We're Approved!

Almost a year to the day from when we first met with our case worker at LDS Family Services, we have been officially approved to adopt!

YAY!

Our profile is now live on itsaboutlove.org, and we can start searching for a birthmother.

Want to help?

LDS Family Services works with birth mothers regardless of religious beliefs or financial situation, so if you know of anyone who is pregnant and thinking about adoption, please let us know.

I won't link directly to our profile from here for privacy reasons, but email me and I can send you the link. We'll also be sending out emails, so if you're in our address book, you'll be getting the link in an email in the next few days.

We're so excited to finally be moving forward in our adoption journey!

Adoption Progress

Yesterday we had our individual interviews with our caseworker and today we turned in the last of our extra paperwork and had our home study!

Next week we'll finish our required training and we'll write our letter to birth parents and put together our profile. After that, I think we're done with everything and will just have to wait for our approval and then we'll officially be waiting to adopt.

Being close to being approved is just a bit surreal. It's hard to believe that 10 years after first talking about adopting sometime in the future, that sometime is almost here.

We mailed in our adoption paperwork today!

handing the envelope to the mail clerk

I spent a crazy morning tracking down the last-minute papers, determining what still needed to be signed (and notorized), which checks need to be written, calling the agency to make sure I'm not forgetting anything, and so on.

We got the forms notorized while Mr M was on his lunch break, then LMS and I took them to the post office.

I have one section left to fill in for the online information, then we'll be done with all the online questions as well.

Next up:

Home visits and adoption training.

We're finally making progress! Yay!

Conversations with LMS

nailed by a snowball thrown by daddy

The little miss has been in the habit of praying for a baby sister for some time now. If her prayer doesn't include anything else, it always includes a request for a baby sister :)

The other night after family prayer LMS told me "You forgot to ask for a baby sister!"

I told her "We might not get a baby sister- we might get a baby brother, and mommy and daddy are good with whichever one Heavenly Father sends to our family. Just because we pray for something doesn't mean we'll get it. Even though you're praying for a baby sister, Heavenly Father might want us to have a baby brother."

Hardly pausing to think it through, she asked, "So if we pray for a baby brother, we'll get a baby sister?"

Ohh, we're in trouble! Not even 6 and she's trying to work the system....

How do you think adopting a child will change your life?

Cool photo of a recent foggy am. No relation to the post :)


(full disclosure: possible TMI ahead)

We're getting closer to turning in all our paperwork for the adoption. We could do it in a couple different chunks, but we decided to just gather it all together and take care of it at one time. Yesterday I was working on the essay question portion that Mr M and I have to individually answer.

Question: how do you think adopting a child will change your life?

The questions are to help the agency get to know us and get us thinking about different things, but as the parents of a five year old I don't think we have any illusions (delusions?) of how parenthood will be :)

Anyway, I was reviewing the lists of paperwork that has to be mailed (some is mailed, some is submitted online) and came across an infertility report that needs to be filled out. We've done the physicals, but I hadn't realized I need another paper signed by my doctor.

I haven't been to a specialist here (kinda don't see the point), but I have to get my over-due annual exam done, so I'll take my stacks of medical files (from doctors I've seen in three different states) and hopefully she won't have a problem signing off on my paperwork.

Good timing all around, really, since I should have had my annual exam a long time ago and I've been meaning to go in so I can get checked for endometriosis. Hopefully I can kill all three birds with one stone. I really hate going to the gynecologist. Like REALLY hate- I've yet to have an exam that didn't hurt like the dickens, even when I've warned them about my tilted uterus and they've assurred me they'll be gentle. A friend recommended the nurse practioner I'll be seeing, and I'm hoping she lives up to the hype. There's a reason I put off my annual exams...

Instant gratification

Our neighbors with the one year old daughter stopped by the other day to pick up a bowl they left here and to share the good news that they're pregant.

LMS has apparently been pondering this (I didn't realize she even heard them), because the next day she asked me why some kids get brothers and sisters and she doesn't.

We've talked about how some families are big, and some are small, and some are in between, so I reminded her of that. I also reminded her that she has at least 3 or 4 friends her age who also don't have brothers or sisters. Of course, that didn't really help: she wants a baby sister NOW. Like by this weekend.

Poor kiddo. We're still working on the paperwork, so it'll be awhile.

Siblings

LMS has decided she needs siblings.

She's talked about it before, but she's holding onto the idea a lot longer this time around. In the past I told her she needed to talk to Heavenly Father if she wanted siblings, but that was it. This past week when she brought up siblings again, and I gave her my standard answer, she headed off to her room to pray that Heavenly Father would send her a sister, a brother, and a baby sister :)

The next day we had a discussion about prayers, mainly that we should pray in the morning and at night, and she has now taken to saying her own prayers in the morning. I believe this is so she can pray for siblings. Though she's now just praying for a sister and a baby sister. She told me she didn't need a brother because he would probably break her toys.

She's in for a rude awakening when she realizes that sisters break toys too :)

She was requesting an older sister, by which she means a sister close to her age that she can play with, and a baby sister, but then she decided she didn't need a baby sister, just two sisters to play with.

We've talked to her about adoption and she's asking more questions about if we're going to adopt some sisters for her. Luckily we're getting closer to the point where we can start the process, but we're still not quite there.

When we were at the grocery store the other day she told the checkout people that we were going to adopt some sisters for her.  :)

The main question we need to answer right now is should we pursue an adoption through LDS Family Services or a local agency. If we go with LDS Family Services we'll be paying a big chunk of money, we won't know when we'll get a baby (birth moms do the choosing), and infants are usually the only ones available for adoption. If we go through a local agency the cost should be less (we need to do some more research on this), we won't know when we'll get a baby/child, and we might be able to adopt a sibling group, which we're open to as long as they're younger than LMS. There could also be issues such as abuse or neglect that we would need to help them deal with. Lots of things to think and pray about.

If you know anyone who's thinking of putting their baby up for adoption, let us know!