This is an absolute mess...

I am in picture hell. I went to AC Moore today and picked up all my supplies to make our profile. I've been working on it since noon - it's now 6:30. I have pictures all over the place...my kitchen looks like a bomb went off. I keep telling myself this is all worth it in the end. I haven't finished one complete profile and I have TEN to do. I'm hoping after I get the first one down, the other nine will be easy to do. I do realize now that I ordered way too many pictures for this thing. Now I am confused on which ones to use or not. And I'm getting tired so I'm getting a little sloppy. I'm cutting the pictures crooked and I have little scraps of paper everywhere. I need a nap.
I did end up ordering more pictures however. I couldn't resist this one here that my sister sent me...Tyler is too cute. I have to add this to the profile.
Back to work I go. I am so glad I have this week off to do this project. It was really fun when I started it but now...not so much.

Re-fingerprinted

Merry Christmas one day late. It was a crazy fun Christmas this year with family coming to our house for the first time. Waking up Christmas morning with my nephew seeing his presents from Santa was so fun for us. It made us really excited for when we have children in the house. It was pretty awesome. We were pretty exhausted by the end of the day yesterday from all the excitement. Sean was asleep on the sofa at 7:30 last night. Today we spent the day organizing gifts, cleaning, purging old clothes, and getting our fingerprints redone.
Another trip back to the police station but this time, the officer who rolled our prints was very nice. He talked to us the entire time and asked us questions about the adoption. I did notice on my fingerprint cards that a cut on my finger is showing up. I got cut from a thorn of a rose doing flower arrangements . I have a feeling we're going to have to get these redone again but we'll give it a shot and send them in anyway.
I just got an email from my adoptive friend, Gwen, who we met at the orientation. She has been inspiring me to stay on top of everything and now we found out they have been approved and are eligible now! I am so excited for them and it makes me want to get all my stuff done. I can't wait to see how long it takes before a birthmother selects them...that will give us a true sense of what can really happen since they are a couple similar to us.
Christmas really wasn't sad for us this year like it sometimes is because we know there is a chance next Christmas we will have a new little elf in the house to celebrate.

Mary Poppins just left

Mary just left the house. It was an overall good visit. She did nothing I thought she would do. She is a retired grandmother who is really relaxed and actually funny so we got along with her very well. She didn't look around the house at all which is funny because we stayed up and cleaned the basement last night along with everything else. It needed to be done anyway.
She sat down with us and asked us questions about how we got to the point of adoption. She asked about our infertility journey and asked how we've overcome the difficult reality of not pursuing fertility treatments. We were honest with her and told her that we didn't know what the future had in store for us in that arena. There are so many advancements in medical technology that we didn't know if we wouldn't try again but we do know that we're not waiting for those advancements to happen before we start a family.
She talked to us about different scenarios with the adoption and said to us that she has seen really quick adoptions through Texas for couples like us. Not to get our hopes up but she said if we are as determined and motivated as we seem, this adoption will move very quickly for us. That was really encouraging to hear.
She left us with two sets of new finger print cards. Back to the police station we go on Tuesday. This time Sean has a new license and we can chalk our other fingerprinting experience up to good practice. If anyone needs their fingerprints done, we know how to roll them.
We gave her our questionnaires that we filled out so she will be reading those in the next couple weeks. Our next step is to have private one-on-one meetings with her (I didn't know about this.) She will meet with Sean and then she'll meet with me. She will probbaly go over the answers in our questionnaire with us. And after that, we have 2 more visits and that brings us right to March 1st which was the deadline we set for ourselves. It's moving right along and March will be here before we know it.
This picture I've posted here is going to go on the cover of our profile. It was taken by Tommy in Newport on the Rum Runner at sunset over Labor Day weekend. That was a really great night.
I can't seem to get it out my head that she said it moves really quickly for couples like us. Can you imagine? I am so excited I could scream. Of course I am not getting my hopes up. Yeah right.

Love Des and Sean
p.s. Lucy was a piece of work during the visit. She was bathing herself then rolled over in front of Mary asking her to rub her belly. Mary said to her, "Lucy, that is not lady like." Very funny.

Dear Birthmother Letter Complete

I've completed our birthmother letter. It's basically summarizing everything she will see in our profile and giving her a deeper insight to our personalities. It definitely wasn't easy to write but we've accomplished keeping it warm, friendly and sincere.
Many people have asked us to see what pictures we're including in our profile so I thought I'd attach a picture each day so everyone can see what we're building it to look like.
This picture will be included on our "About us" page. It was taken in the Bahamas a few months ago at the Atlantis. Definitely a spot we will go back to once we have kids.
Tomorrow Mary is coming over. I'm a little nervous but it will be okay. I'm going to fill up on Starbucks so I can stay up cleaning all night like Magda. Lucy is all fluffed out from the Groomers today. I swear, she is even happier being clean and fluffy.
More tomorrow...

Love,
Des and Sean

Sean Sean

Sean went to the DMV today and renewed his drivers license. Unexpectedly, his expired license has given us grief in a few situations so we are very happy that he is all up to date. We're getting really excited for Saturday. We can't believe how fast this is moving now. It's a good feeling. Final things on our list of "to do's" are getting our doctor's signing off on our bill of health, meeting with our priest, getting our recommendation letters filled out (sorry for not sending them out yet to those I've asked to give us recommendations), putting those ten profiles together, finishing the "Dear Birthmother" letter, getting the letter from our health insurance carrier...and I think that's it. It's not as bad as we thought.

I'm bringing Lucy to the groomers tomorrow so she's nice and fresh for Mary. She'll get her pearly whites brushed. Let's hope Mary isn't allergic to furry dogs. I probably should have asked that.

Mary Claus is Coming to Town

Our social worker Mary is coming to our house on Saturday morning to do our first home study visit. This is very exciting for us because after this visit, there are only two left. The next one will be in early January and the last one not too far behind. She said she will visit with us for about an hour and she will ask us questions about why we want to adopt, etc. Nicely enough, Gladney provides sample questions from their home study social worker so I can look through them and prepare. Not that I want to sound rehearsed but we don't want to be put on the spot with anything.
I have to clean the house spic and span before Saturday. We still haven't been able to train Lucy to stop shedding. It's funny, we have little things scattered about the house as little messages. We have a picture on our fridge of our friends daughters holding a sign reading "We love Auntie Des and Uncle Sean"; so many framed pictures of us with our God daughter and my God son Tyler; family pictures, wedding pictures...and our house looks pretty festive this year. I think Mary will appreciate all of it and I hope it all goes into her notes. I'll make sure I have something baking in the oven so the house smells good too.
She told me to have my fingerprint cards there so she can take a look. Hopefully they were done on the right card form or we may have to do them again on the card she provides. What a drag! I don't want to go to the police station again - it was such a pain. Whatever happens, happens.
My company holiday party is tonight so I get out of work early today. If we bring a gift for Toy's for Tots, we'll get extra raffle tickets and the prizes are pretty good - roundtrip airline tickets, hotel stays, shopping gift certificates. We never win. But, we donated hockey tickets this year so maybe the good fortune will come back to us.

Captain Fuzzy Pants

I found this picture of Lucy today and I couldn't keep it to myself. She is so fuzzy and small! Not anymore. Well, maybe a little fuzzy but definitely not small by any means.

My home study social worker (Mary) got back to me today and said we can start whenever we want. I thought with the holidays coming up it might be hectic and stressful (mostly financially) on us. Mary responded saying if we wanted to get started, we wouldn't have to pay her until the second visit because she totally understands about the holiday thing. I want her to come now then. I'll set something up for this week. Friday would be a good day.

I've started working on our "Dear Birthmother" letter. I took some samples of adoptive parents profiles off the internet. I only took the profiles where I saw "Adoption in Progress" because they obviously did something right in their letter. So I am pulling together the letter based on the formats these couples used and making sure I cover everything.

Crossing my fingers that things keep moving along as they are. Hopefully we'll meet that March 1st deadline.

Slowing Down

We raced to get so many things completed and now here we are tapping our fingers. We do have so much to do but right now it's waiting. Our social worker returns from vacation this weekend so we can set up a time for her to do our first home study visit. Might be difficult to do before Christmas for a couple reasons but we'll see what we can do. I received all the pictures I ordered for our profile. We had to order 15 copies of each picture we want to add for the 10 profiles we need to complete. I've already decided this is going to be my project the week between Christmas and New Years. I'm not working that week so I can take some time and focus on this. In the meantime, I am going to contact Gladney to send me a few samples of other adoptive parents profiles. I heard they will do that - and then we can just plagiarize. Just kidding.

Major Strides in Completing this Application

The past few days have been pretty quiet on the adoption front. However many things have gotten done today alone. One of the best things is that Sean has completed his questionnaire. Of course I read it and laughed at some of his answers. He did a really good job.
This means all of our home study paperwork is filled out. Hooray for us!
I looked through the Gladney adoption application checklist and we finished filling out all the paperwork in the binder, signed all documents that need to be signed, and realize that the only things left for us to do is the following: complete the home study interviews, write a "dear birth mother" letter, get our physician to sign paperwork saying we're healthy, meet with our priest and get him to sign saying we're good people, put together this profile with all the pictures, send our referral letters out, wait for our police and FBI reports to come back, get a letter from our health insurer, practice our evacuation plan in case of fire, get a fire marshall in the house to check our fireplace and furnace, and lastly we need to complete our outreach to a counselor or educator. I haven't put a lot of thought into that but I have a few friends who are teachers who I may lean on for this one.
So although this sounds like a lot, it's actually not because there were about 40 other things on the list that we've already completed.
I'm so excited that we have all the paperwork filled out. Now it's just the legwork which will take longer because we'll be waiting on other people. I might start working on that birthmother letter this week during all the waiting.