Waiting for the BIG wait

This is Echo's 'meet the puppy' page from our photo book we made for our future kids...

OUR FUTURE KIDS!!

Remember how my second to last post was about us STARTING foster care/adoption classes? oh, hi, Well, we had our final home visit on Wednesday.

I knew Roxie wasn't going to scour my house or anything of that sort, but we spent all day cleaning and dusting and mopping and re-cleaning, nonetheless. 

She told us she'd be here around 4, so I was horrified when Russ insisted he had to go to the post office at 3:40 and didn't get home until ten past. 

Sheesh.

It was honestly painless, for the most part. 

She came in and we talked for a little bit, while Echo tried to lick every square inch of her shin, then she checked the house. It wasn't nearly as extensive as the foster care check. She made sure we had our smoke alarms in place, fire extinguisher (which we didn't have but ran out and got that night), made sure we had an extra bedroom and checked to see that we had locks on the cabinets and a lock for medicines. We don't own any fire arms (don't go robbing our house, now...you'll be disappointed anyway) so there was nothing to check there...and that's really it. 

We then went over...the list...you know, that dreaded adoption criteria list where you essentially feel like they are asking you just how good of a person you are. 

"Would you adopt a child with a developmental disability? Yes, No or Maybe?"

umm...we, uh, umm, no...

*notes: lacks compassion

"Would you adopt a child of an ethnicity other than your own? Yes, No or Maybe for each."

Yes, (double check with each other). Umm well that one might be a maybe...that ones a no...

*notes: racist

Granted, we know no notes were taken saying that we are un-compassionate racists, but gosh darn it! It was hard not to just stare at the ground when answering no to certain questions. All we can do is be honest with ourselves though...and sometimes honesty is hard.

We've been bouncing back and forth between if we are open to a sibling group of two, (and increased chance of bonding, but holy crow! Two kids right off the bat?? As well as a potentially shorter wait time...) or if we were going to hold out for a single child. It was a really hard decision and we're still reeling from the fact that we are now going to be listed on the registry as open to adopting two children. If it is a single kid, we want someone between 0-3 but for the sibling group...even though we hadn't really talked about going up to 4, we.just..did...so our age range for siblings is for them to both be between 0 - 4. 

Roxie has 7 days from last Monday to submit our licensing information and then like 40 days (I forget exactly) from there to submit our information to the state to get our certification to adopt...and then we're live. She said she was essentially finished with our home study (luckily, we thought all paperwork had to be DONE by paperwork night, so we had everything handed in and got scheduled for our home studies, etc, pretty early) and between now and when we are actually hanging out on the registry, 

you know...just waiting for the call that will change our lives forever...

in about a month.

I keep going back and forth between not letting myself get too excited, or excited at all really, to can't contain myself "I'VE WAITED SEVEN YEARS TO HAVE CHILDREN AND ITS GOING TO HAPPEN!" and back to meh, if it happens it happens but we've felt failure with this before and we survived...so, it'll all be okay....

...

right? 

...

I'm sure everyone feels this way, but I have this nagging little hope that it'll be soon, like within the next 3 months that we get our call. But again, my heart gets all worked up over that thought and my brain/experience/need for emotional self preservation shuts it down pretty hard.

Anywho, this is getting long. The last 12 weeks have been crazy, especially the last month...and between the safety monitor thing (oh yea, we have an adorable, but teething and very active, 11 month old living with us for the next little bit) finishing up adoption stuff, Russ studying for the GMAT and just...life in general...we don't see it slowing down anytime soon.