many of you may know that my favorite song from early childhood is Loggins and Messina's "House at Pooh Corner," also done in a more upbeat style by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. I liked it so much, in fact, that Katrina and I asked my brother Bob to sing it at our wedding. He did so in amazing style, accompanying himself on his Martin 6-string, bringing tears to every eye in the chapel that morning as he sung about the importance of friendship and living life to its fullest.

Kat and I have gone through a lot lately - a friend at work pointed out that a failed adoption is like having a child die, emotionally, anyway. We've gotten excited about, and lost, somewhere on the order of twelve children in the past three years, depending on how you look at it. There was a child from the Marshall Islands, a baby girl who was going to be ours, but for the denial made by the child's maternal grandfather that shut the entire process down. We had actually faxed over what name we wanted on the birth certificate (Morgan Julianne Rainey). We spent over a year trying to adopt from Ukraine, all for naught when the program in that country encountered problems high up in the national adoption center. Since we were aiming at a sibling group (or at least a pair of kids), that's two more. Late last summer, we met Tammy, a pregnant woman in a bad situation who wanted us to adopt her baby. As the projected costs rose and rose and rose, we chose to walk away from her. This baby, whose gender we never got to find out, was child number four. Within a week of starting the process with Tammy, I got a call from Jenny, a 26-year-old woman I'd known since she was 13, who was pregnant with her sixth child, and "didn't want to bring this baby into the hell" that was her life. Knowing Jenny was a long shot based on her history, we didn't put much stock into the situation, although she did tell us she was keeping a pregnancy journal for us. "What a deal," I thought - raising as my own child the child of a woman I worked with as a high schooler in my old church's youth group. But, this was never meant to be, as Jenny's life spiraled down into more drama than anyone reading this blog would ever believe. Jenny had given birth to five girls, so we were guessing this child was going to be a girl, also. Child number five. In the interregnum between Jenny and our next birth mother, Terilynn, we spent a lot of emotional energy pursuing available children through the NWAE (Northwest Adoption Exchange). Two sibling groups tugged at our hearts - Emily, Lilyan and Chloe and Angelina, Leticia and Talia. Both sets of girls seemed to have qualities that could work for us - and this seemed to be the case with sixty other families each as well - sixty families had inquired about both sets of girls, sixty families who already had all their paperwork in with the state of Oregon, sixty families (again, sixty per set of kids) who had everything ready to go, only needing the final approval from the children's social worker. (The nice part here is, both of these sets of girls have found homes, and we can only hope and pray that they are the best possible homes for them). Children six, seven and eight. Children nine, ten and eleven.
Afterwards came Terilynn, another pregnant woman needing someone to adopt her child. We got as far as attending an ultrasound (and here, here and here), finding out in all likelihood it's a boy, naming him (Alexander Louis Rainey), then having it all fall down in a nightmare of weirdness the likes of which was only approached by Jenny. This woman is completely over the edge - so much so that getting out of it almost overcomes the pain of having to say goodbye to child number twelve.

Almost, but not quite.



So.


Anyway, we're still pursuing different avenues - we've finished up our foster parenting information for the state, and will be sending all that in soon. Foster adoption is a really great course, actually, because it puts us much more in the driver's seat in terms of being able to choose which child (or children) we want to bring home.


So.


Kat and I continue on, seeking to count all the bees in the hive and chasing all the clouds from the sky (difficult work this time of year in Washington). We've, fortunately, never left the House at Pooh Corner, but would like to fill up some of its rooms as soon as we can.