A Baby Shower and a Camel

This weekend I was able to enjoy a baby shower.  Usually, baby showers hurt, because well...they aren't being thrown for us.  Yesterday I went to my friend Amanda's baby shower.  We met in 2000 while going to school at UGA.  We have been through a lot together (and a lot apart at times).  When Amanda told me she was pregnant, we were already well into our adoption journey.  She told me over dinner during one of our dinner and Target shopping excursions.  I had ordered a glass of wine and she said she couldn't have alcohol, per her doctor's orders.  Knowing that Amanda loves a good glass of wine, I assumed the worst. Well, luckily she was as healthy as ever and had a much happier reason to skip the wine.  She told me and I was genuinely happy.  I teared up out of joy instead of sadness or jealousy (Go me!)  I am not going to say I never struggled with the fact that she is pregnant and I am sitting around with a bunch of unused baby stuff, but the feeling is different with her.  Maybe because I just want her family to be happy and she is already such a good mom to her 4 year old daughter.

So, the baby shower.  Baby showers have been hard the last few years.  I go and I smile and am happy for the parents to be, but then I go home and cry or eat as much chocolate as I can to forget that it just hasn't happened for us yet.  This time was different.  I genuinely wanted to be there, I had a good time and didn't feel sadness.  I came home and still felt good about it all.  Something that I feel made all of the difference was that she acknowledged that it has been hard and will be hard for me to be around all of the baby prep and excitement.  She called me aside when I got there and handed me a card.  I thought maybe it was a belated birthday card or another invitation to a second shower.  I had no idea what was coming.  She gave me a thank you card.  It said that she knew it isn't easy, but she appreciated the support during her pregnancy.  Just....wow.  Thank you Amanda, not many people even acknowledge the adoption to my face.  I think people are scared that I will be sensitive if they bring it up (I wont be! Seriously, let's chat about it!).  Really, it is nice to know that people think about it and think of me as "mom to be".

I have a couple of pictures from the shower to share:

Amanda and the diaper "cake"

 

Actual Cake.  It was amazing.

For your comic relief.  This happened at work: 

Camels at work. It ate poop right after this, so we are no longer friends.

 

I had some other stuff to type but blogger is being finicky and frustrating right now, so I am giving up.  Apparently the other subjects were not meant to be on today's blog post.  

As always, we are hopelessly hopeful that our baby will join us soon. 

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!

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!

Grad School- With a Heavy and Relieved Heart

I have to get something off of my chest.  I am only two semesters into grad school and have already decided that I will take at least the summer off.  I am also considering withdrawing from one of my two courses this semester.  I have to decide by March 6 in order to just get a W and not a WF.  The class in question (photography in instruction) is stressing me out so badly.  I literally feel sick about it every time I think about what all I have to do in a short time.  The problem is, if I intend on finishing the program, I will still have to take it eventually.  I have really overloaded myself this time.  So here is my real confession...

I hate this program!  I spoke to the faculty before I ever applied and they assured me that the courses were intended not only for K-12 educators (which I am not) but also for people looking to get into professional development and community education, both career options that I have considered.  Well, the courses are so focused on K-12 that I find a lot of the assignments make no sense for anything I want to do.  There is a lot of applying professional standards for K-12, a lot of lesson plans with no direction on how to make a lesson plan, which of course many of my classmates do DAILY for their jobs.  I feel as if the program needed more students, so they decided to expand it to professional development, community education etc...  In actuality, you really need to have a background in teaching to really get the most out of the coursework. 

It isn't that I am not doing well, I have really good grades.  I just don't care about the subject matter and I don't see the benefit of it long term.  Now, that being said, I am going to give summer off a try and if I decide to go back fall, I will.  I am also going to keep an eye open for other programs that I could start maybe Fall 2015ish.  There are studies that show that if you have graduate degree, it is more likely that your children will too.  I just want to set a good example.  I also realized that more than anything, I try and try to prove to myself and others that people with kidney transplants can succeed and even excel.  I have always been really hard on myself to try and not appear to be the weak person.  I always feel like I have to be a role model for other people who need transplants.  The  best way I can show my strength at this point is to make this difficult decision.

How does this tie into adoption you ask (adoption blog .. yada yada yada...) Well, adoption is stressful!!!  No joke, I don't care if your skin is a mile thick and you heart is made of steel, it is hard.  Emotionally, psychologically, financially etc.  So I think right now I need to focus on the adoption.  I need to focus on getting us noticed and preparing to bring a baby home.  I need to focus on John and I having a strong relationship.  I have let my exercise routine slip and I started that whole thing to be healthy and live SOOO LONG for our child.  In my heart I know that this is the right thing to do. 

Today, my mom and I went shopping for some more baby supplies that we can pack in a "get away" bag.  Just in case we don't have a lot of notice.  Hey, you never know!  My real homework is to be the best prepared I can be for this adoption! 

A Little Adoption Q&A

Throughout the last (almost) year, people have had a lot of questions for me about adoption.  I thought it would be nice to field some of the questions on the blog.  I intended for John and I to answer them together, but due to the increase in the popularity of curling, he has been pretty busy with the club. These are my thoughts, but I ran them by him and he said he was cool with what I said.

What kind of adoption do you want?  Open.. closed.. shared...
We are working with an agency who specializes in open adoption.  Our hope is to have a completely open adoption, where we and our child have access to the birth family.  This is psychologically best for the child and that is our main focus.  Whether we keep in contact through photos and emails or frequent visits, we would like some sort of openness.  I realize that there is no way to predict what kind of relationship we will have with our child's birth mom, so we are willing to deal with whatever comes our way, while promoting complete openness.

Does the age of the child matter?
Our agency specializes in newborn adoption in the US.  This means that most are placed at birth, in the hospital.  We agreed to up to a year on our profile, in case a situation like that comes up, but that is not the norm at our agency.

Does the race of the child matter? 
We are open to all races, except Native American.  This is not because we don't want to have a Native American baby placed with us, but there are some real legal issues with it.  There have to be tribal clearances and they are considered more risky placements, since the tribe can try to disrupt the adoption.  In an ideal world, we would be open to them as well, but it is extra stress that we are not prepared for.

Do you plan on telling the baby that he or she is adopted?  If so, when and how do you plan on approaching the subject?
Yes!  Let's put it this way, there is never going to be a time when our child is not going to know that he or she is adopted.  We will always be completely honest about it.  I know it is a difficult concept for a small child to grasp, but if we raise our kid surrounded by positive adoption language and open dialog about it, there should be a slow immersion into knowing.  We also have some books aimed at very small children that explain adoption in way that is age appropriate.  Since we are planning on an open adoption, it is likely that our child will know his/her birth mother or other birth family member, so that is pretty much a dead give away right?   No secrets in the Farrar household! 

How did you come up with decor ideas for the nursery? 
There isn't really a rhyme or reason to it.  If i had to pick a theme, I would say "calm".  We picked the light green color, because it is soothing and gender neutral.  We can't really pick anything for a boy or girl specifically, so right now it is a little bare.  I picked the Peter Rabbit bedding, because I loved Beatrix Potter as a kid.  I splurged on it, because a)it felt right and b) it was good quality and the quilt can be used for years and years (special blanky?), unlike a lot of the sets you can get at places like Babie R Us or Burlington.  Other than that, if we see something that jumps out at us, we get it. 

Formula or donated breast milk?
The plan is for our baby tobe formula fed.  I wont get too far into this topic, because people can really get heated about it.

Do you plan on making your own baby food?
The answer is yes, the intention is there.  I can't say there wont be a jar or so mixed in when life gets busy, but I do intend on making it all myself.  That is how I will spend my Sundays probably.  Steaming, blending and freezing the week's baby food.  

Where would you like to take your kid on vacation?
Fun question!  We do love vacations!  We try to go to the beach or mountains about once a year.  We both grew up going to similar beach towns in Florida, so we will definitely be continuing that tradition with our kid.  We are in a great location to access a lot of vacation spots in the south.  We can get to beaches in 5 hours or less, mountains in less than 2 hours and live 30 minutes away from the busiest international airport in the world. 
I have big dreams of taking our kid on vacations to London, Paris, Sydney, etc.  I want our child to experience the cultures of other countries.  John is only just now warming up to my personal wanderlust, but I think these trips will be amazing opportunities for all of us. 
Oh and let's not forget Disney World!  One of the best parts of having a kid is getting to experience Disney World all over again!

How do you think your life will change the most after your child comes into your life?
How will it not change?  Haha.  Well, first of all, there will be someone else in our family to love like crazy.  Really there will probably be multiple new people in our family to love like crazy, since we are looking to do an option adoption.  Also,  going out will take more planning!  We will have to always think of our kid first and ourselves last.  We kind of are already in that mindset really.  There is nothing we aren't willing to give up for this though.

How would you define your potential parenting style (and how do you think that might change over time)?
John is the calmest person I know.  He is super laid back and logical.  I think his parenting style will represent that.  I am more ...uptight, no....well, maybe a little more protective and slightly less relaxed.  I think overall our parenting styles will be relaxed though.  We want to raise a strong, independent person, so we can't be too overprotective! I am sure there will be plenty of reminding myself to let go a little! 

Who knows how that will change over time.  I think probably your style gets more relaxed as you learn your child's habits and personality.  There are so many factors, that it is hard to predict how you may or may not be.

How do you think the adoption process has strained and/or strengthened your relationship with John?
This is a very complex question, which has a complex answer.  Though we are on the same page in what we want, we do not deal with the wait the same way.  Like I have mentioned before, John is super calm.  Lucky him, he married someone who is guided by her emotions and gut feelings.  John looks at things in a more sequential way... like these are the stats and figures and will worry about stuff once we fall outside of those lines.  I am more like, holy crap, this feels like forever and these are comments people rudely make, and why is my brain doing this to me!??!  So you can see why there could be some head butting!  With that being said, I do think our relationship is being made stronger.  If we can get through infertility, kidney transplant and adoption, we can get through anything right?  John is my rock and my sense of calm.  Without him, I would probably be much more intense.  Can you imagine?

I bet you will get pregnant as soon as you adopt your baby?  What would you do then?
Um.. nope.  Just nope.  It is statistically next to impossible for that to happen, because my body is kind of a jerk.  We are happy with our plan to adopt and proper precautions are being taken to prevent that "miracle baby" people often tell me I will have (still...not possible).  My medications will also not support a pregnancy at this point, so just NOPE.

When can we throw you a baby shower?
After baby is home and we are out of the revocation period.  Until that time, we probably wont even announce that our baby has been born.  The revocation period is a period of time that the birth mom has to change her mind after signing the relinquishment.  The length of time varies from state to state.  Some states have no revocation period, some have a very long one, like 30 days or more.  Our baby will be in attendance of his or her own shower.  I think announcing a birth and then having to say it didn't happen would be too hard on us.  Thank you for the thought!  I can't wait for the day we do get to have a baby shower!

So, those are the questions I received.  I combined some that were similar to save space.  Thank you all for sending them and being so awesome.  Next week we are meeting with our super supportive adoption coordinator to talk about where we stand at this point and what we can do to move it along.  Next month we have to start renewing that mountain of paperwork that we conquered last year in order to keep our home study up to date.  Fun times! 

If people keep sending questions, I can do a part II later on.  Thanks for reading!

It's A Snow (Rain) Day

So, one weird thing about living in the Atlanta area is that everyone completely freaks out at the tiniest hint of winter weather.  A couple of weeks ago, we had a storm that we were not prepared for on a city or state level.  This resulted in what they are calling "Snow Jam 2014".  All of the major interstates we at a standstill due to ice and all of the schools and business letting out at the same time.  I know people who literally spent hours upon hours in their cars, trying to sleep, scrounging for those old water bottles that slip under your car seats and cuddling up with each other for warmth after they ran out of gas. 

Well, we had another watch that started last night/this morning, so many school and businesses closed, including my office.  So far it is only raining and the temperature is nowhere near freezing, but I am not complaining.  I finished about 40% of a paper I was super stressed out about for my photography in instruction course.  I watched 1.5 movies on Netflix (one was terrible, so it had to go unfinished) and I am about to work out for a little while.  It's terrible, the older I get, the harder I have to work to get any results.  I wonder if it will be even harder to get/stay in shape at 34, which is less than a month away.  34 years old... oh my god, how did that happen? 

John's work pretty much never closes, since it is a grocery store.  John is a manager and being there for this sort of "weather crisis", which will probably hit more tomorrow than today, is part of his job duties.  There is no snow day unless he literally cannot get there due to road conditions. Hopefully if we get iced in, we keep power.  Our lines aren't buried in our neighborhood, so I think we are a little more at risk for a power outage.  I am kind of at a "I have to see it to believe it" about tomorrow's ice storm, since today's snow fall didn't happen.  They keep saying that the situation has so many factors that the forecast is changing every three hours.  Is that their way of saying they have no idea and don't want to be wrong again?  Yeah, I think so!

The adoption is going well I suppose.  No real changes and no contacts from potential birth mothers.  Some people get tons of contacts before "the one" and some only get one ever that turns out to be "the one".  We will have to start renewing paperwork in a couple of months.  Every year you have to make sure all of the background checks and medical stuff is current or else your home study lapses and you are no longer eligible to adopt if someone does want place their baby with you.  We bought a few things to pack in the case that someone who is due more or less immediately contacts us.  We didn't get anything that would expire, but just a few little things to make getting ready easier if we have to get up and go.  Maybe if we are super prepared, the universe will do us a solid and bring our baby to us.  Nothing wrong with putting that thought out there right? 

I am missing John and wishing he was home today.  Normally I would be at work too, so I wouldn't be sitting around the house thinking about that.  I have some stuff I want to do in the nursery and I did take pictures of what we have done so far, but I can't decide if it is a good idea to post them on the blog, since it could seem weird to potential birth mothers.  I mean, I guess it shouldn't matter, because it shows how much the baby that we don't even have yet is already loved (thanks Erin for that!).  We really are already so in love with our future baby, we just can't put a face or name- though we have names lined up as possibilities- to him or her yet.  I will think about posting pictures.  I just want to be respectful the expectant mother's emotions as well. 

I could sit here and let my thoughts spill out all day, but I wont.  Going to get my work out on and then work on those nursery details.  I hope everyone stays safe and warm!

Being "Electronically" or "Paper" Pregnant - Fun Times!

Once upon a time, when you were an approved waiting adoptive couple (or single), you were considered paper pregnant.  This term came about because your paperwork was all approved and ready for a match that resulted in a baby.  Now that times have changed and most everything is done via this crazy thing I like to call the interwebs (nerd alert!), I like to call it being electronically pregnant.  Being electronically pregnant for an undetermined amount of time requires patience and plenty of distractions.  I have found that the best way to distract myself from this extended state of waiting is to try and do as many of the things I would do if I was actually pregnant.  Here is where I let on that I am overly confident that this will work out for us in a decent amount of time and therefore nesting doesn't depress me like it does some waiting parents.

One of the best ways I have found to "nest" is to work on the nursery little by little.  Early in the fall, my mom and I painted the purple room (former owners had grand kids) a nice gender neutral light green.  Nearly 3 coats of paint later, only the inside of the closet remains purple.  Who paints the closet anything but white anyway?! We have received a lot of baby supplies from my brother and sister in law, since my nephew is now two and doesn't need stuff like bouncers, carriers or activity centers.  My parents bought us a crib as a gift and I splurged on bedding, since we saved so much by receiving gifts and hand me downs.  The room is fairly close to being done, but I always find little things to add like the owl doorknobs I posted previously.

I am trying to be crafty.  I have a number of little projects that I want to do either for the nursery or just because.  I am one of those people that if I don't do it well right away, I get fed up and find something I can actually do.  When I was a kid, I dropped out of ballet, piano lessons, girl scouts, every club I ever joined, and as an adult, I have yet to take full advantage of a gym membership.  Reflecting back on it, I probably would be a much more interesting person had I stuck with some of those things.  I have two pieces of furniture I want to redo, an adoption related quote that I want to put on a canvas or blanket or something, and ultimately it would be nice to paint that purple closet!  Hoping for a bit of inspiration to get moving on those things.  Any volunteers to help out?  I will provide pizza or burritos...mmm burritos.

It is also fun to imagine the things we will do with a third family member in tow.  Now that we are actively waiting, it is easy to let your mind wander when you travel or go to local attractions.  We find ourselves saying "When our kid is here... or This will be so cool when...".  Just seeing the zoo through my nephew's eyes last month  made me appreciate a side of it that I hadn't since I was a kid.  The way he plays even makes me appreciate that my front yard can become an arena for dino ball (Dinosaur Train reference).  I am looking forward to riding the kiddie rides at amusement parks and going to kid movies at the theater (though really, let's face it, I do that anyway).  

My favorite part of the wait is how enthusiastic people get about it.  I know in previous posts I have talked about how some people just don't even bring it up, but really those people are in the minority.  Most people want to know updates (hence the blog, FB page, etc).  My coworkers are always asking me "When are you going to get your baby?  Will you bring the baby in to work when you finally have it?".  I have friends, coworkers and family members itching to buy baby clothes and toys.  I have people offering up suggestions on formula, diapers, baby wash, making my own baby food etc.  I am pretty sure our baby will be spoiled by everyone.  Spoiled, but hopefully not too spoiled, we shall see.  This is a long awaited baby, so I can't promise there wont be too much spoiling.  I always want to talk about the adoption, so I enjoy people bringing it up and acting excited about it. 

I think I have said before that meeting other people in the adoption process has been such a positive aspect of this experience.  I can't stress that enough.  I know quite a few people now who are waiting and even know some who have had babies placed with them and are enjoying life as parents now.  I am thinking of hosting a sort of coffee shop support group or get together for all of us.  We have an official support group once a month at IAC, which is awesome, but I think it would be fun to have an unofficial group for people who are still waiting and who have adopted already.  We can talk about adoption related stuff or ideas for raising kids or even just music/books/work etc.. We can meet for drinks without the kids or meet at the park on the days people want to bring them.  I will have to take a poll and see who is up for it!

Lastly, here are a couple of thoughts on focus.  Normally, every year my National Kidney Foundation walking team, The Walking Beans, does the kidney walk.  We normally raise over $1000 for kidney disease awareness and related programs.  I really want the Walking Beans to walk again this year, but I am struggling with finding the time to be captain of the team.  It takes time to do fundraising.  I am not sure that my brain can focus on another thing.  I am taking two graduate level classes, keeping up with our adoption stuff and working full time.  Through all of this, I am trying to keep some sort of social life, because all work and no play makes Sarah kind of nuts.  For real, I get weird without some relaxation and recreation.  Like ponder the meaning of life and become introverted weird.  I just can't imagine a kidney walk passing by without our team walking!  I feel like that would make me sad in the long run.  Who wants to be team captain this year?! I can try not to micromanage you!