Flat Reed: What's Appreciation?

We've been learning a lot about appreciation over the past few years as we have dealt with infertility. Even now, as we wait for our sweet baby boy we are constantly learning new lessons in appreciation. We pray that we will be able to pass this gift of not taking things for granted on to our baby Reed.

Some lessons we have learned have come from our observations, some have come from other people. One sweet lesson we learned yesterday was found when Abbey came home yesterday from work. There was a large box at our door. When Abbey opened it, there was a little frog toy scoop for Reed's bathtub (we registered for it). It was not from someone we know personally, but someone who we only know as a blog reader and someone whose blog we follow. Her gift reminded us that people appreciate the joy our baby is bringing to us, and that he is not only our gift, but a gift to the world.



We're trying to teach Flat Reed what appreciation means. It wasn't enough for him to get a gift, he wanted to see if there was anything else inside.

We tried explaining God and people are much more important than things, although it is a lot of fun to get things!

1. We appreciate our caseworkers, Lisa (in TN), Erin (in OR), Tien (in WA), and there are even people over Taiwan who are working to get our baby to us! We appreciate all of them. They work so hard!
2. We appreciate our families who have been SOOO supportive of our journey to become parents.
3. We appreciate our friends who are already in love with our baby boy. (Holly and Jennifer called this morning at 8:30 to tell us they had just come across a great clothing find at a yard sale. SCORE!)
4. We appreciate our blog-readers who are so into seeing what Flat Reed is up too.

So, that was how we tried getting Flat Reed to understand what appreciation means.



He still didn't get it, and even went as far as "dumpster diving" into the froggy!

So, then we explained more.

5. We appreciate the fact that God has provided the finances for us to not only be able to afford to adopt, but for Abbey to be able to work-at-home while our children (might as well tell him that we plan on getting him a sister someday) are young.
6. We so appreciate Reed's birthmom and family for making sure that Reed had prenatal care and that they loved him so much that they were willing to let us be his forever parents.
7. We appreciate the fact that we get to grow our family through the absolute miracle of adoption.
8. Most of all, we appreciate God for giving us this baby boy of ours.

I think he understood after all this. Appreciation is so important and it is so not practiced in modern society. We live in a world of "give me" or "it's my right." We want our family to appreciate God, people, and everything we have been so graciously given.

Finally, we leave you today, our dearly appreciated blog readers with a beautiful video of how two parents really appreciated their baby boy Elliot. I have added a link under "Other Interests" for their blog. You will be touched and moved by their story. FYI, grab a Kleenex.