Pieces I’m Proud Of

I’m very excited about my latest piece for adoption.com: Red Flags Expectant Parents Should Watch for in Prospective Adoptive Parents Every major blog has probably posted the opposite piece: Red Flags Adoptive Parents Should Look for in Birthmothers. My piece came about because of a discussion in the Creating a Family Facebook group. The birthmothers … Continue reading →

Happy New Year from The Chittister Family

  WARM HOLIDAY HUGS Hello Friends and Family! We hope this letter finds you healthy, happy for this holiday season, and hopeful for the year ahead. In these newsletters, I try to focus on the positive. The past couple of years have been somewhat difficult. But, in the immortal words of Howard Jones, “things can … Continue reading →

Christmas 2013

I’ve certainly had worse Christmases than Christmas 2013. There was Christmas 2005, when my grandfather was in the hospital, dying. (He died on December 31, 2005.) The worst Christmas I remember was actually Christmas 1996, when my grandfather was in the hospital not dying. (Long story.) There was the one Christmas when I was a … Continue reading →

Christmas 2012

I think I’m mostly going to let the pictures do the talking… Cassie did not care one iota about opening presents. She found the entire thing tiresome. She enjoyed her usual routine of walking around the room with random items – especially Jackson’s new stamp pad. Her favorite items from the day (other than the … Continue reading →

We Don’t Do Santa

I really thought I had written a blog post about why our family doesn’t do Santa. But apparently, I didn’t. So here’s the post I thought I wrote last year. When I found out that Santa Claus wasn’t real, I felt betrayed. My parents had lied to me. They had deliberately deceived me. I was … Continue reading →

First Christmas/Sixth Christmas

This was Cassie’s first Christmas and Jackson’s sixth Christmas. Jackson was FAR more excited than Cassie. I was woken up just before 8:00 am. I drove over to Starbucks, where I somehow managed to order the proper coffee for the grandparents and for myself. I returned home, where Jackson was chomping at the bit to … Continue reading →

Open Adoption Roundtable #32: Holiday Memories

The Open Adoption Roundtable is a series of occasional writing prompts about open adoption. It’s designed to showcase of the diversity of thought and experience in the open adoption community. We’re now at Open Adoption Roundtable #32. This time we are going to focus in on one specific memory and record another small moment in the ongoing stories of adoption … Continue reading →

Christmas with Some Pictures

I finally downloaded the pictures from the camera to the computer, and it seems that my computer is no longer randomly dropping my Internet connection. So, I can share a few photos of Christmas. Our plans were derailed a bit by illness. Max got sick first, about 1-1/2 weeks after Thanksgiving. He went to the … Continue reading →

Happy Holidays from the Chittister Family!

Hello Friends and Family! 2010 is almost over, and 2011 will be here before we know it. We hope this letter finds you healthy, happy for this holiday season, and hopeful for the year ahead. So much happened in 2010… let me sum up. The Little Drummer Boy Jack turned 4 in January. He had … Continue reading →

Family History: Childhood Traditions

This week, Dede asks: Describe one of your childhood family traditions! I like this one! We didn’t have a lot of traditions in our family. The one I really remember is Christmas Eve. When I was very little, I remember going to my Grandma and Grandpa’s house. I must have been 3 or 4, because … Continue reading →