Empty words = full heart

Brief overview of the past 22 days:

Stella is pretty much awesome and we are growing to love her more and more each day. She makes all of these facial expressions, smiles a lot and even giggled the other day. I think she likes music. She does this little whimper thing when she eats and she's starting to make this other little noise that I can only explain as her trying to hear her voice. Its all so darling! 

Not saying everything she does is fantastic. Our lack of sleep is not fantastic. 

On Monday it was our turn to sign papers at the agency. Which meant I had to trudge on down to the bank and empty our 'Baby B' savings account. You know, the one that YOU helped build. Ah it got me so emotional. Have you ever wondered how much your friends are putting away for their kids college fund? Or what percentage they put into their savings account each month? Perhaps those things are on my mind because a lot of you have sacrificed those things for us. Its not just monetary either. You laid down at night and actually remembered to pray before you fell asleep and you spoke to God about us. You might have prayed for me to get pregnant or you prayed for Nick to be able to support my emotional needs or you prayed that we would continue to be faithful and not become bitter. Or you prayed for peace in the storm and acceptance of what God was telling us. Or you fasted. Any way you look at it, you sacrificed something for us. I can't even begin to explain what that means to us. Words that have been written in a card might as well be empty because the feeling in my heart cannot be written down. We will never be able to express how grateful we are. We could not have asked to be surrounded by a more faithful, loving, group of people than those that God has hand picked to be in our book. God has used you to create a family and answer our most genuine, painful, faith-trying prayers. If you ever find yourself wondering what you've done for the Kingdom I hope that you remember this one time God asked you to step out in faith and be used by Him to change lives. In my book you get a "Well done, good and faithful servant". 

Adoption Update

I wanted to give y'all a quick update on what's been going on with the adoption!

We have met twice with the birthmother and once with the birthfather.

Her doctor had her on bed rest because she thought she was going to be early. Since we thought the baby was going to be here already, our friends and family threw us a Welcome Home party which turned into more of a baby themed party. It was awesome!

We fixed up her room, it's so pretty! We painted and assembled furniture...okay Nick mostly painted and assembled furniture. I helped move it in the room and wiped it off. I am not so handy and he really is so it works out.

So we've met the birth mother and father. Had her party, to which she no-showed (DI-VAAAH) Prepared her adorable room with purples and dark wood. All we need is...

A BABY!

Today is Stella's official due date and according to my cell phone log she is not here yet! Thinking that she would be here already and not having her here has been difficult for me. Every time my phone lights up or makes a noise I think, "this is it!". It is not it. I think about her almost every waking minute. And almost every sleeping minute. I am not God so I don't know when she will be here. I wish I did. I hate not knowing. All I do know is that she will be here when God delivers her; regardless of what the doctor says, or what the calendar says, or what I say! I do know that this...this right here...this wait...this is in God's wonderful plan and I don't need to fret about it.

We are very anxious to meet her and just waiting for the call and we know everyone else is waiting for our call. We are so appreciative of everyone's support and we love the excitement and will gladly fuel that fire with more information as soon as we have news to pass on! As of right now, we don't have any pertinent news to share but when we do it will be that we have a baby! So look out for our text, call or Facebook updates!

Here's to hoping the next post includes pictures of the five of us! (Lola and Faye...hello!!)

There You Are

God is good, He is so, so good. 

I want to cherish the memories I have of these past several days. 

I want to hold them deep in my heart. 

I want to let my soul dance with them. 

We have been chosen to receive a beautiful gift from God; a daughter, debuting very soon!

Precious stuff

I opened the door and there it was. The big box we registered for was finally here! Nick dragged it in and ripped it open and my eyes danced delightfully as it was assembled! That was three years ago and it was our vacuum cleaner that arrived as a wedding gift.
Fast forward life.
I opened the door and there it was. The big box we bought online (after much research through our book, online, personal Mom experiences, and visiting several stores). I dragged it over the threshold, into our home, into our lives - sounds so dramatic! The second I got it in the house I paused and I flashed back to the vacuum and realized...three years ago we were assembling a vacuum cleaner and now? A baby carseat. Whoa, right? From vacuum cleaner to baby car seat in three years?! It was such a strange feeling, strange in a good way, it was a new feeling, and I liked it.
We have been advised by our social worker that we should, at the very least, have a carseat and somewhere for the baby to sleep. This is the "hospital call" scenario. Its pretty much what it sounds like. You get a call that a baby was born that meets your child desired portfolio and if you are interested you should bring said carseat and yourselves to this hospital to pick up the baby.
I go back and forth between being ALL about this scenario and wanting the traditional scenario. Really, it doesn't matter because God's gonna do what He do and that is what will be best for us. He knows what we need in all matters, not just this one, and I totally trust that.

Ready to see our precious stuff?!

Experience the moment with me. And Lola.
I literally paused when I got it in the house and went,  whoa!

The first and last time she will be in here. I had to. Both are so darling I couldn't resist. I am in love with the design of our pack n play!

My contribution to building. It's best this way.  

So blessed to have a handy hubby. He actually
read the instructions and put the whole thing
together himself while I ooooh'ed and ahhhh'ed at how
adorable it all was. 

Match Book Official!

Like Facebook official but better. Way better.
Our letter is COMPLETE! I can't believe it! A friend of ours stepped in and saved us from making fools of ourselves and graciously assembled our letter for us. She took the few ideas we liked about other match letters and a general color scheme and style and designed away! Using our photos and our words she created something magical that made me burst out in tears when I saw the final result. It is SO good. She is so talented, its like she was channeling me, or us rather, when she worked on it. If you have any spare time at all and want to be truly touched by an amazing artist please head over to her blog, Imaginale Design Blog.
So, thank you so much Ale. You have played a HUGE role in changing our lives and have brought us so much closer with your generosity and your love. And thank you Jose for sacrificing your time with Ale so she could spend time working on our page! You get some props too!
Our social worker saw our letter on Monday, said WOW, in regards to how great it is, and approved it with no changes! We've made all our copies and stapled everything together. We are dropping everything off at the agency next week. I think they distribute our letter pretty quickly and it should be on our agency's website sooner than in the book. Pretty exciting stuff!
I don't know how long it will be before I post again because I don't know how much I'll have to say. I hope its soon that we get a match but I know that I have to trust divine timing. In the meantime I guess I'll be reading up on my Baby Bargains book which has a TON of useful information, thank you Handley's! And I guess we will do a little shopping for a carseat at the very least!
Until next time...

Approved!

"It is ordered that the above named applicants are certified as acceptable to adopt children pursuant to the laws of the State of Arizona."

Our home study was submitted and approved by the courts LIGHTNING fast! We got our official paperwork back from the courts before our social worker even had a chance to call us with the good news! Now that we are approved we can start to apply for grants which is great! We are close to raising our goal amount and hopefully we can get a few grants to help us reach it.

We have been working diligently on our match letter since my last post. We actually didn't rush right out and finish it in a few days like the old me would have made us do. Some parts were easy and some parts were really difficult. Oddly enough, we had a hard time writing about each other! God was working in the hearts of our friends, Jose and Ale, though! They asked our closest friends if they would like to help us write about each other by emailing little snippets about us. They composed one email and left it all anonymous. I cried when I read it. Jose, Ale and our anonymous friends, you are the reason we were able to write anything substantial at all! My heart swells with love for you guys! Our letter is now in the hands of a very qualified professional and we are freaking excited to see how it turns out!

When we started this process we knew that there were going to be hard times and that it wasn't going to go fast and smooth. I prayed A LOT for patience and I feel like God delivered me from my rush to do things now and go go go. When something needs to be done, I've already got it done or I'll just do it myself to make it happen. Definitely in some regards, that's still me. But with this process, its been different. I feel like I'm taking this at a slower pace. Perhaps that's good, this is a HUGE life decision after all...

The time has come!

We can officially enter the match book! Which really just means that I tried to do some work on it and got overwhelmed and sort of gave up temporarily. I am so un-artsy, never scrapbooked in my life and am not as Internet savvy as I thought I was. I asked for patience and perseverance and just let it be from there. A huge step for me.
So instead of working on our letter we went shopping! Never have I enjoyed shopping as much as then. Never have I been as overwhelmed as I was then either! We are totally clueless here people!
"Which way does this go?"
"Oh, these are for infants and these are for toddlers...so wait...we have to buy two?"
"Does this car seat fit into this stroller? Cool, it does! How do we get it off the stroller now?"
"Do all car seats come with a matching stroller?"
"So I guess we need to buy another base then?"
"Is this really safe like this? You get in and let me test it."
After a million or so questions (and we only looked at strollers, car seats and pack n plays) Nick declares, "We are totally in parenting mode right now."
Yep, we totally were.

Well, well, well

I feel like I should post on here because I have a blog and if I'm not posting on it there's really no reason to have one. There has been a lot going as you can imagine since my last post about us was like January or something. I'll keep this very brief since adoption wise...there's not a lot to say.
There has been no movement on the adoption. We hit a snag and were delayed and could possibly still be delayed. I was annoyed but I really don't care right now. I'm trying to let go of things that I can't control. Good luck to me!
Well I wish I had more to share but I don't. If I still have any followers....thank you....you are much more patient than I!

I CALLED IT!! Its good to be right, this time anyway!

This ones not about me. Okay, okay, it sort of is.

Once upon a time, a long, long time ago...but not that long ago...a little girl with brown hair saw a little girl with blond hair and they fell into...an apartment lease together.

The real story is that I met my other better half a few years ago and it was jovial cynicism at first sight! Fast forward to about a while ago while we were still trying to get pregnant and scratching our heads or whatever we were doing. Mavis, said other better half, jokingly suggested that she carry a baby for us. She was only partially joking because she knew how devastated we were over this, and she had her own fair share of tears shed for us. Heartbreak doesn't just happen to one person when it happens. We didn't feel like this was the plan for us as you can probably tell. But that doesn't mean that Mavis stopped thinking about it. In fact, she thought A LOT about it. She decided that if she wasn't able to help us have a baby in this manner that she was going to help someone have a baby. So she signed up to be a surrogate! And now shes pregnant! With TWINS! And I KNEW IT! Hahahahaha!

Obviously a lot has been left out, some of the story is sad and some of the story is private, but overall I think it's a heartwarming, inspiring story, and I'm so happy to be part of it. I know she would love it if you followed along with her through her blog, so check it out. Define:Mavis

Does a little bit of you maybe think that God works in REALLY mysterious ways? Everyone is always trying to interpret what God meant when He said this, or what He wants us to do in regards to that. I don't have the answers to much really but when Ive been praying about something, and its been put heavy on my heart, and then I do it, and it feels like the best feeling EVER - that's how I know its Gods will. Some days I feel like the tornado is chasing me and I'm far from healed, but when I look back on some of the super dark days of the storm, I can't help but feel like God was using me to affect her, to heal someone else's suffering.

Individuality

We had our individual meetings with our social worker this week. I'd like to say that I breezed through it with a slam dunk at the end but that's more Nick's style than mine. We had been driving and flying all day and I had motion sickness from all of it. And I had lady issues. I felt like barf, like I was going to barf and probably smelled like recycled airplane barf air. Ew.

Nick went first and I tried my darndest to hear what was going on in there but no such luck. I flipped through the match book that I found in the waiting room. You see, we meet at a pregnancy crisis center. Sort of ironic (read:cruel) to make couples who haven't been able to conceive meet at a place where pregnancy is considered a crisis? I think yes.

Me next! Me next! The first few questions were about my family and how I grew up, so I knew the answers to those ones! There were a few questions about daycare, staying home from work, discipline, marriage, stress and anger, and managing that. She asked a question that I have personally reworked to be, "Why do you think Nick is so awesome?" to which I replied...with tears. Naturally. My verbal response was that he's a gentleman. The written word really does no justice to how great that word is to describe him. Perhaps that's why I felt tears were necessary? Anyhow, I see friends and I hear of other spouses or boyfriends and it makes me feel sad that some women are willing to short change themselves of a man they truly deserve. Don't get me wrong, we do combat occasionally and not just to keep up on our mad MCMAPin' skills.

Another question that got me going was when she asked how I was dealing with the infertility. I know that not conceiving after one year medically considers you infertile but I sort of think that's bullhonkey especially since nothing is medically stopping us from having a biological child. Our not getting pregnant is not about medicine or our personal biology. Its about God having a different plan for us. I explained through tears of joy that I was, of course, sad about the whole situation but that it was so great because we can honestly say that we've heard Gods will and we've followed through with what He's told us. She reassured me that I may never feel completely whole in regards to the issue of not experiencing a pregnancy and that, that was okay.

Directly after this question she hit me with, "How do you know right now is the right time for adoption?" I'm fairly certain tears were squirting OUT OF MY HEAD when I responded with a smile that "it just feels so good". Cuz y'all, it does. The world with all its ugliness can really get a person down, especially a person that's as sensitive as I am. But when I think about how incredible it is going to be when Nick and I bring our baby home...it makes me feel like, just for that second, there's no evil in the world.

After the individual meetings we all met together and discussed our next meeting and the match book. Man, I remember describing what the match book was...now we are actually talking about going into the match book! Our social worker described the "good" ones and the not so good ones. She gave us a little insight on what birth mothers are looking for. She told us to run a few drafts past our friends and ask them...if they'd give us their baby...no no no that's not what she said...if our letter looks like who we really are. Help us to just be ourselves and not some made up, keeping up with the Joneses, cookie cutters.

We have another meeting coming up which I'm told is the meeting that we will discuss all the wonderful things our references said about us! And by wonderful things I mean all the crap you guys talked about us! So go ahead and fess up now! Hah just kidding! I know everything said was out of love and honesty and you cannot fault that.

I wanted to include a little note on the financial situation. We have been so blessed. While we are still a ways away from having the full amount, we are inching excitedly in the right direction. There have been a few families that have stepped out in faith and have changed our lives not only in regards to the adoption. Every single dollar matters so please don't feel like your donation is too small or that it won't make a difference. You could be the dollar that brings a child into our lives. If you don't feel comfortable donating or just aren't able to make it happen please pray for us. Please be praying that our birth mother is out there right now taking care of herself. Please be praying that we would reach our financial goal. Please be praying that we would continue to be still and hear Gods will for us.