Updates: Basement & Adoption

Hello faithful readers, I hope and trust that you had a wonderful Christmas!

Basement:

We’ve finished tiling the bathroom, now all I have to do is clean up the grout lines, add grout, seal the stone and grout, add the shower fixtures, toilet, vanity, lights and doors. Ryan’s dad will help with finishing the electrical that needs to be done (switches, outlets, lights). I love having talented parents who are able to help near by 🙂 Still feels like we are far away from the finish line with all the little things left – Oh and we need to actually buy a door, but it’s looking awesome and I am very happy with how it’s all coming together.

Family room flooring…my knees and back hurt but it’s coming along! We were able to get two days in with finishing the tiling and starting the flooring. We are using a vinyl plank floating floor for the entire basement (family room, bathroom, hallway, 4th bedroom, stairs and entry landing), right now we are almost done with the family room. We need to add treated 2x4s to where we will put the bar and also put in the cabinets and sink before we can finish laying the flooring. Menards and Home Depot are our best friends lately. I will say I’m LOVING the look of the new floor and I can’t wait to have all the trim and doors done. Hunter already loves being able to run around down there and he’s been very ‘helpful‘ during the floor install. We will need to stain the bathroom door, molding, bar and cabinets to match the existing woodwork because I’m not redoing all of that, so still lots to do, but we are getting closer.

I have to say I have some pretty amazing parents! While dad and I were finishing up in the bathroom for tile, mom was cleaning up the family room and starting to paint! And then once dad and I were done with the bathroom mom was pretty much done painting the family room 🙂 Like I said….I have pretty amazing parents and I am SOOOOOO thankful that they’ve been able to come over and help get things finished. Yesterday while dad and I were working on the floor mom was upstairs getting the nursery ready….

Adoption:

So yes, you read that last sentence correctly. BUT please don’t get overly excited just yet. I know you are asking why? Why can’t I jump up and down and get crazy excited…well, lets go back a week or so and give an update on how things have been going 🙂

OK so on December 20th we had the chance to meet an amazing birth mom through our agency. She is wonderful and she is someone I connected with back in October after reading about her in our adoption month end newsletter. At that time she hadn’t decided if she was going to parent of create an adoption plan. On Wednesday, December 19 she was looking through a lot of different family profile books, and she wanted to meet two families. We were one of them (read my last post, more details). We met with her on the 20th and I feel like we all connected right away, our social worker said that she’s never laughed so much in a first meeting — which we took as a good sign.

After our meeting we weren’t sure what to expect or how soon she might be making a decision. A week went by and during that time baby was born, December 26!! Baby is doing wonderfully and is happy and healthy. We found out on Thursday (12/27) that she picked us! How amazingly wonderful is that!!!!!!! We are beyond excited but still guarded — why you may be asking…well we still aren’t sure who the father is, and until then we won’t know if we are able to bring this beautiful child into our home and love them unconditionally as our baby.

Right now we continue to wait, continue to search for bottles, diapers and other essentials that are packed away. (I want to do a little clothes shopping but I’m not going to – as hard as it is.) We hope and pray that the DNA tests comes back quickly but we aren’t sure how long it will take because of the new year holiday coming up. So for right now baby is in a Gentle Transition Home.

We met with the birth mom today, we also met her mom and her two boys. They were able to meet Hunter today as well and we let the boys play and wear each other out — went to the indoor playground in Maple Grove. FYI that place is AWESOME, I see future birthday parties there.  It was a really great meeting and again Ryan and I felt a calmness around us and we didn’t feel stressed out about meeting everyone or seeing the birth mom again. Honestly it’s all about making sure that the baby is taken care of, and I can’t wait to see what the future holds for us all. It’s really hard not to get excited and start planning things, but then we also don’t want to get too excited because we still aren’t sure how this will all end up.

Continued prayers for our birth mom as this is not an easy decision for her, continued prayers for baby and continued prayers for Ryan and I. God already has this little person’s life planned out, we jut don’t know if it is with us or not.

Do not be afraid, for I am with you; I will bring your children from the east and gather you from the west.

Isaiah 43:5

Advertisement

Can you be nervous and calm at the same time…

Oh boy….so tomorrow is a BIG day for us! Tomorrow afternoon we meet the birth mom who really liked our profile book. I think we are a mixed bag of emotions but every time I think about it I feel calmer than I think that I should. I feel like I’m supposed to be all mixed up and freaking out, but I’m not.

I’ve been drawn to this birth mom since October and I’ve only known here form a paragraph in an email update from the agency but when I think about her I pray for her and I feel God around me keeping me calm. I have no idea what will happen tomorrow or how we will feel or how she is feeling but I’m praying that she feels the same calmness that I do and I hope she can feel the prayers we are all saying for her and the decision she will be making.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m nervous — kinda like a blind date sort of nervous — she only knows us from a book and tomorrow we will get to ask each other questions about our families, what we see for this child, how we would raise them. I’m nervous that I won’t answer a question ‘right’, I’m nervous that I will forget to ask something and then think of it tomorrow night as I’m trying to go to bed. Nervous if we look better in the book vs in person 🙂 You know, all the crazy thoughts that run through my mind.

I am really looking forward to meeting her and seeing what she looks like. From what the Expectant Parent Advocate (EPA) has said she is a wonderful person, easy to talk to, easy to like, very open about everything and won’t shy away from questions. We have some questions from the EPA that she may ask us and we will be getting our list together tonight.

Thank you all for the continued prayers as we navigate this adventure! We know that God has a path already set for this little child and for the birth mom — she is an AMAZINGLY STRONG woman and I wish she knew how much we already love her and support her and pray for her.

Tomorrow at 3:15 we will be meeting her!! I can’t wait to update you on how everything went.

We have a meeting with a birth mom this week!!

I’d like to start out by saying THANK YOU to everyone who has been praying for us this week. We have some BIG news (if you didn’t get it from the title)….the birth mom we told you about in the last post looked at 19 different profiles on Wednesday and we are one of her TOP TWO choices!!!

It’s been an exciting and stressful week, we found this out we were one of her choices on Thursday afternoon and on Friday morning we met with our social worker to go over what happens next. It was a really good meeting, we learned a little more of what to expect when we meet with the birth mom next week. One thing she said is that our first meeting with her is kinda like a blind date…

She said that it feels really awkward at first but once conversation starts flowing it’s less awkward. We were told that it may feel like an interview with the typical questions: what do you do for a living, what are some of your favorite things to do as a family, do you have family nearby…and then it will shift to the more serious questions: what level of openness are you open to, how do you want to be involved with this child, do you have a named you’d like the baby to have, are there traditions you’d like us to keep….

There are so many different variables playing into this process that it’s really hard to know where to start and it’s really hard to keep a level head about everything. Ryan and I have said a few times that it feels like we’ve been here so many times (not the adoption side of things but infertility), we’ve been on the edge of waiting that I feel like we should be awarded somehow 🙂 It was, are we pregnant, do we have fertility issues, will this baby stick, how many eggs did we retrieve, how many embryos made it, will we lose another baby….I feel like a lot of the same emotions are tied up to this process as well.

And a LOT of unanswered questions for us: will she like us in person vs our book and letter, will we click right away, is she the birth mom that God has chosen for us – if so will we become fast friends and comfortable with each other right away? There is also the fear that it’s Dad A — when baby is born there will need to be a DNA test no matter what and that will really decide which way the adoption will go. Could be with the family that she picks (of course, hoping its us) or will Dad A decided to parent? Again, so many unknowns and I feel like the things that is making us not FULLY freak out is that God already knows. He already knows where this baby is going to, he already knows and has put on the heart of the birth mom, and we have to continue to trust in him and give it to him to take care of for us.

We are working on our ‘interview’ questions and will send them to our social worker for her to review and give us feedback – if anyone has done this before PLEASE share what you asked, we are at a loss and Google isn’t that helpful right now. Again, thank you for the continued prayers we need them, the birth mom needs them and crazy things happen when people pray.

Outline for next week:

• Wednesday: (no time scheduled yet)
  • Meeting with Social Worker, Expectant Parent Advocate
• Thursday: 3:15 pm
  • Meeting with Social Worker, Expectant Parent Advocate, Birth Mom
• We wait to hear if she chose us as her resource family
  • We continue to be diligent in prayer and keep busy trying not to think about it while all we do is think about it 🙂

“Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!” Psalm 27:14

 

 

 

We need your help

Hello everyone out there searching the inter-webs of the cyber world! I am looking for some help, ideas and advice. After our last training meeting two weeks ago for our adoption journey, we learned that we need to find a way to ‘market’ ourselves to possible birth families out there. We were told that the agency will do 50% marketing and we should do the other 50% marketing.

So, I am wondering if you’ve gone through the adoption process in the past or if you know someone who has that would be willing to give advice I am all ears! We have a website (through our agency – the also have 2 profile books we printed and delivered for profile viewings), I try and keep this blog going and we have told anyone and everyone who we talk to about our adoption adventure. We have also reached out to our church and they know we are an official waiting family, we also let our adoption support group at church know as well.

Some of the suggestions from our training:

• Add a little business card to our holiday cards for friends and family to pass along to those at their church, or if they know of a potential birth family
• Make flyers and hang up around town (coffee shops, churches, clinics, work…) this one makes me a little more nervous
• Create an email for all potential birth families vs using our personal email addresses
• Create multiple profiles for different adoption sites so we are now more visible (there is a cost involved with this option, more than the other options)

One of the families that the agency has worked with created a Craigs List ‘ad’ and actually ended up finding their birth family that way! They did say that they needed to do a LOT of screening and that their social worker talked with multiple people to figure out if they were real interests and not scams. Also right now agencies are noticing that there aren’t a lot of birth families creating adoption plans, this makes me a little nervous as well, I know our child is out there just really unsure of when we will meet them.

With all that said, we need your help! Please feel free to share our story, website, or contact information with anyone and everyone you know 🙂

Website: Ryan and Marianne

Email: ryanandmarianneadopting@gmail.com

Until next time!!

 

 

Holy Cow — We’re OFFICIALLY on the waiting family list!!!

Yup that’s right! We are officially a waiting family!!!! I can’t believe it and we are SOOO excited! I know, I know, I know…it can take YEARS to be picked by a birth family BUT this means that we CAN be picked and all the stress of filling out piles of paperwork and getting our finger prints and health physicals and interviews with social workers and everything else has been signed off on and we are OFFICIALLY APPROVED!

So now what…well we wait and continue to pray for our birth family and baby (or babies) to find us. We continue on house projects, adding to the nursery, finishing the basement, fencing in the backyard – there is always going to be an endless ‘to do list’ and I feel more comfortable waiting for our baby now. It was always a “hurry up and wait” feeling but I’m ok with it and I have a peace about it. We know that God always has our little one (ones) picked out for us and he is working in our hearts as well as the birth families heart – we will connect and click and it’s going to be an amazingly awesome adventure.

Speaking of the nursery and house projects…HUGE thank you to my older brother Nick for his help with creating my accent wall 🙂 I absolutely love the way it turned out! Dark walls with white furniture and a whitewashed wood plank wall, and as a fan of Harry Potter – a quote from Albus Dumbledore to add to the room. Right now it is being used at Hunter’s toy room while we finish the basement (it’s been a REALLY slow process waiting for people to come in and do their part). Hunter doesn’t call it his toy room he calls it the baby’s room. “Hold on mom, I need to go to the baby’s room” or “can I go play in the baby’s room” — I love it, he’s ready for a sibling – and if you ask him if he’d like to have a brother or sister, he’ll say sister.

Ryan and I are already going through names and talking about what their personality will be like. How Hunter will react and how awesome it’s going to be. The journey of infertility is not an easy road and for a lot of people it can really break up a marriage or it can bring you closer. I’ve said it before, for Ryan and I, it has only brought us closer. Now going through adoption and having social workers in our home and really deep diving into our financials, pasts and family dynamics it can be stressful and take it’s toll as well. But again, it’s only brought us closer together and both of us feel like this is where we are supposed do be and this is how our family is created. Not how we ever thought our family would be formed but it’s exciting and it’s been an adventure to get here and it will only continue to get better.

Pics of the nursery progress 🙂

If you are just starting out on the adoption adventure of if you have been waiting for a while, I really recommend reading Tandem: A Devotional for Adopting with God at the Lead. It is an amazing devotional and the way that Alison writes, I think she I could be great friends. PLUS she has a Facebook support group you can join and the families on there are truly, truly amazing. The stories that are shared and the different situations others have been in, it’s just really nice to know that you aren’t alone in this and that there are others in the same spot that you can lean on.

So if anyone has any other great options for devotionals to get through a waiting period in your life, I’m welcome to ALL suggestions! Or, if you have any tips on helping to not dwell on waiting let me know! I’ve started a Mary Kay business to help with financials as well as keep myself busy, plus I love meeting new people and sharing our story. There are so many out there who are on the same journey.

Until next time!