Saying No...

Greg and I received the home study of a child available for adoption. We don't want to share details as to protect the child's privacy, so it is sufficient to say that we had to say no to adopting them.

Saying no is one of the hardest things I have experienced so far. There is a lot of guilt attached to it. I know it was the right thing to do, but still, it means that that child still does not have a forever home.

I know our kids are out there, and I know we have to keep our needs in mind. But it breaks my heart that I couldn't give that child a home.

Weekends

Weekends are interesting nowadays.

They provide us with a well-needed break from checking our phones to see if we have a match e-mail, but at the same time, we also feel like we have to wait two days for something to happen.

Waiting is the hardest part. It has been the hardest part through this entire experience. You wait for your class to start. You wait for your paperwork to be received. You wait to be assigned a caseworker. You wait for your homestudy to start. You wait for it to be completed. You wait for your homestudy to be approved. Then you wait to match.

Then, once you have matched, you still have to wait for the adoption to be finalized.

Everyone keeps telling us that patience is a virtue, and that good things come to those who wait. We know. It's also hard to understand what we are going through from the outsiders perspective. When you have a baby, you have a general idea of how long you will wait before it's here. You have things you can do to prepare. With adoption, you can't prepare because, especially in our case, we have no idea if we will have a girl or boy, how old they will be, if there will be more than one. And we really have no clue how long the wait will be; days, weeks, months...

On top of that, when you have a baby, you get to start at day one with that kid. You have their whole life. Every first, every holiday. We are missing out on those every day that we don't have our kid(s).

So, if we get a little upset when someone says patience is a virtue, or that good things come to those who wait, or if we are a little frustrated with the process, please forgive us. We are just trying to find our kids.

Matchmaker matchmaker...

We are finally in the matching process!

We have submitted a couple of inquiries, but nothing has worked out yet. Most of the children were already adopted, or they wanted them to stay in the same state they were in, in the case that they were out of state.

We are trying to take it easy and realize that this is not an overnight thing. This could take weeks or months.

In the meantime, we will share what we can, but for our privacy, and for the privacy of the children, we will not be sharing details about the matches or non-matches. We need for the decisions that we make to be ours alone. We hope that you will all understand. We will share the process, and our thoughts as we deem appropriate.

Thank you all for all of the love and support you have shown us through this process! We can't wait to find our kiddos!

Results!

Today, around 1pm I got an e-mail with our homestudy first draft attached. There were a couple of errors, so they have to be fixed, but at least things are moving again! The errors were minor. She wrote that our moms live in Northport, but they live in Sarasota, and she said my dad remarried when I was in 2nd grade, but that was when they met. There were a couple more, but nothing serious. I called her and left a message, but it was after 4 so I won't hear back until tomorrow probably.

In the meantime, I also found out that the results of our background checks are in. That means all that's left is to finalize the homestudy itself, a few minor pieces of paperwork (copies of our car insurance, etc.), and then we can be approved!

Want to see the coolest sentence ever? Sorry for the blurry picture, but read the very last line!