Stuff liked in January

I decided each month I am going to make a post at the end of the month of a few items that brightened up my month in case you want enjoy them too. It's good to reflect on the small pleasures in life sometimes, as silly as they may be on occasion.

1. The movie "Forgetting Sarah Marshall"-- It's been replaying often this month on....I think TBS or USA or some channel like that, of course it is the edited version. I would recommend the unedited version. But I had forgotten how much I love this movie. One of the funniest, sweetest movies. Plus Jason Segel reminds me of Adam sometimes.

2. cb2--- This is Crate and Barrel's "modern" store. I've ordered a few things from them in the past but this year's new catalog had so many cool things in it and affordable as well. A lot of stuff for our new kid's room is going to be coming from here.

3. Leinenkugel's Sunset Wheat Beer-- Awesome, flavorful beer good

I got me a FedEx account!

We are officially sending off our dossier documents to Holt tomorrow. All of them! After a couple of months of notarizing and running around collecting all of this important info and photographs the FedEx envelope didn't look too impressive. Here we are with them for the last time. Can you guess who the "fun" parent is going to be?

They get sent to Holt who get started state certifying and federally authenticating them. Also our home study was approved today. We can now apply to citizenship and immigration this week which is kind of the key piece we need to get on the waiting list. Satisfied high five....

Checkboxes

Adam and I had to fill out our final medical checklist for our home study this past week. We had looked at it several times and had talked with a local pediatrician who is an expert in reviewing adoption referrals for medical reasons, but it was still one of the most difficult things in the process thus far. So many checkboxes to mark or not mark. This was the real document that would be going in our file and that we would be matched with a child off of. It drove home the reality that our child would be coming home with one of these medical problems. I don't want to sound like we hadn't considered this and thought about it extensively, we had. We had agreed this was the path we wanted to take. However when the process starts to move along there is a heightened reality at every step. This was one of those times. I have a feeling impending parenthood elicits....

Angry Dance

Everyone needs an angry dance, I'm going to start choreographing mine as an outlet for frustration! Any moves you would like to see let me know.

Angry dance to my favorite FedEx dropbox each time....................eventually you might see me on the evening news.

Yikes!

We have entered the phase of our adoption process where we have nothing we can do to move things forward! It's much more frustrating than I would have thought......best expressed by James Van Der Beek. He's the new mode of feeling expression for our adoption blog. I'm sure there might be some of you wondering who the heck is James Van Der Beek, that's unfortunate. Ever heard of a show called Dawson's Creek......

Yesterday we finished up all of the paperwork we could do for the process and now we just wait for documents to come back to us and the government to say we can adopt. As I'm writing that it does irritate me a bit I have to wait for the government (and many others) to say I am fit to be a parent, but players gotta play the game I guess. As some of you may know, I am a slightly independent person and having to rely on others to get something this important done makes me feel a bit like Mr. Van Der Beek above.

Home study visits.........no Doug Wilson

Our first home study visit was on last Friday and our last one Wednesday and much to my surprise Doug Wilson did not show up with our social worker. I was hoping in addition to all of the deeply personal discussion we were going to be having it would be a mini-version of Moving Up (TLC home improvement show circa 2008) where the old owners love all of the changes we made. Despite no dramatic reveals the visits went really well!

It was really a painless process with a few tough questions but overall kind of.....fun? We got to talk about ourselves a lot.....who doesn't love that? Our social worker and her student are both really great and easy to work with. As you may know from reading the previous posts our social worker is actually the person we bought our house from (hence the "Moving Up" reference). I couldn't exactly read her reaction to all of the changes we made to our home, but overall it was quite positive! We had all of our smoke detectors working and a fire extinguisher which.......

You can adopt boys from China?

We have gotten this question/ statement several times.......so you will be adopting a girl right? Turns out there are quite a few boys in our program and really it is probably a 50/50 probability for gender in our specific China program. Being open to a boy may actually help us be matched quicker because a lot of people looking at China are looking for girls. It is true in the traditional China program for healthy children almost all are girls but many boys are abandoned for having any sort of medical problems. Below is a link to a blog post about adopting boys from the China Child or Promise Program!

How Did You Adopt a Boy from China?

Adoption Tax Credit Extended through 2012!

Thank you president Obama! Sort of good news.....we thought the tax credit wasn't going to be renewed for 2012 and if we didn't end up completing our adoption this year we wouldn't get it. It's been extended through 2012 but it won't be refundable anymore. Which sucks because you don't get the extra money over the amount you owe back, they just keep the remainder over what you owe but it is better than nothing. There are a few more specifics about the tax credit at the following link if you are interested!

Adoption Tax Credit Extended!

There is a card for everything.

There really is a card for everything......I needed this one about 2 months ago.  Actually about 10 years ago.

Some of you may be receiving these soon..............

See ya later 2010....

I can't say I'm super sad to see 2010 go. It was probably the worst year I've had in recent memory....okay probably worst year ever. I try not to dwell too much on that fact now but I don't want to suppress it either. Everything that happened is still part of who I am and where I've come from and learned from. There is this whole thing about a "new year" that you are supposed to be so hopeful and bright about your year to come. Forget all of the bad things and think about the "sunny" future.  I'm sure that works for some people out there but those of us that have been burned significantly by having that hope are somewhat more hesitant to attack the year with that fury of joy.

I do have hope and optimism for this year. At this point it is slightly tempered with the mounting requirements and growing stress in front of us. I am confident this is the right path for us. I don't want people to be confused on that. It seems complaining about adoption isn't so acceptable. I get that feeling at least. Few people want to hear about the difficult or hard sides of it. It is like when someone asks how your day was and then you tell them actually how it was and as you are talking they start to stare off into space or ask you in the next breath if you watched Keeping up with the Kardashians last night (which by the way is one of my New Year's resolution....not watch that show ever again).

Maybe we will start 2012 as a family of three, maybe we won't, the odds are probably 50/50. I found a verse on another adoption blog I am going to try and keep in the back of my head for this year.

"Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful." Hebrews 10:23