Jun 17, 2016

Ten Months

Ten months ago my husband and I made the decision that would shape the rest of our lives.

We decided to adopt.

Many tears and much prayer and SO MUCH TALKING went into our decision. We are adopting domestically, we are hoping to adopt a pair of siblings 6 years old or younger.

Ten months have passed since we made that first phone call, throwing our names into the ring so to speak. Ten months. If we had been announcing a pregnancy at the same time as we announced our plans to adopt we would be holding our child now. We would have made a birth plan, picked out names, decorated a nursery, decided between cloth and disposable diapers and so much more. Most of these are things that we're not going to be able to do. Someone else is going to name our children, and they may even be out of diapers before they come home to us. And some days that makes me incredibly sad.

But I am going to teach my children to read, and print their names. We are going to teach them about love and about the Lord. We are going to talk to them about how they want their bedrooms decorated and create a room that reflects them and will be a haven for them. I am going to be the one cheering when they cross the stage at graduation and crying when they are walking down the aisle on their wedding day. I can already see Jonathan teaching them to ride a bike and hammer a nail. I am going to buy cute outfits and give good night kisses. We are going to take dorky family photos in matching outfits. My fridge is going to be covered in art work.

Ten months have passed, and I have no idea how much longer we'll be waiting. Things are moving forward right now, but at some point they'll pause again. And I'm okay with that. This is my journey, this is my path. Someday I'm going to be a mother.

Jun 15, 2016

Adoption (and Life!) Update

J & I with our new nephew in the hospital
Well, I'm alive.

And I have a new nephew. He's pretty darn cute!

I don't even think I wrote about Jonathan's brother and his wife (David and Tracey) being pregnant. Probably because when they first announced it I was pretty darn devastated. It was August, they had gotten married in July. J and I had been married six years and been trying to have a baby for five of them. It was like a punch in the gut.

But, the sort of weird thing was, that we had reached our decision to begin the adoption process and made our "we're expecting" announcement on Facebook less than two weeks before they let us know that Tracey was pregnant.

Still a punch in the gut, I can't lie. But so much easier to handle than it would have been otherwise. And, I think if we had made our decision after their announcement we would have questioned ourselves about whether or not adoption was truly the right decision for us, or if it was just a reaction to David and Tracey's news. (Anybody else see God's hand in this? We totally did!) It was tough at times, watching them prepare for the arrival of their tiny human, but it was also exciting. We were finally going to be an aunt and uncle! And so we focused on that, and we focused on preparing for our own tiny humans. And we survived. (More than survived!)

Speaking of our adoption, things are moving along more quickly than we had expected. We finished our PRIDE training course at the end of March. We were told it would likely be a minimum of two months (but closer to 4 or more) before we heard from a social worker about beginning our home visits. Well, we got the email last week looking to start setting up our home assessment, and our first meeting will be this coming Monday. Totally freaking out, but totally thrilled to begin the next step in the process.

And, while we wait for our own children, we're going to spend as much time as possible snuggling and spoiling our nephew!




xo, Sara