March Updates and How I Learned to Love the South

Hello followers!  I do indeed have followers.  I have to say that the interest in this blog has shocked me a bit.  I am so grateful that people enjoy reading and sharing it.  I love feedback, so feel free to leave comments or suggest topics that I should cover.  I have a few updates about the adoption and life in general.

The biggest thing going on is that we have our big fat list of home study renewal documents to get through.  The hardest part of that is scheduling everything to be approved at approximately the same time, so god forbid if we have to renew next year, we wont have to renew pieces of it even earlier.  Our actual home study wont expire until June or July, but we have certain things like the FBI and GBI background checks and the health physicals that will expire starting April or May.  We may even be a bit late with the FBI check since it can take up to 12 weeks.  No pressure or anything! We may just have to take a day off and knock as much out as possible.  We will have to have another home visit this summer, which really isn't as bad as it sounds.  There is a lot of sitting around talking about parenting styles and relationship stuff.

So, one exciting thing happened at the beginning of the month.  Well, exciting and really really stressful.  We had a call for a last minute hospital placement.  Unfortunately, there were issues that went a little beyond what we can handle at this time.  After speaking to some contacts we have in the medical profession and sleeping (yeah right) on it, we had to turn the situation down.  It was not easy!  We both felt pretty heartbroken over it, but it just wasn't our baby.  Someone else out there who has been waiting and waiting hopefully now has that baby.  Our adoption profile is so open that we can get calls about babies that have some pretty significant health issues.  This situation kind of went beyond the examples of significant health issues they listed on the form.  It is just a matter of what we feel we can handle.   Both of our gut feelings said the baby wasn't the one for us and we weren't the parents for her either.  She was meant for someone else. I feel at peace with it. 

That being said, this gave us hope!  We are on the radar, we know that more situations will come up, if we aren't contacted by a birth mom before then.  I think it happened to remind us that we are on the right path.  It is so easy to question yourself when the future is so open ended.  We were reminded that it could happen literally over night!  We have gathered some more emergency "go get baby" supplies and I have a pretty decent looking diaper bag on the way from Amazon.  I wanted something that didn't scream diaper bag and something that John would feel comfortable carrying around.  It is red and black ... UGA colors! We also received our first non-family baby gift!  My co-worker got us a travel set of baby products in case we have to go in a hurry!  So awesome.  Picture below!

This is my excited face!  Thanks Crystal!

So about living in the south.  I was born and raised in Georgia.  Of course this left me wondering how it would be to live elsewhere- west coast or even another country.  When I was growing up, I found myself embarrassed of southern accents and typical southern things.  I just took a walk around outside and felt the warmth (finally!) of the air and noticed all of the trees swaying in the breeze.  I remembered being a kid and playing as hard as I could outside before my parents called me in for dinner.  To me, the south is fireflies, spring storms, good food and friendly neighbors.  It is about sweltering hot summers and being only hours from beaches and mountains.  It is about living where some of our country's most interesting (both good and bad) history took place.  I feel pride about being from the south these days and I even let bits of my southern accent slip out here and there.

North Ave. can even be pretty

Lake Allatoona during a run

 
Speaking of southern things, we saw Once at the fabulous Fox Theatre last Thursday (southern because the Fox is a historic Atlanta landmark- I mean really, I needed a good way to ease into writing about the show).  It was really good, I just had to let my brain release itself from the movie.  The movie is possibly my favorite movie next to High Fidelity (John Cusack for the win!).  The movie is much more serious and romantic... not between the people, but romantic towards the music and life.  I have a bad habit of romanticizing life based on music I love and then feeling disappointed when things don't turn out quite so deep and meaningful.  I kind of felt that way about the play.  It just wasn't as I expected it.  BUT it was still pretty awesome.  We got to be on stage for the first 3 songs!  They had a bar on stage and our usher said if we went straight up there, we could buy a drink and stay up there for a bit.  We ran into people we know from the curling club up there and got to be pub patrons in the show.  It was pretty cool to see the audience from the performers point of view!  I had urges to act out to get attention while on stage... my best/worst attempt at River Dance?  What does that say about me?  Glad my impulse control mechanism works pretty well.  I would like to see a day where people lose the ability to control their silly impulses.  Nothing bad like the impulse to punch someone, just the ones that make you want to sing at the top of your lungs or break out in dance in public.  Randomly meow or hiss?  Let out your best maniacal laughter? 

Once at the Fox!

 Tuesday is my 34th birthday.  It is also my mom's birthday.  Yep, I was born on her birthday and she promptly lost her birthday until I was old enough to go celebrate on my own.  We are both taking off of work and want to go do something fun during the day.  Any suggestions?  She is going to the High Museum of Art  Saturday, so that is out.  We did the aquarium and Fernbank last year, but I wouldn't rule those out again.  John and I are missing IAC support group again this month since it is my birthday.  I feel bad about it, because I really love to go and stay in touch with everyone.  Any Atlanta people want to have an adoption coffee meet up this month?  Waiting families or families who have already adopted?

I am having a little (well kind of getting big) birthday shindig (you know you are getting older when you refer to your party as a shindig) combined with my sister in law Heather this Saturday.  Her birthday is right after mine, so why not combine the two?  We just wanted to have some friends over to hang out and catch up.  Good friends and good music.  Yes please!

I'm ending this with the usual..  we are ever hopeful and excited about this adoption!  Until next time!