Adoption In Perspective

     So as you may have noticed, I am switching all our blogs to here instead of the site we have been using for this entire process thus far (www.helpabeandmarissaadopt.webstarts.com). I thought maybe I would be able to do more with this blog and make the layout more interesting; I've since realized that I am not that talented haha :)



     It's been a long couple of months. I can tell that I am going into "mother mode" because I have been a lot more emotional than usual. We went to PetSmart to buy a bone for JD and is was Saturday, so there were cages and cages of puppies for sale. They were so adorable and little and I started bawling in the store. All I could think were, "No one wants the babies!!!!" I was truly upset for the puppies (they were SO sad.....if we had owned a house, we would have been +2 more dogs.....) and I was that much more aware of the fact that my kids are out there, somewhere, and it's possible that no one wants THEM. That there is no one who cares for them. Are they safe? Do they have shelter and food? Can they communicate with anyone? Are they LOVED??? My children aren't babies....they are old enough to understand being abandoned. And I want to shield them from that and I can't. It may scar them forever. And I am helpless, halfway across the world, without a clue as to who they are.

     This whole crying thing has been happening more and more often. It usually hurts now to see other little brown babies. I started crying in Wegmans last week because there was a precious brown toddler in a shopping cart with his mom and I wanted my kids so badly that I just started crying. It's hard to describe the feeling; other adoptive mothers have used the analogy of having a miscarriage. You think you will have these children by a specific time and you're so excited and fight to make it to that day and then it doesn't happen. You are let down again and again. And you miss that little person who has your heart but is absent in reality. The pain is numbing.

     The other day I was at work and went to cross off another square in my calendar. My friend gave me a calendar last year at Christmas and every day since I have crossed off each little box that represents 24 more hours that I have waited. My thinking was that every day I could look at it and see how much closer I was to my brown babies. Every "X" was one more day that I had beaten and could look forward to their coming home. This week I looked at the hundreds of "X"'s I have made this year and realized our adoption homecoming doesn't seem a day closer. Ten pages all crossed off and we haven't heard a single new concrete fact about our adoption process. Our homestudy paperwork is expiring and we haven't gone anywhere. In a YEAR. It's depressing beyond words.


     I redid all our paperwork for our homestudy the past two weeks. We needed to basically do everything again and filled out a ton of forms and went to the doctors and got proof of employment, etc. I mailed the paperwork and a check yesterday. We are waiting to hear from our social worker about scheduling our visit.


      Today was great because we got to go see Paige and Anthony and all the kids. Seeing their children helps remind us that this is WORTH IT, and that it WILL happen. I don't know what we would do without Paige and Anthony. They are such an encouragement and Paige lets me freak out whenever I need to and always understands. And she is always willing to loan her kids to me :) Love that family :)


      So the moral of this post is that adoption is not rosy. It isn't easy and it isn't quick. It isn't something to be taken lightly and it isn't something you can THINK you want. It is hard and dirty and you fight tooth and nail. And it is beautiful and amazing and the reward in incredible.


I can't wait to know what my children look like.