So, there is good news and frustrating, but ultimately okay, news.

Let’s start with what’s frustrating so we can end on what’s going well! Unfortunately, our lovely 1970s home decided it was time for the sewer pipes under our concrete slab to no longer be usable. We knew that the pipes in our house weren’t great, but we were hoping to wait a little longer for this project.

Fast forward one month, and our downstairs has now been jackhammered, old pipes pulled out, new pipes put in, and concrete poured over the new pipes to repair the jackhammered foundation. What an adventure! Next step is to meet with the person doing our flooring tomorrow – he’s actually someone we went to college with! He will be tearing out the old flooring and putting down new flooring.

While we wish we hadn’t needed to take this time to focus on home repairs (or spend the money on them), we are glad it is now done and will no longer be a concern. Because of this, we also had to go on hold with the adoption wait list.

The good news is that we would’ve been up to number 4 on the wait list! This means that hopefully as soon as we can get our social worker out to do our final home study visit we will go active with our adoption agency very soon after! We are hoping to be able to go active in August.

Other than that, we are setting up the nursery furniture and just getting the house back together!

Kait

Usually I do a mid-month update, but things started ramping up in April and in the first half of May!

Right now, we are officially in the top 10 on the waiting list with our agency! This means that we are really close to going active. We had our second home study meeting a week and a half ago and it was great. We love our social worker, who is also an adoptive mom. She gave us a ton of great tips and insight.

Our final home study visit is on June 6th. This is also when we turn in all of our paperwork (background checks, finger printing, etc.). We leave for Vancouver to go on our Alaskan cruise a week from today! We ultimately felt like it made more sense for us to wait until we were home from the cruise to wrap up our home study than try to rush it before leaving.

There aren’t any other big updates. Alex is currently painting the room that will be the nursery so we can move all of the furniture into the room.

Until next time!

Kait

Last month was an exciting month with us moving up so many spots unexpectedly! We haven’t moved up any more spots since, but that is okay!

The newest news is that for several reasons we’ve decided to go with a different home study company. The one we were using was not communicating well with us and had a lot of expectations for us without much support. Since we’ve decided to go with a different home study company, we are a little behind now on where we should be. The good news – the company we’re now going with has a 2 week expedited process. Lord willing, we will be home study approved 2-3 weeks from tomorrow when we submit our paperwork to the new company!

We also moved back our profile book photo shoot to next weekend. Our photos were originally going to happen today (my birthday!) but we needed a little more time to really get the house ready. Hopefully in my next update I can share some photos of the room that will be the nursery!

We continue to feel blessed for the support from our family and friends – we’re so excited to keep taking steps forward!

Kait

Well, this morning Alex and I got an update we were not expecting – we moved up 8 spots mid-month. Yes, 8! Spots! Usually we only get updates on the first of each month, but there was so much movement this month that we got an additional update!

We are now number 16! You may remember that we started at 31, so we are officially halfway through the waitlist. This is an exciting time for us, but also a little bit of a reality check! We have not completed our home study or our profile book, so this new update means we need to kick it into high gear!

Our adoption agency is still quoting a 6-8 month approximate wait time until going active – on the short end, this means we’d be active as early as May. Once you are in the top 10 waiting families with our agency, your number in the wait list turns red. I have NEVER been more excited about the idea of seeing my name written in red (a joke about those homework assignments I didn’t do so hot on back in high school).

As far as the house goes, our sewer pipe project in the front yard is complete, which is a huge relief! We have started getting nursery furniture delivered. I also think we are going to paint the nursery this weekend! We’re going for a light mint (in no way neon, think more pale and pastel) – we think this will look good with the grey furniture we got, and it’s all gender inclusive!

As of right now, our only predicament is figuring out when to share our news more broadly. I’ve talked about this before, as this is a much different thing to share than the “we’re having a baby!“ posts you see on social media. However, we want to have support from our networks as we move forward in this process. We’re still thinking we’ll share either when our home study is done or when we go active with our agency.

I will continue to share as I have more updates!

Kait

Life has certainly not slowed down for us. We are filling out our home study packets and have signed a contract & paid for the company who will be making our profile book. We also ordered all of the furniture for the room that will be the nursery so that it can be photographed in our profile book.

This month we saw some movement – we moved from number 26 to number 24 on the wait list. This may not seem like a lot, but any movement is still movement. It’s exciting to see that number become lower as we move closer to being an active family.

I had lunch with a friend today; I shared our adoption journey so far with her. She had so many questions and we had a great chat. It made me realize that folks don’t know a lot about adoption – I’m not sure why adoption isn’t talked about. It’s not as though adoption is rare – 1 in every 25 families with children have an adopted child.

I find that sharing information about adoption is really powerful. Especially because, as I’ve talked about in the past, there is a fair amount of issue out there with unethical adoption/processes. This is why we did so much research when we chose an adoption agency. I hope that us sharing our story with adoption and being very open will help provide information to any of our friends considering adopting!

There isn’t too much to update in at this time. As I wrote at the beginning of this post, we bought furniture and are waiting for it to come in. We both hope that that room will become a really peaceful space for us as we go through the next year or so.

We received an exciting email yesterday from our adoption agency that we are 2-3 months away from going active. This means that hopefully in May we will be fully active with our agency – meaning that our profile book can start being shared with birth moms.

While this is an exciting update, we definitely thought we had a few more months and wouldn’t be active until June/July. Thankfully we’ve already gotten our home study application and are working on that, and we have a meeting set up with the company who will be creating our profile book.

The next thing that gets tricky is deciding how we want to furnish a nursery. I’ve talked about this with the few friends and family who know we are adopting – We want pictures of our nursery in our profile book, which means we need to paint the room, purchase furniture, and begin setting up that space! I love interior design, so this is going to be a ton of fun. Hopefully everything gets in by the time we need it to!

Our next step is sharing more broadly with our support systems about our adoption process. We’ve told most of our family and some of our friends, but we haven’t openly shared out with friends and the world that we are adopting. Most of the folks we’ve talked to in our adoption community have shared broadly with their communities that they are adopting – either because they are fundraising or they just want the support of family and friends. While we won’t be fundraising, it would be nice to have that support as we move through the next year!

More to come in March 1st when we get our next update. Until next time!

Yesterday we anxiously waited to see if there was any movement on the waitlist with our adoption agency. Every month on the 1st we get an update about where we are. Well, I am excited to share that we moved 5 spots and are now sitting at number 26. It may not seem like a lot, but after no movement in December, we were so excited for the five spots we’ve moved!

As far as other updates go, Alex and I have reached out to the folks we are going to be using for our home study. We’re waiting to hear back, but plan to begin the home study process by March 1. The process can take up to 2 months, so this would have us wrapping that process up around May 1. That way, we will be ready to go active once we get to number 1 on the waitlist.

We’ve also been doing a lot of preparation for some big home projects. We want to make sure our house is fully where we want it to be when we bring a baby home. As many of you know, we bought our house in August 2017 and have done lots of work on it in the last 4.5 years – Wiring upgrades, re-piping the water lines, replacing the downstairs flooring, painting cabinets, replacing most of our appliances, painting the entire inside of the house, and Alex’s battle against our large backyard. When we bought a house that was built in 1971, we knew we had our work cut out for us. But, something just felt right about this house – we knew we could make it our home.

So, the upcoming house projects consist of the following: Digging out our (steep hill) front yard in order to have the water line and sewage lines replaced & clean outs put in. Then, the company we are using will replace all the dirt and place seed over the dug up areas of the yard. It’s a lot of expensive work for something you can’t see, but this will be one of the many major systems we’ve replaced in our house/on our property. Next, we are going to have some work done on the powder bathroom downstairs – we have a feeling there may be some water damage going on. Aside from those projects, we are saving up so that we can replace the staircase and upstairs flooring, remodel our laundry room, and replace our kitchen countertops. Once those projects are done, we will have little to no house projects remaining! Holy moly it’s been a process of bringing this home out of the 70s! We have retained some of the charm of having an older home though. Our style is very mid-century modern.

The final update is that we are going to begin our education requirements. For our adoption agency, we have to complete 20 hours of education between articles, podcasts, and videos. I’m excited to learn and to hear others stories – especially the stories of birth mothers and children who were adopted. The weight of adoption is not light on my heart.

Until next time, I am sending you all lots of love and positive energy for a great February!

When Alex and I began this adoption process several months ago, we had a friend of a friend that I had chatted with about adoption. Other than that, we didn’t know anyone going through the adoption process in a similar situation as us.

Well, what would you know, by a little bit of luck and a random conversation with an old colleague of mine, I found out she and her husband were in the middle of an adoption process, in a similar part of the timeline as we are! It was so relieving to know that I had another person in my network who I could talk with. While our reasons for adopting weren’t identical, we shared so many similarities.

As Covid cases are rising and we are staying home more, I find myself wanting to online shop. It’s little things I see on Etsy – like an outer space themed mobile for a nursery – that make me smile and think of all that is to come. Patience truly is a virtue.

As we entered into the new year, I felt more called to my faith. I’ve always been a person who feels strong connections to both my spiritual and religious sides. I don’t think you have to be one or the other – the two can (and do) co-exist. But with this call to faith, I’ve found myself journaling and keeping notes of who I’m praying for and why. It’s a habit that keeps me humble and reminds me that there’s a greater plan to all of this.

While I’d love to give an update, there really isn’t one. We had no movement this month, so we are still sitting pretty at lucky number 31. We have decided on who we are using for our home study, and will begin that process likely towards the end of next month. We’ve also started getting all of our financial pieces in order. People don’t often speak vulnerably or transparently about the financial pieces that come with a adoption. It can be the biggest and often the only barrier for many families that want to open their hearts to adoption. We feel very fortunate for the privilege that we hold through this entire process.

So… what’s next? We wait some more! If you know Alex and I, you know we are not very good at being patient. We keep our minds calm by talking about what the future may look like an occasionally purchasing small items. I got a really cute outer space themed quilt on Etsy the other week. If you know Alex and I, you also know that we both love outer space, NASA, stars, the universe… all of those topics. It should come at no surprise that we’ve picked a theme that has to do with outer space 😉.

Until next time!

One of my husbands favorite sayings since we began this process is, “hurry up and wait.”

A lot of the adoption process is about submitting the right forms, doing all of the processes (like the home study), and getting our home ready. Then, it’s just a matter of time until the universe aligns and we are chosen by a birth mother. So, there is born the phrase: “hurry up and wait.”

We’ve gotten a lot of questions from family about timeline. To be honest, we have a timeline, but things could always go quicker or slower. It all just depends. What we do know for certain is that we trust it will all fall into place when it is supposed to.

As always, we remain excited and hopeful. No big updates as of right now – we get our next wait list update on January 1st to see where we are at.

31. The number we saw yesterday when we reviewed our adoption agency’s waitlist. We are number 31.

So… what does this mean? We know you may have a lot of questions. Trust us, we did too (and still do). I’m going to begin by laying out answers to all of the questions we’ve been getting most frequently from family and friends.

Q: What adoption agency are you using and what type of adoption are you doing?

A: We are with a small adoption agency in Greenville, SC, called Quiver Full Adoptions. We chose them for a lot of reasons. They are less than 2 hours from us, they do a lot of hand holding with their families, and they provide really amazing support to expectant mothers. When we were doing our research, a lot of agencies felt less than authentic at best and unethical at worst. QFA takes a lot of steps to be ethical, give expectant mothers control on the process by choosing the adoptive family, and provides great resources and counseling for everyone involved.

We are doing a domestic infant adoption. This means we are adopting a baby from the US. Most families get chosen when an expectant mother is around 4-5 months, and are able to be at the hospital when the baby is born. We are also going to have an open adoption and will work with our child’s birth mother and our agency to figure out how that will look so that everyone involved feels supported.

Q: What does the process look like?

A: We are official with our agency and are on their wait list. They have a wait list because they only work with a certain number of families actively so that they can give them lots of attention. We are estimated to be on the wait list 6-8 months before going active.

Q: What do you do while you’re on the wait list?

A: A lot! We will begin our home study in February, which will likely take 2-3 months. A home study includes actual visits to our home. It also includes an extensive background check of Alex and I, including possible interviews with our family and friends. Once our home study is done, we will create our profile book.

Q: So, what happens when you are off the wait list and are active?

A: Once we go active, the agency begins working with us to become a chosen family. I mentioned profile books – This is a book that provides information and pictures of Alex and I, our home, etc. Without getting too far into the details, the expectant mother is who gets to choose the adoptive family. This was important to Alex and I from an ethical perspective but also so that when our child is older we can tell them that their birth mother trusted us and chose us to be their family.

I’m sure you have more questions – we are happy to answer almost anything, so feel free to text one of us or give us a call. Adoption is a long but beautiful journey and we are thankful to have the support of so many friends and family.

So, where do we go from here? Well, we get started on our home study and we wait. On the first of each month we find out where we are on the wait list. As I mentioned earlier, we are number 31. Lucky number 31.