No Longer Waiting to Wait

This morning we got this email...

This is the email I received first thing this morning from our adoption counselor!

For the past few days I have been checking my phone first thing every morning to see if we received this exact email.  We had not heard anything last week, so yesterday we sent an email just checking to see where we were in the process and then this morning I found this lovely email waiting for me on my phone.

Carla was already downstairs and so I jumped out of bed and literally ran down the stairs.  Those of you who know me well know that I don't really ever run.  So Carla knew something was going on.  I was so happy to be able to say, "We did it! We are on the wait list!"  It was such an incredible feeling.  To know that we no longer have to fill out any forms, we no longer have to wait for any more feedback on our profile, we no longer have to wait for approval.  It was truly a moment of pure joy.

Luckily, Carla had the day off today so we have been able to spend the day being excited together.  We started off with a trip to our old neighborhood for breakfast.  I got to call my family on the way to breakfast and share the good news with all of them as well.  They couldn't have been more excited.  It is such a wonderful thing to be able to share with people.

After breakfast, we headed to our favorite bookstore.  A while ago, Carla came up with a fantastic plan to make our long wait a little bit more bearable.  She suggested that once we were on the wait list, we would each get to pick out one book each month for the baby.  That way, every month we had to wait would bring us closer to having the children's library of our dreams.  Since today was our first official day on the wait list, it seemed like the perfect day to visit Women and Children First Bookstore and begin our collection.

This book store is a little piece of heaven for me.  It's one of those places where you feel like the people who work there have actually read a vast quantity of the books that they sell there.  The selection is delightful and there are handwritten book reviews posted throughout the store.  It is also the first place where we went to purchase books about adoption.  As soon as we walked in to the store today, we headed to the back of the store where they keep the children's books.  Standing there was one of the owners of the store who happens to be the same woman who helped us in August of last year to find the adoption books that we needed.  I stopped to tell her that she had helped us many months ago and that we were now back because we were officially put on the wait list today.  She was wonderfully excited and flitted around the store pointing out books that we should buy.  We told her about our plan to each buy one book for every month that we were waiting.  She loved it!

And then we spent time looking through many books to find the perfect ones.  I pretty much knew that my first book was going to be a Todd Parr book.  Todd Parr is a wonderful author of children's books.  Each of his books aims to make children feel good about who they are.  I often buy his books for friends who have just had babies.  They are nice and short and are filled with brightly colored pictures. They also each carry an incredible message of self-acceptance.  Coincidently, one of his books The Family Book was recently banned from a school district in Erie, Il because it contained the offenseive sentence, "Some families have two moms or two dads."  So, what book did I buy?  That's right.  My first choice of books was, The Family Book by Todd Parr.  So it turned out that we each actually chose two books today!  We were too excited to settle on just one.  So here are my picks:

The Family Book and The Okay Book both by Todd Parr

And here are Carla's picks:

The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle and Mama, Do You Love Me? by Barbara M. Joosse

The store owner laughed at us as we stood there with four books instead of two, but we left happy!

We then headed over to one of our favorite places to shop for things for our house and we picked out the first piece of art for the one day baby's room.  Here it is:

I absolutely adore it and can't wait for it to one day find itself on the walls of our baby's room.

Speaking of walls, as I type this post, Carla is upstairs starting to work on the job of painting our second bedroom.  It will be the first official step towards turning it into a nursery.  We figured that painting the walls was a good step.  One that wouldn't make us sad that there wasn't a baby there yet, but one that would also help us feel prepared for the day when there will be a baby.  So our blue walls are turning into beautiful yellow walls as I speak/type.

So it's been a big day over here.  Trust me, I know that there is along way to go in this process.  I know that in some ways, the months ahead are going to be much more difficult than the months that have just passed.  But I also know that we must rejoice in each small step toward becoming a family of three.  We began this process many months ago and it feels incredible to be officially done with the first phase.  I do not know what the future is going to bring us.  I do not know what else we will go through, but I know that I feel a wonderful sense of relief that we are no longer waiting to wait, we are instead just waiting.

I also want to thank all of you who have provided some much needed comfort over the past few months.  My frustrations hit an all time high and I felt so lucky to have such incredible people around me to vent to.  It also makes me feel so confident that I will be able to make it through whatever comes next because of the people that I am fortunate enough to have in my life.  So thank you all for giving me that confidence.

And now we wait.