May the Force Be With You!

Waffles sporting the Yoda baby hat

I mean, really, is a blog post needed after that picture?  I am pretty sure that sums it all up...

One of my best friends and former roommate Katie knitted our future baby a Yoda hat.  Seriously, she oozes talent.  She has a pastry degree, is artistic, is a wonderful mom to her son Xander, and now she knits.  Being the childless woman that I am, I did what any other sane person would do and stuck it on my cat.  I had to test it out right?  In the picture above, Waffles was frozen in fear or in some sort of stunned state of paralysis.  For about five minutes after, we were enemies.  Luckily, Waffles is our least intelligent cat and promptly forgot all about it.  This means I slept with 10 lbs of cat on my face again last night.

But wait!  It doesn't stop there!  She also knitted me a hat.  A grumpy cat hat.  Brace yourselves.

Nice image quality Sarah...

Um, so awesome!  Sorry for the grainy photo, I used the reverse facing camera on my phone so I could tell if I was getting the ears in the picture.  One of the best parts of these gifts is that I came home to them on my doorstep.  I love getting snail mail and packages for real.  I don't love that Katie moved to Philadelphia, but I do love that she mails things.  I was having a really hard week, really down on that old familiar stagnant adoption process feeling I often talk about.  This absolutely changed my attitude.  Who can feel down when they have friends that will do this for them?  Here is another look at the Yoda hat, sans cat.

Speaking of friends... My sister in law Heather and I had a very successful combined birthday party last Saturday.  We both made a bunch of fancy snacks, stocked up on beverages and invited some of our favorite people.  I believe we had close to 20 people at the house!  That is pretty good for a house party.  I got to show off the nursery progress to those who were into that.  I got to hold our friend Vicky's new baby Connor, good lord he is so cute!  I believe he is around 4 months old.  Nothing but roly poly baby chunk and smiles.  Love it.

Heather and I had a little too much fun with the Publix cake ordering catalog and ended up with this:

Hang in there!

Thanks for the picture Stephen!  It is a cat with a ball of yarn, apparently Heather's dream cake for years.  We got the bakery to add "Hang in there" for added confusion.  Our friends appreciate our sense of humor, so it wasn't too weird when the cake came out.  Anyway, the party was a lot of fun.  We got to hang out with people we hadn't seen in a while and I got to mark "have any party at the house" of my master to-do list.  It was literally on the ongoing list I keep for life experiences.

The adoption is going.  Just going.  On March 23, which is Sunday, we will have been active with our agency for 6 months.  Again, way under the average wait time, but it still doesn't feel great.  You can always convince yourself that you are way cooler than other people and will be chosen quickly, but the truth is that there is no rhyme or reason to being chosen by a birth mother.  Being cool or young or whatever doesn't always have anything to do with it.  After reading about how some birth mothers picked their child's adoptive parents, it can be anything from hair color to location to it coming down to a gut feeling.  It will happen, we just have to be patient.

We did have a woman (I guess, it was online so could have been a man) attempt to start trying to scam us.  Well, I don't know all of the facts and she very well may have been pregnant, but her story wasn't adding up.  The timeline was all off and she said she was already talking to a family that may not "stick".  In the end, it didn't feel genuine.  Even if she was pregnant (again timeline didn't add up on this though) another couple thought she was working with them and it felt really wrong.  The things she said contained so many of the red flags we are taught to look out for, well, because there are a lot of people who are out to scam waiting adoptive families.  Mind blowing right?  They will scam you for money or for attention.  Like this process isn't difficult enough already, you have to be on high alert for scammers?  Awesome.

So, what is coming up?  Just home study renewal stuff.  Our physicals expire in April, as do the cats vaccinations.  In May a ton of stuff expires, so that should be fun.  I signed up for the Run for Your Life, Donate Life 5K, which is April 26th.  It benefits organ donation awareness.  The kidney walk is May 31st.  We are going to Wilmington, NC in June for a curling event with the Atlanta Curling Club... assuming we don't have baby by then.  I would be willing to skip the trip for that!

It's almost time for work to start, so until next time- we are EVER HOPEFUL and excited that this adoption will happen soon!