Updates!

We have been doing a terrible job of updating the blog lately, so sorry!  Things have been kind of crazy with school, work, and life in general, so some things have been put on the back burner.

In any case, we have finally submitted the remainder of the paper work needed to start our home study - it was about 80 pages of questionnaires, forms, acknowledgements, etc.  The agency has also received all of our letters of recommendation, medical reports, etc., so now we're just waiting to hear from them!  We will be scheduling our seminar soon (along with two other couples), and then our home study interviews.

In other news, we have been slowing purchasing baby gear over the past few months.  We started out slowly with some cloth diapers (we now have about 2/3 of our stash completed!), then purchased a Pack n Play.  We have also bought most of the decor for the nursery, which is dinosaur themed.  Finally, we just ordered our crib and crib mattress yesterday, which are a generous gift from Tyler's parents, Gary & Kathy.  We can't wait to receive them!

This is the crib we chose (Graco Charleston):

Image credit: Target.com

I'm trying not to BUY ALL THE THINGS, but I'm getting pretty excited about the possibility that we may be parents in the not-too-distant future, so it's kind of hard.

I also have about 4.5 weeks of school left right now, which is beyond crazy.  I have three major assignments and a few weekly things left to finish up, and then I'll be done!

Finally, I have just accepted a full-time library services representative position at a public library about 40 minutes from here.  I am really looking forward to getting some experience working in a public library setting, since most of my work (aside from volunteering) has been in the academic library.  I will be starting my new job on April 22.

I'm a little nervous about all the changes that are coming up for our family, so any thoughts and prayers you can send our way will be greatly appreciated!

It begins.

If you've been reading this blog, or if you've talked to me or Tyler in person, you know that January 2nd, 2013 was the day.  The day that we would embark on our journey to become parents through adoption.  We were filled with anticipation in the weeks and days leading up to the new year, because we knew that it would be a year of change.

January 2nd finally rolled around, and we had everything ready to go - we had filled out our initial application (basic personal information, statement of assets, work and residence histories, etc.).  We had purchased our large manila mailing envelopes.  Tyler printed the application at work, and we signed it in the car before driving to the post office.

As you can see, we were very excited to get our application in the mail.  We sent it priority, so it would be delivered the next day.  Then we sat back and waited for contact from the agency.  The good news is they called Tyler on Friday morning.  The bad news?  They need ALL of our paperwork before we can go any further.  Cue a flurry of writing, collecting and copying.

There are a lot of waivers and agreements that had to be signed - firearms policies, waiver of confidentiality, agreement that we are never guaranteed a placement - the list goes on and on!  We also have to provide a floor plan of our house, photos of ourselves, our animals, and our house and yard.  We have to have physicals with blood work, urine samples, and TB tests, as well as information from our fertility doctors about our likelihood for conceiving and any infertility diagnoses we have received.  We have to provide copies of all our vital documents, including our insurance cards, driver's licenses, marriage licenses, and birth certificates.

Each of us also had to complete the home study questionnaire - the big kahuna!  This is presented as a simple Word document, 7 pages (single spaced) of questions about everything under the sun - how we were nurtured as children, the personalities of our parents, how we feel about ourselves, how we handle stress, loss, and grief, how we want our children to view sex, how we plan to handle discipline.  Basically any topic related to emotional development, there was a question about it.  The form clearly states that one or two word answers are not acceptable, so you really have to dig deep and go into detail about every aspect of your life.  In the end, I think we each ended up with a 20 page document, and that includes skipping about a page worth of the questions, which are only for those planning to adopt from foster care.  It took Tyler about 6 or 7 hours total to complete his questionnaire, which he did in two sittings on one day.  I worked on mine for a few hours for 3 or 4 days before reaching completion.

We have almost completed all of this paperwork - thank goodness!  We still need to schedule our physicals and take a few pictures, but otherwise we are pretty much done.  Once we mail in all of these materials, we will be connected with our social worker, who will get us scheduled for our two-day educational seminar and all of our home study interviews, in which we will discuss the contents of our questionnaires and anything else the social worker needs to know.

As always, please keep us in your thoughts and prayers as we continue our journey toward parenthood.  It isn't an easy road, but we know it will be 110% worth it when we finally hold our baby in our arms.

Update coming soon!

Just wanted to let everyone know that we'll be publishing an update soon - school just started so things are a little crazy right now, but we're excited to update on what's happened since January 2. :)  Stay tuned!

Guest Post #1

Hey there!  This is Mr. Gnome… GnomeHubs? … Gnome, Esquire?  I’m the husband, whatever you may choose to call me.

As you’ve been reading, we’ve been making CRAZY progress with our adoption goals, from padding up our savings, to preparing the application, to picking out furniture and talking about how soon is too soon for any adoption showers our friends or families may offer to host.  The craziest part about it is how our baby feels so close and so far away at the same time.

As the dad-to-be, I’ve spent the last year thinking about the practical side of things.  Will we have enough space in the house?  Will we have enough money to pay the adoption fee right away?  Will my paycheck be enough for Mrs. Gnome to stay home with the baby for a while?  We’ve even had to talk about how much of a car we can afford, so that we have space for the dogs, a baby’s car seat, and all the stuff that goes along with traveling with a baby and 3 dogs (maybe something about this big).  The consequence?  I haven’t spent much time thinking about how I really feel about this since we first decided to pursue adoption.

Now, with the goal so close, it’s the first thing on my mind.

I’m not one to talk about my feelings, or to even let my feelings show when they’re not “practical.” (I know, ladies.  As a gender, men are particularly bad about this.)  Yet, in the last month, I have faced the looming job of parenthood, illness in my immediate family, and the loss of a grandfather.  When emotions pound hard enough like a flood against a dam, even my stone-cold façade is broken from time to time.  Everything from fear of being a bad parent to the excitement to see the smile on my unborn child’s face seems to run through me lately.

So, in the last month, I’ve become a bit of a worrywart.  And a bit of a dreamer.  Even a bit of a crier sometimes.  I’ve decided my unborn baby has just made me a little crazy, and I haven’t even met him yet.  (Foreshadowing for what’s ahead?)

Keep following our journey, and you just might hear from me again.  Besides, Mrs. Gnome isn’t the only one of us planning to be a parent!

T-minus 15 days!

It's been a little while since I posted last - the end of the semester took over my life for a few weeks there!  I just got my final grades, and so far I still have a 4.0 GPA for graduate school, which is AWESOME!

We also hit a great milestone with regard to our adoption savings account this week - we surpassed the 50% savings mark!  We officially have 52.2% of the total we will need to complete our adoption in savings, thanks in part to a generous gift from a very special couple.  I will leave them unnamed, but THANK YOU from the bottom of our hearts. <3 p="p">
We are starting to get very excited (and a little nervous) about officially starting the adoption process.  In 15 days we are planning to drop our application in the mail (and email a copy to the agency).  Then we will begin a whirlwind of seminars, interviews, and mountains of paperwork and appointments.  We are really hoping to complete the home study process and have our profile active by the time I graduate in May, so here's hoping we can stay on top of everything!

As always, we ask for your continued prayers and support as we journey toward becoming parents.  It always means a lot to us when people ask us how things are going!

Look out for a post from Tyler soon, I'm hoping he'll give you all a different perspective on the road to adoption. :)

34 days

Today marks 34 day until we mail the agency our application!  It is coming up so fast, and we are starting to get both excited and nervous.

This month we have spent a lot of time around little ones, and it fills me with joy!  It is so amazing to see how God has transformed my mind and heart in this regard - infertility so often robbed me of joy in the types of situations we've experienced lately, and I am so happy to be moving on in my journey and beginning to heal.  A couple close to us had their first baby at the end of October, and they have been so amazing about letting us come over to visit and hold the baby.  We also got to babysit her when she was 4 weeks old, which was so fun.

Since then, Tyler's cousin and her husband have been blessed with their first child.  They are also adopting, and there was a lot of drama with the birth mother for several weeks after the baby was born, but the situation has been resolved and they have a precious baby boy.  Holding him on Thanksgiving gave me hope that next year we'll have our own baby to show off to the family.

Thanksgiving weekend was spent in Roswell, NM, where we got to hang out with Tyler's family, including 6 kids under the age of 5.  We had a great time.  Everyone spent some time asking us about our adoption plans and learning about that process, and the support we've received from everyone is just amazing.  Also, watching Tyler play with the kids is priceless.  He is so patient with them, and he is great at going along with their games.  I know he'll be an amazing dad, and that he loves getting to 'practice' with our niece, nephew, and cousin's kiddos.

I can finally reveal some of the news I mentioned in our last post!  We met with the woman in charge of support groups at our church this week, and we will be launching an infertility support group in January.  We feel called to lead out in this ministry, because we know there are so many couples out there struggling with infertility who could use some support and somewhere to vent.  We're hoping to call it "For Those Who Wait" after the Fireflight song.  This song has a lot of significance for the two of us throughout this infertility journey, and we feel the name will give our group members a feeling of hope rather than despair.

Another realization that I had this week was the fact that our future birth mother could be getting pregnant with the child that will someday be ours any day now.  This is rather optimistic, since we have no idea how long it will take us to get through our home study process and onto the wait list at our agency, but I'm trying to bring more positivity into our journey.  Women who are becoming pregnant right now have due dates in August.  It would be amazing if we were placed that quickly after completing our home study, which we hope will happen in the late spring, around the time that I'm set to graduate.  How crazy is that?

That's pretty much all the updating I have for today, but I'm hoping to get Tyler to write a post soon, so keep your eyes open for that!  In the meantime, please be praying for our family, and for the woman that will be blessing us with a child someday.  We really appreciate your support!

Updates

Things have been a little quiet on the blog lately - this semester has been completely insane, so I haven't had the time or energy to update here much.  I do want to thank everyone for the thoughts and prayers you are sending our way as we continue to plan for our adoption - it means a lot more than you can possibly know.  If you have asked us how things are going, THANK YOU!  I love knowing that people are interested in our journey, and we love sharing each step with everyone.

The good news is things are moving along at a nice clip right now - we're still in "saving mode", but we recently got a nice boost - we found out that Tyler got a raise, which is allowing us to put an extra $200 into our adoption savings account every month.  This will help us reach our savings goal by February of 2014 - about 7 months ahead of when we thought we would reach our goal!  This has been an enormous blessing to us, and it has taken a lot of stress out of the adoption process for us.

Another thing we have been doing to learn about and prepare for our adoption journey is watching television shows.  I know it sounds crazy, but it gives us a lot to talk about and helps us to set our expectations when we watch these shows.  The two we have been recording are I'm Having Their Baby and The Baby Wait.  I'm Having Their Baby focuses on expectant mothers who are planning to place their unborn children for adoption.  The show follows them as they meet with their adoption counselors (not every mother does this, of course), chooses a family, and goes to the hospital to deliver.  Sometimes the mothers choose to parent after their child is born, while others go ahead with the adoption plan.  It is a very emotional show and it helps us to build a sense of compassion for expectant mothers - I can't imagine having to make that kind of decision, but I so greatly admire each woman for the decisions she makes for her child.

The Baby Wait focuses on adoptive families that reside in states where there is a waiting period after the initial papers are signed, during which the birth mother can change her mind and choose to parent her child.  In Texas, once the initial papers are signed, there is no waiting period, so we don't have to concern ourselves with that, but again, it educates us on how the birth mothers process their decisions post-delivery, which helps keep our expectations in check.  I would highly recommend either of these shows to anyone planning to adopt, or anyone supporting a person who is either planning to adopt or making an adoption plan for their unborn child.  It is an accessible way to learn about the process, and it can give you a lot of fodder for conversations to have with others.

We have some other potentially exciting news in the works right now, and I hope to be able to share that information as we process it.  Please be praying for us, and stay tuned for more news soon!

There are only 48 days left until we plan to drop our application to our adoption agency in the mail!  I can't believe how close it is getting - exciting and terrifying at the same time!