No news is no news!

Day 832, and still, we wait.

The good news, and in the Yes-of-course-I'm-Jealous-but-in-a-good-way department, I am truly happy to announce that one of the other couples with whom we went through adoption education classes is now no longer a couple but a family!!  I feel like an auntie...sort of...in a way...but not really. I'm so genuinely happy for them, and ask you to continue to keep them (as well as all adoptive families and families-in-wait) in your prayers.

In other news, our adoption agency announced recently that they are cutting back on the number of hoping-to-adopt families they will represent next year, basically because (I've tried five times now to write this next part without making it sound horrible), well, I guess because more unexpectedly expecting parents are choosing to parent instead of making an adoption plan for their unexpected blessings.  How wonderful would it be if there were no need for adoption agencies because every child was born into this world to families who were more than ready, willing, and able to parent them to the absolute best of their abilities?!  It would be something akin to peace on earth, I believe.  Nothing short of a miracle...a blessed, blessed miracle.

It has always felt just a little bit selfish to me, for me to complain about having to "wait so long".  I mean, when you get to the bare bones of how this works, we're waiting to be chosen by an expectant parent (or parents) who probably feel that the best chance their unborn child has for a good life is to make an adoption plan with another family.  The fact that we haven't been chosen yet doesn't mean that we're not a good enough family, it just means that we're not needed, yet.  Sometime between the last time I wrote in here and now, that realization hit me like a ton of bricks.  It's almost as if our "services" are not needed at this time, and when you really think about it, that's not such a bad thing.  So, that is why I feel awkward now, complaining in the least about our wait.  This adoption journey, every bit of it, is so not about us.  It's about a child in need.  It's about an expectant parent making the heart-wrenching decision to let another family raise the child that grew and developed inside her womb.  For us to adopt a child, means that another family will be cutting their ties to an extent with that same child.  If you know me, you know that I don't like to cause another human being to be in pain.  Don't get me wrong, I still have the utmost faith that this is the path on which we are meant to be, and I have not stopped believing that God does have a plan for us to adopt a child, but this is just more evidence that it will happen when the timing is right, and only then.  In my job as an OB nurse, I'm one of the people responsible for convincing brand-new moms and dads that they have the skills and knowledge and confidence to take this newborn tiny human home and care for it to the best of their abilities and turn it into something meaningful and worthwhile...so that part of me cannot be sad that the number of infants being placed for adoption is down.

But the realist in me knows that not every family is able to handle caring for a newborn with that child's best interests at heart, even if they decide not to make an adoption plan.  I don't live in a cave, you know. I see the stories about irresponsible parents and families, and ache for the children who suffer in those cases.  I read about (and pray for, and occasionally even see for myself) children who have been hurt by their families, and I just want to scream and yell...if they had only made an adoption plan with someone like us, that pain could have been avoided.  Lives could have been saved.  It's a little frustrating.

Anyway...another realization of sorts that has occurred to me since the last time I wrote, that has made this wait much more tolerable, is the fact that if this doesn't happen, we will be fine.  I belong to a few different adoption-related groups on FB, and there's often an underlying theme of, "If I don't get to parent a child, my life will be forever incomplete."  Not in those words, but that's the general idea.  And the obvious rebuttal I have to that, is currently sitting on the other end of the couch playing on his smartphone and petting the dog.  I'm fortunate enough to have had the chance to parent one child already.  I've gone through the joys and pains of pregnancy and natural childbirth and all that fun stuff.  I have struggled with feeling like our lives won't be complete if we don't have another child...but I know that we are very, very lucky to have had the one we do have, which is something that a lot of people will never experience.  It's another thing that makes me feel selfish about complaining about the length of The Big Wait.  It's a miracle we had him in the first place, and now we're hoping for another miracle.  Is that selfish?  (Rhetorical question.)

I don't want to sound like a complete downer here, but this is what's been on my mind that I can actually share here.  Working in OB, there are lots of things that come up that I want so badly to write about, but I can't.  So I keep those thoughts and insights to myself.

It's kind of like when I was in nursing school, and in grave danger of failing one of my classes.  It seemed like it would just be the absolute and complete end of the world if I failed that class, and I didn't know how on earth I would even continue if that happened...I was sure that if I failed a class, I would not ever become a nurse, and that put my whole life in a spin because I was so convinced that I was meant to be a nurse, and I had no idea what I would do with my life if that didn't happen...well, guess what? I failed that class.  And it was momentarily devastating, but it was by far not the end of the world.  The planet didn't implode.  I wasn't ostracized from the community. I wasn't even kicked out of nursing school.  I cried for a good day or so, then wiped my tears and pulled up my big-girl panties and went after Plan B -- which was to re-take that class online over summer break and hopefully be able to rejoin my classmates on the same schedule in the fall.  And that's what happened.  And now I'm a nurse, even though something came up that I didn't think I was prepared to handle.  I know there is a huge difference between adopting a child and passing a class, but the lesson is very much the same.  Things happen that you didn't plan for, but life goes on and if it's meant to happen, it will happen.  I'm not the one in control here.  Gotta keep the big picture in focus, right?!

Anyway...in other news, in about a week and a half from now, I will be on my way to sunny FLORIDA!!  With 60-some band kids, on a coach bus.  But still.  DS' marching band will be playing at the Outback Bowl in Tampa on New Year's Eve Day, and I get to chaperone!!!  It will be so nice to escape this cold, bleak, upper Midwestern landscape for a few days.  A dream come true, one might say.  And since I haven't even seen the sun here in almost two weeks, it can't happen a moment too soon.  I miss the sun.  I'm so tired of winter and it's not even January yet.

On that note...thanks for reading, and for your thoughts and prayers and good wishes.  I wish I had news, but I don't, so you get to just hear me ramble on for a while.  :)  Merry Christmas!!

Above average?

September is something of a milestone month in our calendar year, generally speaking.  First of all, there's the fact that my birthday, DH's birthday and our wedding anniversary all happen within the first three days of the month.  (The third day, to be exact.)  That's a lot to handle in one fell swoop, but just so DS isn't left out, school usually starts for him around that time as well.  This year, we celebrated our 40th birthdays and 18th anniversary with a much-needed trip to Las Vegas.  I'll spare the details here, because I plastered them all over Facebook, but a good time was had by all.  DS started his junior year of high school while we were gone...I'm having a harder time wrapping my little head around that, to be honest.  Seems like just yesterday the kid was in preschool, and now he's 6'3" and has facial hair and is driving around in a vehicle five years newer than my daily driver!  But, I digress.  September is also the month I started working at the hospital (first as a CNA and now as an RN), and this is year #5, which I'm also having a hard time believing.  I'm not exactly sure why, though; sometimes it feels like I've been there forever, and sometimes it feels like I just started.  

September hasn't been all fun and games, though.  There's September 11, 2001, for example.  And a few years later on that same date, DH's dear, sweet grandmother left our earthly presence (in what we refer to at work as a "celestial transfer").  On September 4th five years ago, the day after our 35th birthdays, we lost one of the best dogs in the world ever.  And an occasion that I'm pretty sure I've never really made "public" is that we had a miscarriage on our 21st birthdays, exactly one year before we married each other.  But I don't want this post to be all sad, so I'm moving on now...

As you may have already surmised, somewhere in the middle of this is the commemoration of our "Big Wait" anniversary.  According to the records, our 2-year Big Wait Anniversary was technically on September 6th.  I wouldn't exactly call it "fun and games", but it hasn't exactly been horrible, either.  If I had to label it, I'd put it in the "good" category, for sure.  I mean, it is a good thing to celebrate, even though I wish we weren't still waiting!  It means that someday, some child out there is going to have a chance that it might not have otherwise had.  Someday, a life is going to change for the better because of the decisions we've made -- actually, I take that back; many lives are going to be changed for the better, ideally -- the child; the parents who have decided that, for whatever reason, they are not ready to be parents yet; their extended families; and, of course, our family.  So, even though I get impatient and have the occasional "bad day" where I don't think I can possibly wait another minute, inside I'm truly happy to say that we're still waiting.  It's better than not waiting anymore, right?  Plus, the fact that we're still waiting just means that we're not ready yet, or the expectant mom isn't ready yet, or both.  There's literally nothing more we can do except keep the faith, keep praying, and fill out the occasional stack of paperwork that gets sent our way in order to keep our credentials active.  As Lita Ford once said, "It ain't no big thing."

I originally thought that our 2-year renewal would involve another home visit, which I was both dreading and looking forward to (as a reason to declutter the house from stem to stern), but that turned out not to be the case.  (As a side note, I got to deep clean and declutter the house anyway because my parents stayed here with DS while DH and I were in Vegas! hee hee hee)  We did have to have updated background checks, medical reports, provide updated insurance information, and fill out umpteenish various consents and the like in order to have our foster home license renewed for another two years.  As it turns out, we also have to have our fingerprints redone, because there was a mix-up in when our actual "expiration" date was, and so our licensure lapsed for about ten days.  But no worries, because it is active again and it really ain't no big thing.  We found out after the fact, and it doesn't affect our portfolio exposure in any way.  

Speaking of things I originally thought...I could have sworn that, when we were going through our adoption education classes, I was told or heard that the average waiting time in our program was 6-9 months, although our worker was always hesitant to give a time frame because every situation is different, etc., etc.  On the other hand, DH -- who spent the same number of hours in the same classes as I did, sitting right next to me in fact -- says that he remembers hearing the average waiting time was two years.  (It was a fun discussion. If you've never had the privilege of hearing two emotional Virgo perfectionists who don't like to be wrong and have the tendency to remember odd details have such a debate, I'd highly recommend it.  Or not.)  I will admit that I have since read, on highly-unscientific adoption-related support groups on Facebook, that the average waiting time right now is two years.

Either way, whether DH misinterpreted the information we were given or not (ha! ha!!), we're now obviously past both of those "averages".  Which makes us...wait for it!...

ABOVE AVERAGE!!  

*cheeky grin*

Seriously.  Please continue to pray for families like ours who are waiting to make a difference...and pray for the families we will one day be matched with...and pray for the overworked social workers who are dealing with all of us...and pray for patience and guidance for everyone involved.  

And pray that we don't get too far "above average"...

An elephant's faithful, one hundred percent!

The usual gestation period for an elephant is about 645 days, according to Wikipedia.  That comes out to about 21 months, and is the longest gestation period in the animal kingdom.

We're closing in on 23 months.  So take that, elephants.

Had another "almost" moment, sort of, last week.  Our case worker sent out an email about an expectant mom with a history of substance abuse looking to set up an adoption plan for the baby that was expected to be born that very night.  It was an interesting few days, even though the birth mom ended up choosing another family.  DH and I both did some extensive research and had some conversations about things that don't tend to just come up in regular conversations.

I may have mentioned this before, but two years ago when we were in the "getting ready to wait" stage of the adoption process, we were asked to specify whether or not we'd be open to a whole list of potential "birthmom situations".  These situations can be anything from prenatal exposure to cigarettes, alcohol, medications, illegal drugs, and domestic abuse, to a family history of genetic disorders, to known fetal anomalies, to absolutely no known history whatsoever.  It makes me uncomfortable thinking about it, even now.  I mean, when I was pregnant with DS, there was no disclaimer that I would only take him home if he was perfect.  I just felt awkward filling out that checklist, and those awkward feelings come back whenever we get a notification about a birthmom situation.  I completely understand, though, why the workers put those feelers out beforehand.  Some of the situations can have significant impacts on a family, emotionally and physically speaking.  In case you're wondering, we indicated that we'd consider most of the items on that original checklist on a case-by-case basis.  The "awkward" part comes from being given the option to make that choice, if that makes sense.  It's like being forced to be judgemental.  My point with all this rambling is that it's not a comfortable feeling to have to figure out where you'd draw the line.  My gut feeling is that if there is a child out there that needs a stable home and  loving family, I want to do whatever I can to help.  I don't know what God's plan is for me, for our family.  I don't want to miss out on His plan for us by saying we're not willing to parent a child with xyz because that might be exactly what He wants us to do.

I know this is kind of all over the place, but that's how my thoughts are right now. :)  Long story short, it was a good reminder and practice of just putting everything in God's hands and accepting whatever comes about.  In this case, we weren't meant to be matched.  I have been praying for the baby and the families involved in this situation.

So...almost two years now.  It was odd, at first, but now I've lost count of how many people I know (either in real life or via FB) who have had babies in that time frame.  Families who weren't even pregnant or trying to conceive when we went "active" on the waiting list have since given birth and now have infants and toddlers.  That was weird, at first, and made me more than a little jealous.  But that's life, so I learned to deal with it and move on.  However, recently I found out that one of these same families is now expecting their second child since we've been playing the waiting game, and that suddenly makes it seem like we've been waiting for.ev.er.  And is making me more than a little jealous, again.  But I'll get over it; I always do.  Because that's how I roll.  And because one day it will be our turn, again...

On that note, I'll sign off...for now!

Adult temper-tantrum in 3...2......

Don't mind me...I'm having a moment.

A moment where I want to slam doors and throw things around.  I want to be loud and obnoxious.  I want to grab a sledgehammer and start demolishing the nearest wall.  I want to stomp my feet defiantly and stick my tongue out at the world.  I want everyone within the sound of my voice (or, errrr, within sight of this blog?) to know that I Am Here...and I. Am. IMPATIENT!!!

We got the quarterly "Review" email from our case worker this week.  I haven't responded yet, because I know I'm going to ask (as I always do) whether anyone has looked at our portfolio, and I'm just not in the mood right now to hear that no one has looked at it lately.  I could respond that there is absolutely positively nothing new with us and just skip the part where I ask if any has looked at "us"...yeah, no I couldn't.  I have to ask.  So I will.  Soon.

I'm also thinking that, perhaps joining a couple of adoption support groups on FB wasn't such a good idea; it is getting frustrating (and I hate to say that, but it is what it is) hearing about people who got matched in, like, thirty milliseconds after completing their homestudies.  Believe me when I say that I am really, really, really, really, really trying not to let things like this upset me...and most of the time, they don't.  But something snapped inside of me last night and now, I just really, really, really, really, really need to vent.

See?  I feel better already.

Sort of.

I've just never been a patient sort of person.  When I make up my mind that something needs to happen, I need it to happen NOW.  I was in labor with DS for all of two hours, and it still felt like forever to me.  As a kid, I used to get positively sick on Christmas Eve and the night before my birthday, because I could not tolerate sitting by and doing nothing (or even worse, trying to sleep!) on the cusp of such important, meaningful events.  If I had only known then that waiting to be chosen by an expectant mom would be just like 2am on Christmas morning (when it's way too early to get up but probably too late to fall back asleep), day after day after month after year...

I don't know what "then" I was going for with that "if".  It just sounded good in my head.

Anyway...I know this is all happening according to God's plan, and in His time and according to His will, and not ours.  I know that one day this will all make sense, and that His timing is perfect, and of course all the old cliche's like good things come to those who wait and patience is a virtue and all that.  But I'm only human.  I'm impatient, I want to know when things are going to happen and how they're going to happen and when they're going to happen so I can make the appropriate plans and provisions and get everything ready so things will just fall into place when they actually do happen.  I feel like a nervous racehorse crammed into the starting gate...I'm just waiting for that bell to ring and those doors to fly open so I can take off and make things happen.  But the bell isn't in my control, and this endless period of waiting and waiting and waiting can really mess with your mind sometimes!

And, if you know me, I don't have much of my mind left to be messed with...I need to preserve as much of it as I possibly can!  Ha, ha, ha.

Alright.  Time to get out of the house and do something.  DH is working today, so I think I will take the boy to get his hair cut (since it's almost longer than mine, again, and he just looooves hearing about how much he looks like his Mom when he has long hair!) and then I think we'll head into the Cities for a horse show.  Because that makes sense.  :D

Please pray for us...especially for patience, strength, and guidance.  Pray for the other waiting families, as well; especially those who have had failed matches.  Pray for the expectant parents who aren't sure what to do, and pray that whatever decisions they make are the best for their unborn babies, because that's really what it's all about.  I guess I could be glad that we haven't been matched yet, because that means there are fewer expectant parents out there who feel like the best thing they could do for their child is to have them raised by another family...but...yeah.  I'll leave it at that.

Until next time...

90 weeks...

636 days.  Nearly 21 months.  90 weeks.  15,000+ hours.  and counting...

Nothing new to report here.  Our next review is due this month, so I expect to hear from our case worker in the next week or two, and I will ask her if there's been any activity on our portfolio in the last few months.  I'm half expecting her to come back with some response like, "I'm sorry; who are you again?"
I paged through our copy of our portfolio the other day, just to make sure it still speaks from my heart.  (Well, our hearts, but since I did 98% of the actual work putting it together -- not to discredit DH and DS, who were very helpful in picking out pictures since I wanted to include every.single.one...)  It does.  I thought maybe looking at it with fresh eyes would help me see something I could change to make it "better"; other than maybe updating a few pictures since DS has grown about another two feet since the portfolio was put together (slight exaggeration!), I couldn't find anything that jumped out as needing to be changed.  I was kind of hoping to find something big that I'd previously missed, something that will make an expectant parent drop everything and say Oh my gosh, yes, THIS is The Family for my unborn baby!  Yeah, but it doesn't work that way.  It was a gentle reminder that everything happens in God's time and according to His plan.  Our portfolio is as perfect as it can be, and when "our" expectant mom sees it, it will be perfect in her eyes, as well.

But, until that happens...

:)

I guess I could back up a second and tell you how I almost had something to report. About a month or so ago, we got an email from our caseworker about an expectant mom from another region of our agency's service area, who was looking for a specific kind of family for her unborn baby.  I won't go into details, but we did fit the basic requirements specified in the email, and our caseworker asked if it was alright to show her our info.  (The email went out to many different families, I'm almost sure; it was BCC'ed so I don't know how many.  But that's irrelevant.)  I'll admit it -- my hopes were up.  I just felt that this was going to be It, that we were going to meet "our" birthmom.  There were some issues, but nothing we felt we couldn't handle -- in fact, the details we were given made me even more positive that this was going to be It, because there were some very personal circumstances to which I could relate.

Alas, we haven't heard a thing since then.  Le sigh.  DH tried to warn me not to get my hopes up, but I did.  At least they weren't dashed, just sort of...deflated.  Like a balloon.  Slowly, over time.  That's the way the cookie crumbles.

* * * * *

You know, or maybe you don't, for the longest time I was convinced that the one area I never wanted to work in as a nurse was OB.  Given my personal history of several failed pregnancies, it was something I wanted to avoid for my own emotional well-being.  From the early days of my nursing school adventure, there were girls in my classes who were going on and on about how they wanted to work in OB someday because they loved babies and blah blah blah, while I rolled my eyes and firmly maintained that I did NOT want to work with screaming moms and crying babes.  Not then, not ever.  I absolutely dreaded our OB clinical rotations; on one level I was afraid of inducing an emotionally-instigated anxiety attack, and for another, I didn't ever want to work in OB, so why bother?!

Even when I survived my first day of OB clinicals (during which I got to be there from admission to delivery, holding the mom's leg while she pushed and being one of the first people on earth to see this brand-new person make their entrance into the world) without even the faintest sign of a breakdown, I stood firm.  I remember that passing phrase, "I could see myself doing this!", going through my head at one point.  (Disclaimer: in nursing school, I had that thought at some point in EVERY clinical rotation!)  Yet I still stood firm: OB wasn't for me.  Moms yelling their heads off, nervous new parents, fragile and totally dependent newborn people...nope.  Not my cup of tea.  Not even when I practically aced all of the exams in those chapters with VERY little studying.  Nope.  Not gonna do it.

So, when I got hired as an RN at my hospital, I still maintained that I would do med-surg, and eventually one day, ER.  But not OB.  I was a part-time nurse working full-time hours and waiting (im)patiently for a full-time position to open up.  It took about a year and a half, but then a full-time position opened up: nights in OB.  I'd never worked an overnight shift before then, and you might already have an idea about my aspirations to work in OB.  But I did want a full-time position, so I searched my heart and soul and decided, OK; I'll try OB, since it's apparently my ticket to a full-time position.  It can't be that bad!  And I did ace all those exams, probably for a good reason, so...

Here I am, 2 years later, still working in OB.  (Well, I mainly work in med-surg and recently started working in the ER as well, but that's only because our little hospital doesn't get many deliveries.)  I love OB!  Not in that starry-eyed, "oh I get to work with babies and babies are the cutest things ever" kind of way.  It's difficult to explain; I just feel like that is where I belong.  And other people have told me the same thing.  It's kind of weird.  But, I digress; there is a point to all of this.

Just over two years ago, I started working in OB.  Our two-year "wait" anniversary will be in September.  See what I'm getting at?  If I thought working in OB would be a challenge after going through so many failed pregnancies, I wouldn't be lying to say I was terrified to see what it would be like while waiting to be matched with an expectant mom.  It was hard enough seeing all these healthy people repeatedly doing what I could only do once out of seven tries, and making it look easy.  Actually, it wasn't even that hard, because when I'm at work with a patient, I get in the RN zone and my personal life and experiences don't play into that at all.  Because I'm a professional, yo.  :)  And that about sums up why it hasn't been nearly the challenge I thought it would be.  I found a strength in myself I didn't know I had: the ability to put my own heartache and pain aside and take care of others.

The same holds true now that we're doing the Big Wait.  I see happy couples become new parents, and there is so much love and confidence in their situations that it genuinely warms my heart.  I was afraid I'd be struck by jealousy, but I'm not.  I was afraid I'd just want to take every single baby home, but I don't, because I know they are born into loving homes and are in the best possible place they could be.

Except when they're not.  When there is even the slightest doubt that everyone is not "on board" with the daunting task of parenthood, it is a little more difficult.  When you are leery of sending a brand-new defenseless human out of your grasp and into a world of utmost uncertainty, and you have that nagging gut feeling that won't leave you alone...it is a little more difficult.  When you hear in the news about the horrible things that some parents (or friends and family of parents) can do in a moment of anger to a brand-new defenseless human, and you realize that there is no way at all to predict who is going to snap...or when...it makes being an OB nurse a little more difficult, and being a mom-waiting-to-be-matched a LOT more difficult.

I consider myself extremely fortunate that, 99% of the time, it's not difficult.  :)

Alright, time for me to fly.  The dogs are whining to be fed, and I've got to take my "little" (6ft 3in) boy out to get some shorts that actually fit him and his too-tall self.

Thanks for reading, and for keeping us in your thoughts and prayers.  <3

Not funny.

It's April Fool's Day, which means FB is brimming with fake pregnancy announcements.  I try to remind myself that these people mean no harm...

I just wanted to share this excellent post before I crawl back into my shell until tomorrow.

Thanks.

570 days, but who's counting?!?

It's been 18 months and 22 days since our home study (which is what I consider "day one" of The Big Wait, in retrospect).  I won't lie -- sometimes it makes me want to scream.  Although we were told to expect to wait a while, I will admit that I didn't think we'd be waiting this long.  Because, you know, everyone has that little voice of hope (or irrationality or whatever you want to call it) inside of them that says, That might be the 'normal' wait, but we're going to beat the odds!  Or, as I like to call it, the Why be normal?!? theory.

When we were finalizing our home study, and our case worker was telling us that we'd have to renew our foster care license in two years, I remember thinking, "We won't have to renew in two years because we'll be in post-placement by then!"  Ha, ha, ha.  I still hold out hope that we will be in post-placement by then, but "then" is only six five months away.  Our case worker came back from maternity leave last month, and gave us the update that there had been no activity with our portfolio in the three months prior.  I was kind of devastated.  She softened the blow with something along the lines that we shouldn't be worried because it hasn't been "very long" and blah blah blah.  I'll be the first one to verbalize that this is all in God's timing and not ours, and that we know it's going to happen sometime but have no idea when, and all that.  But sometimes I just feel like I'm going to burst.  We've been waiting patiently for 81 weeks and counting; I'm ready for our break, already!

Yeah...I know it doesn't work that way.  I know it will happen when it's meant to happen and not a moment sooner.  I know that, when it is all said and done and we're actually in post-placement, this tortuous waiting time will be just another blink of the eye of the past.  But until then, I need to vent every so often or I'm gonna 'splode.

So I will try not to think about how I've now lost track of the number of people I know in real life who have become pregnant and given birth in the last 81 weeks, because that makes me feel jealous, and I don't like feeling jealous.  I will try not to question whether I should have tried to treat my uterine fibroids and severe endometriosis with something less drastic than a hysterectomy in the hopes that if I still had a uterus, maybe I still would've been able to get pregnant, because that makes me feel regretful, and I don't like feeling regretful.  I will try not to wonder if our portfolio was "too much" of something or "not enough" of something else and that is why people are looking at it but not choosing us, because I poured my heart and soul into those pages and I know in my heart of hearts that it says exactly what it needs to say to the right person.  Because I know this isn't about finding just any person, it's about finding the right person.

Often times, well-intentioned people ask us if we've considered routes other than open domestic adoption.  I know they mean well; I know they're just trying to help, because the idea of waiting 81 weeks and counting for something is hard to fathom.  I would do the same thing.  So to those people I reply, we have considered other options.  Before we went to our first informational meeting about open domestic adoption, we considered many other options (foster-to-adopt, international adoption, surrogacy, etc...).  We talked about them, prayed about them, discussed the pros and cons of alternate routes, and in the end we reached the same conclusion.  And here we are.  Had we gone another route, we might have another child by now...but, for our own very personal reasons, we chose this route on our journey -- and we stand firmly behind that decision.  It's hard to explain that our journey isn't about adding another child to our family as quickly as possible (although the fact that we didn't start this journey until our DS was 14 years old should be a glaring clue...).  It goes much deeper than that.  All that being said, I still love it when people ask if we've heard anything new lately, and I eagerly await the day when my answer will be something other than, "No, nothing yet."  :)

In other news... well, since the last time I wrote in here, DS celebrated his 16th birthday, completed behind-the-wheel training, and is now a licensed driver!  Scary?  You betcha!!  Not because of his driving; I did teach him a fair amount of what he knows, so I know that he's a good, level-headed, careful driver.  (Sometimes too careful -- he lost points on his exam for going too far under the speed limit!  Just like his Mom.  I was like that at first, too.  Heh.)  But scary because I know for a fact that it's not usually things under your control that cause accidents.  And scary because it's a definite step toward grown-upedness, which coincides with realizing we're old enough to have a child that's getting closer to being a grown-up.  There's this whole big paradigm shift when your child no longer needs you to chauffeur him around from place to place...it's like this whole block in your schedule opens up, and instead of getting out of bed to drive the kid to school in your pajamas on your day off, you get to stay in bed and wake up only enough to acknowledge him when he knocks on your door to tell you he's leaving.  It's strange.  For 16 years, one of my primary jobs has been making sure the child gets to where he needs to be when he needs to be there, and now, he can do that himself.  It's a milestone, for sure.

Anyway...I guess that's about all for now.  As always, I hope to have more interesting updates soon!  Until then, please keep our family, and all of the other waiting families out there, in your thoughts and prayers.  And also pray for the families of the ones who find themselves unexpectedly pregnant and not sure what to do about it... pray that they will realize that there are families like us "out there" who are waiting with every ounce of patience we can muster, to help them in their times of need.  Let them know they're not alone.  Let them know they just need to reach out, and He will lead them to us.

See ya next time!

Another year over, a new one's just begun...

Happy New Year!! And since I missed it, Happy (belated) Thanksgiving and Merry (belated) Christmas, too.

I seemed to be lacking in the so-called "Christmas Spirit" this year, and I'm not exactly sure why.  I barely decorated the house...put our little Charlie-Brown tree in the window (and I can't even take credit for that, because I delegated that task to DS), taped the Christmas cards to the wall as they arrived, and got the red shiny tablecloth out on Christmas Eve.  I didn't even put any lights up in the windows this year, which is always my favorite part of decorating.  I guess it's not so bad, though...when I decide it's time to un-decorate, I have about five minutes' worth of deconstruction to do.  And I will probably delegate that to DS, because I don't like going into the cave-like basement.  Happy Holidays!!!  :)

In adoption news...nothing new to report.  Absolutely, positively, NOTHING.  I don't even have any updates from our case worker, because she's been out on maternity leave since the beginning of November.  (The irony of having an adoption case worker who is out on maternity leave has not escaped me.)  There is someone taking her place, of course, but I haven't contacted that person because I'm sure they're very busy, doing their own job and trying to cover for our worker as well.

I don't know if it's just because it's a new year, which makes me feel like wiping the old one off the books and gives me a new sense of hope in "starting new", but I feel like this is going to be a good year.  For one thing, it's the Chinese Year of the Horse.  Horses are my favorite animals; thus, I'm taking that as a sign.  (On a side note, DH, DS and I were all born in Years of the Tiger, or how ever that should be worded.)  It would be just perfect if our next child was born in the Year of the Horse.  The next Tiger year is 2022, so, yeah...

Another thing is, I've had this undeniable urge to go baby furniture shopping lately.  I mean, more than usual.  :)  I'll admit, at first I was all gung-ho for it, and couldn't wait to go pick out cribs and bedding and car seats and all that.  But then, the novelty faded and so did the urge to shop.  But suddenly, it's picked up again.  I want to get the room fixed up.  I would suppose this is almost like nesting, but I'm only speculating because I never had the nesting instinct before I birthed DS.  Well, if I did, it was probably buried in the fact that we moved to a new house two weeks before he was born!

But the one big thing that stuck out for me, is that one morning when I was drifting off to sleep (remember, I work mostly overnights...), I was bouncing around in that state of semi-consciousness, where your rambling thoughts start to meld with your dreamy-time thoughts and disorientation takes over before pulling you away to solemn slumber, when suddenly and vividly, a series of numbers popped into my head.  I could see them, larger than life, and heard my inner voice repeating them over and over.  I tried to dismiss it as a dreamy-time thing at first, but it wouldn't go away.  All I could hear was my internal voice repeating the set of numbers, over and over.  I was shocked back into awakedness, it was so vivid and urgent; and when I was fully conscious, it was clear that the numbers could easily be a date and time.  I wrote them down (well, typed them into a note on my smartphone, which is the technologically-advanced equivalent of writing things down for me) and as soon as I had done so, the sense of urgency passed and I was able to get back to sleep quickly.

I'm not going to share what those numbers were, though.  Sorry!  I just don't want to obsess over it.  (Too late!!!)  I mean, and I know I'm going out on a limb here, but I could be overreacting.  :)  It was just so in-my-face, and I've been praying for a sign or something, and I don't want to assume that was a sign but, yeah.  I'll quit rambling now.

My point being, I have a good feeling about this year.  Maybe this will be the year our birthmother needs us.  I can only continue to hope and pray, and ask our friends and other loved ones to do the same!

In other news...nothing much to report there, either.  I'm so tired of winter already that I'm not even going to talk about how our high temperature on Monday is supposed to be in the negative double digits (Fahrenheit), or how it was 20ºF this morning when we got up and that actually felt WARM.  I've been working a lot, DH has been working a lot, DS is doing well in school and band and choir and everything else in which he's involved.  Speaking of DS, he turns 16 in a week from Monday.  Can you believe that craziness?!  I'm not old enough to have a 16-year-old.  ;)  He's a busy sophomore, that's for sure.  And tall!!  The child is 6ft 2in now, and still has some growing to do.  DH is just a smidge under 6 feet tall and I'm only 5ft 5in.  I never really considered myself "short"...my Mom and sister are both around 5ft 3in'ish, so compared to them I was The Tall One...so this is a new experience for me.  :)

Well, I wish I had more to share right now, but I just don't.  Thank you for keeping us in your thoughts and prayers...one of these days we'll get that call, I just know it!!!