Hey friends!
I know, I know, it’s been quite a bit of time since we’ve
done an adoption update, but I’m here to tell you ALL about what’s been
happening over the past 4 months.
We started
fundraising and saving pretty much immediately.
The first thing we did was sit down and take a look at our
finances to see where we could make cuts. I’d been chatting with friends and
the internet about successful fundraising opportunities and we knew that there
were two that were no-brainers. The first most logical step for us was to have
a garage sale, we needed to organize our home for baby anyways, and had a big sale in October. A local realtor even posted about our sale
signs! It was so easy and was a great way to de-clutter the room that would be
our future child’s.
I’d also spoken with my friend Kimmi, who had raised money
through a Christmas ornament fundraiser, so I immediately reached out to her to
find out more and got to painting 150 wooden Christmas ornaments with a saying
that had kind of turned into our adoption mantra, “together is better”. (It’s
from a Simon Sinek book and is all about how it takes a community to be successful
in our endeavors.) I even wrangled Eric into painting some, which turned out to
be slightly hilarious. Crafting certainly isn’t his favorite thing, but y’all
this turned out so well! The ornaments turned out so well and sold like hotcakes. We
loved getting pictures from all of our friends of the ornaments on their tree,
and will always have the sweet reminder of how amazing our community is when we
see them on your trees.
After our adoption announcement, my incredible friend Dawn
reached out to see if I’d like to have an adoption fundraiser class, where I
sold ornaments and got to dance my heart out with all of my friends from
Jazzercise. I even dragged my mom and best gal pals along and it was seriously the
most fun day. If you are in Springfield and want to be surrounded by amazing and
empowering women who also love to shake their booties, PLEASE come join me at
Jazzercise. Those women are so special to me!
We completed our home
study visits
We’d been intimidated
hearing from friends how LONG this process took, to the point that most of our
friends said that it basically turned into a second part time job, so I was
prepared to jump in as quickly as possible. (Eric will tell you that this is
likely my most endearing AND annoying quality… when I get a task, I’m ready to
take it on then and try to complete it as quickly as humanly possible.)
I’d started our “APQ” (adoption profile questionnaire)
pretty much immediately and had schedule our first home study visit for the
week before Christmas BECAUSE I AM A GLUTTON FOR PUNISHMENT. Eric and I
received a two page list of things that they’d be looking for in our home (i.e.
fire extinguishers, smoke detectors, outlet covers, medications placed in
appropriately inaccessible places, etc.) and began maniacally cleaning the entire
home. I often joke that Eric and I take very different approaches to cleaning,
when we’re having people over I’ll be sure to majorly hit the rooms that I know
they’ll be in whereas Eric will be polishing all of the faucets to a mirror
sheen and scrubbing the attic baseboards. You know, the really important things.
We went on an organizing kick and I labeled and categorized every medicine and
cleaning supply… so maybe we both have a problem...
We’d been told by every
friend who went through their home study that it was no sweat, but I had worked
up a such a head of worry the day of that I broke out in hives. And y’all. It
was so fine. Our home study worker was so laid back and nice, she put us
to ease pretty much immediately. The whole process consisted of two meetings,
took about 6 hours, and about 1 million very personal questions. Then your home
study worker writes up a giant report on you with all of that information, states
if they would recommend you as a good fit for adoption, and it gets sent to the
agency for final approval.
And then, we wait. And wait.
In our home study, one of the questions that we each had to
answer was what we felt would be the most difficult part of this process…and y’all
I’m in it. Over the past few months we’ve been working so hard gathering
documents, preparing our profile book, and checking off tasks so that we were
one step closer to going live. We’re just awaiting the final stamp of approval
on our home study, have our profile books printed and distributed to each
agency location, and then we’ll be officially able to “go live” to waiting families.
From there it’s a total waiting game, and I won’t lie that I’m much more
nervous about having nothing to do but wait than I ever was when I had a list
of tasks. The average wait time is anywhere from 12-18 months, and we’ve known people
to have significantly shorter AND significantly longer wait times until they
were matched. Patience surely isn’t my strong suit, but I’ve felt in my gut
that 2020 was significant to this process and that it would be our year. So now
we wait, we pray, (I’ll probably cry a few times) and we remind ourselves to take
this time to celebrate our time together as a couple before our family grows.
We continue to be so grateful to each of you for the support
and advice you’ve provided us throughout this process, we are so so so lucky. As
always, we appreciate your calls, texts, prayers, good vibes, as we wait. Love
you, mean it.
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