Arrivals

I checked out the LSS adoption website tonight and saw that the families that were listed as "Placement Pending" are now in the "Congratulations on your new arrival section!" (In addition to some families that were listed as waiting.)  So, things are happening!  One of the families has a biological child...that gives me hope that someone will pick us.  OK expecting parents, we're ready (beyond ready in some ways and as ready as we are going to be in others!)

On a side note, it's hard for me to look at the list of waiting families and know that some of them were on the list when we first considered adoption--which was about a year and a half ago!  I can't even begin to imagine their wait (and don't want to experience it), especially if their "pre-wait" was anything like ours. 

In

Our contact at LSS in Minneapolis emailed me today that we are officially in "the book" and that our online posting will be up within 24 hours.  So, as of November 4, 2011, we are officially a waiting adoptive family!  Interesting since it seems like we've been waiting a long time already, but this is a new wait.  A wait with a chance. 

I'm hopeful that the end result is what we've been dreaming of for years....a bigger family.  To be even more blessed than we are already.

What will we do during our wait?  Enjoy G-man.  Organize stuff, lots of stuff.  Research cloth diapers?  Sleep.  Live the profile.  Be thankful for what we have.  Embrace being a waiting adoptive family.  (Cyn, that word was for you!)

I feel like we just got accepted into an exclusive group that we've been waiting so long to be part of!  :)

Profile update, we're in!

I got an email from our LSS contact in Minneapolis today, she has everything she needs to put our profile in the books--YEAH!  We had to complete 3 more forms (I'm super thankful we have notaries at work!) and we're done!  Our online profile will be posted as soon as they receive the notarized documents.  I honestly can't believe I overlooked them....clearly a sign of the mass amounts of paperwork we've completed! 

I've been trying to get motivated to do some more work on the adoption website I started for our family.  It's just that there are SO many other fun things to do in life instead.  Maybe tomorrow......

All done! Just kidding.

I want to swear!  I was just about to post (and brag) that we're all done with our profile (meaning ready to mail all done) when I looked over at the printer to see the last few pages of our LSS Adoptive Family Information (income, ethnicity, religion, ya know, nothing all that important) coming through the printer streaky.  NO!  The printer is running out of black ink.  Seriously!?  So, I opened the desk drawer to see if we had an extra cartridge...no such luck.  But, I did find 7 (yes 7) empty cartridges.  What is wrong with me?  OK, add to the "to do list"--clean desk.  I'm sure that will get done soon, or like, never. 

Anyway, the good new is that our profile looks even better than I could have imagined--the color quality is amazing!  We had them printed at West Central Printing--Steph and Laura took great care of us!  They even sent me with a box to ship them in so that they stay in tip top condition! 

And, the other good news is that Jamie is "in town" getting his hair cut, so he can pick up a cartridge. 

And, more good news, we got to eat at Frieda's for breakfast since it's right by the print shop!

18 copies!  7 will go in binders at the LSS offices around the state.  The others will be sent to families, etc. upon request.  (We had to complete a notarized form consenting to that.)

 How ironic--in this photo is one of my favorite books on infertility--Conquering Infertility by Dr. Alice D. Domar.  I had it out because I was gathering resources for someone that's just begun her battle with infertility.  I've now switched to leisure reading rather than coping reading.  Fun!

Sigh of Relief!

A huge weight was lifted off me as I attached our adoption profile to an email and sent it off to be printed.  Then, I emailed everything for our web listing to LSS. I honestly felt giddy and started to well up with tears of joy.  Soon we will have a chance at being picked to parent once again.  What a blessing!  I KNOW it will be a hard road.  I KNOW we have a lot to learn, and will continually be learning.  But, I also KNOW that we have lots and lots of unconditional love to give a child and we can't wait to share it.  I'm thrilled that we have this opportunity and that Jamie and I are on the same page and both knew our family wasn't complete yet.  I'm thrilled that we have so many people supporting us.  Any negativity we hear about our desire to adopt doesn't come from our core group. 

Many people proofed our profile, it was great to get the input of our friends, family and expert proofers!  So many great points and ideas were brought up which helped to make our profile better.  The thing I really love about it is that it's so US. The real deal. 

Many uplifting things happened this week that encourage our hope and I'll share those later.  It seemed like every time I turned around I was encouraged by a hope filled story or a "sign".  Love that!

Profile Update

We had a blast at the farm on Saturday, we were busy living the profile.  I got back to our profile on Sunday and was having fun...I was making edits and all was good.  But, time started ticking away and I started getting a little mopey about the whole thing.  I wanted to be living the profile, not writing the profile.  I was getting a little bitter that instead of enjoying life, I was back to working on paperwork for our adoption...it seems so unfair that I have to take so much time away from Griffin (and my beloved naps) to do all of this.  But, as a good friend reminded me today (thanks, Dana!), what I am doing is for Griffin, too.  And, as soon as we get through the profile and website updates, I can get back to having more free time and playing farm, splashing in puddles and raking leaves with my buddy.

I wasn't in the mood to proof our profile one last time last night, Jamie did, but I went to bed.  I looked at it today and am going to call it quits.  I'll have it proofed one last time, then will send it to our social worker to review. 

I hope that whoever looks at it can see us shine through.  I have to have faith and hope that we will shine through....to the right one.  Our birth mother. 

We're in!!!!!!! Well, almost.

We got the message today!!!  We were invited to put our family profile in the adoptive families book through LSS.  Holy buckets.  So, we're in, but not really, because we aren't quite ready!!  Can you believe that!?  We still have to make a few tweaks to our profile.  So, this weekend we'll be all over that.  Hopefully by the middle of next week we'll be able to send everything in....along with our check for $5,000 to go into the book. A lot of cash, but I am sure it will be worth every penny and more!!  Bring it on!  Hello diapers!  Hello cute baby noises!  Hello rocking chair!  Hello fighting over toys!  Hello sleepless nights!  Bring it all on!

Thanks to all of you that helped with the proofing process.  Your guidance meant a ton to me.  Truly. 

XO
Heather, soon to be profiled with my family!

Take that, Profile!

I worked my butt off on our profile last weekend and sent it to some of my peeps to proof it.  I have quite a few edits and updates to make.  On Sunday I woke up exhausted....late nights working on the profile and late nights working on work got the best of me.  I felt like I should finish updating our profile and send it off to our social worker.  But, I don't always like to do the things I should.  So, I revised my should for the day.  I should enjoy the real deal, the people in the profile.....live the profile.  So, that's what I did, and I am glad I did!

We packed a picnic lunch and headed into the local small town and ate by the damn.  It's pretty there and we fed the bullheads our leftover watermelon.  (What a random sentence!)  Then we devoured some yummy frozen treats.  And, we lived the profile.  It still needs to be updated, but I guarantee that some day I'll get it done!

 G explaining to me how a damn operates, coupled with lots of hand motions.  I love this kid!

#2!

I just logged into my personal email account and found a very happy message from LSS--we've moved up to #2 to get in the profile book.   Ya-hoo!  Bring on the caffeine, I may be inspired to pull an all nighter to finish up our profile!  To those of you that offered to proof it--get ready!  :) 

And just like that....

We're #5.  Another family has a baby that they are lovin' up, and we're one step closer to getting in the book!

I made a few updates to our adotion profile pages and showed them for the first time "publicly" to a friend today.  She loved them.  No changes.  And, she said she'd pick us.  She said the pages show who we truly are, and since she's once of my "besties" she should know.  :)

I have to finish page #4, then there will be lots and lots of eyes on it for two reasons.  1) Just to make sure I didn't make some crazy mistakes.  2) Because it's good to get support, it's what has gotten us this far.

Hope.

Adoption Profile

I spent a big chunk of the day working on our adoption profile, it felt good to get a good start on it and I had a lot of fun.  (Fun once I figured out the software...there were a few sketchy moments.)  In the end, I felt like our profile would give a good, accurate, real glimpse of our life to potential birth parent.  I was tempted to add in some photos to show the real us, see below.  Don't worry, I left these out.

This is our pool table.  We don't play pool.  Pretty much never.  OK, when we host choir kids for church or have the occasional guy night maybe it gets used.  I used it the other day to sort socks.  It was necessary to have a giant spot for this daunting task because we had a huge laundry basket full to the top with socks.  Seriously.  It was one of those deals where we'd just grab the socks we needed for the day and kept adding to the basket.  Not cool.  Jamie is GREAT at doing laundry.  He hates matching up socks.  So do I.  Anyway, I got the socks matched up and here are the leftovers.  A week later, or was it two weeks?  I can't believe I can write this much about mismatched socks.  Anyway, this would be a nice addition to our profile, no?

This is our garden.  There are two basil plants and some walking onions in there.  Somewhere.  We tilled (ok, Jamie tilled) it up this year so that we could plant tomatoes, peppers and herbs.  But, it was a cool spring, then we got busy.  And, you know what?  We love the RESULTS of a garden, but we don't like TO garden.  Oh, and yes that's a soccer goal by the garden.  You never know when you'll want to play soccer.  The reason it's there is that we "only" have a 3 car garage.  And we have 2 vehicles, but one has to be parked outside.  Want to know why?  We seriously have way too many blow up giant things for the lake.  No lie.  A huge ball to crawl in, a ginormous slide and other treasures.  Treasures that are apparently worth parking outside for. 

In our defense, here are some of the delicious veggies in our crisper.  We signed up for a CSA this year instead of gardening.  Smart, smart move.  Thanks, Wendy, for the idea!  We get farm fresh eggs and all sorts of amazing produce. 

So, I'll leave these out of the profile.  But, if we have a meeting with a potential birthmother that asks if I like to garden, I'm telling her the truth!  

Marketing Ourselves

So, we're approved.  Now for the part that I thought would be easy, but it turns out that it's really not all that easy.  Marketing ourselves.  It's so hard, I want to show our lives to potential birth mothers, but it feels so weird, almost like we are "showing off"--look at us, look at our house, look at our son, pick us!  And, it's hard to put our life into a few web pages or scrapbook profiles.  What's important?  What's not?  What is too much information?  What's not enough?

I'm going with just trying to tell our story.  The story of us--the Thompson family and our family adventures.  And, I figure the right person will like us, right?  Someone will say, "Look, they let their kid get dirty, I'll pick them." or "I love it that they camped in the backyard, I want my kid to grow up camping in the back yard." or "Look at that mom, she clearly doesn't shower on her days off so she can spend more time with her kid, I'll pick them."  Ok, maybe not.  But, hopefully our real everyday life will identify with someone that will choose us. 

One thing is for sure....this process makes me feel very vulnerable.  I want people to like us.  We want another baby to love, but to do that someone has to like us.  And, like us enough that they want us to raise their child.  That's a lot of like! 
I started an adoption website, I'm creating it through Shutterfly.  It's not likely to come up in searches, but that's ok with me.  We can spread the site by word of mouth, and to me that just feels safer. 

I've spend HOURS looking though our photos from the last year to include on the site.  I LOVE photos and I take way too many.  But, I'm glad I have a lot to chose from and am hoping that our photos speak to an expecting mother that would like us to parent her baby.

The other day we were out on the boat.  It was a beautiful, calm day.  Jamie was fishing, Griffin was napping and I was writing.  So, quite a bit of the info for the website is right here:

I love that journal.  I bought it at Marshall's without a real plan for it.  I just thought it might be handy.  I was right!  I jot down thoughts, notes, adoption info and things to blog. 

If you want to see the start of our website, here it is: http://thompsonfamilyadopts.shutterfly.com/.  Just keep in mind that I've only just begun.  I have lots to add and edit!  I'll let you know when I make lots of progress and take those notes from my journal and add them to the website!

And, I'll be looking for people that are willing to proof the site for me and offer suggestions.  Feel free to sign up! 

Thanks everyone for your support....we have a great team of family and friends rooting for us.

Family Photos

Those of you that know me know that I take gobs and gobs of photos, I scrapbook them, blog them and print them in excess. So, I feel like we have what we need to show potential birth parents who we are and what we are about. But, we didn't have a recent (in the last 9 months) family photo that was a close up and would work for the main photo that will be featured on LSS's website. My good friend, Mandi, came out yesterday to take a close up of us to use for the profile. Thanks, Mandi and Spencer, you two are awesome!!!