On parenting (this coming from a non-parent!)

To be honest, I haven't felt much like blogging lately. It just feels like not much new is happening on the adoption front. Furthermore, I know full well that I won't have any adoption news to report for another ten months or so...

My husband and I have discussed it, and we've decided not to go out and buy lots of toys and clothing until we have our proposal. Although I am very eager and excited to go out and start preparing the baby room, I know that it's better to hold off until we know more. I am a dreamer and my mind is often run by emotions, while my husband has a much more scientific mind, ruled by logic and practicality. We balance each other out. Emotionally, I would love to go out and start buying some clothes and toys for our child...but rationally and practically, I know that my husband is right and that it's more intelligent to wait. From a practical perspective, it's better to wait till we know if it's a girl or a boy, and the age. Whether our child is nine months old or almost two years old makes a big difference in the kind of clothing and toys we'll buy. When you're pregnant, you have something concrete...you see the baby growing, you can feel it moving, and even hear its heart beat. With adoption, it's different...it's very vague and abstract...you wish, you dream and talk about it for years with the people around you with nothing to show for it...and then, all of a sudden, you have a one and a half year old running around your home!! A part of me wonders if my desire to buy things for our future child doesn't stem more from a desire to make the adoption concrete and real rather than a real need. So, even though my heart is already with our child in the Philippines, I'm going to hold off on buying things. Once we have our referral, we will still have three months before we actually travel. It will just keep us busy and help to pass the time between our referral and our travel date. Besides, I see a lot of people around me who have tons of toys for their children to play with...and the result is that these children are bored very quickly and easily. It is as though they are unable to entertain themselves...they need constant stimulation. Neither my husband nor I were raised like that...we had a limited amount of toys, and were encouraged to use our imagination and entertain ourselves. I am grateful to our parents for this, for it allowed us to develop our creative side. We hope to do the same for our children. Give a child an empty cardboard box, and they will play for hours. We don't always need expensive, complicated electronic toys. This is my plan and my wish, but we'll see what actually happens. I have to admit that we do actually have a few toys for our dog, and I buy her treats and bones on a regular basis. Our dog is a bit spoiled, and I bet our child will be too :0) Since we don't have children, we may have made her too much the center of the household. It is for this same reason that we would eventually like to adopt two children, to avoid having a single child who's very spoiled and selfish, and the center of our universe. Adoption and having children is a very big part of our lives, but it's not the only thing that's going on. I think it's healthier for the parents to be in charge and to run the household rather than that everything revolves around the children and that they run the household. I know this is easier said than done, and we will surely struggle with this issue in much the same way as we've seen many families around us do. We all do the best we can...and just hope that it's good enough!

My husband and I held a BBQ for all of the members of his team at our house. We were about 25 people in total. I was speaking with the wife of one of my husband's colleagues about adoption and raising children, and she told me that there was one thing that she thought I should always remember: there's no manual on how to raise children, there's no one right way to do it. Every child is unique, every situation is different. You have to make it up and learn as you go along...you can read all the parenting books in the world, but there's just no one right answer! I think of how my mom raised the six of us, each of us a little differently as we each had our own unique personalities and very different needs. There definitely seems to be some truth to this piece of advice. It will be interesting for me to read this post again in a couple of years from now, when I actually have a child and am actually a parent. I wonder if my opinion will have changed...if I will see things differently. Time will tell!!

Other than that, Raph is on vacation for two weeks...yay! We're staying home and relaxing...it's been a big year, and he hasn't had much time to relax. In September, it's going to be busy at work, so he'll be running again...which is why we've decided to just stay home this year and relax. I have a teaching contract for the next two weeks, teaching an afternoon class. We can take this opportunity to visit Ottawa, go bike riding...I know Raph wants to play golf...and we wanted to do our deck as well. Two weeks goes by so fast! I have a job interview at one of the local Colleges tomorrow morning...I'm really excited about that. In the meantime, I've started taking contracts from the language school in Ottawa and by mid-September there will very likely be an opening for a full-time teaching position there. I also have an opportunity to work part-time with children at the YMCA after-school program. Teaching the College class is definitely my top priority. We'll see what happens! It looks like I'll be working in September though...I don't know yet exactly what I'll be doing, but I'm hoping I'll be pretty busy :0)