Home Study Visit #1

Thursday was our first meeting with our Adoption Specialist, Kimber and she was a hoot! We had a blast just getting to know each other as she asked us questions about what brought us to adopt, how we met, what school was like, how we were planning on disciplining our children, and each others strengths. She walked around our house for a bit commenting on our decor and the nursery while asking us questions about baby safety. She even cracked on Derek because he kept calling her "ma'am", making her feel old.

We were worried about our animals getting in the way, so we had our prayer warriors pray that they would be freakishly calm. When she was leaving she bent down to pet one of the three kitties sleeping on the couch and she asked if they were always this calm. Why yes, yes they are. It was so nice to know that God listened to our silly prayer!

She gave us some questions to think about- are we open to a legal risk adoption, do we want to be put on the website for out of state adoptions, and gave us some options about race. We decided to celebrate surviving our first home study meeting and chat about our next one over a chinese buffet :o)

Our second meeting with her is this Tuesday where we will have our individual interviews. Eeep. I always do better with this kind of thing when Derek is sitting next to me, but it's all part of the process. Our third and final home study meeting will be on the 20th. She said that once those are finished, it usually takes her about 2 weeks to complete the 20 page paper (yeah, no joke) and then she'll send it off to the Bethany office where it takes about 2 more weeks to be approved. All in all, we're looking at about 6 weeks until we're approved or around the end of July.

We have a pre-placement meeting up in Indy on the 28th of this month that is required before you can complete the home study. This meeting will give us all the information we need about getting matched with a tummy mommy, picking up the child from the hospital, and the finalization process. I can't believe that we're already talking about this! Just a month ago we turned in our preliminary adoption paperwork. Wow!

How can you capture this in a photo book?! lol

During our home study we've been busy bees. We're working on completing the nursery so we can show that we are baby-ready in our profile all while trying to keep the house clean for our next home study meeting. It's kind of like the stress you feel while trying to show your house to sell it. We also need to build our family profile which is the book that Bethany will show birth mothers. I'm sure you can imagine how important this book needs to be, so we'd love to have your prayers about that. We're looking for unique ways to show our personalities while staying true to who we are. We've decided to make it ourselves, so I'll be writing it and Derek will be designing it. This book needs to be completed by the time our home study is approved because they will immediately begin showing it to mommas, so we're feeling the rush.

On top of that, we're doing all we can to raise extra money and research adoption as much as possible. Just this week I've watched 12 different children, all under the age of 6, so my brain kind of hurts.  Did I mention that we've never been happier?

Nursery Update

Some of you have been asking about the nursery, so we thought we'd share just a few pics. It's definitely not done, but we're having a blast working on it!

TB Or Not TB

I did it!!!!!!! Yesterday I went to get my physical done along with TB and drug test.  For those who know me at all, you know my two greatest fears are birds and needles (although the combination of the two, a hummingbird, is a close third). I know everyone says they are scared of needles, but for me it's devastating.

When I was little I actually hit the doctor with a rubber chicken when he gave me a shot. It was his own fault for giving me a rubber chicken to distract me. Isn't that in Pediatrics 101? Sheesh.

When I was in high school I quit a job I loved because they told me I would have to get at TB test. I even went to the doctor, but didn't have the guts to walk inside. Lame, I know.

In college I paid $300 extra for knock-out gas so I wouldn't feel it when I had to get an IV during mouth surgery. Totally worth it!

Last year when I had to have more dental work done they had to stop because she said my tears kept getting in her way. So they gave me some happy gas and even though I sucked down an ENTIRE tank, the nurse still had to hold my hands down because I was so upset. After that I remember my dentist singing "These boots were made for walking".

I had to have blood drawn twice during the miscarriages and bawled like a baby, so much so that Derek had to hold me up. That one I'm going to blame on high emotions.

Yes, I know that it's an irrational fear and shots are done in 10 seconds, but if it were a rational fear, I wouldn't say I have an irrational fear of shots. But yesterday I was a big girl and went by myself to the doctor and am proud to say there were no tears! When she took my pulse and blood pressure, she asked if I was nervous to which I replied, "yes, yes, yes". And she suggested we do it again after the shot. I saw the doctor, peed in a cup (always fun) and got the shot. She was awesome! I even hugged the nurse because she put up with me. She took my blood pressure and pulse again and said, "that's my girl". Nurses should get paid more.

Blessings

I've been wanting to share this post with you for awhile, but just wasn't ready. Today, I am.

During our miscarriages, I shut everyone out and went inside my bubble for protection. Nothing got in. I was so confused that sometimes I wanted to talk about them for hours and there were other days that I never spoke a word. Everyone deals with grief differently and I found myself wanting to be alone. The questions became too much because I had no answers. While I knew that God was in charge and for whatever reason our miscarriages were for our benefit, I struggled to see that during some of the darkest times.

A few weeks after the last miscarriage I was driving home from work thinking about our little ones and a song came on the radio that I had never heard. Within 15 seconds I was sobbing so hard that I had to pull over on the side of the road. This song touched my heart in a way that no one else could. My heart was so closed off to everyone that only something like a harmless and innocent song could break it open again. And let's be honest...when your heart breaks open, it's not pretty. With me there is a lot of tears and snot involved :o)

It was the first time I had cried about losing them since and it was so needed. But once I had heard that song and knew what it could do to me I quickly memorized the first couple of notes. Anytime I heard that intro I'd run (I mean RUN!) to the radio to turn it off. A girl can only handle so much breaking.

Until a month later and I couldn't make it to the radio because I was literally stuck under a pile of baby clothes.

You see, Derek and I had received some large donations of clothes during pregnancy #1 and had been storing them in the room that would become our nursery. During the pregnancy I was trying to organize them all which just became large mounds of pink and blue all over the floor. Before I could ever get back to cleaning that room up, we miscarried. We literally shut the nursery door and didn't look in for weeks. It was just a reminder of what had happened.

Time passed and we began the adoption process and the nursery doors were opened once more only to find the floor covered in baby clothes. I shut the door again..too much, too soon. Over the next couple of weeks I would leave the nursery door open for as long as I could stand it and if needed, I'd shut it. It was kind of like having a visual on the grief process. I began to see that the door stayed open longer and longer until finally it wasn't shut at all.

When the thought of our lost little ones brought joy instead of grief, we knew we were on the up-side. We started to straighten up the nursery and embrace the thought that a child would be in there one day.  It was a mess though and one morning I blasted the radio and got to work cleaning up those piles of baby clothes. I was literally covered in piles of pink and blue when I heard that song intro. I couldn't make it to the radio in time before the tears started rolling. But what healing it brought.

When I first heard that song in my car I was broken and hopeless, but when I heard it that day I could almost feel Him stitching up the pieces again. While I still cry during this entire song (I think my tear ducts know to start on that intro) I want to share it with you today.  I hope that it speaks to you the same way it spoke to me.