Green Light for Printing

On February 2nd we got an email from our counselor that everything was a "go" to print the profile!  I was so excited.  Once we have our profile and questionnaire in the agency's hands, we are "officially waiting".  This was such a big deal to me.  I know that once we are officially waiting, there is nothing to do but wait- I just wanted to get there so bad!!!

When I got the email, I called Matt (and woke him up since he works nights) and asked him if he wanted to go pick up B early from school and go get them printed straight away (of course this is what I wanted to do).  B was supposed to wrestle that night in a dual, so we decided that we didn't need to go right that minute.  We could go the next night when we have more time and would still be just fine.  (Big sigh from impatient Amber)

Even though everyone around was in a state of panic due to the large snow storm that was supposed to be coming in, we were able to make it to get everything done before the weather started.

We left after B got out of school and headed to the agency to pick up the zip drive.  Next up was a trip to Kinkos to print.  I had already called ahead to ask about options and price so I thought I knew what we were doing.  The Kinkos people were so helpful with walking me through the options and reviewing the order.  When it came down to the paper, they printed me four samples (that really all looked the same)  Matt of course said they all looked the same and that any of them were fine.  (thankyousomuchhelpfulhusband)  I picked one that was second best of the four and the order was sent to print.

We went for a little dinner across the street and took our time, arriving back about 15 minutes before the scheduled pick up time.  As I walked in the gal was just putting our books in a sack.

We needed four copies with black back, clear cover, and spiral binding.

I ordered one copy for us to keep and to share with family and friends who know about our plans.  One copy will go with each of the three counselors to their office and the last copy will stay at the main office.

Hooray!!

Profile Stress

Our profile has been printed! This was such a relief to me to finally be able to do this.  The last few months were so stressful for me as I waited and waited.  We had a very dear friend who does amazing work design our profile.  Our friend has a family and a full time job that requires her to travel frequently. It was hard for me not to be in control during this situation.  My original goal was to have our profile done by the end of December and then it was the end of January.  We ended it up with it done the beginning of February.  Not too bad.  There were days that it was killing me that I couldn't speed things up.  We first sent the text only in to the agency and had to wait for the 4 counselors to review/ edit it.  Then when our friend had the first draft done with the layout, we had to wait again for all 4 to review it.  Once they sent us the edits, I had to wait again for our friend to make these changes.  Oh how I wished I was able to get in there and do it myself.  Our feedback was good that they gave us on the profile.  We didn't ever have to change any photos etc.  The main things were to add captions to the photos and a few grammatical errors.  Another one of the major issues we had when trying to send in the completed layouts for review was that each page had to be emailed by itself due to being such large file sizes.  Then, it took about 3 days each time of trying because we kept getting "delivery system failure".  Finally, we ended up having to drive the files on the zip drive to the office and personally deliver it due to the email problem!  Frustrating!!

I appreciate my friend creating such a beautiful project for us more than I will be able to express to her.  I started crying when I tried to tell her thank you when I picked up the zip drive from her house.  It just means so much that she would do something so important for us in the middle of her own busy life.  Thank you CDPlam! 

Agency Updates

I continue to love getting the monthly update from our agency.  As I have mentioned before, they are a small agency so there is not a lot of activity at times.  They don't hustle birthmoms in and out.  Their main purpose is pregnancy counseling so they typically only see a small number of adoptions a year. This does allow for a really personal feeling with any of the staff we have worked with. 

The latest update told us that there were/ is:
2 Hospital calls in December that were placed with families
1 due in May- leaning towards parenting
1 due in June- leaning towards parenting
1 due in July- reviewing her options

So, basically, there is one expecting mom who is thinking of adoption at this time.  I am looking forward to the February update!

Hello out there!

2+ months?  Really??? I know I only have a few people who read this blog and at least one of you have checked in with me for being so quiet.  I've just been busy with work, home, our profile corrections, and LIFE!  I didn't mean to be gone so long, but I didn't have much to say.  I am not a very good writer so I don't have much to go on and on about that is interesting.  A few times something has happened or I've had a conversation with someone and thought to myself, "I should put that on the blog".  Part of our problem too is that we have had major computer problems as well.


But, here I am nonetheless, and will let you know where we stand on our journey!

On a fun and flattering note- I was nominated for a blog award from TTABaby.

I was nominated for the Liebster Blog Award. TTABaby has been waiting for a while and just got her "call" this last week to be a mommy.   It isn't clear where the award started and its not adoption related but its based on love and well... thats what adoption is all about. Liebe means love in German and liebester means "favorite" or dearest."

The Liebster Award is for “little blogs” with fewer than 200 followers and is a way to spread the word about your great finds.

The rules of this award are:

1. Show your thanks to the blogger who nominated you by linking back to their blog. Thanks TTABaby!  Congratulations on your new little one! I can't wait to read more about the details of your first meeting and all about her.  I am continuing to pray for your new family and the birthparents as well as you begin this journey together.
2. Nominate five other blogs with 200 followers or fewer by posting a comment on their blogs.
3. Post the award on your blog.
4. Check out what the other up-and-coming blogs have to offer. 

I am such a rule breaker however. I am supposed to nominate 5 blogs.  Tonight, however, I am only going to nominate one.  Heidi at Thinking of a Clever Name is my choice!  She also recently just had her "call" and is preparing for a baby girl due April 1st.  Heidi and her husband have a biological son already and I think this is what drew me to their blog.  Besides TTABaby, the few other blogs I follow have over 200 followers. 

Please take some time to visit these two lovely blogs and wish both of these new mamas a big CONGRATULATIONS! 

Introducing: Mara of Marriage 2.0

I am so happy I participated in the Adoption Bloggers Interview Project at Production, Not Reproduction.  I can't wait to read through many of the interviews and hopefully find some new blogs to follow.

Through random pairings, I was matched with Mara at Marriage 2.0 .  Mara has a great insight on life and blogs about a variety of topics, not just adoption.  Mara and her husband Chris have officially been in the waiting game since late summer.  She is a very talented writer and I am excited to share with you the interview questions I asked her.

1.       What has been the best part about blogging your journey to parenthood?  

Two really wonderful things have come out of blogging for me. First, finding this community and connecting with other people who are facing similar challenges. I don’t have many real-life friends who have battled pregnancy loss and infertility and who have shared that with me. Learning that I wasn’t alone was a huge comfort during the difficult times. Second, having an outlet for my emotions was a huge help. After my miscarriage, I really withdrew from most of my friends. I didn’t mean to, I just didn’t know how to talk about my loss with them. Through my blog, I was able to share my feelings and work through some difficult emotions. It really helped me in my healing process. 

2.      What do you think will be the biggest change in your life once you have settled into parenthood?

Well, I like to think that I will be so happy and grateful every day to be a parent, and I’m sure I will be! But I think in reality, my life will get a lot more chaotic. My husband and I are both very organized, and although we are far from perfect, we are fairly successful at balancing our marriage, our professional commitments, our family and friends, our singing, and our various volunteer activities. I think having a baby is going to throw us into beautiful chaos, and we are going to have to get used to pushing forward, even when we don’t feel like we’re on top of things.

3.      What will you miss most about your pre-child life?

Sleep! And feeling like I’m on top of things.

4.      You say that you are open to adoption a child of any race; how / do you plan to incorporate their heritage and culture into your lifestyle?

I think the most important shift for us will be to start thinking of ourselves as a multi-racial family, not just thinking of ourselves as white people with a child of a different race. We already live in a very racially diverse neighborhood, and we will seek out a school, church and other activities that include a diverse mix of races. We have some close friends who have mixed race families, and I think there will be a lot of positive role models available for us and for our child as we move forward. If there are specific cultural traditions (foods, holidays, etc) tied to our child’s background, we will celebrate them as part of our own family traditions.

5.      How and when do you plan on sharing your adoption story with your child?

We plan to be open with our child from the very beginning, so there will never be a moment when they “learn” that they were adopted. At the same time, we know that their understanding of their story will evolve as they get older and start to ask more detailed questions and have a more sophisticated understanding of their story and a more complex emotional response. Our priority is to be honest with our child and to allow him or her to feel that this topic is not taboo and can be discussed openly, even if he or she is feeling bad about it sometimes.

6.      What is the best way to describe your feelings about your infertility?

I have accepted my infertility, and I have tried to turn my struggles into something positive. I think that pretty much sums up the way I have approached every obstacle and failure in my life. I have learned to forgive myself, I am making peace with my body, and I am excited about expanding our family through adoption. I try to allow the difficult emotions I experienced around infertility and loss to expand my compassion so I can be more understanding toward other people in my life, who might be struggling with their own issues. I also hope that someone else out there will take comfort in my story.

7.    Are you looking for an open adoption? 

We have some flexibility with openness. I think our first choice would be to have a semi-open adoption, but we are flexible depending on the situation.

8.    How did you view open adoption when you first began considering adoption as a way to build your family?

I had never really heard of open adoption before we started doing adoption research. It was completely foreign to me, and it sounded a little scary. Today, there are some aspects of openness I feel comfortable with, and still some that I don’t. For my husband and me, we find it a lot easier to talk and make decisions about openness in the context of a specific adoption situation, and we are looking forward to having that opportunity!

9.        How do/did your friends/ family react when you began to tell them about open adoption?

We haven’t really discussed the topic much with people at this point. The most common thing that happens is people ask if the adoption will be open, or they ask if the birth parents will know who we are. We usually tell them that, yes, most likely we will meet the birth parents, and that openness is a spectrum, and that we won’t know the specifics until we’ve met the expectant parents and made a plan together.

Thank you so much Mara for being my interview partner!  I wish you the very best as you move forward on your adoption journey!  Click here to explore all of the other interview partners and read what everyone had to say!

Please stop over to Mara's blog and offer her and her husband encouragement!

Odds and Ends

It's late and I should be in bed.  I am on my third pack of starburst candy from our son's Halloween candy bowl and trying to wrap up a few odds and ends.  I feel like I have so much going on right now in our life and that it is going by so fast.  I'm trying to organize a holiday boutique for 10 vendors this next week, pick out and order Christmas cards, catch up at work,organize my bazillion photos saved on my computer hard drive and most importantly- finish our profile.

Writing our profile has been so difficult for us!  We are finding it hard to sit down and write all of that stuff about ourselves while not making it sound too cheesy!  I had a goal of having it done by December 1st and I really don't see that happening.  Matt and I had Friday off together and worked so hard the last two days trying to finish up the questions.  Tonight we pretty much finished them all and are almost ready to send in our first {very rough} draft.  That was way exciting for me and I did a little happy dance to the Michael Jackson video that was on VH1 at the time. 

I'm overwhelmed with thinking about getting the pictures picked out and finalizing our profile to look "pretty".  I have to depend on a few friends for help with these final pieces and so that means fitting things in with their schedule as well.

I haven't been as good at writing here as I want to be.  I think of things almost every day that I want to include but I don't have the energy to come in and write them.  They are little things that I run into- someone who shares something encouraging, someone who says something insulting or ignorant, or someone I meet that has an adoption story for me etc.  I hope to get better with these once I am finally "waiting" and don't really have anything else to be doing.

In other news, I received an email a couple of weeks ago from our adoption counselor.  One of them was an article about the "stages of waiting".  It was very interesting and even though we are not officially waiting yet, I know the feelings it discusses to be true.  They range from relief, joy, outrage, guilt, doubt, all the way up to exhilaration.  I know I was feeling relief tonight as we have our first stage of our profile nearly completed.

The second (and way exciting) piece of news from her was our Agency Update.  These are exciting to get but as you look at it I feel like there are so many waiting families and currently not a lot of babies on the way.  I was excited to get this but know I will be discouraged after waiting months and months and not being selected.  Recently, there were twins and a single placed with an adoptive family in August and currently 3 receiving pregnancy counseling with two of them reviewing their options (considering an adoption plan) and due in January and May.

In the News

I was so excited to be included in the monthly round up of Open Adoption Blogs at Production, Not Reproduction.  They have a great list of blogs organized by first parents, adoptive parents, and pre-adoptive parents.  I have already found several I enjoy reading and it is very interesting to read from both sides of the fence as far as first/ adoptive parents go.

I am also participating this month (It is National Adoption Month, you know!) in the Adoption Bloggers Interview Project.  I received my email today with info on my partner.  We will be reading each others blog and posting our interview questions and answers.  Stay tuned for that!  I am pretty excited!  Stop over and take a peek at her blog if you like!