Parent in Waiting: Prerequisite - The Home Study

Let the first term of the "Waiting Parents" class commence!  Unlike most courses, this "lesson" has no known end date.  It could be next month or next year.  There are no guidelines or course expectations.   

However, to get to this point, we had LOTS of homework.  Here is what we have successfully done so far:

·      Adoption Class - Pass

·      Stacks of Paperwork - Pass

·      Finger Prints - Pass

·      FBI/Background - Pass

·      Home Fire Inspection - Pass

·      Physical - Pass

·      Driving Records - Pass

·      Home Safety Inspection - Pass

·      Letters of Recommendation - Pass

·      Profile Book Submitted – Pass

Now that we have successfully passed the home study (approved as waiting parents), we begin the wait. We PROUDLY refer to ourselves as "Parents in Waiting" and "Paper Pregnant." 

The Homework for this term includes:

1.  Reading parenting books; 

2.  Spending time doing things we won't be able to do once we become  

     parents (movies, romantic dinners, vacations);

3.  Preparing our house for baby (Well, more than we are already prepared!  We have a pretty awesome fire safety plan that we hope to NEVER use.  This includes a fire latter, extinguisher throughout the house, and personlized (by room) fire exit floor plans!  Who knew our days as a Residence Hall Director and Sorority House Mom would pay off so well!)

Here's hoping for a short and successful term of waiting! :)

Intro to Blogging

After years of trying to become parents, we decided to build our family through adoption.  We started the process in the fall of 2010 and recently became approved as waiting parents!! (Or, as known in the adoption world - Paper Pregnant!)

We have established out Adoption Blog (parents2be) for 3 reasons and 3 sets of readers. 

1) To provide a way for prospective birth parents and your families to learn more about us as you make the difficult decision to place a child.  It is impossible to state how much we respect and admire you!  Thank you for taking the time to learn more about us and look at our profile. 

2) To provide our friends and family with information about our journey to parenthood. We are also hoping our friends and family will keep us in mind and remember that we want to grow our family through adoption.  Please share this blog and/or our adoption contact information with others making an adoption plan.

3) For ourselves.  Over the past 6 years, we have had our share of ups & downs.  A few of you have heard tales of our funny family building stories.  As we now wait for our “forever family”, we (ok, mainly Kirsten) have decided to chronicle the journey and share reflections of the process.  If a few of you are interested in following along, even better!

This is our first real experience with both blogging and adoption...and this venue will be a learning process for both.  Actually, blogging and the adoption process have much in common.  Neither are easy tasks.  Both require perseverance, deep self-reflection, and patience.  Both will be approached with thoughtfulness, care, concern, and yes, the occasional mistake.  Both depend on elements of timing & luck.

As most of you know, we are also both college educators.  As a result, we approach most situations as "valuable life lessons."  In an effort to remain (become?) witty, our posts will reflect the names of our lessons in our adoption journey.  Therefore, we hope some of our "course names" will be amusing, though we realize most will just be a tad bit corny!

Thanks for taking time to visit, read, and learn more about us and our journey to parenthood!