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....

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!

Home Study!!!

We got it! We have our home study in hand, finalized and ready to go!!! Now we can actually start contemplating the "fax us your home study right away" situations...there was just one we had to turn down in PA...and already born, parental right terminated, peanut of a baby girl...under 5 pounds!!! She was Caucasian though so I knew they would have tons of applications for her, and I didn't feel bad about saying we had to pass...Our baby will find us when the time is right :) Just wanted you all to know!!

Little Update!

So as of Wednesday November 28th, we will have ALL our paperwork done. We'll ship off the last final documents to our social worker so she can complete the writing of the home study. In the meantime, we are scrapbooking, profile making fools. These books take a lot of time...and every freaking time I get one assembled...I find a typo. That really sucks. Anyway, by the end of next week, we shuld be mailing out several books, and we expect to match sometime in the next 4 weeks to 3 months. It could be longer, it could be shorter. After our match, we'll likely have about 2 months to go till delivery. We are really hoping for a delivery in the early part of 2008.
The other birth mother we submitted on has decided two things. She want's an African American Couple, or at least a biracial couple. That's fine, that is totally her choice. She also decided that since they couldn't find any of those (AA and bi-racial couples have almost no wait time to match, unless they are gender specific because they are in high demand) she wasn't going to choose at all. If the baby is born, and they still haven't found a couple that she likes, she will let the agency choose. We'll just have to wait it out I guess...we could be matched by the time she has that baby....
AND we thought of another girls name we like, but no middle name yet.
Ella.
I love it :)

Matches...

Not the fire kind...the kind that really matter in our life right now. The kind with an expectant mother.
So I have a line on one...we'll see since there are some complications regarding religion. They seem to have a misunderstand when they say Christian Couple. That actually does include us. Christian Science, is actually Christian...but they won't work with Christian Science, Morman, or Jehovah Witness. I can see the other two aren't Christian. Christian Science...is actually Christian though, AND it's not even how we're planning to raise our children. It's like splitting hairs at this point.
But I push the issue anyway. It's a great situation. We will encourage everyone not to get excited. There is ever chance I'll post 1,000 of these before I ever post that it's THE match. Anyway, here are the basics, so you all can see what kind of info we get.
Black American expectant mother due Jan 18. This is her 6th pregnancy, she typically delivers at 36-38 weeks. She smokes less than 1/2 pack a day. No drugs or alcohol. Looking for pictures and letters after the birth, maybe one meeting before. She's in a very adoption friendly state. Fees come in at about 1/2 of our max adoption budget (very low). They want profiles by Thursday at 6pm, which we don't have yet, and haven't heard yet if we're good enough anyway. It's not looking good for this one...If we don't "pass" this expectant mother will be given only 2 Traditional Couples to choose from (her request) but they will also give her one single parent, even though that isn't her preference.
We'll wait and see :)