You know how the president has the state of the union address and governors are always having state of the states, well I have decided that atleast monthly, I will give a state of the adoption address. Since we have started telling people I get lots of questions wanting updates so here seems like as appropriate place as any to give said update. Besides my blog is becoming a little too Shakespearean (much ado about nothing.) So here we go, our next step isn't until June 1st and 2nd when Jay and I will spend 2 days in OKC for a mandatory class taught by our agency. Hopefully, they will provide us with more details on what to expect and where to go from here. Once we complete the class, we will begin the Home Study Process. It seems that these vary much from agency to agency but involve much more that I had originally gathered from the name. It seems to be somewhat of an ongoing thing with mental evaluations, background checks, criminal checks, more financial records and finally a one or more actual visits to our house. A lot of this information we had supplied as part of our initial application. My understanding is this will just dig deeper into each of these subjects including our marriage and our relationship with Brooke. I am trying not to worry about it - I think we will be great adoptive parents - we have a good marriage, a nice (albeit small) home and are as financially secure as one can be these days. Still, I worry. How can I not??
Once the homestudy is complete, we pay an activation fee and submit our personal bios, family album and Dear Birth Mother letter. At this point our agency will actively share our information with prospective birth mothers. Hopefully, one will choose us soon! At this point, our agency said the wait is somewhere between 2 weeks and 2 years. Both timeframes scare me. I am not sure which one more. Once we are chosen we just wait for our little bundle of joy to be born. In almost all cases, we would take our baby home straight from the hospital. That kinda scares me too since with this agency, we know our baby will be born in Deaconess Hospital in OKC. I can't imagine driving 3 hours home with a BRAND NEW baby! Someone had better be prepared to give me some valium because I can hear myself now asking Jay to slow down and be careful every 2 minutes!

One of the things J and I have talked about it is what to do for a nursery and when to do it. A lot of agencies require the nursery to be complete before the homestudy (we don't know about ours). As excited as I am, I don't want to stare at an empty nursery for 2 years! However, I kinda did a bad thing. We bought a crib. Before we lost our last baby, Jay and I had picked out a crib - a ridiculously expensive, gorgeous crib. We loved it but knew we couldn't justify that kind of money on something that would only be used so little. Well, by chance, we were back at the same store a couple of weeks ago. turns out, they had discontinued this line - "our" crib was marked down 50%!! Jay and I talked about it but decided that was crazy - its too early. Later that night, i was reading my Adoption for Dummies book (no, I am not kidding) it had a great line in it saying getting the nursery ready was ok to do once you have agency approval - it could help ease the wait. It also reminded me that adoption is not like trying to conceive where you just don't know if you will ever have a baby. With adoption, you know it, you just don't know when. Very comforting words to me. Very comforting. We bought the crib. We aren't going to put it up as a matter of fact it is still at the store waiting to be picked up. Its just nice to know we have it.

So that kinda brings us up-to-date on our state of the adoption address. Thanks for reading!!