November is National Adoption Month! It's also the month when my husband and a few of my in-laws were born, so a big ol' happy birthday and many happy returns going out to Jeremy, Grannie Joan, Nick and Kirsten! In honor of National Adoption Month, get a white ribbon for your lapel and check out http://www.childwelfare.gov/ to learn a few new things about adoption.

We attended another class on Saturday called Transition to Openness at the Cradle. Friday night, Jeremy had a gig in Buffalo Grove, so we stayed at the parental condo in Mount Prospect to be closer to the gig so we would get some sleep and be able to make it through the class the next morning. Those of you who were at the gig know that I got pretty sick - I think it was a piece of bad sausage from the pizza I had beforehand. Anyway, we made it back to the parent's and were able to get a good night's sleep. We were a half hour late to class in the morning, because we made a wrong turn, but we got there just in time to watch the most incredible video about adoption from the baby's perspective. There wasn't a dry eye in the house! I'm going to see if I can get a copy so that anyone who is interested can see it. I'll keep you posted.

The focus of the class was making adoptive parents more comfortable with the idea of an open adoption and to teach them how to keep communication lines open with their child's birthparent. I have to admit that when we were first weighing the merits of international adoption vs. domestic adoption, one of the strongest pros toward international adoption was that we wouldn't have contact with the birthparents. After our first class with the Cradle, we felt quite differently, and have become stronger in our desire to have an open adoption for the benefit of all parties involved. I'm sure it won't always be easy for us to have a relationship with our children's birthparents because no relationship is without friction, however with the knowledge we are gaining, we expect things to be easier than if we went in blind.

We also got more information on how to write our 'Dear Birthparents' letter and how to assemble our profile. We are both looking forward to getting that all together. Once again, we met more really nice people in our class; Holly & Will who are from Lincoln Park and Kevin & Marc from Waukegan. Holly & Will are going to be in our class on 12/2, so we're all excited about seeing each other again, and Kevin & Marc might be in our class on the 11/28.