Dear Brit

Dearest Brit,

Usually when I sit down to write you a letter, I have something in particular in mind.  Today I do not have anything to share.  Honestly, I am writing because you have been on my mind without ceasing for weeks now.  My heart aches with love for you that I am unable to share with you in person.

I know the holidays have alot to do with that, because that is when we want to be with our extended family.  And obviously we have no interaction with you at all at this point.  Needless to say, we miss you.  We wish so desperately that we could have a visit with you during that time just so we could let you know how much we love you too.  The kind of visit that families have during the holidays.  We continue to hope and pray that someday soon that will happen.

We did send you your Christmas gifts and we hope that you got to enjoy them.  I loved picking out your outfit.  BF, J (your oldest brother) and I all went to a special store called Sparkle and spent all kinds of time looking for the perfect thing to get you.  It was funny to watch the big boys looking at tutus, sparkle shirts, tights and shoes.  For what it's worth, BF found the adorable little shoes for you and they might be my favorite part of the outfit.  He was pretty proud that he found shoes to match the crazy shirt we got you.  I hope you love them as much as we did.  They might be a little big right now, but I'm sure they are still fun for dress up.  We would sure love to see a picture of you wearing the outfit someday.

We all three laughed out loud as I picked out the bow to include with the outfit because we have never seen you with any kind of fancy hair bow, and your hair is crazy and out of control.  I had never seen a white blonde afro until we saw yours.  Your hair cracks us up every time we see a picture of it

I was also so very proud of BF again this year because he picked out your LeapPad and accessories to go with it.  He was so excited the day he brought it home because he had found online that you could download games from your favorite TV show O.omiZo.omi.  I hope your parents were able to download that for you and I also hope you like using your fancy little electronic pad.  If you ever come to visit, make sure you bring it with you because that is exactly what your brothers do all day long.  They all walk around with their i.Pads, often wearing their own headsets, playing games, or listening to music.  Now that their teachers use the iP.ads for school work, they even use them at night to do their homework.  We are a fully electronic household now!  You would fit in perfectly with your own little device. :)

The little wooden doll set that we sent to you was an impulse buy that we just loved because the character that you dress up has the same name as your middle name.  When I walked by the set in the store I immediately stopped and had to get it for you.  I hope you like dressing her up.  It sure looked like fun.

We have had lots and lots of talk about you around our house the last couple of weeks.  It makes me so happy when we say your name and talk about how we hope our future includes knowing you better.  BF and I have talked ALOT about that lately.  The boys chime in from time to time and will often ask if we have heard anything from your parents.  They too still have hope that maybe soon we might get a little more access to you and your family.  We keep praying.

So as I wrap up today, I thought I would share a few photos with you so you can know what your brothers look like right now.  LanMan and B are both 13 right now and they are as silly as can be.  I love how they are best of friends.  They crack us up every single day.  They are so much fun, and so very funny, especially when they are together.  This is a picture of the the outfits that the two of them wore to our family Christmas celebration.  They wanted to make a holiday statement.  I think they did.  Everyone got a good laugh out of it.

 D won't let me take his picture anymore.  So usually I have to sneak up on him and rarely does the picture turn out.  But this one I was able to snap of him after a basketball game last weekend.  We were at the bowling alley having a huge family gathering because my sister who lives in California was in town for a few days.

Your brother T will always let me take his picture.  This is a piggy bank that he got for Christmas.  He really likes the Kansas City Chiefs which is unfortunate since they can't seem to win games.  Maybe by the time you are older they will be a better team.  We can only hope!

This is a picture of me and 3 of my 4 sisters and our dad.  One of the girls had to work.  The girl with the red hair is the sister from California.  She's the only one who doesn't live here locally with us.  She is an  actress and singer in California.  Just this week she found out they are using a song she recently recorded in a new Disney movie coming out soon.  It has Selena Gomez in it.  We will have to watch for it to come out.  You'll love meeting her someday.  She's so interesting.




My dad also got all of us girls fun hats for Christmas.  This picture has the sister who was missing from the first photo in it (far left), but my sister from California wasn't in town yet when we opened the hats so she is missing from this photo.  One of these days all 5 of us will be together for a group picture!  The baby I am holding is my youngest sister's (the girl sitting next to me) newborn daughter.  We are crazy in love with her and all fight to hold her.

And finally a photo of me and BF.  Sometimes I think he may not ever fully smile.  Bless his heart, he just always looks like smiling is hard for him.  I will tell you that he really is a happy guy, so I'm not quite sure why his smile looks so forced.  I love him anyway. <3


So we hope you know how very much we love you and we are looking forward to the day that we can shower you with that love and include you in some of our special family gatherings.  You are never far from our minds and you are always in our hearts.

We love you so much and can't wait for our relationship to develop with you.

Much love to you,

Lisa and BF

Big brother denied

I wish that this adoption situation wasn't so hard on my youngest son.  He is definitely passionate about the fact that he is being denied a relationship with HIS sister.

Last night he was talking to a friend I had over from church (someone who does not know us well), and he proceeded to tell her that he has a little sister who he is not allowed to see because her adoptive mom is not nice to us.

Now mind you, this woman from church didn't even know I had a child that I had placed.  She was witness to what she thought was a simple conversation about how many brothers and sisters are part of our family.  But instead of a simple answer, she was trying to put together all the tidbits of information that D was offering.

I was doing what I could to try to redirect the conversation, but it was obvious that I was trying to hush a child who wanted to tell about his family.  I wished I could run across the room and cover his mouth, but I think it is important that he is allowed to speak of his sister as if she is part of our family, because she is.  And let's be real here, he was speaking the truth.  He has a sister.  He is not allowed to know her.  He had no choice in the matter.  And it's not fair.

I quickly corrected D and said that he has no idea if Brit's mom is nice or not nice, because he doesn't even know her.  And I mentioned that Brit probably thinks her mom is very nice and I am sure she loves her very much.  I also told him (and the poor visitor who was watching it all go down) that just because we haven't been allowed to have a family visit with Brit, doesn't mean her mom is not nice.

But D wanted to be very clear that he is being denied a relationship with his REAL sister.  He continued by saying "I can prove it, if we had a DNA test they would KNOW she is MY sister!"

I am so sorry that I did this to my children.  All of them.

I just wish we could fix it.  I wish that we were allowed a relationship with this little girl. For the sake of all the children involved.

It seems like it could be such a simple solution that could be beneficial for all involved.

I wish we were all on the same page.

Dear Brit, I'm sorry.

Dearest Brit,

It is the holiday season again. Thanksgiving just past, Christmas looming around the corner and Halloween is a not-so-distant memory.  It is a great time of year to be a kid.

Last year at this time, I was pretty much a mess.  I haven't gone back to look at my posts from that time, but I know for a fact that tears were my mainstay.  I missed you so much and wanted you with us so badly.

I must say, not much of that has changed.  I cry less (just because I think my tear supply is permanently diminished).  But the the longing for you is the same.

While it might seem silly, Halloween was hard this year.  There were a few reasons why, but one at the top of the list was because we didn't get to see you all dressed up.  We had all the boys, in costume and together.  But you were missing.

I know your parents took you out and you had a blast.  They told us about it about a month later when we got our monthly update about you.  But for weeks preceding, your (birth)father and I talked about what we thought you might be dressed up as and how you would like walking around getting candy. And the night of Halloween we sure thought about you and wondered how it was going.

This weekend when we were celebrating Thanksgiving, I found that while I have so much to be thankful for, my thoughts always come right back to you and how I wish you were here with us.



Your brothers D and LanMan - your cousin A also at the table.
If you look closely your (birth)father is in the background.

 I wanted you to be making gingerbread houses with your brothers at Nana's house. 

LanMan with your cousin B

I wanted you to be running around with your cousin who is 2 weeks younger than you.  I wanted to hear the two of you talking to each other in that language that toddlers speak to each other while playing with toys. 


I wanted to hold you on my lap while you napped from shear exhaustion from all of the busyness of the day.

Instead of that, when we took pictures, you were missing.  You didn't get to sit at the table with us.  You weren't rolling around on the floor playing with your brothers.  We weren't passing you around from aunt to aunt, oogling over how positively adorable you are.

Me and all my sisters (your aunts) and my mom (your gma)

Thankfully our family doesn't pretend like you don't exist, just because you aren't here.  We all love you so much.  We talk about you and what your parents have told us you are doing now.  We look at your pictures.  We speculate about what it is like to hear your voice.  We talk about how very cute you are and how you look like us.  And of course, all of your aunts ask time and again when I think we might be able to see you.

I sure hope that my counselor is right when she says that the way things are right now is not necessarily how they will be forever.  I don't know if I can bear the thought of not having a relationship with you for much longer.  And you are only 20 months old!

I am glad you have great parents who adopted you.  I know they take very good care of you and that you are happy.  For that, I suppose I am thankful.

But I won't pretend that I don't want a do-over when it comes to choosing to let you be raised in a different family.  The problem is, there are no do-overs with adoption.  We chose that path for you and now we are all living the consequences.  Thankfully your consequences are unnoticeable right now.  You are young and happy.  We are the only ones visibly grieved by your loss.  I do know that this will not always be the case.  As time goes on, you will be the one who is conflicted and forced to deal with all of the issues that are inherent to those who are adopted.

I would guess that someday you are going to wonder how we felt about our decision to place you with another family. I hope that you know that just because we chose adoption when we did, it does not mean we ever stopped loving you or that we didn't think about you all day, every day.

We all miss you.  Every one of us.  Adoption has not just changed me, but it has changed all of us.  Your (birth) father, your brothers, your grandparents, our extended families and even our closest friends.  We miss you.  We wish you were here with us, part of the family you were born into.

But you are not with us.  You don't get to share in the family get-togethers.  And it is our own fault.  We did what we thought was best for you at the time.  Unfortunately we didn't realize the consequences of that decision.  We were wrong.  We could have and should have raised you.  But we can't fix it now. 

What we can do is be ready and available for the moment when we are allow a little access to you by your parents.  And we hope and pray that once you are capable of having a say in it, that you will want to have a relationship with us too.

Now to be clear.  This has little or nothing to do with your adoptive parents.  They are so good to you.  They love you and care for you just exactly how we wanted you to be loved by two married parents.  They are excellent parents as far as we can tell (and we believe it to be so).  All that I am saying is that I wish you would have stayed with us.  Even if it was hard.  Even if we weren't married and you had to be shuttled between two homes.  In hindsight, that is nothing compared to the complication we have created by choosing a completely different family to raise you.

Me and your (birth)father at Jessica's wedding

So please know my dear, sweet Brit, we have loved you every single day.  If we could, we would rewind and make alot of different decisions.  The greatest of those being never letting you go.  I am so sorry that this is your reality now and that we are the ones responsible for it.  We are going to do everything in our limited power to make this adoption story turn out the very best it can.  We want only the best for you.

I hope that we are so available to you that you never wonder about our love and commitment to you.  I hope that you are allowed time with our family so you can know first hand all of your family and how much we all love you.  If there is any way to make this adoption story happy for you, we will do whatever it takes.

We love you dear Brit.  More than can ever be put to words.

Love,

Your first mother

P.S.  On a single happy note, I got more Christmas gifts for you last night.  Your (birth)father and I have already been shopping for you for several weeks (he actually bought your first present without me around!).  We finally figured out what gift to get you this past weekend and last night I found exactly what we were looking for.  When I bought it, I immediately went over to his house and had to show it off.  We can't wait for you to get it.  Maybe we will even get to see you open it, maybe...

What not to say...

The boys and I got a Valentine's card for Brit yesterday.  Last night we each took turns writing in the card. 

L was the first and he looked at me and said "I wish I could write, I hope to see you soon."  I told him that isn't something we can write in a card to her, because it might hurt her mommy's feelings.  He understood.

Then D got the card and asked "Can I write, You're the best sister?"  L told him that Brit probably doesn't even know that she has brothers yet.  I told him that it would probably be better if he just wrote "You're the best!"  He thought that would be OK.  He then proceeded to draw a girl superhero portrait on the blank page of the card.  It was adorable.

Someday I hope that we won't have to edit what we say.  But I am so glad that at least we can send cards. 

Hopefully Brit's mom will save them so Brit can read them when she is older and she will understand that we were always thinking about her.

Because we always think about her.