You know what's fun?

Looking at adults of all shapes, sizes, and colors and wondering if someday Ben and I might be parents to someone who grows up to look like that. The possibilities are endless, and magical. We are a lucky lucky family.

2012

It's shocking to me that the first month of 2012 is nearly over. I have so many friends that are having babies this year, and they keep popping out of the woodwork. I feel excited that our baby will be growing up with other new little ones in our group of friends. It's also interesting to watch others go through pregnancy, and recognize the parts of it I will always feel a longing for, and the parts of it I am grateful to never have to do again. Watching a sweet little girl moving in a friend's belly, her arrival expected any day now, makes me feel such sweet warm memories of what that was like, that swimming feeling. The sensation of carrying your tiny companion around, watching the wee girl roll as her mother laughs. But another friend battles with morning sickness, and all of the rottenness of the first trimester, and I think that I am grateful to never have another first trimester again. Not so much to avoid morning sickness (because although it's awful, it often accompanies a healthy babe down the line), I feel incredibly lucky not to ever have to wonder again if I will "stay" pregnant. I feel fear and panic and when I think of that part again. Not ever ever ever. So releasing my own body from the burden of nurturing life to fruition feels like a great relief. And makes me that much more grateful for the possibility inherent in adoption.

I thought that activating with our agency would help me feel more ready to "nest" for this little one - because I feel with my whole heart that this baby deserves as much pomp and ceremony and nesting as Adeline received. But I still feel unsure, and a little out of practice. We do need to carve out a space for this person, I want him or her to know that there was physical as well as emotional space being held as we waited.

In answer to many of your questions (and I feel so touched that our family is in your minds!), nope, no news. I don't expect there to be any for a while. And although I am excited, I don't feel anxious in the wait right now, just settled. Ben is predicting April, he isn't sure why. April would be lovely, but so would any other month. Adeline is already thinking it's taking too long, with a little over 3 weeks of waiting under our belts ;) I've explained that were I pregnant we'd have a long 40 week wait, but time is very fluid in her head.

So yeah, that's it for now. Please keep us in your thoughts, and send warm thoughts to the little one who might be growing this very minute.

A Very Happy New Year

I'm too weary to write much, we all have a bad cold. We're now active with our agency. Our profile is visible for the whole world to see and is now being shown to potential expectant mothers. Now we wait. happy happy happy.

Sooo...

It looks like around about the end of this month we will be "active" with our agency. 7-10 days from now that means that we will be shown to expectant mothers and fathers, our profile will be visible online, and that our match could really come any time, or be a year or more from now.

Yesterday we went to our bank and signed papers before a notary that were kind of intense. They laid out exactly how this all works, in legalese, and then we had to initial over and over again each paragraph on each page, confirming we read and understood it, and then sign at the bottom. I felt my hands shaking a little as I did it, and the whole rest of the day I felt a bit discombobulated. It was our activation agreement, and it makes what we are doing binding, the backout point without being seriously penalized has passed. The papers are on their way to Kansas and we are just waiting on them now. I am so very happy and terrified, and eager to meet our child. So, Merry Christmas to us, we are now as pregnant as we've been in quite a while.

So close...

Yesterday I mailed out a disc of pictures - a representative bunch of photographs of our lives together - to the agency. It was almost cripplingly difficult to choose, and I hated it. I'm a photographer, why was this so hard?

For a lot of reasons. First being, I really am rarely on the other side of the camera, so pictures of Ben and Adeline and myself together are really rare, so rare that we had to quick take some for this project. Second being, I am picky as heck, and am sort of a control freak about photographs that pass through my hands. Third, the awareness that these will be what decides our fate in all reality. Someone will look at them and choose us, or not.

But I did it, I released that envelope into the mail, and hopefully very soon the graphic designer at the agency will combine the pictures and our written profile into a masterpiece that reflects our family well.

The last piece to be sent off is the completed homestudy report and a million supporting documents. And of course, some initial big checks. Yikes. That should be completed by tomorrow.

I think we are both starting to feel the realness of this, knowing that we really are reaching the point where we just wait, where any phone call might mean THE phone call. It's intense. I recall the feelings I had when we were newly pregnant with Adeline. She was conceived on purpose, planned, hoped for. And then when we actually discovered we were pregnant I walked around with a frightened monkey grin on my face for a few days. I had regrets about how we had suddenly put ourselves in a position where we were irrevocably changing our lives in an enormous way. That Ben and I were no longer go to be a the happy duo, that there would be someone new and unknown entering our little bubble. But then, at five weeks, when I had spotting with her, when we thought that we were losing that unknown little person, we felt terrible despair.

And now, after 4 years - 4 YEARS - of trying to bring another into our family, we are at a place where it looks like it really is going to happen. And I feel afraid. What will our family be like as a square instead of a triangle? A roller coaster, this whole creation thing. But how can we not feel afraid?

I feel some of those feelings - fear, excitement, worry, doubts - but they are all being overridden by huge bucketfuls of hope. We have been longing for this child for so so long, and I can't wait to lay eyes on his or her sweet face. To say welcome to our family. To start the good (and hard) part, the actual parenting, the growing from a family of three to a family of four. The sleeplessness and poop and spit up, and memorizing a new soul's face.

Approved!

It's done! We're homestudy approved. The thick envelope was in the mailbox this afternoon, and what a joy it was to read it.

I'll write more when I am less post-holiday foggy, and can process a bit.

If you know an expectant Mother or Father that would like to make an adoption plan for their baby, you can now officially send them our way.

You know, just in case you do...

Happy Happy Happy Thanksgiving.

The last one's in!

We have (knock on wood...) completed our homestudy! We're just waiting on approval now, and really hoping that will come without any hitches. Our home visit was this past Sunday, and as everyone says, it was much less stressful than we expected. I even felt like it was a bit anti-climactic.With the help of my Mom and Mother-in-law we finished up projects, organized, and spit-polished the house. I love the way it looks now, and want to keep it this way. The home visit went smoothly, and I scanned and emailed the last documents today, and it felt so very good to see all the check marks next to the requirements. This part is done, now we just wait for her to complete the report, and in the mean time begin the really difficult task of creating our profile.

Who would have guessed that a writer and a photographer would find this task so challenging? But we find ourselves second guessing everything, realizing that the way we present ourselves in this situation is monumentally important. We also really want to be truthful, because we want the people who choose us to be their baby's family to be making that choice for the right reasons. 

So we are filling out long lists of favorites - what is my favorite candy bar? I don't know! Writing essays based on different topics, manicuring the front yard for pictures, and compiling a million photographs that represent who we are as a family. No small task. Who are we? And how do you lay that out in words and pictures?

Thank you all so much for rooting for us, it means so much! And now that we've finished that homestudy, I hope we'll have more time for taking care of this here blog.