Harry Potter Brought Us Together

We met the birthmom and her mother today.  I couldn't have imagined a more perfect meeting.  It was like talking with an old friend.  We went on and on about random topics for an hour and a half.  Every 15 minutes or so, when the social workers could get a word in edgewise, they would bring us back to the real topics that needed to be discussed such as birth plans and legal issues.  But in the end we'd always skirt off topic and start talking about something else so eventually they just gave up trying :)  But it was such a natural conversation to have with them and something that I'll cherish forever.

Many curious friends and family members have asked us what the birthmom's "situation" is.  Brandon and I decided long ago that this isn't something we will share at all.  After all, it's not our story to tell, it's our daughter's and we don't want her hearing about it for the first time from anybody but the two of us.  When she's old enough to hear it, we'll tell her everything she wants to know and at that point she can decide who to share that information with.  We just don't feel right doing it any other way. 

But there are a few things I will share, like why she picked us.  After we had been talking for about an hour I asked what it was about us and our profile that she liked.  She mentioned that she liked Brandon's connection to Utah (many of her family members live there too) and the fact that our profile was short and sweet.  But she also said she picked us because I was a Harry Potter fan. 

So there you have it.  Harry Potter brought us together.  It was a match made in Hogwarts :)

We Crossed Over to the Dark Side

And got iPhones.  Brandon has been wanting one for MONTHS and we had been planning on getting rid of our Blackberries and getting iPhones a few weeks ago when we got The Call.  Though we worried about money I knew that we still needed new phones and Brandon was really looking forward to getting an iPhone so we decided to go that weekend and get them anyway.

But they were sold out!

Oh, darn.  Looks like we'll just have to put that purchase off for another day, I said.  Weeks went by and I convinced Brandon to come shopping with my on Black Friday with the empty promise that he could get his iPhone then.  Really I just thought they'd still be sold out and he'd have to keep waiting.  Unfortunately I was wrong and it turned out that they had plenty in stock.  Brandon was completely ecstatic but to me it was just another phone.  I opted to get the older model, the 4S, while Brandon of course got the newer one.  Our cell phone contracts had long since expired so it was fairly cheap to buy new phones.

He hasn't stopped playing with the damn thing ever since.

Meanwhile I still miss my Blackberry keyboard.

Random Thoughts

It's been an extremely busy week in our household. I'm trying to work on my blog design for my travel blog (I already paid for the design so I might as well continue to keep up with the blog!) and that's been a big work in progress. I'm also working on a list of things to complete before the baby arrives, like steam cleaning the carpets and getting the carseat installed and inspected.  We've got a meeting with the birthmom and a few members of her family scheduled and I'm really looking forward to that.  Brandon and I narrowed down the list of names to 6 (which isn't narrowed down much at all!) and we're hoping to present 4 of the names to the birthmom for her to pick...if she wants.  If not then Brandon and I will argue about the name until we finally flip a coin and be done with it :)  But I jest.  Actually, I'm not jesting, I'm really hoping the birthmom becomes the tie-breaker in the Name Game!  Picking out names isn't as easy as I thought it would be.

This Thanksgiving Brandon and I have awesome plans.  We're headed to Plymouth, MA for a traditional 17th century Thanksgiving dinner, in celebration of the Pilgrim's feast and all that jazz.  It may sound a bit hokey but apparently this feast is pretty popular.  Brandon and I bought our tickets in July and just a few weeks later they were sold out!  People come from all over the world to partake in the Plymouth Thanksgiving dinner.  Then we'll come back home, do a bit of shopping on Black Friday and then head to Boston for the rest of the weekend!  We'll be bringing Oso with us and staying in a nice pet-friendly hotel in downtown Boston where we'll catch an evening performance of the Nutcracker at the Boston Ballet.  On Saturday we have reservations for brunch at Cafe Fleuri, known for their Chocolate Bar and the rest of the day will be spent doing random sightseeing around Boston.  Then it's back home on Sunday where we start to focus our attention on cleaning this mess of a house and getting ready for Baby Girl's arrival.  The next 6 weeks will be super busy but the reward in the end will be worth it!!

Opening Up an Old Wound

I'm healed. I've moved on. I closed the door to the possibility of being a parent, and I'm perfectly okay with that.   In fact, I'm really enjoying being childless and having the freedom to do anything I want.

So why am I back in this space you ask?

Because we got The Call.

I'll let that sink in for a minute because trust me, I needed more than a minute myself today.   In fact my hands are shaking as I type this.

We are no longer active with our adoption agency because they are a national agency and our homestudy was only good for one year with them.  But our homestudy was actually completed by a local agency in CT where it's valid for two years.  So while we went inactive with the national agency the homestudy agency continued to show our profiles.  And we were chosen by a birthmom.

Words cannot begin to describe the range of emotions I felt when I got The Call.  We never expected to get a call from our local agency.  They do only 3 or 4 placements a year while the national agency completes over 300.  We were completely shocked when we found out that a birthmom had picked us.

I had a meltdown at work.  I couldn't get ahold of Brandon for over an hour.  When I did get in touch with him we both decided to take off work early to come home and talk things over.  I was a basketcase but still unsure of whether we'd accept this match.  It was just so difficult for us to make peace with a decision, close a door and then have it fly open again out of nowhere.  So many thoughts were rolling around in my head, the biggest one being "What if we say yes and she changes her mind?".

We spent the entire afternoon talking, reasoning through this new turn of events.  Brandon was concerned that he'd miss out on major milestones when he starts deploying next fall.  We worried over money because we had taken all our adoption savings and put it towards paying off my car so now we'd have to take out another loan to cover the adoption.  We discussed our current lifestyle and how we're genuinely happy, baby or no baby.  It was just so easy to make a decision to quit adoption when the idea of adopting was just a nameless, faceless dream.  Now there is a unborn baby out there with an identity, a race and a gender and suddenly it becomes so very very real.

In the end we decided to take this opportunity, to stop in the middle of the path that our lives were currently headed and completely switch directions back to parenthood.  We called our social worker to tell her the news.

Our daughter is due in late December.