The Double Digit Dance

Wahoo! We're officially in the 3rd trimester. I can't believe that we'll be parents before the holidays this year. I'm so excited I can hardly contain myself! Our home is quickly filling up with baby clothes and tiny shoes and of course a lot of pink. Every evening I like to wander into the nursery-in-progress, open the double closet doors, and just stare at what's inside. Even though the rest of the room isn't put together and ready to go yet Mackenzie's closet is nearly stuffed full with adorable little outfits, baby blankets, and all kinds of lovely things that give me warm fuzzy feelings.

It's truly amazing. As soon as I was willing to let go of all control and trust in whatever was meant to happen a refreshing calmness took over. I can't even put the words together to explain how satisfying it is to have moved past infertility struggles and have such a wonderful and perfectly timed blessing to look forward to. The daily charting and testing and living life by my hormones schedule has been gone for months now and I feel normal again. I'm so at peace and confident with our decisions. Along those same lines, I was finally baptized at our church a few weeks ago. It was something that I've been thinking about doing for years but just hadn't been ready until recently. I felt that same calmness afterwards, like a million weights have been lifted off of my shoulders. Even though things are changing quickly for our little family I feel so refreshed, so calm, and so happy for the journey ahead.

With adoption it requires you to let go of control. For a super planner like myself that can be a hard concept to grasp. Baby Mackenzie isn't with me right now, she is growing with her other mother. Sometimes I get asked if I feel less connected emotionally since I'm not carrying the baby. My answer is of course, but not by choice. That's just natural. Obviously there is a instinctive bond between any birth-mommy and baby that I just don't have yet and I have to respect that. I'm more than happy that the birth mother gets to cherish these 9 months. I know that my time to step in will come. Until then though, I relinquish control and continue to trust. I feel like we have a great relationship with the birth family so it's that much easier for me to rest assured. I'll admit I still have to stop myself from sending those obsessive texts "are you getting enough rest?" "drive save!" and "don't carry heavy things!" though. Adoption requires such a high level of faith that really all you can do is sit back and trust what happens. I literally have my entire heart in someone else's hands. Or belly, I should say. And the same goes for the birth mommy, too. Her heart will be in our hands. It's really a beautiful thing to have one wiggly little jellybean bring so many people together. I just hope that I'm doing a good job of being respectful and (somewhat) patient until baby gets here!

So anyway, slowly but surely we're marching onward. The fingerprinting process was completed a few weeks ago. I expected to show up at some dark police station and get inked like a criminal by a mean cop in a cold interrogation room. Well, maybe it didn't have to be a cold room but still something like that. It turns out that we just had to stop by the sheriff's office inside the mall. It's (kind of) all digital now so there wasn't even any ink required. They just press and roll your fingerprint into this machine electronically. Apparently it didn't like my prints very much because I had to try several times for it to actually read. While mine took a good 15 minutes of the machine frantically beeping at me to re-try every single finger, Allen's was done in less than 5 minutes. So, since it was all scanned into this machine I'm thinking that's cool because they must just "click" and send everything automatically. Apparently not, though. They still print the prints (print the prints...ha) for us to mail in manually. Either way, it's done! We're in the system now. No bank hold-ups here. Ha, we had a good laugh about that. And by laugh I mean a silly sarcastic conversation that would probably freak out strangers if overheard.

Our home study is this weekend and even though I'm already running around like a crazy person making sure everything is perfect for the social worker I actually don't think it's that intense. Even still though, I know I'll be dusting the baseboards, scrubbing the tile, and sweeping the porch obsessively until it's over. Completing the home study will be a major step forward and aside from the rights termination it's probably the most important and involved step in adoptions.

I'm also nesting like crazy. I cut back from work a little bit so that I can spend more time preparing for baby. I consider our home really tidy and neat, but it's amazing how much disorganization you can encounter when you have to empty out an entire bedroom and closet and make space for those things elsewhere. We're making major progress, though, and the only thing left to do is have our new desk delivered and then move on to the baby room! I'm in the process of picking the nursery paint color right now. After trying half a dozen different pink samples I think I've decided to go with a beige instead. I bought some glitter additive to add to the paint to give it an awesome shimmer, too. I figure pink and sparkly would just be too much. I'm trying not to give my husband a heart attack from girliness overload here.

Along with nesting comes the ever dreaded... cooking. If I'm going to become a stay at home mommy I have got to learn how to throw a meal together. I don't like recipes that don't show a picture of the meal so Pinterest has been pretty awesome at helping. I also have a cookbook (with pictures) from the fam that has been helpful. "30 Minute Meals" or something. I'm pleased to announce that I've made a few "real" dinners now and that all but one has turned out well. Last night grilled chicken was attempted and failed, though. The entire house filled with thick smoke from the oil and Allen had to make a dash to Target to grab some precooked chicken for the main entree. Other than that it's going well, though. I just wish I had a passion for cooking like some people do. I despise it. It's not enjoyable, it's messy, and it takes too long. I never know how to sync everything so that it's all done around the same time. Or, what if you need two things in the oven but they both call for different temperatures? I have no idea.

Aight.

Love love.

Heather