Waiting Feels Empty

So I have very little contact with the adoption agencies. It all feels so strange.
Today I scheduled us a "meet and greet" with a pediatrician that has been highly recommended to us. Apparently it's good to have a network of people to consult with when making a decision to accept a match. So now we have a pediatrician, my aunt who is an OBGYN, and the MA adoption social worker to help us make a quick and informative decision. Viola... now can we have a match?!

I received my MA state license to practice Speech Pathology again. Not sure where this will take me but for now I am out of the Marketing world! It feels really good.

As I mentioned before, we put in an offer for a house that we love so much in Vermont. (Pictures are in an earlier post) The owner would not come down to our price. It really is the difference between the % the realtor would get. We sent him a letter saying that if his contract ends with the realtor we'd be happy to talk and work directly with him. We hope that this will work to our advantage. We went to Vermont this weekend to look at other homes and we found one that is really pretty inside but nothing really special like the house we love. But we will think about it and continue to look at other homes as we go through this process.

Back in Boston and no News to report

It was a long journey home from Trinidad yesterday but a really good flight. Check out these photos from the airplane crossing over the Bahamas! You can see the mountains under the water!! It was really amazing!

Waiting In Trinidad and Tobago

We are in lovely Trinidad! Liam is working with BP this week in Trinidad so I've come along with him to see the country. It is a beautiful small country. The people are so friendly and actually very beautiful too. The down side is everything is expensive and there is a lot of crime. I'm told over and over again not to walk alone.
While Liam's been working I've been checking everything out. I hired a driver for two days and met two other women (one from Atlanta and the other from Ireland) and we toured around together. We went to the Pitch Lake, a tour in the swamps to see wildlife, an amazing beach called Maracas, visited a beautiful Hindu temple, and had lovely picnics and amazing drives from coast to coast. When Liam gets off work he meets me for a sunset drink and then we just go to dinner. But we did stop and hear a steal drum band practicing for Carnaval! It was a huge band and sounded like and orchestra!


WE ARE WAITING??? OH REALLY??? THANKS FOR LETTING US KNOW!!!!
Waiting period begins in Colorado. Today I spoke to the Colorado adoption agency and they have everything they need from us and we have been told that we now just need to wait. I have to say this is pretty anticlimactic!! We submitted the huge application, our home study, our dear birth mom books, and the check over a week ago but I had not heard anything from them. It was making feel like what the heck!! nothing is happening!! I called them today from skype and asked "have you received everything from our home study? Is there anything missing?? What do we do next???" The adoption agency says, "yes we have everything and no, there is nothing for you to do. Now you wait for a match." I was like "so you don't call to tell me anything?? This is it?? We just wait in silence??" (I didn't say that to her but that is what I was feeling.) So after all the anticipation of what happens when you get to the 'waiting period' - all there is is silence - you wait. I feel like they should say "You are GREAT!, You are finished and we are excited to be working with you! Let's talk again! Here is what happens next!" But nothing at all not even a call to say "hi we've received everything and you are all set." Nope, nothing. It's worse than ordering something from online! At least when you order something you get an email confirmation, and an approximate delivery date!
We received silence....shhhh... now you just wait.

Laurence's baby is finally home with her

I have wonderful news! As you know Laurence was adopting a baby from Haiti and she went to see him the week before the earthquake. Well, because of the terrible situation, the Luxembourg government worked with Haiti to release the waiting children from the orphanage. ANNNNNDDDD he is home in Luxembourg with Laurence as of yesterday Jan. 21, 2010! They are doing well and fortunately they bonded just the week before so Laszlo is already comfortable in Laurence's arms. She is madly in love with him and ever since she met him in Haiti she felt instantly that this is her son and her new life.

This photo is of the two of them in Haiti. God bless them!

The Waiting Game

So what am I doing while I'm waiting..... Check this out. I'm tiling things in our house.

Everything is about waiting right now!!! Ugh.
- We are waiting to hear about the offer we put in for the house in Vermont (see photos below!)
- We are waiting to hear that everything is all set from Colorado and that they will start presenting us to mom's.
- I'm waiting to see if I get my speech & language state license to do some work in that field ONCE AGAIN! They said it would take 3 weeks and it's only been just about two weeks since they received everything. Doing speech seems to fit a little bit better in my life right now. As you know it's been the gorilla on my back for years! Anyway, while I'm in the middle of a career change I thought I'd do some speech.

The House we love so much below. It has such nice views too. smaller views from the house then bigger views from the top of the 5 acres (I don't have a photo of the big view). It's a small house but a really great place for us to spend our weekends.

Colorado is First!

So this week we finished the 40 page detailed application and sent it out to Adoption Choices of Colorado. It was a big step! When I went to the post office the little old man who works there said to me "So, you're adopting?" He's never even looked at me before. He smiled and said his niece and nephew were adopted. Funny. And there it went off to Colorado. We are on our way.
I just called today (Friday) though, and they have not received the huge application yet.....eeeekkkk. They better get it soon. It's making me crazy. I just want to get this going.

We decided to start with Colorado because they didn't have a problem with the fact that Liam and I have not been married for a year yet and Kansas did. So once Colorado has us just "waiting" we'll send Kansas their shorter application and books. Maybe by the first week of Feb. Not sure.

Liam will now send our birth mom book into production and send a few to Colorado. They told us they have a lot of "activity" right now..... let's go, let's go, let's go!!!!

Everything takes sooo long to do these days and I'm trying not to fight it.
Even putting in an offer to buy a house in Vermont! Heck, we decided back in the end of Nov that we would put in an offer and STILL we are in that process too. We actually put in the offer yesterday! We'll see how this works out. I want to put it all out there and not force anything during this very emotional time (maybe year) for us.

What are we doing???

Liam and I went through a really hard time last weekend about the adoption process. It's incredibly difficult to go through this process. We just laid in bed last weekend after finishing our birth mom book thinking - wow, this is big. How do we trust we will not be taken advantage of? How do we know we really shouldn't try egg donor for one last shot of our own?? The emotions are so complicated. Our fears do not come with having the baby (all parents fear this part) but we just fear the match. Will we make the right decision? Will the birth mom change her mind at delivery. Will it be a scam? It's all about the money (adoption), and it's all about the birth mom and not about the adoptive parents. It's difficult for us too. All of our hopes and dreams and fears...so much is out of our control. We have to trust a lot of people .
After deep discussions and for me, going to church, it came to me again so clear that we are doing the right thing. We could never go back and do the egg donor idea. This is right and I pray that we will not be taken advantage of financially and emotionally and that we will make the right choice in picking the birth mom.

We finished the birth mom book and it's ready to print and send out!