A week of joy

Well, here we are a week after bringing our daughter home. Of course the cliche goes "words cannot describe"; however, it is true here. Seeing Mommy in action is just awesome! Seeing Zoe smile at her and know that she is content and her needs are met is breathtaking. The love that I hold for both of them is beyond words. I am sad that I have to continue to work through this important time in Zoe's life, but I honestly look forward to her waking me up in the middle of the night because this is my chance to get to spend time with her. Her facial expressions and personality makes us laugh. I know everyone thinks their child is the cutest ever, but our baby girl is the CUTEST EVER!

She is going to grow up so fast. I enjoy having her sleep on my chest, but before I know it she will be too big to do that. Mommy got out some toys yesterday and Zoe had a blast talking to them and playing with them. Before we know it she will be crawling, walking, talking, running, going off to school, graduating, and moving out to start her own family. Everyday is a miracle to us and we will continue to cherish it.

Love. Love above all else. Love is all I can think about when I think of Zoe, Mommy, and our family.

Instant parents!

The last 48 hours have just been amazing. Thursday, we went to the last education meeting to finish our home study. On the drive home, we get a call from our social worker. We were just thinking it was a call about how the class went and a congrats about having our home study done/next steps to get our profile up and stuff. 

Well, she also told us about a little 13 day old baby that needed a forever home. We were the only family that met the criteria the birth mom requested for her baby's family. We were just in shock. We never expected to get a call to adopt our baby only hours after having our home study complete. We were expecting to wait at least 6 months to a year. 

We thought long and hard about this life changing decision on the way home. We prayed and spoke with family, friends, and our work. We soon realized that we had overwhelming support and love from our family and friends. This crazy idea of being parents with only a 12 hour notice started to feel right. 

So at 3pm on July 25, we got to meet our little Zoe. We fell in love instantly. She just fits in our family and was born to be a Thomas. We feel truly blessed to have her in our lives. 

Thanks so much to everyone for the love and support. We truly appreciate it and love all of y'all for it! 

Holy crap, we are parents!!! :)

Our Adoption Profile Book

Throughout the home study process, we have worked on our adoption profile book. Now that we are just waiting on signatures to finalize our home study, we can finally post our profile book!

This book has taken many months to create... many months of us re-writing pages, choosing which pictures to include, and praying that our personalities, our love, and our lives shine through each page. We hope this book sums up our lives well and speaks to the parents that will bless us with the greatest gift anyone could give us.

We can see the Home Study finish line!

Things have been a bit quiet on this blog. This is mainly because we are wrapping up the home study. We have a meeting to attend later this month, then we are done! After that, we work on our online profile, get our profile books printed, and our adoption profile goes live!

We are so excited to be at this stage. We cannot wait until our home study is complete and approved. The home study process, while long and tedious at times, has served as an insightful tool at looking at our lives, our marriage, what we envision our family to be, and what we envision our parental style to be. Sometimes I think this four year process of trying to build our family has given us an opportunity to prepare for parenthood more than if we were able to get pregnant soon and just have 9 months to figure it all out. 

I've spent many, many hours and days and years researching different parenting styles, types of diapers, the best cribs, the best carseats, the best day cares, and the best foods for babies. I've had a chance to watch my friends and family raise their children and learn from what they've done. We've been able to go ahead and purchase items for our future family member.

I know that no amount of research and preperation can truly prepare you for the chaos that parenthood can be. I do think that it helps to have these ideas handy to help in creating the most loving, caring, and nurturing environment to raise a little one. 

I just cannot wait! I am looking forward to our little family and all of the memories we will create!

Mothering in action

Last weekend we were able to visit with my (Brian's) brother and his family in the Atlanta area. I haven't seen my niece and nephew in about 8 months or so. They have grown so much! They were so outgoing and accepting of us and wanted to spend every waking moment with their Uncle Brian and Aunt Suma.

The highlight of the trip for me was seeing Suma reading with my nephew Zach. She showed her motherly skills so well that I can't wait to see her in action with our child.

Home visits complete!

Today we had our final home visit from Bethany. We are so excited to move one step closer to adding a miracle member to our family. Now all we have to do is attend an educational meeting next month and we will be on the waiting list! 

Meeting Dos & Disney

We completed our second meeting this week! This was our individual interview with Bethany. We have one more visit and one class to go to complete our home study! So we are about half way done. So excited!

The meeting went well. They mainly asked questions about our background, our family, and things. We cannot wait to move on to the next step and have our profiles be active. We are just so eager to become parents and share our love with a baby.

We were in Disney last week. This really made me wish we had a baby to share this wonderful experience. I was at one of the Disney resorts for a work trip. Brian came along so he could go to Universal Studios and Disney World. It was soo much fun! We had great food. Brian got to ride a lot of rides, and we made some great memories. Since it was a work trip, I did not get to visit the parks I wanted to visit, but I had a lot of fun at the resort and at Downtown Disney.

I work for an international honor society. It was very touching and fulfilling to see our members enjoy the convention. We had great academic and inspirational speakers. It just made me feel great about where I work and the impact we have on the students that we have as members!

 

1 down!

Today we had our first in-home visitation with the adoption agency. Basically we just discussed the neighborhood, the house, and went over our backgrounds again. The social worker was very complimentary of our house and yard (even though the yard is kind of basically just weeds now since the Bermuda grass is still basically dormant.). 

The thing I am also very happy about today is how well behaved the cats were! They basically just laid in their respective sleep spots and looked majestic except for Martini who was nosy as always and had to be in the middle of us as usual. 

Now we have about two weeks before we go for interviews again but this time more in depth and in their office. 

Clean, clean, and clean

So Brian spilled the beans! First home visit!!! How exciting!!

Our house is pretty neat and tidy most of the time.  Brian has OCD, so that helps with keeping everything nice and neat.  However, it looks like a lot of the nursery and front yard to-do's will be done this weekend!  The nursery is kind of a disarry of baby items and cuteness right now.  I will try to arrange the room better and hang some of the artwork I've accumulated for the nursery these past few months.

As for the yard, our cute cheery succulents did not survive the winter and look pretty sad right now.  I need to head to the garden center and get expert advise about something low maintenance and evergreen to go in our cool pots in front of our house.

Besides those two major areas, the house is pretty much put together.  We hope the agency loves our little house as much as we do.  We think it would be perfect to raise a family in.  I am eager to know what questions she will ask us.  It is just kind of hard being judged, but we are confident that we rock and hope our agency will think we rock too.

Please pray for us!  We are so ready to start our family and share our love with a child.

First home visit!

Yesterday we received notice that we are ready for our initial home visit! This was wonderful news. We figured it would take at least a few weeks to get to this step since we only turned in our paperwork last week. I guess this weekend means big time Spring cleaning! So excited to move one step forward! 

Still in Paperwork Limbo

Our agency is backed up with other home studies, so we cannot start the home visit portion of our home study or the group meetings.  We are super bummed about this.  We want to just dive in there and get things done!  We are so ready to start our family and get closer to actually being able to have our profile out there for birthparents to see.

Until then, we have a few paperwork items to complete.  We did our background checks.  It was our first time EVER going inside of a police station and jail!  We had to go to our city and county police stations to get our background check run.  We had to go to the county jail to get our fingerprints printed.  It was... interesting.

With that done, all that is left are our physicals.  We hope to have that done within a week.  Then we can mail off the humongous package of paperwork to our agency.  Then wait for a spot to open for the home study.

I've been really anxious this month regarding getting the paperwork in and starting the home study.  This is kind of our last hope at having a family.  I pray and hope that adoption will work for us and that our agency will see that we are kind, loving, faithful people who are ready to love and raise a child in our home.  I think the anxiousness comes from February being the three year aniversary of my first miscarriage and April being the two year anniversay of my third miscarriage.  Just a lot of emotions running through me and reliving the losses I felt those years ago.

I know that God has set us on this path for a reason.  I pray for strength to get through this dark time and focus on the joy that is to come.

Papers, papers, and... diapers!

We are still in the boring paperwork stage. We are hoping to have it all completed by the end of the month. Our agency is still backup with other home studies, so we aren't sure when we can start scheduling the visits. Hopefully soon!

Besides paperwork, I'm finishing up our massive cloth diaper stash! I'll do a cloth diaper specific post later. There is a ton of information on the web about cloth diapering. We decided to cloth diaper because of the cost savings. Added bonus, they are super cute!

Sorry for the boring update! Hopefully we will have more exciting things to post once we start the home study process!

So it begins...

We finally received the paperwork for our home study! I'm actually excited to begin, but I'm sure that will change after filling out the first few forms. 

Our agency is backed up, so we can't start the home visit part of the home study until later. I'm just excited to begin the process! 

Some of the questions asked are very personal.. Like questions about our sex lives personal. Both Brian and I are pretty quiet and shy, so that is just going to be awkward for us! 

Even though some of the questions might be awkward to answer, I think the process will help both of us reflect on ourselves and our relationship. It will open discussion about what we want for the future of our little family. 

Forever, I will carry you in my heart

We've come a long way in the last 3 and a half years. We first were able to successfully get pregnant in December 2010. I remember the joy I felt when I saw that little plus sign for the first time. The excitement I had to tell Brian that we were going to have a baby! I remember our first appointment and our first sonogram. Seeing our little gummy bear's heartbeat at 8 weeks and falling in love. Then it happened, I started spotting. I knew that something was wrong. When we went to the doctor for another sonogram, the baby only grew a day since the previous week and had no heartbeat. It is as if the baby held on long enough for us to see him wiggle around and hear the hearbeat.

About a year later, we were pregnant again. This time, we were both cautiously excited. I found out just before going on vacation. Sadly, the miscarriage happened during our vacation. A few months later, we were able to get pregnant a third time. This one also ended around week 6.

We've taken time to grieve each loss. We are truly heartbroken by what could have been and the little lives we lost. We believe that God has a plan. Each loss, while devestating, has brought us closer as a couple. They have helped us reflect on ourselves and what we truly want in life and what we want for our family. They've made me stronger in a way and more determined. We miss our little babies that we've never gotten to meet, but we are hopeful for the future.

We have had almost two years of unexplained infertility since our last loss. Our doctors are not sure what is wrong. Since looking into adoption, we've stopped all fertility treatments. They were doing more harm to my body than good. Plus, I did not like pumping my body full of hormones and dealing with the odd side effects.

"So... When are you guys gonna start a family?"

We get this question a lot. After being married for more than eight years, it is more like "So where are the kids, already?!?!" About four years ago, we started our journey to grow our family. Through this journey, we've experienced three heartbreaking miscarriages and over a year of unexplained infertility. Now, we are looking more closely at adoption to grow our family.

Why Adoption?
We've always planned to adopt. We wanted to have a child then adopt our second child. We've just always felt that God has called us to adopt. Adoption is a big part of both of our families. My youngest sister is adopted. Brian has cousins that are adopted. As we've started looking more into adoption, we've found that we had many friends and other relatives that are adopted or have adopted.

We are just so ready to become parents and to share our love, faith, and experiences with a child. Our families already love our future son or daughter without even meeting them yet.

Why blog about it?
I wanted to start this blog to document our adoption process and our experience growing a family. Brian may chime in with a post here and there as well. I also wanted to document this journey to help anyone else that is looking into adoption or that has experienced the pain of infertility and multiple miscarriages.