Adoption Fest is over. For the time being.
For starters, let's just say how Henry could have cared less that Sloan and I were away all day Friday and the first part of Saturday. Apparently, he went into our bedroom and looked for us, but upon being told we were gone, did not seem to care. He delighted in never once being ignored for two days. I am hoping that he did not get too used to this. Not that I ignore him, just that I encourage him to play independently. With frequency.
Probably our favorite part of the weekend was a speaker who dealt with overcoming infertility. When I saw that was a topic on our agenda, I (like most everyone else) groaned. Did they want me to give a talk? It is certainly a topic with which I am well acquainted. But the speaker's main point was that a) adoption can cure childlessness, but cannot cure infertility, and that b)who else but God could intersect the agony of infertility with the crisis of an unplanned pregnancy and bring about so much joy and redemption. It helped that the speaker was funny.
It also helped to meet the other perspective adoptive parents who are in similar situations to ours. We met folks who are pursuing their second adoptions and got to hear about what the experience was like the first time. There were people there who have contact with birthparents, those who have scheduled meetings and reunions with birthmothers only to have the birthmoms not show up, and others still who simply have the background information provided by Bethany.
There were several people who told of how they had been chosen by birthmoms, had interviews and meetings with the birthmoms, met grandparents, aunts, and uncles, and had paid for prenatal copays, only to have the birthmoms decide after the baby had been born that they would parent the child and not go forward with their adoption plan. I suppose I knew this happened. And even with some frequency. But it seemed like something that simply happened to other people. I'm praying that it is something that doesn't happen to us. But some part of my adoption naivety has been lost.
One of the funniest things that happened over the weekend was Sloan's first time experience of me in a more classroom experience. He met "student" Elizabeth. Unlike regular 'ol funny wisecracking Elizabeth, student Elizabeth takes copious notes and seeks to be liked by her teachers. It was also discovered that student Elizabeth may be a dork. If not a dork, than at least an overachiever. I asked the couple behind us where they were in the approval/home study process, assuming that since it was their second time around they'd be way ahead of me. Their response, "Oh, we're planning on completing the home study much quicker this time around. I think it will only take us a couple more months. The first time we took 7 months to complete the process." Knowing that we were in week 6 of our approval process and more than 60% completed, I asked, "Geez, what's taking you so long?" Sloan kicked me under the table. To the couples credit, apparently the first time around there were some weather delays with interviews and they live 2 hours from their closest Bethany office. I asked our case worker about this and she told me that most people take around 3 months to complete the paper work I had completed in 2 weeks. It was as if our case worker had just put a gold star by my name.
I also asked around about the profile scrapbooks and it seems that I'm the only one who had started theirs. And let's be clear, I'm 2 pictures away from completing ours. Fearing that mine was too Creative Memories-ish and not Snapfish photo book enough, I brought it in for our case worker to see. The words perfect and amazing were used. I was even told my handwriting looked like a font from the computer. Beaming, I came back to my desk to tell Sloan was she'd said. Sloan quickly reminded me that he was a mere 10 feet away when she'd complimented me and that he'd never taken me for a brown-noser, but apparently I was. He also checked to see if the windows opened, to make room for my ever growing ego.
It was all I could do to place our profile back in my backpack. I wanted to show it around to everyone in the training and say, "See. Valerie said it was perfect." I did show a couple of people the profile under the guise of "Hey, do you want to see pictures of Henry?"
I think part of the reason I've been able to be so quick about all of this is that God has been working in our hearts awhile to bring us to the adoption journey, and oh yeah, I picked AWESOME references. All three of our references and our pastor letter are back in to the Bethany office. A big shout out to Aunties Robin, Ann, and Shannon, and Pastor Shelby. You guys rock!!! Once Sloan's boss sends back in his proof of employment letter (a person I can't really call up and threaten with loss of friendship like I did with the Aunties), we'll be all set to begin our interviews. An interview with us together, then each of us will have a private interview, and then the home visit interview where they'll check out our house and talk to Henry. Some of the other parents were worried about how their toddlers would take to have a new baby in the house. I told them that as long as the baby brought Henry a truck, he'd be fine.
By the end of the weekend, we were tired. As in we both took naps during Henry's nap yesterday, then proceeded to cuddle on the couch with Henry while we watch the Curious George movie, put Henry to bed, then more TV, and then were in bed by 9pm. All three of us slept in until 8:45 this morning. And I'm thinking about heading up for a nap when I finish this post. Cross your fingers that Henry's nap is one of his 3 hour ones.
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
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