Overwhelmed

Brian with our niece, Amari, at our rehearsal dinner.

Just a glimpse of what a great dad he's going to be.

We have been so overwhelmed with support in just a few days since we "officially" announced our intent to adopt out of the foster care system.

I mentioned to Brian last night that this decision was, in some ways, like a birth for us. It seemed a long time in coming and painful in the process. But, here, on the other side of it, we are filled with joy and anticipation for the future.

Now it is hard to believe that I was so hesitant to announce. I was so fearful of criticism. It will probably come, but not from the people who's opinions I truly care about.

I'm going to do my best to share the goings on of this adoption process here. Many women share their pregnancies on a blog. Here I will share our journey to parenthood.

The first step we made was to contact our local Department of Children's Services. Since I'm an internet type, I just Googled it. I already knew that there would be some training classes involved, so I looked up the schedule of classes. In Tennessee, the classes are called PATH (Parents As Tender Healers). We registered for a class that meets twice a week for about a month. There are other classes that only meet once a week for I'm guessing about twice as long. I also went ahead and asked for an application packet to be sent to us. However, I know that this info will be given to us in the classes as well - I'm just eager.

In an effort to mentally shift toward parenthood, we've begun to make some changes in our house set-up. We (Brian) moved the office stuff to the bonus room so we can use that room as the nursery. I have a list of things I want to do. Move stuff, paint, steam clean the carpets, get furniture, etc.

That's where we are for now - excited, delighted with the support we're receiving, and making some changes!