These Sneakers are made for Walking

      Our adoption agency has been great to us through each step we’ve taken in this process. From the time we first met up with them they’ve treated us wonderfully and gone to any lengths to help us. A few weeks from now, we’ll get to return a portion of the kindness that they’ve shown us.

      As a non-profit agency, The Miriam Project relies a great deal on donations and fundraising to pay for the many services they provide. One of the biggest fundraising events they do throughout the year though takes off Saturday, September 14^th with the Miriam Project 5k/10k. Runners for the 5 or 10k, as well as 5k walkers, will gather at the Miriam Project offices at 8am for a day that not only guarantees to be fun, but also a time to support Miriam’s mission of uniting children with their forever families. Ashley and I, along with some friends and family, are looking forward to getting to see all the people from Miriam who have been so great to us, and to spend the day with so many others who have been so supportive to this cause.

     The reason we’re writing this tonight is that we wanted to invite all of you to join us. If you have Sept. 14 free and don’t mind making a trip to Anderson, we’d love to have as many of you there as possible. All of the information about the event is on the agency’s website (www.miriamproject.org). If you’d like to pre-register, you can do that there. Or, if you’d like to register with us, just let us know and we’ll register our group all at once. Early registration guarantees that you’ll get a t-shirt (registration on race day doesn’t), and pre-registration ends on September 5.

     We know that most, if not all, of you won’t be able to join us, and that’s ok. We also understand that, even if you wanted to go, making a drive to Anderson early on a Saturday morning isn’t how most people want to spend their weekend. Don’t worry, that’s ok too. This blog has just been so great for us that we wanted to take the opportunity to invite all our friends who read it to join us at this event.

The Waiting Game

       I’m not really sure how this whole “waiting for a baby” thing works, so I’m not sure if we’re doing it right or not. We’ve looked for books to tell us what we should be doing during this time, but unfortunately Books-a-million didn’t have anything called “What to Expect when You’re Expecting Someone Else to be Expecting.” Our house has generally divided into 2 distinct strategies. The first one, which has been adopted by me and the dogs, is to wait semi-patiently until there’s some progress. The second approach has been to freak out about everything and find work that, for some reason, has to be done immediately, even though our baby is, at best, several months away. I won’t tell you who has taken this approach, but I will tell you that it’s someone I’m related to by marriage and leave it at that.

     Last week we were able to get rid of the yard sale stuff that filled our spare bedroom for the last several weeks. This is the room that will eventually be our child’s room, so now that it was empty, that meant that it needed to be painted right away. If you understand that logic, you’re firmly siding with Team Ashley. (However, if you thought, “What’s the hurry? There’s plenty of time to paint,” then I welcome you to the good team.) It’s no big deal though. I mean, the room was empty, so why not go ahead and get that done while we had time. I get that. It makes a lot of sense actually. Plus, it’s not like we had anything else to do. And that’s the problem that keeps coming back at us; we have nothing else to do.

      For all the adoption books we’ve read, and all the research we’ve done, none of them really give you much advice on how to survive the wait. There’s a ton of advice on how to pick an agency, domestic vs. international, and home studies, but none of them tell you much about what the wait is going to be like. Some mention it and that it’s hard, but that’s about as far as it goes. But we’ve been “paper pregnant” for almost 10 months now, and for the vast majority of that time, the question has always been, “What’s next?” First it was researching and choosing an agency. Then it was the information gathering for the application process. After that was the home study and the profile book. There was always something to work on, until now. It’s kind of a weird feeling.

     So now we’re here, just looking toward a light at the end of the tunnel. We don’t know how long that tunnel is, or how long that light will take to get here, but at least we’ve made it this far. Until we get to the end though, we’ll be finding ways to stay busy to keep our minds off the wait. Whether it’s buying things for our child, or painting his/her room, we’re trying to put any nervous energy to good use. This kid had better hurry though. If not, we’ll end up with a house full of baby items and every room in the house is getting painted.

 

 

P.S.- Just to let everyone know, we’re planning on having another fundraiser dinner this winter and are hoping to include a silent auction. If anyone has anything they would like to donate for the auction, or would be interested in volunteering at the dinner, please let one of us know. We'll have more details on here as we begin to get our plans finalized for this event. Thanks again to all of you for all the support and encouragement you continue to give us.

Adam's Soapbox

     This blog has been a number of things since we started it last September. In the last 43 weeks, we’ve shared some pretty great experiences with all of you. From picking an agency to preparing for a home study, we’ve enjoyed being able to tell all of you about it. But this blog has been some other things too. We’ve discussed things like taking our kids to IU games, the dogs knocking down the Christmas tree, and my agony over which little NBA jersey I’ll buy for my child first (I’m thinking a Victor Oladipo jersey). But today’s entry is something different. I’ll apologize in advance, but this is my soapbox moment.

     I got angry the other day. That’s not totally uneventful though. I mean, sometimes I get angry in traffic, at work, at the dogs, you name it (although never at my wonderful wife who is perfect in every way and who also edits this blog). But I suppose that happens to all of us at times. But this wasn’t one of those little angry moments that you get over in a minute or two, this was one of those visceral angry things that sticks with you and keeps you from sleeping at night.

    Here’s the thing: I think racism is stupid. I’ve honestly never understood it. I mean, if you want to hate me, that’s fine, I’m sure I’ve given you a reason somewhere along the way, but hating someone or judging them for something they have no control over, like the color of their skin is ridiculous to me. I just don’t get it. But late Friday night I stumbled into a facebook conversation that had evolved from reasonable discussion to borderline hate speech. I read the first few comments on the page, and everything was fine until I read a comment that basically said that all “they” (meaning African-Americans) do is complain about slavery and look for handouts from everyone instead of earning what they get like everyone else does.

     Now I make it a policy not to argue with stupid people, but my anger got to me for a few minutes, and in that time I thought of a hundred different things I wanted to say back to him (none of them repeatable). But I followed Ashley’s advice to stay calm before I replied with anything. I tried to reply calmly and respectfully, but the thought that kept going through my mind was, “He’s talking about my kid.”

     Way back when we first began our adoption application, we had to answer the big question about what racial makeup we were willing to accept in our adoption. While race was never a big deal to us, a lot of the research said that the hardest children to get placed were African-American boys. Our immediate reaction was that, if that’s who needs to be adopted, that’s what we want. We wanted to help where help was needed and if African-American boys are the demographic that needs the most help, then that’s what we want. So maybe that’s why what this guy had to say got to me so much. The idea that this guy, who was on my friends list up until that point, would make a generalization about my child (even though he isn’t born yet) had me shaking with anger. My kid is going to have a hard enough life just dealing with us as his parents, he doesn’t need stupid people adding to it.

      One thing that stuck with me though, is the fact that he was so comfortable generalizing his fellow citizens in the first place. But a lot of us have had trouble with that. We generalize people with different political opinions, religions, even regions of the country by what we assume they are like. But how often do we take the time to talk to people who have an opinion that differs from ours? Maybe what I wrote tonight will offend you or cause you to make some broad generalization about me, but if it does, I’d much rather you talk to me and explain why you disagree. We can discuss it. Great things happen when intelligent people are willing to engage in discussion, even when they disagree.

    The only thing I know about my child is that there’s a pretty good chance that he’s not going to look anything like me. In fact, if he did, I’d probably be a little concerned. But I know that no matter if my child is white, black, Asian, Hispanic, or whatever, it won’t matter to me for one second, because he’ll be my child and we’ll be a family. I wonder what would happen if we all treated each other that way.

Yard Sale

       So, what are you doing Saturday? Oh, you’re busy? Well, that’s understandable, I suppose. I mean, we were just hoping you’d help us raise a little more of the money that will be used to bring home our unborn child, but I suppose your plans must be important. Oh, you’re not busy anymore? That’s great!

     Here’s the deal: We’re having a yard sale at our house Saturday morning as a fundraiser for our adoption. I know, we’ve already had one yard sale, but we’ve got a lot more stuff! We’ve had more donations and have a ton of different items that we need to get rid of. Whatever it is you need, there’s a decent chance that we have it somewhere. We’ve turned part of Ashley’s mom’s house into our yard sale warehouse, then stored the items that wouldn’t fit there into an extra bedroom in our house. The point that I’m trying to make it this; Ashley wants her house back! We have to get rid of all of these boxes, and you can help us with that!

    Maybe we won’t have anything you’re interested in, and that’s fine. And maybe you really do have plans that won’t allow you to join us Saturday morning (the guilt trip at the beginning was totally a joke, by the way), but if you’re able to stop by we’d love to see you. If you want to join us Saturday morning, we’re at 981 S. Orchard Rd. in Salem. We’re starting at 7AM and going until we either run out of things to sell (which would be awesome), or we get tired and want to go inside (which is far more likely). The sale is also weather dependent. If it rains, we’ll have to postpone, so let’s all pray for a sunny day. We’ll also have a listing in the Salem paper on Thursday that will have some of the items in there. If you tell us you heard about the yard sale on the blog, you’ll get a discount of…well, nothing. It is a fundraiser after all. But we’d still appreciate hearing that you’re reading.

    That’s all for this week. Hopefully we’ll have some updates to give you next week on the progress of our adoption. We hope to see you all on Saturday morning!

Ready, Set, Wait

Ever since we started this process almost a year ago, there’s been one part that we dreaded more than anything else. Unfortunately, we’re at that point. It’s time to wait. This afternoon we mailed a copy of our profile book to our agency, along with the payment for completing our home study. All of that means that we’ve pretty much done everything we can do on our end, so now we begin the wait. Our agency doesn’t really have a chronological list though. Their goal is to make a good match between birth mothers and adoptive families, so the wait that we’ve dreaded might not be too long, but it’s still not something we’ve been looking forward to.

     Despite the fact that we’ve dreaded the wait for so long, getting to this point feels pretty great for a few reasons. First of all it’s nice to not have to worry about which documents or forms we needed to get filled out and turned in next. After spending months going through every detail of our finances, home, and family life, it’s nice not to have to think about turning something else in. It’s also nice to a sense of finality. I know we’re not at the end of this yet, but dropping that envelope in the mail this afternoon left me with an awesome feeling. It felt like we had taken a huge step closer to getting this process finished, but more importantly, we felt much closer to bringing our child home.

     We’ve waited on a lot of things throughout this process, but now the real wait has begun. We might not have as many things to update you with, but we’ll continue to try to update the blog once a week to keep everyone aware of any progress we have. We’ll also have smaller updates on our facebook page for all those little pieces of information that aren’t quite big enough to write a blog about. If you aren’t following us on facebook, you can find us by searching for Adopting Willpower.

    We’re excited at the progress we’ve made, but more excited about what’s to come. This wait, no matter how long it takes, will send us through a wave of emotions. There will be times, I’m sure, like today when we feel so happy about the progress we’ve made. There will also be times when we think that we’ll never get to the end. No matter what kind of mood we’re in, we’re looking forward to bringing all of you with us as we continue on this journey. As always, we appreciate all of the support you’ve given us through your prayers, kind words, and donations, and ask for your continued prayers as we move forward. We can’t tell you how much it means to us that you’ve joined our family on this path. Thanks for your support….and thanks for waiting with us.