In recent years I've switched from having a new year's resolution to having a practice or discipline. Last year, Brad and I wanted to practice hospitality and we committed to opening our home at least once a month to new friends or people we don't see as much anymore. We wanted to try to drop the pretense that our home is always put together and that our kids are always well-behaved and invite people in to our lives. It's a practice we ended up loving and will hopefully continue for years to come.
This year, with adoption in full swing, my word is readiness.
We need to be ready, in every sense of the word, to welcome this child into our home with open arms. In the literal sense, we need to be ready by continuing to complete the mounds of paperwork and by navigating the laws and regulations of the United States and Bulgaria. This is no easy feat and I understand why a good social worker is worth their weight in gold.
We need to be ready for the call. The call that we have a match and will be sent information on our child. Not only will this mean being ready emotionally, but this call will set off a cascade of one million logistical concerns (good thing I'm married to Brad Hemmings who will have a plan for each of them!). With two trips to Bulgaria that means a host of family and friends stepping in to help with our children. It means me leaving work for a period of time with the details not being fully fleshed out yet. It means being ready to meet our referred child and discern if they are the child who is meant to be ours.
Finally, we need to be ready to grow as a family. This will likely be the hardest part.
We recently finished up 30 hours of parenting courses with 20 more hours to begin in the next several weeks. While we indeed are already parents, our agency wants to give us as many tools as possible for Baby #3. We are learning all about parenting children who have been through trauma, how to help children form healthy attachment and always being a detective to get to the bottom of our children's behaviors. It has challenged my own parenting and I feel we've grown already. But all this preparation and growth will continue in 2020 as we continue readying ourselves for baby 3.
To fill you in on what we've been doing, December was packed full of adoption activities. We completed our home study, completed psychological evaluations (we both passed!!), met with our medicals doctors to write letters on our behalf and coerced 7 dear souls into writing recommendation letters which needed to be notarized (Bulgaria sure does love notarized documents!). One more challenging activity was getting our doctor to write a letter about our health, which needed to be notarized. Luckily, a notary friend of mine was willing to rearrange her day and meet me at the doctor's office to notarize. The psychological exam was 600 true or false questions, 40 complete the sentence exercises, a 1 hour interview, and 3 hours of take-home work. It was all taxing and made the home visits by our social worker seem like a breeze.
What comes next? We are working on passports and the last few documents necessary. By the end of this month, the goal is to have everything to Bulgaria and then the waiting starts. We are likely still looking at 2021 as the year we get "the call" but we really don't know that for sure.
As far as our puzzle fundraiser, we have 100 pieces left to sell. We are so thankful to the 82 people who have bought the first 200 pieces. If you are interested in donating, click here to find out more about this fundraiser.
We start 2020 feeling blessed and thankful to be on this journey and for the support each of you have given to us. We also feel energized to continue the hard work of readiness for as long as it takes to get our child home.
Happy New Year.
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