okay, it’s a little late to still be posting about christmas stuff, but i just wanted to write a little post about our gifts to Baby Dude’s birthmother and birthsister. I haven’t posted much lately about our contact with them, but we continue to communicate fairly regularly (most often via text, but sometimes through phone calls) and although sometimes it’s hard for me to hear her talk about how she misses him and understand how incredibly difficult it must be for her to see him looking so big and grown-up already, i know that maintaining this relationship is very important to all of us.  I just have to learn that I don’t always have a way to make her feel happy because, well, sometimes things are just sad or frustrating and that’s just the way life is.  The best I can do is to keep the lines of communication open (i also still send her a monthly letter with a pile of pictures from the past month), let her see him grow up as thoroughly as I can (hooray for videos of milestones!), and let her see that he is happy and healthy and very, very loved.

But trying to convey all of that through a Christmas gift was a bit tricky.  I’d already given her a locket bracelet with a photo of him and a DVD with some movies of him and I had a vague idea that I wanted to do a photo book as a one-year gift (hmmm… speaking of which, perhaps i should get started on that….). Even if I just wanted to give her a non-sentimental gift, we don’t have a lot of casual interests in common (for instance, I really have no idea who her favorite musicians are. I think she’s mentioned a few in the past, but since I’ve never heard of them I have a terrible time remembering their names) and I’ve already given her candy and nail polish and other froo-froo, generic gifts like that for other occasions and nothing seemed quite right. I poked around on the internet for ideas and came across someone mentioning the idea of giving matching ornaments. As in, one for us and one for her. I thought that if I made it a photo ornament, it would be a good mix of sentimental and yet not TOO sappy. I also sent chocolates and fuzzy green socks (her favorite color is green) and another DVD of different little Baby Dude videos and I made a felt crown for her daughter and also sent three Eric Carle board books and gave the same titles to Baby Dude (matching ornaments for the grown-ups, matching books for the kids!). The DVD was, by far, her favorite gift, so I probably spent too much time thinking about and acquiring the rest of the stuff, but it made me feel somehow better to send a “care package” full of gifts. Unless I find out that she secretly hated the ornament, I think it would make a nice tradition and I’d like to continue to buy us matching ornaments each year.

For those of you who have relationships with birthfamilies (or, really, any other dear family who lives far away) what special gifts did you give this year? Would you do a similar gift again or recommend that gift idea to someone else?