The Gladney Caregivers

For all you adoption-blog fans out there, I'm sure you've noticed here and there the pictures of the wonderful women who work at the Gladney foster home. These women are remarkable. For one thing, they are all drop-dead gorgeous. For another, you can tell by their facial expressions that they adore these children in their care. I've heard so many parents say that one of the most difficult parts of the trip to Ethiopia was watching these ladies say goodbye to the children they'd grown so attached to. Some of these ladies continue to ask about certain children and even send gifts to them after the children have gone home to their families.

Through this stressful period, there have been two things I have not even once worried about. The first is the competence and dedication of the Gladney staff. The second is the care that Abenezer is getting right now in the Gladney home. Another adoptive mom told me a while back that when she took their child the first day from the Gladney home to the guest house where they were staying, she felt a little guilty. What a gift to know these children are being taken care of so wonderfully!

In that batch of photos we got last week of Baby A, I was struck by the kind face of one particular lady who always seemed to be holding Abenezer, tickling him, cajoling a mile out of him, or simply looking at him adoringly. Who is this lady and what can I ever do to repay her for the attention and love she has been giving to this boy we hope will be the next Rooney?

Well, I know that nothing could ever be truly enough, but small tokens of thanks that are appreciated by these ladies are cosmetics, especially lotions from Bath and Body Works. So here's what I did this morning. It was quite an experience.

I made little cards with my name, email address, blog address, and phone number and took off to my personal hell-on-earth: the mall. I was asking for free cosmetics. I started at the Macy's fragrance counter and made my way to Bath and Body Works, the Body Shop, Gap Body, and finally the Nordstrom's counter. At Macy's they gave me the phone number of a manager who was out today. The manager of Bath and Body was the friendliest but they didn't have any samples to give me. She said she'd call me if they got some. I think I believe her too.

I could tell the nice folks at Gap were freaking out a little, wondering how to navigate corporate policy to be able to give me a few samples. The friendly manager ended up giving me a corporate phone number. I'm not too hopeful for success with that one.

Nordstroms was an afterthought. When I finally got the manager's attention, she furrowed her eyebrows oh-so disapprovingly at me and was not at all interested in my cute little contact info card. She listened to my spiel, sizing me up the whole time, and grudgingly walked off saying she'd see what she had. She came back with a bag chock-full of perfume samples! And I don't mean those chintzy magazine inserts--I mean those small glass sprays that can actually last a while.

And then Lady Curmudgeon Perfume-counter Manager with a Heart of Gold gave me a great idea. Once a year, she organizes a party where she invites all her buddies to go through their cosmetics and collect all their unopened "free gift with purchase" items or any other unopened item like lotions, perfumes, body sprays, etc. They have their party and donate all they collected to local womens' shelters. What an awesome idea!

So I may try to get it together enough to do this in Portland, but since a lot of us are so spread out, I'm asking here if any of you with unopened "free gift with purchase" items like this you have laying around your house would be willing to mail them to me to bless these lovely lovely women who love these children. You could even organize your own get-together to collect your friends' stuff! I promise to take photos of what you send and post them here as proof that I'm not keeping it all for myself :)

I put our email address on our sidebar. If you are interested in participating, please send me an email and I can let you know how to get stuff to us.

***

Thanks so much everyone who wrote encouraging comments yesterday. Today feels better somehow. Mary told us this morning that the court has received all our documents and that the Gladney reps are to appear in court on February 11th to find out if any more information is needed before an official court date is set. Yes, it feels slow, but I'm at least happy to know that things are moving.

So, no official court date yet, but at least a preliminary one. That's something, right?