Opportunity Lost

Do you ever have what seems like a really great idea?  You get excited about it, you plan for it and you even make two or three false starts because you're so eager you get started before the moment is right.  Then, when the right moment comes...nothing happens.  There is something standing between you and your great idea.

I had this happen recently and it totally sucks.  Three years ago, when Nathan and I decided we were going to pursue adoption, I went to my little bookcase where I keep my notebooks and pulled out a yellow one.  It has a padded cover with a really bright design of flowers and butterflies and is really pretty.  "I know what I'll do," I thought.  "I'll keep a log of everything we do as we begin the process of adoption.  Then when the baby is a little older, I'll give it to them.  It'll be a sort of, this is how much Mommy and Daddy love and planned for you."  I even wrote the two names we had picked out for the baby on the inside cover...and then crossed them out and wrote new names...Nathan and I go through names like paper towels.

Starting the process took longer than either one of us anticipated.  We checked out a couple of agencies we thought would work and they didn't and then we both lost our jobs so the moment was far from right to start planning a family.  When we signed the papers with Angel Adoption I came home and started digging around in my nightstand, where I thought I had left the notebook last.  It wasn't there.  So, I went through the little notebook bookcase.  It wasn't there either.  I have no idea where it is now and we've started the home study, so it seems like much too late to keep a notebook chronicle of everything we've done.  I hate it when stuff like that happens.

Trapped...and having a bit of a deja vu moment

It is now about 2000 degrees outside with the humidity.  That's a rough estimate of course...and Nathan and I are trapped in our bedroom.  Why?  Because earlier this summer our air conditioner went on the fritz.  Generously, my mom and dad loaned us the window unit they had in their own bedroom so that we might sleep a little more comfortably at nights and have some place to retreat to during the day when the heat was overbearing.

So, here we are.  And yet, it all seems a little too familiar...rather like this past winter when the gas company wouldn't turn on our heat and we were reduced to living in the bedroom with space heaters until they got everything sorted out on their end. Oh, the circle of life...

Marketing

Not long after we signed the contract with the adoption agency we are going with, we received a couple of packets of information one from our agency and the other from the group the agency operates under, who are going to be doing the homestudy.  We had to fill out in all kinds of information about our personalities and why we want to be parents and then we had to ask friends and acquaintances if they would be comfortable answering questions about us as people and as parents as our references.  Thanks everyone, by the way!

But to me, right now, the hardest part is the information we have to give for the other packet we had to fill out, the parent profile.  It feels kind of like an essay test.  Tell us about your home, your lives, your family and your habits.  And then, write the "Dear Birthmother" letter.  I'm a writer by nature but this is unlike anything I've ever attempted before.  We are basically selling ourselves and our lives to women and families who are making the agonizing decision of who they want to raise their children.  I did my best. 

Also, we had to come up with pictures.  Pictures of the house, the cats, our families and us.  We have to have 15+ pictures of ourselves.  We personally have very few pictures of ourselves.  We had to go pillaging our friends and families' cameras.  Even then it wasn't enough so we asked a friend of ours to come take pictures of us at the house.  We have everything but the pictures nailed down enough to send in a preliminary draft.  Bring on the closeups!

The House

This summer has been an interesting one for the little house we live in.  I did not spend any time weeding our flower beds this year, so that the weeds run riot in them completely unchecked.  I hope to spend more time on the flowerbeds next spring.  Nathan has been very attentive to the lawn this year and seems to have given up on any thought of me mowing. Thank God!

We painted Nathan's office in the winter, but were unable to do anything with the ceiling that was damaged long ago by a leaking bathtub from above.  In April we got rid of the putrid purple-pink color on the walls of our bedroom and replaced it with a nice ice blue.  I had hoped to work on the breezway this month, but somehow the month has gotten away from us and the room is still in a little of sorry condition and the old refrigerator still sits there.  Oh well, maybe next month.

Up to Speed

So, what have I been doing since the last time I posted?  Well, working a lot, thankfully, is the short answer.  But I have also had time to do a few other things.

The day Nathan and I sent off the paperwork to start the adoption I got home from the post office and immediately began knitting baby booties.  After a few false starts in which my booties always came out looking like socks, I finally figured out where I was going wrong and have been thinking about booties and hats ever since.  Most of my scrap yarn that I'm using for practice booties is blue, brown, or a green.  I told Nathan I think this means our first child will be a boy.

I like the style to the right better, but the one to the left is the pattern that was part of my calendar.  I found the one with the button on Ravelry.com, which I have become a devotee of.

I have also had the priviledge to spend a few of my Wednesdays (which are really Sundays to me) watching our niece, Sophie, who is almost five months old now.

And I have a new favorite picture!

Unfortunately I had to stop my babysitting gig because my gall bladder decided it wanted no more of me.  I have been sick several times since its revolution at the end of last month and have yet to see the surgeon about getting it out.  I was put on some fairly strong pain relievers and anti-spasmodics and am doing fairly well now, but I go to the surgeon (finally) on Wednesday.

I won the Netflix war.  That's right.  My very first Netflix movie was a foreign film called Rosenstrasse which I had seen part of on TV one day and wanted to watch again.  Since then I have enjoyed a getting many movies in the mail and watching more on line.  I still use the library ordering system as well.

And that is most of what I have been up to since the last time I wrote.  I have yet to go back to my beloved Alton, but Elizabeth has been enjoying her summer in Minnesota with Eric, her fiancee and hopefully, I'll get back there after she goes back down for the fall semester.

Hiatus

I realize I have not been to this site for quite a while.  My only excuse...okay, I have two, is that a) I have been busy with something Nathan and I are working on and b) while I love second shift tremendously for my own sake because it works better with the way my body functions, it has not done my blog any favors.

It is my proposition, then that this hiatus comes to an end.  I intend to make every effort to blog with greater frequency again to let everyone know what is going on in our lives and really just for my own mental sake.  I hate the thought of having another failed diary.  And that's kind of what this has always been, a less intimate, more public diary.

So...what is this big "project" Nathan and I are working on?  Since I precieve it is mostly family and friends who read this page, I know you already know, but I'm going to put it here anyway, just so that I get to say it again and maybe someone will be surprised and excited for us about it all over again.

Last month, Nathan and I signed paperwork to officially begin working with an adoption agency.  It's called Angel Adoptions and functions out of Cary,Illinois.  We looked at several different agencies and ultimately chose Angel because we liked their size and the way they interacted with us when we were going through the "looking" phase and also because they were the most reasonably priced.

I always hate saying that, but it is true.  The biggest reason we chose the company that was going to help us find our child was purely mercenary.  I have since been told by someone who I know is in the middle of the adoption process that Angel is a great agency and we should be very happy with them, and that made me pretty happy.

The day we settled on an agency, I was changing the page on my daily knitting pattern calendar and the pattern that turned up for that day was for baby booties.  I felt it was a good sign.

26 and All Grown Up

I don't know why, but more than being married or living on my own or having a steady full time job, there has always been another factor that has seemed to me to be the indicator that someone has truly grown up.  It seems silly but I've always felt that without this, a household really isn't complete yet.  (This is not meant to be derogatory to anyone who doesn't have one, it's just the way I've always thought of it.)  But I got one for my birthday from my husband.

I don't understand it, but I've always thought a grown-up household needed a sewing machine.  This one is actually a million times nicer than the one I asked for.  Thanks, Nathan!

I also received the knitting needles I asked for from my mom and dad, plants from my sister-in-law, very nice gift cards from my own sibilings and this, from my in-laws:

No one else seems to understand it, but I have wanted a globe all my life.  I'm in love with it!