Tuesday, January 15, 2008

My Love/Hate Relationship With Target

The last two days have been R-O-U-G-H for me with regards to waiting for Tariku. It doesn't help that Zach is not with me, it doesn't help that I looked at 3-year-old clothes and pictured his face in them. But most of all, it doesn't help that people on the forum who received their referrals on 12/28 (ours was 11/12) have a court date of 2/5 and ours is 2/7. I realize this is 2 days. I realize when Tariku is home those minute details become moot points but they are BIG points to me today. They are BIG points to me because those 2 days could mean they sneak in a week early and pick up their kids before us. It's hitting me today because my parents and my sister-in-law, the people who we're hoping to watch the kids while we're in ET are both going to be gone March 20 for at least one week. This puts us in a time crunch to get there beforehand. Oh, the hills and valleys of adoption. A hill that comes with all of this is one of my friends from the forum received a court date of 2/5 so theoretically we could travel together which would make me happier than Trysten when he farts (which he just did, so it came to mind easier, sorry Leslie). But other than that hill, it's been all valleys the last couple of days.

Which brings me to Target. I'm not sure how they do it, but they seem to entice me whenever I'm in one of these moods. Then, when I get inside and we have our popcorn/pop combo, I find myself lingering WAY too long after completing my list. So today I came out MUCH poorer than I should have. I came out with some clothes for Dailah (of course, when there's the cutest girls stuff for $4 I dare you to not buy it). But I also came out with 2 matching outfits for Trysten and Tariku. What the heck am I supposed to do? My baby is half a world away and I'm thinking about him constantly. So I hate Target because they make me poor, poor, poor, poor, poor but I love Target because they are going to enable me to have cute matching boys once the one comes home.

Speaking of Tariku, we finally sent his package. Woohoo! It contained a blanket we had slept with for approximately 2 months (it now smells nicely of Zach's armpit and camp...sweeeet) a photo album with pictures of the family, Amharic descriptions (or as best as I could do, they're similar to Chinese letters and it turns out I'm not so good at any of it) and a recorder with our voices. We recorded 10 things that went as follows.

1) Zach's introduction (I teared up)
2) My introduction (I choked up)
3) Trysten's introduction (I cried)
4) Dailah's babbling (I laughed)
5) Us singing "Jesus Loves Me" (I did okay, they apparently sing this in English at the care center)
6) Zach playing "God Blessed the Broken Road" on his guitar and sang it (I cried, kind of fitting and my husband is too good to be true)
7) Me singing a song I wrote to put the kids to sleep (I cried but that was mostly during playback when I heard how ungodly my voice really is)
8) Trysten telling a story about Tariku sleeping in his room, Power Rangers, etc (I cried, of course)
9) Us praying (I teared up)
10) Can't remember but I'm sure it made me cry.

All this to say God gave me a lot of things but He did not give me patience, or the ability to turn down good deals at Target.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

well, shut. i was actually doing OK today...but now I'm a mess.
Come over if you need to...and bring cookie dough.

Erica Jo (mamasweetpea) said...

I am so with you on the evil spells of Target! It's my "special"place, my home away form home....the only place that I can just walk in, open my wallet freely and leave poor, but happy!

My fingers are crossed for you on timing and all. Just remember, that big parent UP THERE has it all figured out and we are just supposed to follow along like good little kids! And as my pastor told me last week as I was lamenting the lengthing wait, God must think you need more practice!
Hang in there! Hugs from here!

Cindy said...

Imagine me...I work at Target. I hate shopping there because that just means more for me to replace later on in the week (I am in charge of keeping the store full)...and I LOVE to shop there because I get 250 dollars worth of toys for 80 (I have birthday presents for the year) and most of my kids clothing cost under 2 dollars and is cute cute cute.
Again I hope that we get to travel together to pick up our big kids and I will continue to keep my fingers crossed that court goes smoothly.

Cassie said...

i'm sorry.
2 days is an eternity at this point...