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Monday, June 25, 2007

Intake

I just found out our intake evaluation is scheduled for this Thursday at lunch time. According to the email we received from Elly (she's our adoption counselor) the appointment won't take much longer than an hour but that is dependent upon how many questions we have. Most of my nervousness has moved out of the way for the excitement I feel, at least for the moment.

More to come...

Thoughts about Truth

I got up early this morning and I've been online, reading and researching more about adoption. I found one very interesting and heartfelt article that I really enjoyed. Here's an excerpt from Secret Thoughts from an Adoptive Mother:
"As more and more of us tell the truth about our feelings, and those feelings resonate with others, they gain a legitimacy that can be comforting. Like every other aspect of adoption, truth is not a gift that you can choose to give or withhold; it is a prerequisite. The process of adopting a child takes more courage than you think you have, offers more self-knowledge than you think you want, and reassembles your characteristics into someone familiar but changed. It is an incredible journey through a rich landscape of hard truths."
This resonated with me and it kind of sums up how I feel overall and why I'm creating this blog to begin with. I want and need to tell our story in a truthful, meaningful way and I hope I will be able to do that. If you're interested, you can read more of the article I quoted here

Sunday, June 24, 2007

Garage Sale

Towards the end of last week I somehow managed to motivate myself enough to clean out our garage, with the intent of participating in our neighborhood-wide garage sale this year. This basically means I've spent most of the past two weekends either in our garage or our driveway working my tail off. Despite the hard work of cleaning out garages, basements, closets, etc. it's always nice when the work is done and you can sit back and admire all the new-found space.

This time around my efforts were for a dual purpose. I decided to apply the garage sale proceeds to our adoption fund, thereby killing two birds with one stone: a cleaner, more organized garage and a little additional cash for our nest. This weekend was the actual garage sale and it went pretty well. While it was a lot of work to clean, organize and price all that stuff, I actually enjoyed sitting out in the yard chatting with people, meeting a few neighbors for the first time, and finding excellent uses for so much of our excess stuff. All totaled after Friday and Saturday I ended up with close to $150.00 that I can take straight to the bank. Not too bad for a few days of work that was begging to be done anyway...good times!

We should probably hear from the people at Catholic Social Services (CSS) this week sometime and then our intake evaluation will be scheduled. I am anxious to find out all the details of the adoption education classes we will take in July, as well as all the other ins and outs of our road toward becoming adoptive parents. I know it will probably be overwhelming when we get all the information but at least then I can feel like I'm being productive and like progress is being made towards our goal. My hope is that I'll feel less anxious overall when I can keep myself busy with adoption-related research and projects.

I guess time will tell...

Monday, June 18, 2007

The Journey Begins

And so it goes! I placed a letter in our mailbox today containing our application for adoption through Catholic Social Services of Michigan. The next step will be to have our intake evaluation, which should happen sometime within the next two weeks. This will be an opportunity for us to get to know our adoption counselor a little better and to learn much more about the details of the journey that lies ahead for us.

This is a big step and I feel excited and nervous all at once. There is so much to learn and I can't seem to get my hands on enough information to satisfy my curiosity. I've already read four adoption books, ranging from personal stories all the way to the how-to variety. I know that a lot of what we will learn will come through experience only and that's just the nature of the adoption process but I still yearn for answers to all my questions!

I haven't been quite sure until now that I wanted to create a blog for this part of our lives but the act of placing that oh so important letter in the mailbox today made me realize that I do. We have been waiting a long time to become parents and now that we have taken these steps toward making that dream a reality it seems impossible to NOT write about it. I am an avid journal keeper anyway, both in electronic and paper form so this will be yet another link in my journaling chain.


I guess I'm done for tonight. I know there will be more to say soon!