I won't sleep a wink...

The phone rang on Wednesday afternoon, and no it wasn't THE call. But it was Kelly from our adoption agency asking some questions. She wanted to know if we had our profile book finished (scrapbook for birthmoms to look at.) She remembered me saying in January that I had been working on it and it was almost complete. They have several new birthmoms coming in next week to chose families and they wanted to be able to show our book. They already have snapshots of us and our "dear birthmother" letter, but she wanted have our complete book to show them.

What happened next?

Um, complete panic set in.

I told her that it was almost finished (which was true-ish) and that I would see what I could do to get it to her.

I raced home and proceeded to work on it. For 5 hours. Emily tried to IM with me, but I was so focused, when the chime went off I didn't even know what it was. Sad. Let me explain something about the profile book...it isn't a paper scrapbook. It is a digital scrapbook. Yup, that's right, DIGITAL. Which means I learned how to use Adobe Photoshop CS3 in order to make this scrapbook.

There are pros and cons to this type of scrapbooking...

Pro: there isn't any mess to clean up.

Con: if you don't know what command puts text on the page, you might not get to write any words.

Pro: I can change the file as many times as I want.

Con: I can change the file as many times as I want. Oh, the perfectionism.

Pro: Sizes of things can easily be changed. I want this graphic bigger, I stretch it out. Can't do that with paper.

Con: I might have to cuss at the computer when I can get those graphics to stretch out the way I want them. No, I didn't cuss. But I clicked REALLY, REALLY hard. Yeah, that's tellin' the computer.

Do you get the idea. I slaved over this thing learning a new program and getting it right. I needed to include all sorts of things about us, our families and our house. I drove everyone crazy taking tons of pictures of them over the holidays.

Oh, back to Wednesday night....well, I worked on a couple of the pages, making sure they all had captions and such, then I prepared to upload them to a site that prints them and mails them to you. I can't print them out at home because it would take tons of ink and I can't print 12 x 12 pages in my printer. I thought Charlie might be able to print them at work, but he didn't think he could make it work either, but he had a printer friend in town that could do it for him rushed. So he ran around on Thursday getting it printed, then we laminated the pages, bound them and got it in the mail. It turned out really well. I was so proud of all my hard work.

And as soon as I can figure out how to shrink the file to post on the internet, I will show them off. I shared with several friends at work and they thought it was cute and showed who we are as a couple. I hope so.

As this week goes forward, please pray for the birthmoms coming in to the agency. These will be hard appointments for them...making a decision about the family that will take their babies home. Pray that I will sleep this week, and not lay awake thinking of baby names. Pray that I won't jump every time the phone rings.

Pray, and stay tuned.

a quick update

Just wanted to do a quick update on the adoption process. Not much is going on right now. We had to work on a 45 page form for the HomeStudy and I had finished all my answers and it was ready for Charlie. Then our social worker emailed us and told us that the state had updated the form and she needed to send us a new one.

Sigh.

So we started over. Charlie blessedly transferred my answers to the new form and answered his portion, but there are some new questions we have to answer together. And the questions cover so much about our lives and views on parenting. I think I gave you a sampling of them before, but it covers EVERYTHING in our lives, childhoods, marriage, etc.

Now we will turn this in and a couple other forms, then we get to make an appointment with the social worker. That will be nerve racking, I'm sure. After that, we will be on the list.

And then we wait.

i opened the mailbox today and...

Just wanted to drop a quick line to say we received our criminal clearance from the State Bureau of Education. Yay! We aren't criminals! Whew!

fingerprints

As part of our paperwork we have to be fingerprinted, and I had to call around to find out where we could have it done. The nice lady at City Hall told me that there were two places that did it, the Municipal Building, and the Sheriff's Office, and she told me the address and times they did it. Turns out there are only certain times that one can be fingerprinted, and they are only during the day.

Charlie went down to the Sheriff's Office on his day off, and the address the lady gave me was wrong. Someone directed him to the correct building and he got it all done. I followed his directions to the Law Enforcement Center, which is a dull gray stone building with no windows. I found the building with no problem, but there was no place to park. All the street spaces were taken and the lots were labeled for employees only. I drove around the block three times before I found a space.

When I went inside, I found the correct window easily and stood there. And stood there. And waited while the woman inside went on with her work. For several minutes. Oh, she could see me all right, but she kept on working. Finally, she turned to me and looked up with this irritated face. I told her I needed to get fingerprinted and she asked for my Driver's License. I handed it to her, along with a letter that the adoption agency had provided for the fingerprint agent to read, asking them to fill out several things. She took a cursory look at the letter and shoved it back at me saying, "that's for you to fill out." Now, I had looked at the letter in advance and it clearly said, in capital letters, that were underlined, ATTN: LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENT: PLEASE TYPE OR FILL IN THE FOLLOWING ITEMS. Then it listed all these things that they should verify and fill in. She was not having it.

I gave her my ten dollars (in cash and exact, because that's all they take) and then she motioned me through a set of double doors. The place I entered was so sad. Seriously, it was the most depressing office, with builder beige walls and no natural light. And, the woman was wearing a builder beige sweater and had builder beige hair. She put on some gloves and told me where to stand, and grabbed my hand. She jerked my fingers around and rolled them on the card, while telling me how stupid I was not to know which fingers she needed. She was laughing at me, and I hope my prints are ok, cause they looked a little smeared to me.

Now, I did tell her that I was applying for an adoption. I thought that might make her a little more friendly towards me...that I wasn't a pedophile or some criminal. She just acted like I was inconveniencing her. When she was finished with me, she handed me a baby wipe and reminded me to take my prints with me when I left, and she was gone back to her depressing little office.

Well, since she didn't fill out the things the form asked her to, I had to go home and fill in the information. Charlie came home and said that his fingerprinter told him to fill in a couple additional spaces that the agency hadn't mentioned, so we didn't know which way was correct. So we called the agency and they weren't even sure we were allowed to write on the card after the agent signed it. I didn't want to have to go back there to get fingerprinted AGAIN, so we called the State Bureau of Investigation (who we have to send the prints to) and asked what info they needed. They said we could write on it, so I filled in some info and we finally got it in the mail.

Now, this story is kinda funny, and it makes for a great post, but I just felt so bad that the woman just wasn't having a great day. And if I have to go back there cause my prints are messed up, I am so not going let her push me around. It did make me think about how sometimes we just don't enjoy doing our jobs. She probably sits in that window everyday, in the dingy flourescent lighting, fingerprinting scummy people and I bet most times it isn't fun. But I was nice to her, and she could have responded in kind.

(Oh, I hope you like the new background. I guess my other one wasn't loading right, and since I had light colored text on a dark background...and when the background wouldn't load, you couldn't read the text. Maybe that's too much info, but let me know what you think of this one.)

giving up control

I've got to let you in on a little secret. Not a secret that worked out well, but a secret none-the-less.


Last week our social worker emailed me and let me know that she would be meeting with a birthmother this week, and even though Charlie and I hadn't finished all our paperwork, she wanted to show them some photos of us! Wow! I didn't know we could even be considered this soon, but she wanted us to send photos and a birthmother letter. She also warned us that the birthmom already had a couple in mind, but that she wanted to show her everyone.


Charlie and I worked on our birthmother letter, which is a really difficult letter to write. It's hard to express all your feelings about adoption, and the longing for a baby without convincing the birthmother that she should just raise the baby herself. There is a great temptation to be greedy and just say "gimme." But you can't. And even when I have been thinking about adoption since I was little, it's hard to anticipate how the birthmother will interpret your words. Trust me, it's difficult. I mean, I need a thesaurus to get more words about how difficult it is.


So we sent off pictures and the letter and we knew that Emily (social worker) was meeting with the birthmom today, and that she would let us know something either tomorrow or Friday. It was a hard couple of days, because we didn't want to get too excited, but at the same time we knew she was due in 8 weeks. If we were somehow chosen, we would need to expedite everything else and have all the money ready in that amount of time, too (that part scared my husband a tad.)


I spent the week praying for God's will. Everytime I prayed I asked God to help the birthmom make a decision that was right for her, and for the baby. I prayed that He would help me deal with whatever choice she made. I prayed that when the baby He intended for us came along, we would know it.


And He came through. We did not get chosen. But I am ok. I am a little sad, but I am not broken apart with grief. Obviously God intends this baby for that other couple, and He's the one who is in control. It's hard to give over that control and leave it up to someone else. It's stressful to think that we have to be chosen, but my Heavenly Father chose me, and He can choose a baby for us. He will.


So, now we will finish up our paperwork properly and continue saving those pennies and nickels. I get fingerprinted on Monday, and then the State Bureau of Investigation has to clear us. Fun times.


Just wanted to let you all know what was going on. I am sorry that I didn't share earlier, but I didn't want it to be real. I didn't want to start all the planning in my head, buying all the clothes, getting all the baby stuff. I couldn't do it. But I wanted you to know.

And now you do.

take a stab at it...

Yeah! Our packet was approved and we are now in the second big round of paperwork. I just got it today, and it is quite a packet of forms. There is one 39 page questionaire that we need to fill out before the social worker comes to talk with us at our home. Yup, you read that right. THIRTY-NINE pages. I read through it a little bit today and here are some sample questions:

1. How were you disciplined as a child? Do you agree with this type of discipline?
2. How did you meet your husband?
3. Describe your first date.
4. What do you think your wife likes most about you?
5. Have you ever been under the care of a therapist or counselor?
6. Did you have any pets growing up?
7. Decsribe the layout of your house...where does each person sleep?
8. What is in your backyard?
9. How long have you had your job?
10. Who will raise the kids in the event of your untimely death? How much money do they make?
11. How do you resolve conflict in your marriage?
12. Who pays the bills and makes financial decisions?

And this is just a sample, people. The social worker told us that it would be kind of fun to do because you will learn a lot about your spouse. Should be interesting just to get Charlie to sit down and answer his half.

But, YIPPEE, it means another step is behind us and we are continuing to move forward!

Oh, and where does each person in your house sleep? I'm dying to know...

parenting classes

We have been taking a couple of parenting and adoption courses online. Our adoption agency requires several hours of education credits before you can complete your homestudy (where the social worker comes and talks to you.) We worked through two in the last week: Let's Talk Adoption and The Conspicious Family. They were both fairly informative and made you think about a couple of things.

Let's Talk Adoption
This was a course that deals with how you talk to your adopted child about being adopted. Some of it was meant for parents adopting older kids and addressed issue like how to talk to them if their parents abused them or committed crimes. Mainly, it was about keeping the lines of communication open so that your child feels like they can ask questions about their birthparents and how they came to be with you. The trend in adoption is to talk to your child as early as possible, so that there aren't any secrets about where they came from. No one has to watch what they say or worry about whether they've exposed any hidden truths. Charlie and I both feel like adoption is a blessing to us and we will share it early and often.

Conspicuous Families
This class was interesting and I think we both enjoyed it. The main theme was when you adopt a child that is a different race, it will be obvious to the world that the child is adopted, and there will be lots of questions about that fact. Some will be rude. Some will just be curious. And the course helps you work through how to answer those questions without being offended and to educate people at the same time.

For example "How much did you pay for that baby?"

Answer "We paid for the social work time and the legal fees, not for the baby itself."

It was a pretty good course and it made me think. I often ask questions of the women around me that have adopted and they are very forthcoming with the information. But I did have to ask one friend about the appropriate way to ask those questions. I mean, when you see a blond lady with an Asian daughter, it's pretty likely that she's adopted. I guess the woman could be married to an Asian man (that's possible...totally!) but usually adoption is the case. But how do I walk up and ask what adoption agency they used or what their experience was like without sounding completely uncouth? Yikes. My friend Sarah helped me realize some of the same things the course taught us, but in return. I will be the one answering the questions this time.

Lots more to learn. Lots more.