And the waiting period officially begins...

I know, I know, I have mentioned the waiting period as if we were "really" in the waiting pool, but I swear now we are officially waiting. Hurry and wait - that has been our motto and our life lately. Now that the paperwork is turned in, our family book is complete and sitting on agency coffee tables and baby gear is being collected from garage sales and craigslist - we have an opportunity to be carefree and revel in spending time with each other and our lovely pup, Ursa. The calm before the storm as the saying goes.

As I mentioned in a previous post, we just got back from an adoption class weekend. I could tell you all about how amazing it was, the incredible stories we heard, the extremely useful advice we received, the inspiring people we met, how much the class confirmed our commitment and excitement for this journey and so much more, but instead I am going to share some powerful words with you that I think reflect some of the important lessons we learned last weekend.

Adopted Children's Rights
From Making Sense of Adoption by Lois Melina

1. Children have the right to know who they are and how they joined their families, and how to grow up knowing the truth.

2. Children have the right to freely ask questions and express their feelings about being adopted.

3. Children have the right to a positive attitude about their birth parents.

4. Children have the right to be accepted as individuals with a unique genetic heritage.

5. Children have the right to be recognized by society as full and equal members of their adoptive families.

6. Information about our children's origin is private and belongs to them. They have the right to choose to share certain information.

7. Transracially adopted children have a right to a positive sense of racial or ethnic identity.

These are important rules to live by and David and I are committed to them as I hope you are too.

Now off to get some more weeding done in our garden before the sun goes down. I love summer.

A new look

Hello out there in blogger world. It has been a long time and now we have a new look, but don't you worry it is still about the same great adoption. Things have been fairly quiet in our adoption world, which we are very grateful for. We finished our interviews for the homestudy and it has been turned in to the agency. The next big milestone is our class which is coming up in two weeks.

There has been a lot of talk about the class and we are really looking forward to it. First, we will meet other prospective adoptive parents in our area. It has been amazing connecting with all of the bloggers out there. We love being part of a community even though we don't see you face to face (just screen to screen)! It will be equally amazing to meet some folks in person at our class.

In addition to meeting new folks, we also are looking forward to hearing the panels...adoptive parents, adopted children, adopted children from a transracial adoption, the list goes on. Hearing the stories will be amazing. We also are reading books that are required by our agency. Here is our reading list:

Making Room in our Hearts by Micky Duxbury

Inside Transracial Adoption by Gail Steinberg and Beth Hall

20 Things Adopted Children Wish Their Adoptive Parents Knew by Sherrie Eldridge

Family of Adoption by Joyce Pavao Maguire

All great books!

We have been enjoying sunshine and dry summer weather here in Oregon and haven't had much time inside. Our vegetable and flower beds are producing copious amounts of food and beauty and we just couldn't be happier right now.

Must run outside and pull more weeds before the sun goes down. Pictures of new crafts soon!

Exhaling...

All together now...exhale...thanks, we needed that.

So the home visit took place on Saturday and go figure, it went great! Alexis came to our house and we spent six hours chatting. The interview was really wonderful - both of us had a chance to talk about our childhood, high school and college experiences, and our relationship with each other. It was a lot. Beyond just talking about ourselves, we also talked a lot about what it means to adopt, be a part of an open adoption and possibly a transracial adoption. Alexis even threw us a few curve ball questions for us to think about how we would react. We really appreciated the fact that she is an adopted child and had a lot of insight for us and is an excellent resource for our hundreds of questions. All in all, she is great and we feel lucky to have her helping us through this process.

We feel quite exhausted after this weekend - not only because it was a long day on Saturday but really because of the way we built the home visit up in our heads. We were nervous, not about "passing" the visit, but rather about how close we are really getting to the end of this 'hurry up and wait period.' It has been paperwork, fingerprints, family book making, etc up until now...now we need to talk about our motivation to adopt and our pasts...now we actually are reflecting and not just doing. It is exhausting to reflect and process.

We also had a lot of anticipation for what this home visit would be like. Of course we googled and checked out every blog out there to skim other experiences, but in the end still had no idea what it would be like for us. To our surprise the meeting was pretty uneventful and non-climatic. It was just a talk, nothing more, and quite easy. Of course for the rest of the evening I replayed every moment of the meeting in my head (and out loud to David) wondering if we impressed upon Alexis how much this meant to us and how great of parents we would be...thank goodness David is so patient! But as I said above, the visit was great and we feel good.

We have a final follow up meeting with Alexis in two weeks where we will see a draft of her write up and answer any final questions she may have. I look forward to seeing her final product! Then we have our class in June and we are officially in the pool. Can't wait to dive in.

Stay tuned...

Lots to Update

We haven't updated the blog in a while - we have been busy. First, we have finally finished our family book and are ready to share it with the world! You can find the final version here. We spent days locating appropriate pictures and finding the right words and we are so happy with the final product - 15 copies are on their way to our agency for showing to birthparents! Thanks to Kathy and Josh for helping us put the final touches on the book!

Whew! Glad that hurdle has been jumped.

We also found out (finally) that David's background check has been cleared. So really the only thing we are waiting on is my medical form. My appointment is next week, so we can basically check that off.

Some more exciting news is that we are scheduled to have our homestudy interview completed this Saturday! The social worker called us yesterday and set up our 5 hour (yes, 5 hours) visit for this weekend. We are busy cleaning and trying not to be nervous.

Thanks again, can't wait to update you all after we have the homestudy interview complete!