Thursday, May 12, 2011

The Highchair Dilemma

On my morning walk/run (I pretend to run, but man, I am really sloooow so it's almost like walking fast) with the Maggiedog, a woman was setting a clean, perfect highchair out in front of her house with a sign that said "Free". 
So here's the dilemma, and I hate to say it, but I have spent the better part of this morning thinking about it:
*Do I take the high chair, and have to look at it for the next two years while we wait and wait and wait and wait for a child to sit in it?
*Do I take it and put it in storage where I don't have to look  at it, but of course will know it's there?
*Do I just walk away and let it go?
What did I choose?  Well, I looked at it and looked at it and looked at it, and then walked away. I really didn't know what to do--I mean, when the wait is just getting longer, at what point do you start actually preparing to be a parent? 

It's just a really weird position to be in.  Everything we are doing and have done to this point to be parents through adoption has been quite abstract.  Let's face it, filling out profiles and applying for immigration, while having to generally do with bringing a little one home, has very little to do with having a real, live child sitting in a high chair, attempting to feed their dinner to the dog.  It still seems really abstract, and I don't know if I'm ready to have it be more concrete, as it is still so far away. 

When we applied to the Ethiopia program, the wait times were 4-10 months for a referral of an infant.  So an 18-24 month wait, as it likely stands now, is a really, really, reallyreallyreally big shift in our timeline--I can't think "This will be my last Mother's Day as an outsider"  or "This is our last summer just the two of us"  or anything along the lines of "By this time next year....".    I'm hoping for a referral in 2013.  And good golly, that is depressing.

So we're in a holding pattern, where we have been for the last four years, and this will not be the first nor the last time I will be faced with this dilemma.  Do I start looking at Lonely Planet Ethiopia, to plan a tour while there?  Do I start collecting cute baby things and favorite children's books while waiting?  Do we snap up bargains when we see them? 

I always figured that when we were around 6 months away from a referral, I would start really thinking about things like maternity leave, baby items, clothing, decorating a nursery, etc.  It's just hard to believe that our mark of "6 months from referral" is likely a year from now (or more, but that just doesn't bear thinking about). 

Not even sure if this post makes sense, but there you have it.

8 comments:

  1. I have Lonely Planet Ethiopia on my night stand, and can't open it. I don't want to fall in love with Ethiopia any more than I already have--I'm scared it will all come apart again.

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  2. :-( Hugs and hugs xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
    Amy

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  3. Adoption is really hard sometimes. Hugs to you.
    -Shannon

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  4. A storage unit is a good idea. I have stuff for our future baby, and sometimes it makes me happy and sometimes it makes me sad. It's the adoption rollercoaster.

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  5. Oh no, it makes ALL kinds of sense. I know just what you mean. And I'm really sorry.

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  6. Ditto to everything you've written. I'm right there with you! It's hard to get excited about something you're not even sure is going to happen, especially when you've had so many letdowns with regards to babies in the past. I know how you feel, and you're in my thoughts...

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  7. Ahhh, the complexities of being in the paperwork part of adoption. I'm sorry things have slowed down so much. My only hope is that they'll figure things out really quickly and in the end the delays won't be as bad as they're predicting.

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  8. Awful. These decisions are awful and never easy. I didn't buy anything over the 10 years that I was dying to be a mommy. Not a single thing. Because the result of having to stare at those "things" in my home was not acceptable. Totally unsolicitied advice? I wouldn't buy anything. Once your little one is matched with you you'll be ready to shop and the things you pick up now may not be what you'd want then anyway. We had a similar highchair situation. i'm glad I didn't take the free one because I found a really amazing one I loved when we registered and it was the first gift someone sent to us. We still use it. It is our favorite "thing." I think it was really redeeming of those painful hopes and dreams and all of the free stuff we turned down to finally install the highchair in our kitchen. I hope you have the same experience!

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