Waiting Kids in the US
November is National Adoption Month (Yay! Heels clicking, Jig dancing), but it’s almost over (Boo! Lips pouting, Shoulders slooping).  This is the one month of the year that we celebrate all forms of adoption and all types of adoptive families.  Every month is adoption (and infertility) awareness month here at Creating a Family, but while we celebrate all forms of adoption, in honor of National Adoption Month I want to draw particular attention to the “waiting children” right here in the US.  Waiting kids are kids that wait, in other words, they’re the children in foster care whose parents have had their rights terminated.  They are waiting for a real forever home with real f

Life in the Slow Lane
I twisted my knee while running a couple of weeks ago.  As my father in law would say, I’ve been “stove up” since then.  I’d like to report some major insight from moving more slowly for a week or two, but truth be told, I spent most of the week mad as h_ll.  Mad that I had to stop running, yoga and tennis.  Mad that I had to draw attention to myself by sitting around with an ice bag on my knee.  Mad that my coordination had let me down, and that my body wasn’t healing fast enough. I prize efficiency.  If I’m going to the game room, I automatically try to gather up all the game room odds and ends that have drifted to the kitchen counter, dining room table and

Raising Adopted Kids-New Research
As most of the regular readers of this blog or listeners to the Creating a Family radio shows know, I am a research geek.  I love nothing more than curling up with a good peer reviewed journal.  Meta analyses and longitudinal studies make me swoon.  But as much as I like research for research sake, I particularly like research that offers practical suggestions for parents, especially parents like me.  So you can imagine my excitement at the release of the new report by the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute titled “Beyond Culture Camps: Promoting Healthy Identity Formation in Adoption”. W

Being on the Receiving End of Forgiveness
I’ve been thinking about forgiveness lately. Not the smug, slightly self sanctifying forgiveness where I am working to forgive someone for a wrong done to me. No, that’s the easy, or at least more comfortable, type of forgiveness. I’ve been stuck thinking about the shame and regret filled type of forgiveness—forgiveness where I’m on the receiving end. For me it’s far easier to think about being the forgiver, rather than the forgivee. What sparked these thoughts was the recurring popularity of a blog I wrote insp

Sperm are Cute and Other Things I Learned at the ASRM Conference
The American Society of Reproductive Medicine had their huge annual conference last week in Atlanta. Harkening back to my elementary school days, this blog will be my report on “What I Learned at the Conference”. Sperm are cute, eggs are not, and the corollary axiom ~ sperm sell, eggs don’t. I have never been in a room with so many adorable sperm chotskies before. OK, truth be told, I had never seen a sperm chotsky before, much less been in a room with one, but still… I made it my mission to get one of everything sperm related and came home with a stuffed sperm plush toy, a sperm lapel pin, a sperm pen, and best of all, a sperm baseball hat. The possibilities for use