Marriage

Leap of Faith

Dar­ling Hubby,

Four­teen years ago, I gave my heart over to you com­pletely. Which makes no sense, because I’m sure you won my heart over the first moment I climbed into that canoe with you on your six­teenth birth­day. Of course, I refused to lis­ten to my heart that day and kept you at arm’s length for two years after that fate­ful moment.

But once I took that leap of faith (and kissed you first ), I knew that you’d be the per­son I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. Four­teen years ago today, we sealed our love with our mar­riage vows … and despite the ups and downs in life we’ve had, I wouldn’t trade any moment of it. I would hold your hand and take every leap of faith with you, over and over again.

Happy Anniver­sary, Hubby!

Love Moves in Mys­te­ri­ous Ways
(music and lyrics by Julia Fordham)

Who’d have thought
 this is how the pieces fit?
You and I
 shouldn’t even try mak­ing sense of it
I for­got how we ever came this far
I believe we had rea­sons
 but I don’t know what they are
So blame it on my heart, oh

Love moves in mys­te­ri­ous ways
It’s always so sur­pris­ing
 when love appears over the hori­zon
I’ll love you for the rest of my days
But still, it’s a mys­tery 
of how you ever came to me
Which only proves
Love moves in mys­te­ri­ous ways

Heaven knows
 love is just a chance we take
We make plans 
but then love demands a leap of faith
So hold me close
 and never let me go
’Cause even though we think we know 
which way the river flows
That’s not the way love goes, no

Love moves in mys­te­ri­ous ways
It’s always so sur­pris­ing
 when love appears over the hori­zon
I’ll love you for the rest of my days
But still, it’s a mys­tery 
of how you ever came to me
Which only proves
Love moves in mys­te­ri­ous ways

Like the tick­ing of the clock
 two hearts beat as one
But I’ll never under­stand
 the ways it’s done

Love moves in mys­te­ri­ous ways
It’s always so sur­pris­ing
 when love appears over the hori­zon
I’ll love you for the rest of my days
But still, it’s a mys­tery 
of how you ever came to me
Which only proves
Love moves in mys­te­ri­ous ways

As per­formed by Fil­ipino singer, Nina

 

Like Sands Through The Hourglass …

I can’t believe it’s already the last few days of August. Where has the time gone?

All I know is that Hubby & I have been busy non-​​stop since return­ing to the “Flat Fields” of the Mid­west.** We returned to Chi-​​town (via Detroit after Seat­tle) on Thurs­day and have pretty much been pack­ing up our apart­ment since then.

Yes, I know. We should have been packed for our move to our new apart­ment before leav­ing for our Alaskan Adven­ture … but if you recall from this post, exactly where we were going to live was still up in the air right up until just before we left for Alaska.

And then there’s the whole mat­ter of me fly­ing out to North Car­olina today … which also hap­pens to be the only day in which we’d be able to pick up the keys to our new place.

Yes … the trip to North Car­olina in which I’ll be attend­ing my New Employee ori­en­ta­tion for my new job. For an entire week. The same week in which we’d need to hand in the keys to our old apart­ment by Tues­day night.

So if you haven’t fig­ured it out by now … this means that:

  1. Hubby and I had less than three days to pack up our old place,
  2. Hubby & I only have three days to move all our crap stuff into our new place, and
  3. I wasn’t going to be around to help move all our crap stuff.

Uh-​​huh. That’s right. I’ve totally bailed on Hubby. And believe me … I feel absolutely hor­ri­ble about it.***

What’s worse is that Tues­day is our 14th Wed­ding Anniver­sary … and we won’t even be in the same state! This will be the first time we’ll have been apart dur­ing any type of spe­cial day. Boo.

And tomor­row … well, tomor­row I start my new job. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t ner­vous, but I guess the only thing I can do is go into it with my head held high … and pray for the best.

Despite all the “brick walls” we’ve been encoun­ter­ing lately, I must admit that I’m excited with all these new changes: nicer (yet smaller) and more afford­table apart­ment, and a new career direction.

I just wish the tim­ing of it all didn’t suck.

~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~

** Ugh … totally sucks not see­ing moun­tains in the back­ground any­more. We so miss Seat­tle right about now!

*** Thank you (from the bot­tom of my heart) to my In-​​Laws, who are cur­rently in Chicago help­ing Hubby out!!

Feelin’ Lucky

The Happy Newlyweds

Hubby & I have spent the past week in Canada. While the main rea­son was to cel­e­brate his cousin’s wed­ding in Toronto last Fri­day, we spent the past week tour­ing East­ern Ontario and Québec. And actu­ally, as I type this … we’re on a three-​​hour tour bus drive from Kingston back to Toronto, where we first started this bus tour.

The main pur­pose of doing these tours is because Hubby’s Uncle and Aunt have flown in from the Philip­pines to attend the wed­ding. Since they’ve flown halfway around the world, Hubby’s par­ents as well as the other fam­ily mem­bers liv­ing in North Amer­ica have decided to have a “mini”-reunion to show Hubby’s Uncle a small chunk of Canada.

And when I say “mini” … I mean that it’s a smaller por­tion of Hubby’s entire fam­ily. Dur­ing the actual wed­ding week­end, the total num­ber of fam­ily mem­bers (includ­ing aunts/​uncles, cousins, chil­dren of cousins, and all sig­nif­i­cant oth­ers) equaled 37. When we went to Nia­gara Falls on Mon­day, about 25 of those fam­ily mem­bers were still around for an overnight stay. And when we started the three-​​day bus tour on Wednes­day, we whit­tled down to 17. Regard­less, it has been an incred­i­ble week with the fam­ily … some­thing that we haven’t done since Jan­u­ary 2008. And unfor­tu­nately, that hap­pened to be in Vir­ginia Beach when Hubby’s grand­mother passed away.

Only a hand­ful of the “young” cousins with Hubby

In that two-​​year time period, four new chil­dren were added to the fam­ily. One was our niece, Kairi and the sub­se­quent three babies were girls born between 2009 and early 2010. In addi­tion, Hubby has much-​​younger cousins between the ages of thir­teen and eight. The other young kids are chil­dren from his sis­ter (Tyler) and his first cousins. This puts the total of “young kids” four­teen years old and younger at twelve.

That’s twelve kids being watched over by par­ents; twelve kids being beck­oned by the var­i­ous par­ents and their “Tita” or “Tito”** or “Até” or “Kuya.”*** Twelve kids all call­ing out “Mom” or “Dad” and approx­i­mately seven sets of par­ents respond­ing to that title.

That’s about eleven of Hubby’s Aunts /​ Uncles /​ First Cousins out of the 37 fam­ily mem­bers that have young kids under the age of eigh­teen.  If my math is right, this also means that about twelve of those 37 fam­ily mem­bers are either par­ents of older kids (eigh­teen or older).

Par­tial Group shot in Old Quebec

Then there’s Hubby & me; the child­less cou­ple. We’re not counted amongst those who have chil­dren at any age. We’re only counted as chil­dren of Hubby’s par­ents. And we only get the title of “Tita/​Tito” or “Até/​Kuya.”

But we’re def­i­nitely not called “Mom” or “Pa” (which is what Hubby’s fam­ily calls their Dads).

Now, I know what you’re think­ing … here goes Emily, once again, com­plain­ing about not being a Mother; of not being able to expe­ri­ence what its’ like to be called “Mom” or “Mommy.” And yes, I do admit that it has been bit­ter­sweet this past week when see­ing all the babies dressed up for the wed­ding; when see­ing all the other Aunts and Uncles and Cousins pass­ing the new addi­tions to the fam­ily around the group, oohing and ahhing and fuss­ing over them. (Although, I do fully admit I took part in such activity … )

But you know what? I actu­ally found the sil­ver lin­ing in all the hul­la­baloo of the “World of Babies/​Children.” And that sil­ver lin­ing is this:

Hubby being silly with our nephew & cousin

I was actu­ally ecsta­tic that I didn’t have to respond to being called “Mom” … espe­cially when it was in regards to the con­stant ques­tions from the kids older than four years old about what was going on next.  Or why we had to leave now to go to our next des­ti­na­tion. And I cer­tainly didn’t mind that I wasn’t respon­si­ble with hav­ing to deal with atti­tudes or behav­iors that the kids doled out once they got grumpy.

While I dealt with each instance that came my way or hap­pened dur­ing our “watch” over them****, I have to say that I finally appre­ci­ate the fact that I’m “just the Aun­tie” or “just Até Emily” to all the kids.

In fact, I can hon­estly say with­out a doubt that Hubby and I are lucky. And I don’t mean “lucky” in the sense that, as a Child-​​Free cou­ple, we don’t have to deal with the day to day issues of being a par­ent … because, I still wouldn’t trade the oppor­tu­nity to raise a child for any­thing else in the world.

Great “can­did” photo of the older kids

No, I mean “lucky” in the sense that we get to be the “Cool Aun­tie and Uncle” to the chil­dren. We get to take the kids around to do fun things (while hope­fully giv­ing the par­ents a bit of a reprieve) when we want to and/​or are able to. And we get to “play” with them and joke around with them as much as we want.

But most impor­tantly, we also get to be the ones who they can talk openly to;  feel com­fort­able around to ask some dif­fi­cult or sen­si­tive ques­tions. And we’re the ones whose words, at this point in their lives, can make some sort of impact on them; put a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive in mind for them … even if they’ve been told the same things twenty times over by their par­ents. And it feels great.

I can hon­estly say that the time we spent with Hubby’s youngest fam­ily mem­bers has been won­der­ful and truly sat­is­fy­ing. And I hope that dur­ing the week we’ve spent with them, we’ve been able to con­tribute to last­ing mem­o­ries and life lessons that they can take back with them to their own homes.

~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~

Related Posts

Fam­ily Fun in Nia­gara Falls

The Mr. Apron Strings Fam­ily Bubble

Wel­com­ing Kairi to the world

Preg­nancy New(s) Edi­tion (PWP)

~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~

** Means Aunt or Uncle in Taga­log (the native lan­guage of the Philippines)

*** In Taga­log, Até (ah-​​teh; fem­i­nine) or Kuya (koo-​​yah; mas­cu­line) is a title given to show respect to your elder sib­lings or cousins.

**** And believe me, this week there were lots of times where we vol­un­tar­ily offered to take respon­si­bil­ity for the kids.

Prob­a­bly my most fave pic from this trip. We’d go back to Que­bec City if we could!

Four Hundred

Wow. Another week has gone by with­out more than a weekly update. What can I say? It’s been a pretty busy summer.

I admit that I hate tak­ing more than a few days break from writ­ing, because I find that my cre­ative juices start to slow down. Not that I don’t have a lot to say — G*d knows I always got the “Talks Too Much” com­ment on my grade school report cards — I just find myself strug­gling to write these thoughts down.

Any­way … what have I been up to?

Well, El Hubs & I were “home” in Detroit early last week. In real­ity, it’s because we knew we had to travel to Toronto on Thurs­day for his cousin’s wed­ding on Fri­day. And yeah … we coulda done the 9 hr trip in one shot. But why do that when we can break the car ride up in two days? Besides, we fig­ured we’d do some house-​​cleaning while we were in town for a cou­ple of days.

Thurs­day after­noon, we pulled into the Greater Toronto Area and swiftly met up with my cousins for some seri­ous catch­ing up. One of these cousins was LJC, whom we haven’t prop­erly spent time with since her wed­ding in 2008. Her youngest sis­ter was also there and we had the plea­sure of finally meet­ing her Sig­nif­i­cant Other.

It was an evening full of incred­i­ble fun of just sit­ting and talk­ing … some­thing I sorely miss from the years of spend­ing end­less sum­mers with them chat­ting until late at night.

Fri­day was obvi­ously Hubby’s cousin’s wed­ding. And it was an amaz­ing time … per­haps Hot as Hades in mid-​​July, but so much fun! The best part of the recep­tion … at least in my mind … was get­ting on the dance floor with all of Hubby’s cousins/​significant oth­ers and their chil­dren (our 14 yo nephew included) to start off the night of danc­ing with the Black Eyed Peas’ “Tonight’s Gonna Be A Good Night.”

While the wed­ding recep­tion was an incred­i­ble party, I must say that get­ting together with Hubby’s entire fam­ily (well, most of them any­way) on Sat­ur­day was also won­der­ful. Because even though we spent time together the day before at the wed­ding, Saturday’s get-​​together was more laid-​​back and relaxed. I know Hubby & I had a won­der­ful time … espe­cially teach­ing them Cana­dian cousins how to play the very Michi­gan card game of Euchre. We think we may have cre­ated mon­sters. LOL!

Hubby overlooking Horseshoe Falls

And today? Well … today Hubby & I found our­selves cel­e­brat­ing HIS birth­day in Nia­gara Falls. I must say, I can’t think of any bet­ter way to cel­e­brate Hubby’s birth­day than with an entire gag­gle of fam­ily. Just imag­ine a group of 25 fam­ily mem­bers (includ­ing an Aunt & Uncle who came from the Philip­pines for the wed­ding) doing an entire bus tour of attrac­tions. It was com­pletely chaotic … but I know Hubby has been enjoy­ing him­self today.

Even if I did for­get to wish him a Happy Birth­day until another Aunt had said it to him this morn­ing. Bad bad bad wife!! **

Now, I’m lay­ing here in bed at the hotel, fin­ish­ing up the last min­utes of Hubby’s birth­day by writ­ing noth­ing more than a jour­nal entry for the past week.

Hubby, how­ever, is spend­ing the rest of his birth­day night out with the “boys.” And by “boys” I mean two of his cousins, two of his uncles, and his Dad. I’m glad Hubby’s get­ting a chance to spend time with them … espe­cially since we haven’t had many oppor­tu­ni­ties to get together with fam­ily (from all over the U.S and Canada) over the past few years.

Hubby & Me on Maid of the Mist

So Hubby … before the day’s over, I just want to send an incred­i­bly huge birth­day hug and kiss to you. You are my world; my sun­shine and rain­bow. You are my best friend … and I’m incred­i­bly blessed to have you in my life. I can’t wait to con­tinue our jour­ney in life together.

Oh … and one more thing. Not that this is incred­i­bly excit­ing news (in the grand scheme of this post any­way). But check out the title of this post.

Yep … that’s the num­ber of blog entries I’ve offi­cially writ­ten as of today. Wow!

~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~

** In my defense, I must add that I did remem­ber it in the shower this morn­ing. But since we were try­ing to pack for an overnight stay in Nia­gara with his fam­ily, it slipped my mind by the time I started pack things away! Bad bad wife!!

New Directions

I had a life plan.

Never mind the fact that I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life (at least in regards to a career), but by the time I was 15 years old I had a gen­eral sense of how I wanted my life to turn out.

I wanted to get mar­ried by the time I was 25 years old and have my first child by the age of 27.

And because I had this notion that thirty years was a ginor­mous age gap between my last child and myself, my goal was to quit “baby-​​making” by the time I was 30 years old. This notion came from the first hand expe­ri­ence of a 15 year old who not only dealt with a big gen­er­a­tional gap but a cul­tural gap as well.

But yeah; I’d have all the kids I could bring into this world before I turned 30 years old.

Obvi­ously, this life plan never panned out. I mean … geez. I even pushed “actively try­ing” for that first child into my mid-30’s. We had already gone through all the infer­til­ity treat­ments we could (finan­cially and emo­tion­ally) put our­selves through. We had even seri­ously con­sid­ered other options to bring a child into our lives; either through domes­tic adop­tion or inter­na­tional adoption.

But in the end, Hubby & I made the deci­sion to move on with our lives with­out children.

*****

There have been many rea­sons why Hubby & I decided to close the door on the quest to have chil­dren. One of which was to regain some san­ity in our lives.

Liv­ing in 28-​​day incre­ments, in which any given moment can pro­duce the tini­est bit of hope, can be exhaust­ing. Espe­cially when the next given moment can quickly turn into a major dis­ap­point­ment. I won’t lie … it has been incred­i­bly nice  to step away from liv­ing in four weeks of con­stantly wor­ry­ing about whether or not I’ll see two pink lines.

Another rea­son was obvi­ously to start mov­ing on with our lives; to start plan­ning a “new future” with­out children.

When that “life plan” I dreamed of at the age of 15 was com­pletely derailed by infer­til­ity, I know I spent a lot of time and energy try­ing get it “back on track” … In other words, I fought tooth and nail not to head down the child-​​free “rail­road track” that my life was already on.

Mak­ing the deci­sion to move on with our lives was not an easy deci­sion. But when we finally decided on the child-​​free path — this “rail­road track” (if you will) — it was as if I could finally allow my life to move for­ward in the direc­tion that my life and our mar­riage was already on. I could finally stop strug­gling to get “back on track” and accept that per­haps we were never meant to be on that par­tic­u­lar “track” at all.

****

A "chance" photo, shot during our trip to Banff, Alberta

A “chance” shot taken from the road in Banff, Alberta

****

Today I turn 38 years old. I’m obvi­ously very far from where I thought I’d be by now; in that “life plan” I con­cocted at the age of fifteen.

If my life turned out as I planned it to be, I would have had at least one child some­where between the ages of 7 to 10 years old. And I prob­a­bly would have begun to think of return­ing to the work force after being a Stay-​​At-​​Home mom once the 7 year old started first grade.

But it’s not … and today I can finally say that I’m actu­ally really okay with it. Maybe it has to do with age, but I’m finally to a point where I no longer have focus on the dream or “life plan” I had always had in my mind.

Instead, I can finally accept that this is where Hubby & I are meant to be at this exact moment in time. And we can forge for­ward in this new uncharted direc­tion in our lives.

Old Souls

Hubby & I have always said that we’re old souls; ones that have lived and loved before … and are cur­rently in our next life together. It’s in the way we work hard in our careers; it’s the weight of respon­si­bil­ity that we feel for our­selves and for our par­ents and fam­i­lies. It’s been in our desire to have a bio­log­i­cal child of our own.

My Favorite Dis­ney Movie

In the same aspect, I like to think that we’re extremely young at heart; love to tease one another and love to be play­ful. We know (or rather Hubby knows) when we should let loose and relax.

The lat­ter is prob­a­bly the rea­son why we love to see movies. And specif­i­cally, the rea­son we absolutely love watch­ing ani­mated movies at an actual movie the­ater, rather than at home in front of our tele­vi­sion. It reminds me of the times when my par­ents would take me to see movies when I was a kid.

I will never for­get the day that the two of us saw Disney’s “Aladdin.” Hubby & I were still dat­ing and in col­lege. We had seen an evening show at a 1940’s the­ater in down­town Royal Oak; the the­ater packed with par­ents and their young charges. In the midst of the movie, when Aladdin backs out of free­ing Genie because he feels the need to use his third wish on him­self in order to keep Princess Jas­mine … one lone child in the the­ater, in her loud­est voice said, “Mommy, why doesn’t Aladdin just tell the truth?”

While the entire audi­ence let out a col­lec­tive, “Awwww …,” I can recall Future-​​Hubby squeez­ing my hand just a lit­tle tighter as we smiled at one another. And that was one of the first times I can recall think­ing that Future-​​Hubby would make an excel­lent father.

Now, flash for­ward to early 2009. Hubby & I had been mar­ried for 13-​​plus years by this time and we’d been through the ringer with Infer­til­ity. We had gone to see a movie one evening and saw the trailer for the movie “Up.” Both of us knew that this was one of those ani­mated films we’d want to see … regard­less of whether our nephew (or any of our younger, school-​​aged cousins) wanted to come with us or not.

What Hubby & I didn’t expect, when “Up” came out last sum­mer, was the infer­til­ity aspect of the movie. Well, okay … we did have a bit of a hint from read­ing other blog posts about the movie. But what I didn’t expect was how much it would affect  us; not just in the begin­ning scenes of the movie … but through­out the whole film, as Carl inter­acts with Russell.

It’s see­ing that “old soul” in Carl open his heart up to a young boy that broke my heart. It’s know­ing that Carl prob­a­bly closed his heart to chil­dren after he saw how it hurt Ellie that they couldn’t have chil­dren. It’s see­ing how much Carl loved Ellie and their life together; and how he’d do any­thing for Ellie … even after she passes away. It’s see­ing what Carl does through­out the movie to pro­tect Rus­sell and make sure he’s okay.

It’s like see­ing how Hubby, and his “old soul” would prob­a­bly be in years to come, if (or when) I pass before he does. It’s know­ing that, just like Ellie, I’d want Hubby to be happy and to know that my great­est adven­ture in life was with him.

Hubby turned the char­ac­ters from “Up” into an Asian ver­sion of us …
BTW, like my new header?

I cried in the the­ater that day. And I cry now, even as I write it; because that is a fear that I have, grow­ing old with­out any­one to take care of us except our­selves. And if, G*d for­bid, one of us dies before the other … not know­ing exactly how we’d be able to go on with­out the other.

But I sup­pose that since Hubby & I have already estab­lished that we’re cur­rently on our next life together as a cou­ple … it only makes sense that our next next life together will fol­low shortly after.

And that’s the only con­so­la­tion I can even begin to fathom at this time.

~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~

Related Links:

How Aladdin played into the theme of our Wed­ding

Another Disney-​​related post

Sock-​​Her Match

Whew. It’s been a busy few days. Hubby & I drove home to Detroit last Thurs­day and just arrived back to Chicago tonight. Lots of fun things hap­pened dur­ing our trip home; of which I’d like to write in more detail. How­ever, I’m quite tired right now.

Instead, I find myself sit­ting on our couch watch­ing some World Cup soc­cer and enjoy­ing it immensely. The only thing I find highly annoy­ing are the darn horns; of which it sounds much like a non­stop remix of “Flight of the Bumblebee.”

Watch­ing the World Cup reminds me of when the tour­na­ment was played here in the U.S. back in 1994. And if you asked Hubby about that time period, he would no doubt tell you one of his famous “Emily” tales; one that usu­ally includes adding some embell­ish­ments to the actual story.

This tale includes a book bag, an impor­tant career-​​defining test, a Type-​​A gal (aka me ), and free tick­ets to see the U.S. play against Switzerland.

Back in 1994, I had just grad­u­ated from Nurs­ing School and was study­ing to take the Nurs­ing Boards (NCLEX) which would pro­vide me licen­sure to prac­tice as a Reg­is­tered Nurse. 1994 was also the first year that the NCLEX would be pro­vided to each can­di­date indi­v­d­u­ally on a com­puter. Prior to this, each can­di­date took the same stan­dard exam at a set date and time in an incred­i­bly huge room with the rest of the eli­gi­ble can­di­dates for that date. In addi­tion to tak­ing the exam on the com­puter, each exam would be unique; mean­ing that the test ques­tions would vary from per­son to per­son and … depend­ing on how you did, you could have a min­i­mum of 75 ques­tions, up to a max­i­mum of 265 ques­tions. Regard­less of how many ques­tions you ended up answer­ing, one could fail at 75 ques­tions or pass in 265 ques­tions. So need­less to say, I was quite ner­vous as I had no pre­vi­ous ref­er­ence to tak­ing these com­puter adap­tive tests.

This also meant that I took my study guide with me every­where so I could study at a whim. And back in 1994, lap­tops weren’t com­mon, iPhones weren’t invented with apps to assist in study­ing for these exams. Oh … and the inter­net wasn’t read­ily acces­si­ble to the gen­eral pub­lic; so for­get being able to google  for answers on WebMD or nih​.gov. Nope; this meant that on top of the study guide I’d take with me, I might just take one of 20 lb text­books for Pedi­atrics or Med/​Surg … depend­ing on what topic I wanted to study that day. And oh, did I men­tion that my study guide weighed about 10 lbs all on its own?

Any­way, less than a week before I was to take my exam, my then-​​fiancé called me up and told me that he had two free tick­ets to a World Cup match at the Pon­tiac Sil­ver­dome, com­pli­ments of his employer at that time. Ini­tially, I had told him that I wouldn’t go because I still felt I had so much more study­ing to do. Except, well … he wouldn’t take no for an answer. “Once in a life­time chance,” he’d tell me; fol­lowed by “you need to take a break from study­ing so much!” And, truth be told, he was right. I was THAT Type-​​A that I felt I couldn’t go a moment with­out study­ing for the NCLEX.

That’s how I found myself head­ing to the World Cup.  But because I still couldn’t let go of not study­ing at all, I also found myself tak­ing my 30 lbs back­pack filled with NCLEX study­ing mate­r­ial. I con­sid­ered it my “secu­rity blanket.”

Because of secu­rity rea­sons and traf­fic issues, the city of Pon­tiac required that all ticket-​​holders be shut­tled into the Sil­ver­dome from their down­town loca­tion. (And yet, I was allowed to take a huge back­back in then … Wow, life pre-​​9/​11!) So the day of the game, Then-​​Fiancé and I stood in line with another coworker and his girl­friend wait­ing to catch a 15-​​minute shut­tle ride to the venue. And once we got there, we were so enthralled with the inter­na­tional atmos­phere and into the game which ended up in a 1:1 tie.

After­ward, we found our­selves amidst 70,000-plus peo­ple try­ing to catch a shut­tle back to down­town Pon­tiac. Oh, and did I men­tion it was 90-​​some degrees out­side that day? It must have taken us more than an hour just to get onto a shut­tle and, because of sur­round­ing traf­fic, an addi­tional half hour to get back down­town. But the kicker of it all was … that entire time, I did not once open up my back­pack to study.

Stryker, the 1994 World Cup Mascot

Instead, the won­der­ful man (that I even­tu­ally mar­ried) ended up car­ry­ing my 30 lb secu­rity blan­ket the entire time … while I “absorbed” all the infor­ma­tion by osmosis.

He’s such a good guy, my hus­band … and even though he’d likely tell his side of this story by adding an addi­tional 50 lbs worth of study mate­r­ial, I am most grate­ful for all the won­der­ful things — big or small — that he does for me on a daily basis.

And reflect­ing back on this tale? Well it just reminds me that even back before our lives were immersed in the world of Infer­til­ity … that my won­der­ful hus­band was always there to let me know when I needed to come up for air and take a breather.

I guess you can say that I scored big by mar­ry­ing such a won­der­ful man. And that we make a per­fect match.

Okay, I’ll stop it with the lame soc­cer terms. More inter­est­ing posts com­ing soon … I promise. But for now, it’s nighty-​​night!

2">Infertility Bets On Hold, Part 2

(If you missed Part 1, click here … )

While I’ve pretty much begun to resolve those par­tic­u­lar grief issues, there’s still that lack of strength that I feel I need in order to go through the entire adop­tion process.  Because it takes some­one who really has enough strength to climb over the prover­bial brick wall get­ting in the way of hav­ing a child. And specif­i­cally, I’m talk­ing about all the rules and reg­u­la­tions and inves­ti­ga­tions into your pri­vate lives just to raise a child that is not bio­log­i­cally your own. Quite frankly, I know that I don’t have what it takes to go through that.

Why do I say that? (And Kelly … hope­fully, this will help answer the ques­tion you posed to me at one time … ) Well first of all, I just know what I’m capa­ble of han­dling emo­tion­ally, and I know that I wouldn’t be able to sur­vive any fur­ther dis­ap­point­ment or heartache. Or as my new favorite quote from Pam says:

It got to the point where the poten­tial for more heart­break was more over­whelm­ing than the glim­mer of very small hope.

The sec­ond rea­son I feel as if I have lit­tle strength is because I have lit­tle con­fi­dence that things will come rel­a­tively straight­for­ward and sim­ple to us.

Not that I expect adop­tion to be an easy path. If we did decide to adopt, I have this very strong sus­pi­cion that we’d have so many more walls to climb. Give me a chance to explain … and I’d absolutely love to hear what oth­ers have to say to con­tribute to this discussion.

Let’s start off with Domes­tic Adoption:

  • Hubby & I both Asian Amer­i­can; Fil­ipino Amer­i­can, to be specific.
  • How often do you sup­pose any Poten­tial Birth Moms (PBM) would look at our dossier and — just by looks alone — think that we’d make great par­ents when their child will (most likely) not look at all sim­i­lar to the adop­tive cou­ple that they’d hope to raise their child?
  • Or that the PBM might worry that their child would face more bar­ri­ers hav­ing Asian Amer­i­can parents?
  • How often are Asian Amer­i­can babies given up for adop­tion; espe­cially if the PBM is also Asian or Asian Amer­i­can? Cul­ture dic­tates that fam­ily is impor­tant. If the child is not wanted in the imme­di­ate fam­ily; chances are that there is another fam­ily mem­ber (aunt, cousin, third uncle twice removed) that is will­ing to raise the child. Unfor­tu­nately, that’s a sit­u­a­tion that’s likely never going to hap­pen to us.

Mov­ing onto Inter­na­tional Adoption:

  • There are stricter laws and reg­u­la­tions from var­i­ous coun­tries in effect.
  • Some spe­cific coun­tries, like Rus­sia and Guatemala, have either sus­pended or have placed holds on any adop­tions to the US.
  • Wait time. Even for Fil­ipino adop­tions there are cer­tain stip­u­la­tions on how and when a child can be adopted; when the child can come back to the US with the adopted par­ents. And quite frankly, I don’t think I can afford the three-​​year wait in order to adopt a child from my native country.

And finally other, all-​​encompassing barriers:

  • Age: Let’s face it. Hubby & I are cur­rently push­ing 40. And yes, I know that there are cou­ples out there that are rais­ing babies that are much older than us. But there was a rea­son why Hubby & I started try­ing to con­ceive within a year of mar­riage: I had always seen me as a younger mother; one that wanted to fin­ish hav­ing babies before the age of 30. There was a spe­cific rea­son behind that: my mother and I are exactly 3o years apart in age (sorry Mom!). Grow­ing up (par­tic­u­larly in high school), not only did I deal with a cul­tural bar­rier, but I also dealt with a huge gen­er­a­tional gap. Both my par­ents were pre–baby boomer, while I was most def­i­nitely a Gen-​​Xer. Even though after I turned 30, I knew that this was some­thing beyond my con­trol, adopt­ing now — espe­cially as the rules and regs of adop­tion have got­ten more strict — well, it no longer seems pru­dent for both Hubby & my sake.
  • Energy: Along with age, this is the sec­ond biggest con­cern that I have. And, if I was hon­est with myself, the flim­si­est bar­rier of all. Because, really this has to do with energy and sta­mina. It’s one thing to raise a child with the thought in mind that you’ll be young enough to (some­what) keep up with their needs. It’s quite another thing know­ing that I can no longer wake myself up in the morn­ing with­out hit­ting the snooze but­ton a dozen times. Would I be able to care for another life if I can barely care for my own? Like I said, flimsy … but I’m just being honest.

I don’t bring up these points to be neg­a­tive in any way, shape or form. I’m sim­ply stat­ing facts that appear to be the most obvi­ous bar­ri­ers for our indi­vid­ual case when it comes to adopt­ing a child. And that’s assum­ing that we would ever go down that route. And, as I said above, I’d love to hear your thoughts on what I per­ceive as barriers.

*****

As it is, I feel that we’ve already played our game of Infer­til­ity Roulette. We’ve already placed all the bets we wanted to at this time in our lives. And we lost that bet. With adop­tion (or h*ll, even if we ever decided to go through IVF again), I want some­thing I can be sure of … some­thing I can count on.

I hes­i­tate using the word “guar­an­tee” … since noth­ing in life is ever guar­an­teed, but after more than ten years of fight­ing the odds and now fac­ing even greater odds against us (age, finances, etc), Hubby & I opted to get out of the bet­ting pool.

And this is why, at least in my eyes, it’s never as sim­ple to “just adopt.” It’s never easy to go through another round of IVF.

This is why Hubby & I have decided to “cut our loss” … or in this case, “cut the strings” … and live child-​​free after infertility.

~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~

Related Links:

Cut­ting The Strings

Infer­til­ity Bets On Hold, Part 1

Thoughts on Adoption

Infor­ma­tion on Fil­ipino Adoptions

Wiki Info on the Pre-​​Baby Boom Generation

Wiki Info on Gen­er­a­tion X

1">Infertility Bets On Hold, Part 1

(I guess I need to start off by say­ing, no … things have def­i­nitely not changed in my bar­ren world. And don’t let the title of this post fool you. Appar­ently I may have “freaked” a cou­ple peo­ple out by both the title and the pic­ture below … LOL!)

I’m not a bet­ting per­son. Which, when you think of the many trips Hubby & I have taken to Vegas, is quite humor­ous. All those casi­nos, and the most we played were slots.

I mean, I’ve played poker and black­jack in my col­lege years; but seri­ously, all bets were based on pen­nies. Or cig­a­rettes, depend­ing on who you were play­ing with (<cough> Tim <cough>). But to place actual money that’s more than a dol­lar (okay, maybe $2 max for a slot machine)? Can’t see myself spend­ing that kind of money.

My odds with these tests were never good

Which, given the odds that Hubby & I were given when we did our one cycle of IVF, makes it ironic. We were given a 51% chance that we’d be suc­cess­ful in our pur­suit to become preg­nant. We knew the odds were only 1% more on our favor. We had hoped to win this bet — a bet in which we put a boat­load of money into the pot — and we lost. And I was devastated.

That’s not to say that I regret ever hav­ing done our one cycle of IVF. Because even back then I knew that this was some­thing Hubby & I had to try in order to feel as if we tried every­thing in our quest to repro­duce. I’m just sim­ply say­ing that the results of that bet, that one IVF cycle, was enough for me to know that I could never place another bet on another IVF cycle ever again.

So yes … the next log­i­cal step would be to go for adop­tion, right?

Except adop­tion isn’t a sim­ple thing to just “think about.” First, there’s the process of griev­ing the fact that I can’t have a baby. That alone is noth­ing sim­ple. That process involves never being able to expe­ri­ence preg­nancy. In my case, it involved never being able to see two pink lines in a preg­nancy test.  And it involves feel­ing as if my body’s failed, not only me and my Hubby (espe­cially my hus­band), but our par­ents and our sib­lings. And our sib­lings chil­dren, too.

Then there’s the other part that I needed to grieve; which is out­lined in more detail in this recent post. It’s griev­ing the fact that we will never be able to have our own bio­log­i­cal baby.  A child that we could pass our genes to. A child to pass the Fil­ipino tra­di­tions we were taught grow­ing up; and find­ing a way to blend both our Amer­i­can and Fil­ipino sides together. A child to carry on my Hubby’s last name.

And while I’ve pretty much begun to resolve those grief issues, there’s still that lack of strength that I feel I need in order to go through the entire adop­tion process.  Because it takes some­one who really has enough strength to climb over the prover­bial brick wall get­ting in the way of hav­ing a child. And specif­i­cally, I’m talk­ing about all the rules and reg­u­la­tions and inves­ti­ga­tions into your pri­vate lives just to raise a child that is not bio­log­i­cally your own. Quite frankly, I know that I don’t have what it takes to go through that.

(Part Two con­tin­ues tomor­row … )

~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~

Related Links:

Thoughts on Adoption

Baby Pic­ture

Split

Like the cur­rent Stan­ley Cup Finals series, the Apron­Strings House­hold is split.

For those that aren’t sports nuts like the two of us, that means that the Chicago Black­hawks and the Philadel­phia Fly­ers are both tied with two wins apiece after Game Four in the seven-​​game series.

Not that I mean to say that Hubby & I are at odds with one another … well, at least when it comes to our rela­tion­ship. Rather, we’re at odds when it comes to cheer­ing on which hockey team we think should win the cov­eted Cup.

I should start off by say­ing that, first and fore­most, I will always cheer for my home­town Detroit Red Wings wher­ever we live. But since they failed to make it to the finals this year … I had no choice but to choose an “adopted” team.

I should also add here that if I had my druthers … and if the Red Wings weren’t going to make the Finals … I would have absolutely loved to see two dif­fer­ent teams vying for the Cup this sea­son. And those two teams would have been the Van­cou­ver Can­nucks and the Mon­tréal Cana­di­ens. To me, it only seems fit­ting that the year Canada won Gold in a Cana­dian Olympics, then they should also deserve to have Stan­ley return home … at least for the year.

And yes, Mrs. Spit. I know this would have made you very very happy, also. :-)

Instead now, Hubby & I find our­selves — for the first time in our mar­ried lives — root­ing against each other. Him cheer­ing for a team, sim­ply because they’re con­sid­ered the under­dogs of the series. And me cheer­ing for a team, for the mere fact that this team’s town has become my adopted town.

Hubby cheers for his team, sim­ply because his oppos­ing team has long-​​been rivals of the Detroit Red Wings. While I cheer for my team because it’s been 47 years since this team has won the Stan­ley Cup.

Either way, it’s been fun watch­ing the series with Hubby. And it’s def­i­nitely made watch­ing the NHL’s “sec­ond sea­son” much more interesting.

~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~

Meet Al the Octo­pus; the Detroit Red Wings mas­cot. For Wing Nuts, like our­selves, throw­ing octopi onto the ice dur­ing Play­off Sea­son is a long-​​standing tra­di­tion for the Red Wings Franchise.

As for how Al got his name … he was named after Al Sobotka, the gen­eral build­ing man­ager for Joe Louis Arena; and the won­der­ful soul that picks up every thrown octopi and twirls it over his head.

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