Thoughts about Monday

1. Today was a day I felt all out of sorts. I'm not sure why.

2. I don't know if Hannah and Olivia could tell but they were out of sorts too.

3. I think Olivia has a cold, which might be why.

4. I think Hannah is just preparing us for her teenaged years. I think I got some gray hair today and maybe some wrinkles. I also just found three parenting toddler books online to buy.

5. Matt and I just had a big long discussion about parenting and Hannah. We need a child psychologist to come live with us for a while to give us some advice. We don't want to expect too much, but we certainly don't want to expect too little of our sweet munchkin.

6. Craft time fail. I tried my hand at the project I mentioned a few days ago. I will not be posting a picture because I think I can re do it. But that won't happen for a while because life is about to get hectic.

7. We officially adopt Olivia on Friday. We have not heard anything about how the court date went last week. We are assuming no news is good news and we are glad to spend the extra money to make sure all the paperwork is done correctly.

8. We have heard this adoption day is really big. Since it's national adoption day, I guess the judge here does over 40 adoptions on that day. Very exciting day for our family!

9. In case you weren't aware, November is national adoption awareness month.

10. In honor of that, here are a couple adoption thoughts for you. First, my favorite magazine, World, did a short profile on international and domestic adoptions. According to an article in the November 10, 2010 issue,

"Despite high rates of out-of-wedlock pregnancy and abortion, pregnant women are still not turning to domestic infant adoption: In 2007 only 22,000 domestic infant adoptions occurred. The federal government has tried to encourage adoption options, and NCFA has a grant—The Infant Adoption Training Initiative—to train family planning and healthcare workers to discuss adoption with pregnant clients. Pregnant women for the most part don't consider it a viable choice even though research shows that women who place their babies for adoption generally do well in life and are happy with their choice.

The one bright spot in adoption is a small increase in the number of children adopted out of foster care. According to the Administration for Children and Families, 52,000 children were adopted out of foster care in 2005. In 2009 that number had increased to 57,000. At the same time, the number of children waiting to be adopted from foster care declined from 131,000 to 115,000."

11. Last adoption thought...want to know the most adoption friendly workplace? The Wendy's/Arby's Group founded by Dave Thomas. It offers it's employees a max of $24,300 reimbursement for adoption expenses and up to six weeks leave. So maybe I should take another part time job at Wendy's. I do love a good Frostie.....

12. All in all, not a bad Monday but I was certainly ready for bed four hours ago.