7 Quick Takes

one

Today is Nathan's 32nd birthday!  For his birthday this year I did something completely unexciting and let him pick out his present.  We had a date night last night, which was awesome, and we stopped at Best Buy where he picked out a new set of super spiffy headphones for his computer.

Elijah's all bundled up because that was the day we took him sledding.

two

Check out how grown-up this kid looks!  I can't get over it.

three

Please say a prayer or two for my sister's friend Taryn who is trying to pay off the last thousand dollars of her student loans so she can join the Discalced Carmelites in Buffalo where she was recently accepted.

four

My car is officially fixed.  It's out of the shop and back in our garage.  I won't get into all the details of what was wrong, mostly because it was my fault and it's embarrassing.  But I will say that for all I hate to drive in general and even though I get mad at the car when I do something stupid and it has to be worked on, I actually do love that little car.  I drove it home from the shop yesterday and was very happy to have it back.

Nathan's car is a stick shift and I really hate having to drive it.

five

  I don't think anything has caused me more "first time mom" anxiety than what to feed Elijah now that he's eating regular food.  We have the chart about serving sizes and what he needs nutrition-wise everyday, but I keep wanting to feed him more.  He usually gets bored of sitting in the highchair before I think he's really full.  I also need to figure out better snack foods than just giving him Gerber crunchies and Goldfish.

six

As I said, last night was date night, so Nathan and I went to see the new Oz, the Great and Powerful.  I have to say I was surprised by it.  The plot did things I didn't expect and it was actually a pretty good movie.  A big thanks to my father-in-law for babysitting last night!

seven

Are you as excited as I am that the conclave starts Tuesday?  I can't wait!  

For more 7 Quick Takes, check out Conversion Diary.

 

Oldest child perils

It must be very difficult to be an oldest child.  I am the second of four, so I don't really have much frame of reference for it.  But, based on how many times a week I pose a question about our son's life or upbringing to my husband and we both say, "I don't know," I'm sure it's no barrel of laughs.

I picture an adult Elijah one day speaking with friends, or a spouse, or a psychiatrist saying "My parents are great (at least I hope he says that) but when I came along they really had no clue what they were doing."  NO FREAKING CLUE

The biggest quandry right now is feeding him.  We have moved away from exclusively feeding baby food and are introducing different solid foods.  My problem is, now that it's not just a matter of getting to the bottom of a puree cup and being finished, I really don't know how much to feed him.  Today at lunch, for instance he had a couple spoonfuls of corn, a crumbled piece of cheese, some Gerber crunchies and his milk, which he took out of a sippy cup for the first time today.

Elijah is a child who will eat until he pukes, so I really don't know when he's full and just eating because it's there.  Thank God we have his year check up with the pediatrician on Wednesday!

January 1

January 1, 2004
Nathan and I went on our unofficial, official first date.  We were friends in high school and went on a bunch of individual dates in the past, but this is when we really started dating.  My brother had just gotten back from Italy so he wanted to cook for everyone (a contagious condition over there).  Nathan came over and ate with us and then we went out to see Mona Lisa Smile.

January 1, 2005
I just got back from studying in England and was having a lot of fun getting to spend time with Nathan again before being sent off to Macomb to finish my junior year at Western Illinois University.

January 1, 2006
Our very first full day of being engaged.  My mother woke me up by coming to my room and asking to look at my ring and then thrusting the phone at me with the command "Call your grandmothers."  After a wonderful few days of preliminary wedding planning, I returned to Macomb again to finish my senior year.

Skip forward six years

January 1, 2012
I honestly don't remember what happened last year on this day.  I was probably at work.  It is remarkable only because we had no idea that in 17 days we would get a phone call about a woman who chose us to raise the baby boy she was carrying.

January 1, 2013
Nathan and I and our little guy, who will be one in a couple weeks, drove to Iowa to visit Elizabeth and Eric and watch some college football.  I'm almost never off work when everyone else is, so we took advantage of this rare day.  Everyone but me goes back to work tomorrow...I've manage to finagle a 3 day weekend for myself.

Nathan and I have been together nine years we've traveled quite a bit, gotten married, moved twice, had six jobs total, become an aunt and uncle-twice, and began raising a beautiful and hilarious baby boy!

2/3rds

Elijah is 2/3rds of the way through his first year.  His eyes are lighter than they were when he was born and decidedly blue, not grey.  His hair went through a brief red period around 1-2 months, but is back to blonde with red highlights.

He is very happy, and very fun.  He is working his way through a stage where he doesn't like getting dressed or undressed.  With two front teeth on bottom and three on top, Elijah is a very calm teether.  The only thing he wants when a tooth is breaking through is to be carried around.  He sleeps through every night, even when teeth are coming through.

He loves his food, whether it's a bottle, Gerber crunchies, or fruit/veggie puree.  He holds his own bottle regularly now.  He loves music, rocking back and forth in his boppy when we've got music on.  Books are another of his favorite things.  He reaches for them and loves to flip the pages on his own.

Elijah has a couple new tricks: he picks his head up all the time now, and Army crawls.  He can push himself onto his hands and knees and rocks there for a little.  We'll have a crawler before Halloween!   He has just learned how to sit up on his own and we're working on waving.  He has also turned into something of a ham baby.  Every time he sees the camera he smiles.  It's pretty hilarious.

He loves games with movement, when we hold him and dance or run around.

Nathan and I have discovered that while we both love to play and spend time with him individually, we have more fun with him when we are all together.  Things are changing all over.  The car I've been driving, which used to belong to my grandparents, has become undrivable.  We are going to look at other cars tonight and I've been thinking what I want in a vehicle.  My biggest priority is having enough room in the back for Elijah's car seat.  And then, of course, safety and gas mileage.

We can't wait for Halloween!

Did I really say that?

There are a bunch of things I never thought I'd say that have become part of my life since we brought Elijah home.

"I don't care what side of the bed I sleep on."  Nathan and I (or maybe just me) used to be big into "that's your side, this is my side."  When we got home with the baby, Nathan's wonderful sister, Janelle, and her husband had set up the pack and play their daughter used as a bassinet in our room, because we didn't have a bassinet.  They set it up on Nathan's side of the bed.  If you remember, we got home in the middle of the night.  I collapsed onto the side closest to the bassinet and haven't thought about it since.

"For the love of St. Michael, where is the musical panda?!"  The loss, even temporarily, of my son's favorite toy is enough for household panic and an attic to basement search.  Before this the only thing that got my attention like that was losing my keys or ipod.

"Hold still, Mama has to get the bugger."  Yes, I pick his nose.  I really never thought about having to do that while I contemplated parenthood.

"Here it comes, yummy, yummy peas."  You could supplement "squash" for peas, but I hate peas a lot more than squash.

"Gots" In any context as in, "Mama gots it," or "Daddy gots it."  I watch my grammar pretty scrupulously and initially I was appalled when I heard myself say this.  Then I got over it.

"Okay, let's just watch 'Robin Hood.'" I'm working on getting over my screen phobia, but I surprised myself the first time I put a movie in.  It was about 100 degrees and he was tired and cranky and I was out of ideas.

The End is Nigh

We always intended to arrive here.  When things looked bleak and depressing, we kept a happy thought and a prayer.  And now, it seems like we can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Yesterday, I scheduled our last post-placement visit with our social worker.  The state of Illinois requires three visits after adoptive parents bring a baby home.  When I called to schedule it, I asked if we could do it on July 27th and she said we needed to do it before everything was final.

So, things are winding down.  Before we brought Elijah home, I sometimes didn't think we'd ever get to this point.  Even in February when we were at home with him, six months seemed like a long time away.  But somehow here we are.  The papers will soon all be filed and signed and we will get a birth certificate from Birthmother's home state that says "Elijah Nathan" with our last name and lists Nathan and I as his parents.

It feels strange now that, in a sense, this adoption will no longer be part of our day-to-day lives.  He will officially be our baby and it won't matter how it came to be that way.  (Not that it matters now.)

But in another way, adoption is now part of the fabric of our lives.  It will be our special bedtime story, our long road trip story, our "Mama and Daddy love you so much" story.  Every time we tell it, we will explain how courageous Birthmother was and how very much she loved him. 


But I think we'll have a little party when we  get the official paperwork (or phone call or however the notification process works.)

Panic!

Elijah has recently moved out of our room and into the nursery, which is all of like six steps across the hall from our room.  His bedtime is around 8 pm.  We have a specialized routine: last bottle, diaper change, pajamas, book, cuddles, and bed.  He wakes up for bottles at 4:30 or 5 and then again at 6:30 or 7.

Last night, we went through our little bed time dance.  Mommy read the book while Daddy snuggled the baby and then set him in the crib.  We turned off the light, left the room and went to have dinner.  We checked on him before we went to bed and then it was lights out.

The next time I looked at the clock was when Nathan's alarm went off at 6:45 this morning.  I realized right after I opened my eyes that I hadn't gotten up that night.  I looked at Nathan and said "Did you wake up with him?"

"No."  I jumped out of bed and ran the six steps to the door.  Peeking inside, I saw Little Man, stretching in his sleep.

He had wiggled out of his swaddler a little bit and moved toward the end of the crib, which made me afraid we had missed his crying.  There was a thunderstorm last night and the windows in our room rattle horribly in the wind; it could have happened.

Nathan assured me we didn't and I tried to go back to sleep.  15 minutes later an insistent little whine came over the baby monitor.

"There's no way we would have missed that," I said, and went to get our little sleeper out of his crib.

Elijah Nathan

I was asleep, to begin with.  It was mid-afternoon on Wednesday, January 18 and I still had about an hour to sleep.  But, the phone rang.  In my sleepy haze, I answered the phone and heard Nathan talking about our adoption agency calling him.  They said a birthmother in a neighboring state really liked our profile and wanted to talk to us.  He kept saying I needed to call the agency because she wanted to talk to us that night.  Finally, my mind started working and all I could say was, "Nathan, did she pick us?"  He responded with "Yeah, that's why they want you to call them."  I hung up right away and called our adoption agency.  Our adoption coordinator answered the phone and said "talk about things happening for a reason."  Then, she told me about a birthmother who had one or two conditions we initially hadn't said we would accept.

"I didn't mean to send her your profile," the coordinator said.  "But I must have accidentally put it in the pile of profiles I sent because she picked you guys and wants to talk to you tonight."  She went on to tell me a few things about the birthmother, and that she was having a boy in one week. Then the coordinator gave me Birthmother's name and phone number.  I was in shock.  We hadn't even heard of this situation before hand.  She just liked our profile enough to think we would be good parents to her little boy.  Suddenly those few conditions didn't seem so daunting and we were so excited.

Nathan came home that night and we called her.  We were all very nervous, but it was a wonderful conversation which lasted about an hour.  She told us she wanted us to be in the delivery room when the baby was born.  She explained why she picked us and we told her about our lives at home and how we plan to handle day care after I go back to work.  She said she expected to need to be induced.

The minute we hung up the phone, I pulled out our big black duffel bag and started packing it.  I made sure the diaper bag was still packed from the last time we got called.  We told our parents and siblings.  We told our bosses.  Things went on pretty much as they had before.  I spoke with the birthmother one other time as we waited.  But, really, things were different.  I bought a car seat.

I put together the swing we bought and the bouncy seat we received as a present from my brother and sister-in-law.

We had to get all our paperwork updated and retained lawyers in both our state and Birthmother's state.  Birthmother was due on Friday, January 27 and we were ready to head to her state when she was induced. 

Nathan responded to all this stress by not sleeping.  He wasn't going to bed until 3 am most nights.  Finally on Wednesday the 25th, his body said "no more" and he was in bed at 7 pm.  That was my Sunday, so I stayed up, sitting at my computer reading articles about newborn care and playing an on-line game with a friend from work.  (We all keep strange hours.)  At 4 am Thursday, January 26, Nathan's alarm went off.  He didn't move and I shut if off.

Fifteen minutes later the phone rang, it was Birthmother.  "Margaret, I'm in labor," she said.  "Okay, we'll be there as fast as we can," was all I could say.  I shook Nathan's shoulder and woke him.  "Birthmother is in labor, we have to leave now."  "What?" he responded.  I finished packing our big duffel bag, I double checked both of the baby's bags.  An hour later, after Nathan had checked the car over carefully and we installed the car seat for the first time, we left.  We drove for seven hours, had one near miss with a semi and arrived safely at the hospital.

We made it, Birthmother was still in labor.  Her parents were both in the room and a friend of hers arrived.   Everyone was wonderful and even the hospital staff referred to us as "the parents."  She started pushing about 2 hours after we got there.  I stood on her left side and helped brace her while she pushed.  Nathan sat in the corner.

Baby boy arrived at 4:46 pm Thursday, January 26, 2012.  He was 8.09 lbs and 20 1/2 in.  We named him Elijah Nathan.  He was perfect and pink and healthy.

When the doctor pulled him out and placed him on Birthmother's chest, she reached down and grabbed my hand, pulling it up to the baby's stomach.  I could feel tears running down my cheeks.  I glanced over and Nathan was standing up, smiling with a look of complete awe and happiness.  Then they took Elijah off and cleaned him up, wrapped him and handed him to me.  I couldn't help it, I started singing to him.  The first song that came to my mind, which, I think is called "The Spinning Wheel."  After that, I handed him to Nathan.

The hospital gave us an empty room to stay in so that Elijah could be with us and we could feed and change him.  We were there for two days before moving to a hotel.  The next day we traveled to a bigger city where the lawyer's office is and stayed in a hotel there.  It was another five days before we finally received clearance from our state and Birthmother's state and were told we could leave. 

It has been so nice to be home.  Elijah is such a good baby, he sleeps well and eats well.  He doesn't fuss unless he is wet or hungry or wants his pacifier.

We thank God for Birthmother and for everyone who has supported us and cheered for us all along the way.

So, here it is

Early last month, Nathan and I got an e-mail from our adoption agency saying there is a birthmother in another state that was due to give birth in mid-November and gave us a basic run down of her situation.  We considered it and talked to my mother and sent them an e-mail back saying we would like our profile presented to her.  Usually, they just show our profile, but this time her situation didn't match our parameters perfectly, so they wanted to make sure before they showed her our info.

Then, two Mondays ago (the 29th) I woke up at 12:30 to a phone call saying she chose us and she was basically due any second.  I was over the moon.  I called Nathan and he was over the moon.  Our parents and siblings all celebrated with us.  I had another 4 hours to sleep, but of course that wasn't about to happen now. So I decorated for Christmas and ran over lists in my head of everything we would need.

We both let our bosses know we would probably be gone for a while and, because you can't keep secrets where I work, everyone knew by the time I got there that night.  It was a fantastic day.

Mom and I went shopping and picked up some little things we didn't have that we would need.

I bought some Dreft and did my first ever load of baby laundry.

I washed my first ever group of bottles.

We packed the diaper bag.

Then, we waited for the call.  And we waited.  Days passed and we waited.  Finally, this past Monday, I called the adoption agency to see if there was any news.  They advised me that she most likely had the baby already and decided to keep it and not say anything to anyone.

We were heartbroken.  But at the same time, I knew that if it wasn't meant to be then it was better he stayed with his mother.  Even though it didn't work out, it still gave us reason to hope.  We've been contracted with our agency since June 2010 and this is the first time we know of that someone has been serious about us.  It is uplifting, even though it fell through.

And if you're one of the many people we didn't tell when we heard she picked us: this is why.  Our parents wanted very badly to tell everyone but we asked them to hold off, in case this happened.  I couldn't bear to think of having to tell everyone it didn't work out.

So, yeah, it sucks and yeah, yesterday when I was addressing Christmas cards and watching Santa Claus is Coming to town I started crying randomly.  But we keep praying and hopefully, we'll have a baby soon.

Number crunching

Since we've been married, Nathan and I have been pretty careful with our money.  We both have cars we paid cash for, and we don't carry credit card balances month to month and we have paid off a couple of our student loans.

But we've been noticing lately that we could probably be saving more money each month.  Therefore, starting in November, we are going to be on a monthly budget.  I sat down and tried to work out budgeting for myself and didn't really do too well.

So, I turned to my mom, Queen of Budgets, and asked for help.  She taught me how to estimate what all our expenses will be, give myself a monthly allowance for groceries and try to guess how much each of us will spend on gas.  Hopefully the grocery budget will also lead to other things I've been meaning to do, like using coupons.  Beyond that, we are each going to have a monthly allowance for what Nathan calls "random fun money."  That will be for things like eating out, movies, yarn and books, or snacks.

It's going to take a while to get in the swing of it and figure out just how much we need to hang on to for each category, but hopefully it will help us put more money into savings each month.

1,000 Little things

Lately, every time I think to myself, I should write a post about that, I realize it would only last a paragraph or two.  There just isn't that much going on around here:

I've been on vacation since the 18th and go back Saturday.  It has been very nice.  Mostly, I've stayed home and relaxed.

Nathan and I celebrated our 5th anniversary on the 21st with a dinner at JMK Nippon in Rockford, the restaurant we went to for our first "official" date and also where we went the night we got engaged.

On the 22nd, my cousin got married and we all got to spend time with the family, one of my favorite things.

Because of some strange symptoms and goings on with my health, I am now wearing a 4-week event monitor, which I began on Monday.  I have to say, I'm not a fan.  Hopefully, this will tell the doctors what they want to know.

For Christmas last year, Elizabeth gave me fall colored yarn and I just finished knitting it into a blanket.  The blanket itself isn't very big, but it's more decorative than anything.

Fall is a very busy time for Nathan.  He pitched in again this year at the apple orchard close to home.  He does this every year because the people who own it are friends of his parents.  Now that that's over it will be time to help out with harvest soon.

We just had one of our biannual visits with our social worker.  It seemed to go well and she was very encouraging.

That's about all we've got going on here.

Wishful Shopping

It has been just over a year since we signed our contract with Angel Adoption.  Since it's a two year contract, I have always kind of dreaded getting to this place.  We are over halfway through now, and as far as I know, no closer to becoming parents.

I do my best to keep mine and Nathan's spirits up and remind myself that God's timing is not our timing, but it doesn't always help.  Why is it that when things are starting to look a little bleak or become a little overwhelming, is when everyone I know gets pregnant or has their baby?  I've noticed this phenomenon throughout the whole process.

My biggest problem is figuring out what to do with myself.  How do I spend my time?  What should I be buying or preparing?  Is buying or preparing anything a universal adoption jinx that I just don't know about?

And then there's Nathan...Nathan who won't talk about the baby much or even how he's feeling about the process unless I mention it's stressing me out.  He doesn't like to talk about names or painting the nusery (even though it needs to be done).  How am I supposed to support Nathan and his feelings when I don't even know what they are?  Why do men always think we are mindreaders? 

I've read all the adoption books I care to and they can't really say anything new about where we are in the process because really, there is no set way to handle it.

With that in mind, I actually have done a little shopping...We decided a long time ago, that we wanted the nursery theme to be farm animals; it's perfect, cute and reflects who we (or rather Nathan) are as people and its androgynous, which is probably the most important factor.

Not long after we signed the contract Fisher Price came out with a line of swings called "How Now Brown Cow" that was a farming theme.  Our local Target started carrying it and everytime I walked into the store I would go and stare wistfully at the swings.  Nathan got a $50 giftcard from work for administrative professionals day and I knew he would never use it, so early last month, I went to Target and bought the swing, which was normally $100 but was on sale the day I got there...

Not long after, I went to Lombard with my mom, who was shopping for a baby shower gift for my nephew Brian Patrick.  We went into Babies R Us and one of the first things I saw was a 6-piece crib set on sale for $90 from about $180.  Seriously, this was an amazing sale.  The theme was "Animal Acres" and since then I've found they actually discontinued the set.  So, I bought that too.  While we were there my mom picked up an extra crib sheet and the wall appliques of the same set for me.

There are a bunch of other things I want to do.  I want to find a smallish bookcase and paint it white and then add in pastel paints of all different colors, my favorite quotes from all the books I love beginning with "Once upon a time in Spain..." from Ferdinand, my very first favorite book.  I've picked out two possible colors for the nursery and I'd like to get it painted.  I want to spend half a paycheck on books and buy the cute "police uniform" onesie I saw in an ad the other day.

But maybe I'll wait...

Profile Pictures...again

At the beginning of the month I received an e-mail from our adoption agency asking for new pictures for our profile.  We have been with them for a year now and they wanted to freshen up our profile.  This is understandable, but it still made me cringe.  It was so hard to get enough good photos last time, I did not look forward to trying it again, especially because when I got the e-mail Nathan was still spending all his available time in the fields helping with planting.  But they finished last week and we've been able to slip in a few photo shoots and I mailed off the new pictures yesterday.

The setting in this picture is Nathan's parents' backyard by the creek and I think it's a lovely place for a photo.

This was taken at my parents' house after our nephew's baptism.  I believe the phrase I used for Nathan's hair is "a little overwhelming."  But it's a good picture.  By the way, you can't tell, but I'm wearing a really cute dress in this...just saying.

I love this one.  It's just really good.  I don't remember why I decided cartoon character T-shirts was a good idea, but I still think so.

We took these last ones yesterday at my Mom and Dad's.  I think they're supercute.

Yep, we even had a wardrobe change yesterday.  There are several of us in our blue and green and I love them all, but this might be the best one.

Nathan really wanted a picture of us in front of one of his Dad's tractors.  We took two and this is definitely the better picture.

I think I sent more than one picture of each set except the first one.  I hope these work for the agency and I also hope they retain some of the older ones.  There were one or two that we were really good.

Also, I will post soon about having one year in with the agency and how we are doing with that, I just haven't worked up the nerve yet.

While we wait...

Two months ago Nathan and I became officially certified foster parents.  Since then the wait has been a very big, but unspoken part of our lives.  I've been wondering, since then, what are acceptable baby-related activities for prospective adoptive parents.

We plan on painting the baby's room, but haven't done it yet.  I've been knitting baby hats and booties like crazy.  I bought a couple baby outfits, just one or two in case we get a call out of the blue and need to be ready right away.  And yes, we have picked out names, more or less, Nathan doesn't like to make "concrete" pronouncements until he absolutely has to.  But the girl's name we picked so far is Natalie Joyce and for a boy Elijah Tarbert (it's my paternal grandmother's maiden name).

But part of me is scared that having done even these few and necessary things, we might be "jinxing" oursevles in some way.  I don't know many other adoptive parents, so I don't know how far ahead or behind we actually are.  Part of me wants to buy all the nursery furniture we need right now, car seats, toys and everything and just have the room absolutely ready for the little one.  We told the agency we would happily accept twins if the chance arose.  Should we have secondary names picked out, just in case?

I don't know how much of  this is "in case" and how much is just masochistic.

Stepping forward...a little

Finally, after many months of anxiety and checking the mailbox everyday for our license, all our paperwork for the adoption has gone through successfully.  We still haven't gotten our physical license yet, but our social worker assured Nathan by phone the other day that everything has been okayed and we should have the license within the week.

And hopefully, in the next few days, our information will appear on our agency's website.  This is the official last step before we are chosen.  And yet, I find myself feeling even more anxious and nervous now than I did when nothing was happening.  We have come almost eight months into our two year contact and have only gotten this far.  I am very afraid no one will have chosen us by the time our contract runs out. 

But I am excited.  I have started looking at cribs and infant necessities.  I hope we'll need them soon

My fears

Now that we are officially done getting things put together for the home study, and I have time to think about the adoption and how things are going, I'm experiencing more fear and anxiety than I thought I was going to.

The thing is, the agency we contracted with works off a 2 year time frame.  So, we have two years from this past June to find a birth mother.  We haven't had our home study approved yet, and we're already almost at 6 months.  This terrifies me.  Going in to this process we had no real idea what it was going to be like. 

We knew nothing about adoption except what we had gleaned from the little bit we read and the failed meetings we went to.  Then we found our agency and signed the contract and got started with our social worker. We didn't know that we could schedule our meetings with her a week apart if we wanted.  We didn't get right on top of the paperwork because we were expecting things to just naturally take forever.

Now here we sit, ready to start looking for a birth mother but held back by the stupidity of our own naivete.  And what happens if our 2 years runs out and no one has picked us yet?  No one has said, yes, I want them to take care of my child.  We could keep working with them on  a month-to-month basis or  we could go it alone.  That comes with its own set of fears. Gah!

4th Anniversary Weekend

In celebration of our 4th anniversary, which conveniently fell on a Thursday, which is my Saturday, I took two extra days off.  And I have to say, my four day weekend was very worth it. 

We spent our actual anniversary day in an adoption seminar listening to birthmothers tell stories about their relationships with the children they placed for adoption and the families they were placed into.  Our anniversary dinner was at Taco Bell.  Oh well.

The next day was 4th anniversary observed and we went out to dinner at my favorite bar.  Sadly, the food was not of the best quality, definitley not what it has been in the past.  Then we went to the university where the theater and dance department was putting on a production of Twelfth Night my favorite of Shakespeare's comedies.  It was awesome. 

And really, the rest of the weekend was very low key.  Saturday, which might actually have been my favorite day of the whole weekend, we didn't do anything.  Literally.  We stayed at home, we read, we played video games.  We didn't actually leave the house until close to 11 pm when we decided we wanted a pizza.  Sunday must have been "family day" we had breakfast with my family and then spent most of the rest of the night with Nathan's family.  It was pretty great.

Thanks to my mom and dad for the lovely card and the cookies, they did not make it through the weekend.  Thanks to Pam and Craig for the new microwave.  I LOVE IT! 

The "Holy Crap" List

Our social worker is coming to inspect the house on October 15.  I have no idea how old this house is as a structure.  It has a history as a carriage house before it was turned into a home, so it is quite old.  It was also badly treated in the recent past.  So, we have quite a few things  to do around the house.

1. Clean and organize our breezeway (the space is newly bereft of our old refrigerator and I hope it will make a good mudroom)
2. Clean both bathrooms and wash/scrape the walls.  The paint needs a good touching up.
3. Clean and organize every room
4. Sweep and mop all floors
5. Sweep garage and basement
6. Adjust temperature on water heater
7. Trim the lovely vine that grows up the trellis on one side of our house
8. Reattach the downspouts to the garage
9. Hang and put batteries in smoke detectors/CO detector

 There are also quite a few things we need to do outside the house

• The cats need rabies shots and I was hoping we could get Hyperion professionally groomed (he needs it)
• We need to have our fingerprints done
• We have a few finance matters to get ironed out
• We need to get our references back from friends 
• We have to purchase a fire extinguisher
• Some of the pictures we submitted for the parent profile were rejected because they were too blurry so we need to find a time and someone with a good camera and have a bunch of pictures of us retaken

We also have a series of 3 adoption classes on Thursday nights beginning October 14.  Our anniversary is the 21st (it's our fourth, we'll be in class).  But then on the 22nd we're going out for a nice dinner and to a play.

As you can see, the next few weeks are going to be quite hectic for us as we try to get our home ready for our home visit.  By the way, if you're in the area and bored one day, please feel free to stop by and help out!

Parent Profile

Yesterday I mailed to the adoption agency the disk with our parent profile materials on it.  Getting all the information together was harder than I had initially thought.  It was a lot of listing of favorites, and Nathan never claims to have a "favorite" anything.  Then we had to write short essays about our lives, our home and our families while attempting to make everything sound great and keep a certain humiliy.  But I think the hardest part was getting pictures.  I mentioned in a earlier post that we needed at least 15 pictures of just the two of us.  We have never had that many pictures of us.  Finally, we just took the camera and went first to my parents and then my in-laws and asked them to take our pictures a bunch of times.  It worked out okay.  These are a couple of the pictures.

We actually had this one in the house, it's from a recent Thanksgiving.  I don't know which year exactly.  I was surprised at how many pictures we were able to come up with in the house and through friends' and families' cameras.

So, Nathan got a rake for his last birthday.  I don't know whose idea it was for us to take an "American Gothic" picture, pretty sure it was Nathan's.  I don't imagine they'll use this one, but we sent everything we could find.

This is one my mom took, I think it's great.

My father-in-law took this picture on the old merry-go-round next to their house.  I wasn't dressed up the best, but it's such a nice picture.

So, initially we were going to send seperate pictures of the cats, because we didn't a have a picture of them together that was nice.  Then a few weeks ago the cats and I were all hanging out in the bedroom and I looked over and they were sitting like this.  It's perfect!  I took a couple, but this is definitely the best one.

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...