Bad bad blogger

Yes, the last post was in February, what can I say? There has been little to report, that's my defense.

So it's April now, the month Ben predicted our baby would join us. There are still 23 days left in which that could happen, but I don't think I'm going to hold my breath.

We did have the closest brush we've had yet, with a local situation that we may have been considered for. The circumstances required us to pass on it, which was hard, and weird. I know that wasn't our baby, and so we continue to wait.

We got good news from our agency - our profile was able to be shown to over 30 expectant Moms during the month of March, which is apparently, as they put it, a "very high number". So our comfort level with different scenarios is evidently open enough that our chances for a match are increased. This gives me huge hope, because as we wait our agency warned us we would hear from them very infrequently. My pessimistic mind feared that our profile was never being shown, and it turns out we're in good shape. Just waiting for someone to decide that we are IT.

And because a friend suggested it - I'm going to do it: post our profile right here.

So, if you know anyone that is pregnant and considering adoption - they can check us out. We've got a lot of love. Lots.

I'll try to be more consistent about blogging, and maybe poke my negligent husband into doing the same. Perhaps I'll even add some pictures of the quilt I'm making for the baby, or the preparations we're making for an infant being in our home again (wow!). Or maybe, just maybe, April will be the month I turn 31, and the month I become Mama to a second child.

The Wait

So we've been officially active and waiting with our agency for 8 weeks today. I had a nice talk with a very close friend tonight about how that feels - and how we (so far) manage not to lose our minds, with all of the unknowns floating around. On one hand, she was right, it's crazy making, not knowing ANYTHING about the arrival of our baby. We don't know when, or where from, or who, or how this baby will arrive. We can't really make any solid plans about what we will do when the time comes, because there are so very very many variables at play.

But I guess that is the very thing that is helping us feel at ease with the wait. We've done what we can, and now we wait. I am making a quilt for the baby, which is coming along slowly. We talk about names regularly, knowing that the circumstances surrounding the baby may change what his or her name ends up being. I pick out knitting patterns, and debate what size to make, not knowing if we will have a wee tiny winter baby, or a chubby little spring baby, or a leggy summer baby, or some variation thereof. I poke through Ebay, looking at cute Hanna Andersson pajamas in the little tiny sizes (because if my adorable nephew looks that cute in them, our baby must also), and I do a lot of dreaming.

I won't lie, I have moments of feeling such urgency - "come baby, come right now!" and willing the phone to ring. 4 years is such a very long time to wait for this to happen, and we're not done waiting yet.

This past weekend I attended 2 adoption related events, one with my Mother-in-law. They were so interesting and relevant, and I got to meet a bunch of other families that have already walked through this path. It made me feel hopeful and so happy - to see these families in the flesh, knowing that our own will look an awful lot like that very soon. They are real, and normal, and happy, and this really will happen. It's my mantra. This will happen.

Say it with me now.

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.