Happy Birthday Ellie!

My sweet girl Ellie turns 2 tomorrow! She enjoyed her birthday party today with dog ice cream topped with peanut butter. She is not aware that most likely, this year was probably her last birthday party. Nevertheless, she'll always be my baby!

I've been sitting on this topic for a while: Dumb Things People Say to Adoptive (& Infertile) Parents. First, I am not so high-and-mighty to acknowledge that I have probably said insensitive things to people, too. I KNOW I've asked relatives and friends about their baby plans. Never again. Here are a few (uttered by well meaning acquaintances) of my favorites:

-One woman at a wedding asked me if I had kids. When I said no, but we're adopting, she said, "That's great, and then you don't have to worry about being pregnant because that sucks!" (Followed by 15 minutes of preganancy horror stories and a ridiculously long labor & delivery story. I love those.)

-A fellow teacher (who had just learned of our plans) said, "Are you going to have one of your own some day?" Like this child will be our trial run?

-Someone said, "You have to be careful because some adoptive children have alcoholics in their family." Whaaat?

And my personal favorite . . .
"Well, if you were pregnant, you_____" (Fill in the blank) The best line came from the 20 year old working the Babies R Us registry who (after looking at my mid-section quite obviously) kept repeating, "If you were pregnant, you would want to register for a breast pump!" "If you were pregnant, you would need a Boppy!" Listen, Toots. Thanks for the reminder--not pregnant. I haven't thought about that in a good 3 minutes since walking into this Pregnant Belly Wonderland. Seriously, Sweets, could you make Babies R Us any more fun for us adoptive parents?

Phew, sorry for the bitterness, but that felt good to vent! The truth is, we've only gotten a handful of these comments. I have to admit, there are a few people in our lives who are ignoring our adoption. This is starting to confuse me because they are people who have said nothing, or barely a sentence. Because I'm too sensitive, this hurts my feelings. Let me say that I'm not talking about a long, in depth, "how did you come to this decision?" conversation. I mean nothing--zero, zilch, nada, never a word. Perhaps they have reservations about adoption, or maybe they are just busy. I've even thought that maybe they are saving their supportive words and excitement for when the baby is here. For our child's sake, I hope that is the case.

Of course, I don't operate that way (always try to celebrate pregnancies and babies)so thankfully there are many, many others who have been loving and supportive. We are blessed to have such incredible people around us, and we'll never be able to thank those people for their support. We received our first baby gift in the mail last week--a beautiful pack n' play. I cried--surprise, surprise! Jon gave me a happy hug. We're so lucky to be having a baby!