New Week!

It's 12:00AM....the Pats won the AFC tonight and it was a great game. Tomorrow I'm going to e-mail for updates on our situations. I don't really expect good news because if it was good....right. They would have called. Anyway, I'm not working tomorrow and I'm hoping I can make it over to a friends to learn more about cloth diapering. I'm actually excited :)

Mike's work party was pretty fun. We stayed till almost the very end, and it took the whole next day to recover. I'm not sure if it was the rich food or the late night...maybe we are just getting old! Mike had like 1.5 beers and I didn't drink at all and was in bed till about 1. Then we went over to Rob and Rachel's and got burritos. Their son Simon LOVES Mike. Mike likes to tell me that he loves us both, but I'm pretty realistic about the whole thing. He's a smart boy and he knows I wear the pants. If he's not nice to me, and doesn't hug and snuggle me I could cut of his connection to Mike, and he just doesn't want that. After dinner (which he didn't eat) we were eating our dessert (which he wanted), so his Mom was trying to get him to eat some apple sauce and yogurt (which he didn't want)...Four adults ended up sitting there watching him eat. If he said no to the bite, we would say...Boooooo, and when he ate it, we would say YEAH...and all clap. It was quite a show and he enjoyed himself a lot. We were all just glad he ate something. He hadn't eaten anything since breakfast...poor little guy is teething and may have a bug.

Well thanks to another blog I read, I'm on a vegetarian kick. EBSCO style. EBSCO is where Mike works and they advertised for the holiday dinner in December a vegetarian option of poached salmon. I figure if they counted that as vegetarian, I will too! I'm on veggies, fish and shell fish, with dairy. Basically I'm not eating beef, pork or chicken. I'm starting out including the fish and stuff but I'll try to limit it as much as I can based on my protein intake from other sources. Anyway, it's time to kick some weight.

You didn't think I would leave you all hanging did you???

We got the call today that we weren't chosen for the baby born yesterday...the 10 pound little guy will go home with some other family, whom I'm sure is flipping out as I write this. We will wait and hope that one of our other situations is the baby for us! I may ask for updates tomorrow, but most likely it will be Monday.

Thanks to everyone who was pulling for us! This call, as our 2nd chance at an immediate placement just goes to show, we don't know when it will be. We could get a call at anytime.

We have Mike's Party for work tomorrow, and since I have the day off I'm going to get my stupid tooth fixed (I've been sporting that stupid chip for several weeks!) and I'm going to get my hair done for the party. I thought about getting my nails done, but I think I'll just paint them myself. Save $$.....

Have a great weekend everyone!

Adoption

I think I speak Adoption language in my sleep. Birth mother, revocation, living expenses...it's our whole freaking life. At least I thought so? For some reason whenever there is an immediate decision to make, Mike is missing. Today I get another call (YIKES! A CALL!) from our agency out in Utah. This is an agency that I almost called to have a temper tantrum at last night. Thankfully (maybe) I didn't...that's a long story filled with nights were Mike and I are up till 4, getting up at 7 and over-nighting packages (at $30 each). It was a crazy time, and I'm intensely grateful that for right now, it's behind us, so I'll not comment on what I was going to tantrum about to them last night. Anyway, today...they call. They call my WORK. They call my work without even trying my cell phone. That shows intense urgency. So I listen...urgently...if that's possible. She says...We have a birth mom. In. Labor. Now. (!these are killer situations....no stress right?!) Would you like to hear about it? SURE! Never mind your typing up the main line at work, and my boss is shooting daggers at my head with his eyes. I want to hear now. So I get all the details and it all sounds good. Everything sounds good! So she asks if I want to talk it over with Mike and call her back. Call her back about the expectant mother that's "in a good labor pattern now, and I'm on my way over in 5 minutes to give her the profiles" . She thinks I'm going to risk calling her back when never in the time I've known her, have I ever called her cell phone and had her actually answer? Last night her cell phone actually wouldn't even accept anymore messages! I'm not letting her off the phone. BUT, Mike is not on-line for immediate comment so I joke with her that he doesn't really need to comment, and I tell her to go ahead. All the while the little voice in the back of my head is saying...but...but...THIS is the agency that is 2X as much as the others...but...but...this is the agency you don't really like....in the state with laws you don't really agree with....this is THAT agency Amy. I tell the little voice to shut the F up. This mom is in labor!

Details anyone?

Full African American Baby BOY! expected to be around 10 pounds (what could we ever bring her to thank her for going through THAT??) This is her 5th baby, all with the same man, who is also at the hospital and willing to sign the adoption papers. (that doesn't happen often)

She wants a semi open adoption with pictures and letters after the adoption. She is from FL, and is freezing her butt of at the agency which is located in state that is colder than the North Pole right now apparently.

Here's why I'm *trying* not to get my hopes up:

1) This expectant mom is petite (about 5'4) and slender (when she's not carrying a 10pound baby I guess) so I tend to think that she won't really be draw to us "huskier" folks. Then again, she's carrying a freaking 10 POUND baby...I guess there is a chance that the expectant father isn't as petite.

2) She is freezing her butt off...is she really going to be inclined to place her baby in MA, where the baby can freeze IT'S butt off 5 months of every year? I had always hoped that people that lived in warm climates might be drawn to us because we have snow and maybe they idealized snow. Clearly this woman is not idealizing anything about the cold right now.

3) We are...WHITE...she and the expectant father aren't. If there are any African American or even Bi-Racial Couple also being submitted, there is a good chance she will choose them. It's just the way it works. We did demonstrate our diversity in our families in our profile, so hopefully she will see that.

4) Our house looks pretty ghetto on the outside. I don't think anyone looks at the picture of our house and thinks how cute it is really. Plus she lives in FL...cost of living is so much lower down there that she has no idea what a house like we have actually cost us. I bet she looks at our house and wants to keep her baby.

I haven't spent all day thinking about this...really! I haven't. I didn't get the call till lunch-time.

If this is our baby, he will find us. If it isn't...we are submitted on 4 other situations right now too. Hopefully one of those will work out. Pray for our sanity...mine anyway....

It was an exciting day!

I started off the morning with Mike coming in to wake me up with a ringing cell phone. It was one of our agencies, and she first needed to know our "county" which I had read as "country" when I filled out our application. Opps! So I'm figuring that's it, and read to roll over and hang up on her. Then she says, I was also wondering if you'd like to be submitted to another birth mom we have? All agencies call the expectant mother's birth mom's. Technically they are NOT birth mom's till they relinquish their rights, but agencies always say they are birth moms...it's all part of the psychology of adoption I think. Anyway, then she says...the birth mother went into labor this morning. I say, SURE! We would love to be submitted! And she says...Do you want to know about the situation? He he....So I hear about the situation, which sounds great and she says she'll tell the social worker to show our book. We did end up hearing a couple hours ago that we weren't choosen, but I'm trying to remain up beat! Our profile is out there, and it's being shown. We are still in on 3 other situations that are due in the month of Feb. It was also a big reality check that we need to stay caught up on house work and laundry if there is a chance that we could have to leave so short notice like that!

Today Mike also learned that he is not allowed to "stalk" Dewey like Dewey stalks Daisy when they are playing. Dewey was laying on the bed with me, almost asleep and Mike stalked around the corner, and scared him. Dewey ran to the end of the bed, peeing the whole way. I was so happy. So on top of our other laundry, we got to strip the bed and wash the comforter and duvet cover too. Wicked fun. Dewey talks a good game, like he's a tough guy, but he's a wimp. He was deathly afraid of Mike's backpack for the longest time....so weird.

We have Brielle overnight tonight. She is the biggest sweetheart. She loves to play and look at all her toys. She loves to pull Uncle Mikey's hair. She loves to hold her bubba all by herself. I love it when she drinks her bubba, and looks up at you and smiles, and milk drools out the corner of her mouth....it's great. Uncle Mikey is holding strong on not changing the diapers though. Though he did pick up all her toys and fold up the blanket we were all playing....he stacked them all on her high chair and he said he would put her in the high chair and she could play with her toys and watch him cook breakfast. That sentance leaves me to think two things.
1) Maybe he's getting up with her in the morning? AND
2) Maybe I'm getting blueberry pancakes for breakfast?

I hope....

Wing Night!

We went to wing night tonight. Marc's on a Diet again, though he did seem to enjoy his $12.00 Old Grandad and Diet Coke. Our waitress, who we see almost every week, suggested that we now call him Old Grandad. I guess it take guts to choose a Whiskey randomly off the bottom shelf at a bar right?

Anyway, I also finished my last loading dose for the Orencia tonight. These infusions are not the miracles the Remicade was, but they are slowly helping over time. I wish the insurance would stop denying the claim though. It took me 6 months of nearly OD'ing on pain killer while they "preapproved" this treatment, and now they are telling me it's not covered. $2400 a treatment. I've had 3. I am NOT paying that. They preapproved it, they need to pay it.

No new news on the adoption. I'm sure a lot of you think you can guess how hard it is not to e-mail about the situations we've submitted on. It is SO hard. It's harder than waiting 6 months for the medication I need :)

Anyway, I think if we didn't get choosen for any of these situations, we might be out of the running till fall. We'll have to just wait and see I guess!

Never underestimate the comma....

Weekends suck! I know! I'm crazy right? See at one point, I did like weekends. That one far away point in my life, when my WHOLE life was not consumed by adoption. Now, on the weekends, everything slams to a stop. No posts with new situations on any boards. No e-mails from the referral agencies, cause THEY aren't getting any e-mails from any agencies, cause they are all closed. Don't get me wrong...I still check the forums everyday anyway. One never knows when there will be a baby "born" situation where an adoption worker was forced to come in on her day off an deal with it. Rare, but it could happen. So that's the story. Weekends are boring.

Then today, we get a CALL. I know I've said before how calls are good....mostly cause calls are rare. More exactingly (my blog, my made up words), Mike gets a call. I don't even really realize, he's on the phone. He pokes his sweet little face around the bedroom door and says to me. It's So and So agency, they called to say they got the profiles and wanted to touch base with us. It's all one sentance right? See the little bitty comma in there? Right between agency and they? That comma, as we all know, indicates a SLIGHT pause in his speech. During that slight pause, here is what happened to me...

My heart fell out of my chest. I wondered why they called Mike's phone and not mine? I concluded it might have just been that Mike's was listed first on the paperwork. I wondered if she was in a hurry so she called the first number on our paperwork. I wondered if there was an emergency match! I pondered what we had in our checking account for immediate tickets to Ohio. How long would it take to drive to Ohio? Should we rent a car? I can't believe she's calling on a SATURDAY? What? Hun? Oh...she's just calling to touch base...."Okay give me the phone." Really...all that in the space of a comma. Comma's a big thing....

Anyway, she was very nice, and she said our profile were great, and she was sending it right over to the social worker that was working with the expectant mother we wanted to submit to.

It was still a pretty big deal for us. We really feel great about this agency. They are excellent fee wise, they CALLED us just to tell us they GOT our profiles, and they made that call ON A WEEKEND! I will now forever hold hope that we'll get weekend calls from this agency. Weekends are a little better now.

Still no word on our bricks. I'm starting to think the guy was a brick tease. :)

Family Updates.

Most of our family and friends will have read this update already, since I e-mailed it to them...course, even since I e-mailed it, things have changed, so read the new info at the bottom!!

Hello Family and Friends!
I know people are starting to feel weird about always asking how things are going...honestly, we don't mind answering, but I thought I would send out a quick update to let you all know where we are at. Some of you we just don't see as often as we would like to, so we figured you might like an idea on what's up too :) Anyway, we got all our approvals, and home study in hand in mid December. It wasn't without it's trials. Our social worker lost her mother right before Christmas, so our thoughts were with her during that time, and not very focused on our own progress. She's just about ready to get back to work now, and we've gotten excellent support while we've needed it from the main office.

We're currently listed with several agencies, though we aren't thrilled with all of them. One is out in Utah, and although it's renowned for it's fast placements, they do everything via telephone. It makes it hard to keep in touch, and they never seem to return calls in a timely manner. They were pretty expensive anyway, so we're pretty comfortable writing them off :) Our other agencies are located in Ohio, and Georgia. We found them both through an amazing, wonderful, fantastic (yeah, we like her) referral service out of Ohio. She's an advocate for trans-racial adoptions, and adoptions with reasonable fees (gotta love that). With her guidance we've found a couple agencies that are not only with in, but well below our budget. We are comfortable that our baby can find us through these agencies.

Current situations that we are submitted on...sometimes it's hard to recall exactly who has our profile where, since we basically get e-mails or phone calls, and give a yes or no based on preliminary information. As far as I know, we are only in one, with one on the back burner right now. Most agencies were closed during Christmas and New Years and they are all still playing catch up. They all "expect" there to be an influx of expectant mothers in the next couple of weeks.

We got word today that the last of the 5 situations in Georgia did choose a family..obviously it wasn't us :) They do expect updates this week and next from the intake coordinators in Georgia. This agency seems to work in "batches" where each coordinator will take on a certain number, work with them, and then pass on the ones ready to match. They match at a main meeting once a week or every other week. They have our info, so we should be hearing if they have any situations that might be a good match for us.

We just got a call today (calls are good, that's means it's a more pressing event) asking if we would like to submit on an expectant mother due Feb 14th. I guess the mother "thinks" she will deliver earlier...I think a lot of expectant women think that, but we'll wait and see :) It's a great situation, and we gave them the go ahead to show our profile. This is an agency that is traditionally very low in numbers for their pool of families accepting infants that are not full Caucasian. They did 5 non Caucasian placements the week before Christmas, so their pool is even lower now. This particular mother is young, very healthy, and has stated she is drug and alcohol free. I can imagine that there will be some competition!

We are also being considered, though conditionally, on a situation in Pennsylvania. The expectant mother is due in early February but is already having contractions. She wants to match now, although all the numbers aren't in yet. We agreed to be submitted with the understanding we are working on a budget, so if she didn't fit that, in the end we wouldn't accept a match. Pennsylvania is also a 30 day revocation state. 30 days is longer than we would have hoped for but not unheard of. The fact we could drive there and save on airfare would be a bonus. We'll wait for the numbers to come in on this one before we get too excited.

As always, I'll keep everyone up to date as things change, without flooding your inbox of course.

Happy and Healthy 2008 to everyone :)

Amy and Mike

***In the 6 hours since I sent that e-mail we've also submitted on additional situations so the excel sheet I'm now keeping has the following potential situations

Submitted: Ohio, baby girl due 2/15; Ohio, baby boy due 2/15; Tennessee, unknown gender due 2/12;

Monitoring: more info required: PA baby girl, due 1/23

I'm sure you can all see why I don't e-mail an update every time the situations change :)

Hopefully I'll atleast stay organized!

Happy New Year!

Life cruises on...
We heard about another potential situation. Expectant Mother due Jan 23, but already having contractions. Our only sticking point is she is in PA. I personally don't have anything against PA, but their adoption laws are right on the edge of being "ok" with us. Actually they are way beyond what we initally considered, but the more I learn about adoption, the farther I lean. In PA, the mother gets 30 days after signing TPR (termination of parental rights) to change her mind. THIRTY FREAKING DAYS. Georgia is 10 days. We're with an agency in Georgia and we decided 10 days we could handle. Actually, I liked 10 days. I honestly believe that we need to find the right baby to find us, not just any baby. I want to add a baby to this family that comes from a birth mother who is confident in her choice. I don't want to attempt to have an open adoption with a birth mother who regrets her choice only days after signing consents. Thirty days though...that's a long time to wait to be sure. That's 30 days of bonding, and 30 nights of feedings. That's 30 days out of work, with no pay. That's 30 days, where on day 29 she can decided to come get the baby from us. That is really, really scarey. We decided we would agree to be considered on a few conditions. We want to know everything we possible can about this expectant mother, her family, her living situation, and the birth father. We need to know what happens if she does disrupt 15, or 20 or 29 days in. It's scarey, and we'll just have to see....

No new news on our bricks. Mike did take the brick hearth out of the long back room though...you know the room that is shaped like a bowling alley? We're finally going to split that in half, and make the laundry room. I NEED a laundry room if we are going to have an infant. The room is about 8X25, so we'll end up with about and 8X10 laundry room, and then an 8X15 "Den", bascially a dog room/office. We'll keep our computers in there, and the dog kennels. I just can not wait for my laundry room. We have the washer and dryer....I just can't wait to have them next to each other....a novel idea, I know.

Speaking of the dogs, they are all doing pretty well. Dudley is still really slowing down. He's got arthritis like his Mum :) I try to help him out as much as I can. I have so much empathy for him as he walks all stiff legged around the house, or when it take 3 tries for him to stand up from a sit. We have him on Condroitin/MSM stuff, and it has helped, it's just the weather partly I think. He's feeling it, just like I am...

Last night (New Year's) we had planned for a really quiet night in alone. Then my sister got sick and my brother-in-law (Brad) wanted something to do with the 2 girls so he came over. It was great to see them. Bridget and I watched Dora for a while, and then Brielle and I spent some quality time blowing raspberries. She loves it when I blow raspberried right inside her open mouth. It's like a messy little baby kiss...you know how they always kiss with their mouths open first :) She's such a cute, happy little girl. Well not so much when she's in her carrier, she doesn't really love that, but otherwise, she's very happy :) Since we were having people over, we called to invite Rob, Rachel and their son Simon. Brad and the girls went out the door just as Rob and Rachel came in. The stayed for a while and then Mike and I watched 8 Crazy Nights (Adam Sandler). We paused it when the ball dropped and open a bottle of Champagne. Since we realized we weren't going to drink it all we walked next door in our slippers to share with the neighbors. Stayed over their and chatted for about an hour. It's always nice to catch up with your neighbors at midnight while we're all in our PJ's....that's just how we roll though!

Mike is making chili today...it's smells so great. I think we're going to have a roast for dinner, if I ever get out of bed. More snow today, so I'm pretty sore. So far the Orencia infusions are helping, but it's not the immediate wonder drug that the TNF Alpha Blockers were. This seems to take a lot longer to build up and give me relief.