Eighteen

I was just telling my neighbor that these last 6 weeks have been the most stressful of the entire application process. We're at the point where the social workers are making sure that every last detail has been covered, which requires a lot of back and forth, getting lots of papers notarized, redoing forms that may have had a tiny error and now need to be completely done again, etc. Just when we think something is complete we get an email or phone call that more information is required. It's been a bit of an emotional roller coaster, extremely time-consuming, and sometimes frustrating. (For example, there was a very small mathematical error on one of our financial forms, so the entire thing had to be redone, including getting it notarized again.)

We had our home study a couple of weeks ago, which went really well. A social worker came to the house and asked us a million questions, talked with Khai and Avi (who did an amazing job. It's like they really understood the importance.), and then looked around our whole house, including the messy basement, which was embarrassing. But the social worker was extremely nice and friendly, and she is the person who will do our follow-up visits once the baby is placed with us. She will visit every few weeks for 6 months and once that is complete, we will go to court to finalize the adoption. So we still have a long road ahead.

We had our video session earlier this week where we had to talk about ourselves and our family. Birth moms will view these videos which will help them to make their decision. Khai and Avi had to be in the first part of the video and they did an amazing job with this as well, but the promise of a new toy immediately after we left the adoption agency was probably the main reason why. My very smart friend, Nica, told me that this isn't bribery because the deal has been made ahead of time. This information made me feel better about myself as a parent in a major way.

At this point all we're waiting for is for our profile to be accepted, which should happen in the next week or so. Then we're finally, finally, finally done with the application process. From start to finish it has taken almost 8 months. It has been hard in some places, easy in others. I'm not really sure what to expect with the next stage of all this, but I do know we will look back on this time and think of it as easy. I think the true hard part is coming up.

I also think the next part of this journey is the part we will need to be more private about. It's been so amazing to write about the application process and to get comments and messages from so many people in our lives. The level of support we have felt has been astounding to us and we will never be able to adequately express our gratitude. But during this next part we could hit some bumps and disappointments and I have a feeling that we will only want to talk about it with our friends privately. So I think this is going to be my last blog post until the baby arrives. If you're the kind of person who prays, we would love your prayers for a healthy baby, a short wait time, and a smooth transition for all of us.

So let me say for now, thank you so much for reading this silly blog. Thank you for your support, for your encouragement, and for your empathy. Nghia and I are so grateful for the amazing people in our lives. All of you. Thank you and we love you.