seriously god...that was weird.

today i made my grocery list and waited for karyssa to wake up from her nap to go shopping. she loves to go as much as i do so i figured i'd get her out of the house this afternoon. but when it was time to put on shoes she was SURE nothing would do but the light up crocs. thanks alot mimi! they don't stay on her feet well so i told her she could wear her brown shoes or her ballerina shoes, but not crocs. seriously-getting crocs off that girls feet once her mind is made up is so impossible most days it's not even worth it. but today i knew she'd want to walk all the way through walmart so i insisted. finally i told her if she didn't pick one of the other pairs she was going to just stay home. and with that she crawled up on paul's lap and started watching a video about reseeding lawns. with out a fuss from her, i left the house. weird. she almost always fusses to go but not this time.
as i was checking out i realized i had gotten the wrong peanut butter so i went back to get the right one. on my way back to the peanut butter i saw someone who looked so much like the kids' birth dad from the back. then on my way back i realized the guy who looked so much like our birth dad from the back was with someone who looked just like our birth mom from the front. *gasp* i scurried back to my check out lane and handed over the peanut butter. then our birth dad scurried up to the lane too. he stood at the end of the isle for a brief second trying to decide if it was me and then looking disappointed that i didn't have either of the kids with me. i said "hi!" and he came towards me so i gave him a hug. what, exactly, i'm supposed to do i still haven't figured out. as my friend says "it's not like emily post has quite written a chapter for this." and she's right. there's no protocol. every "open adoption" is different. and although ours is open, as in: we send pictures and letters a few times a year and meet with grandparents a couple times a year. it's not open as in: they know our last name and where we live and see the kids whenever they want to. in fact, we're still deciding what, if any, contact we want to have with the birth parents. that's a decision we feel is for the kids to make. and until they are old enough to tell us they want to or don't want to we don't feel that's something we want to push onto them.
we chatted about some photos i'd recently sent and he asked if the email address i had given him was working yet. and after a minute (it felt like forever since my heart had stopped beating when he came to my isle) we parted ways and i waved to our birth mom. she didn't come towards me and i didn't want to push her. she didn't talk at all, and i didn't want to force her.
but then she smiled at me. SHE SMILED AT ME! the woman (girl really) that didn't show up to any of our face to face meetings, the girl i've only seen in pictures or from the back of the head in court smiled at me. so i have to know she's as happy to be kid-free as i am happy to not be kid-free. so maybe down the road, just maybe, i'll figure out this open adoption thing. until then seriously god, that was weird. i need a little more warning.