Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow!

What an amazing few days here! We've gotten close to 10 inches of snow in the past 3 days and it's been beautiful! This time last year, our street was not full of homes yet, and you could see snow covered land for miles -- well, maybe not miles, but it was a very different sight that what we were accustomed to in our previous neighborhood! There are no streets lined with broken lawn chairs marking their spots, no black slush sitting in the alley, just beautiful untouched white snow as far as the eye can see! We are the last street in the county to get plowed on snow days, or so it seems sometimes, so our street went un-touched for a good portion of the morning. The few people that did venture out, left tire tracks that were quickly re-covered by the snow that was still coming down!

Among the snow, we've also been showered with orders for our Etsy shop! We are so excited that this is successful and hope that the success continues after the holidays. This past weekend, we made a little bit of everything -- it was our first big weekend for orders and we are looking forward to the coming weekend to be just as busy! We were blessed to provide turtles for VIP bags for Avergan Foundations Launch Party and are working on a number of teacher gifts for the local community! Head over to our etsy shop and get your orders placed today!! Sweet Treats!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving!

We are so thankful for so many things this year! In no particular order: our families, our friends, our neighbors who have become friends, our canine children, our faith, our beautiful home...oh yeah and each other! We are also thankful for the journey that we are taking towards adoption. In just a few days, we've secured a handful of Etsy orders for our homemade candy and have "sold" several puzzle pieces! We can't wait to deliver the pieces for everyone to decorate! Thank you for Avergan Foundation, Courtney Anton Photography, and Sparkle Events & Cakery for advertising our Etsy shop! And thank you to all of our friends & family who have shared our Go Fund Me page! 

Mountains of Paper Makes Candy~

You read it right! Making candy is something that my mom and I used to spend hours upon hours in the kitchen doing every Christmas! Homemade caramel, drop turtles, chocolate covered pretzels -- you name it, we made it! It was a chore, and our fingers were sore for days, and "our feets hurt" when we were done. But, nonetheless, each year, without fail, we repeated tradition. When Pete and I met, we continued that tradition and for the past few years, every member of the family looks forward to peanut butter balls and no bake cookies =) This year, we've decided to expand our repertoire and delve into some other things. So, we set up shop on Etsy! Every dollar earned through this shop will help turn our dreams into reality as we continue towards "gotcha day" (aka: the day we meet our future son or daughter). We'd be delighted if you would share in the magic. Purchase candy as gifts for co-workers, neighbors, church members, or even yourselves! Or just share our page with others! Every item comes wrapped and ready for gift giving and includes a personalized gift tag -- we will even ship direct to the recipient!

Find us at https://www.etsy.com/shop/MountainsofPaper

The Holidays Are On The Horizon!

It's been a couple of weeks since I've last posted and while there has been a lot going on for us in the world of adoption these past couple of weeks, there isn't really much to share in terms of updates! We are, yes, still waiting...but since we've passed out announcements, and made official announcements to our employers, we've been overwhelmed with support and people saying "you know, so and so adopted". We've been blessed to meet another couple in our neighborhood who is traveling this road alongside us. We will call them Team PB! We met for the first time 2 weeks ago for dinner and ended up shutting the place down! It was so nice to meet another couple walking this road and sharing our hopes, dreams, laughs, tears and everything in between.

We've also started working on clearing out what will become the nursery. We've raised more than $150 so far by consigning items around the house that we either no longer use or need. With that were able to purchase a dresser that had been refinished by a local woman. We've started picking out paint colors -- did you know that babies cry more in yellow rooms than any other color?! Who does this research? Needless to say, we will NOT be painting the future nursery yellow!

With the holidays coming, we know that we will be busy, busy, busy. We've received our first donation for the puzzle and we hope that we will have all 60 pieces of our puzzle filled by the end of the year! We are asking for a donation of $10 per piece, but will really be thankful for anything that you wish to contribute. We want this baby to have a piece of each and everyone of their family members (both glitter & glue) hanging in their room. We will be bringing the puzzle, as well as bottles for the bottle fundraiser to upcoming holiday gatherings along with pens/markers to decorate your own piece!

Puzzle

View the entire collection of cards.

Happy Homestudy Day!

Happy Anniversary & Happy Homestudy Day to Pete and I. We celebrated our 2nd wedding anniversary and completed our homestudy today! We are so excited to be through the mountains of paperwork and be officially PAPER PREGNANT! For those who have been wondering, our next step is to wait! We will be finishing our profile key in the coming weeks, which will give the agency an idea of what type of child we are going to parent. This key allows us to choose race and birthmother history. We have chosen to keep our exact choices private. We do not get to choose gender, and there is a high likelihood that we will not know the gender until the baby is born. Rest assured that we will continue to share details during the matching process as we can. We have a job to protect the privacy of the birth mother, and we plan on honoring that. We encourage you to follow this blog for all of our updates.

Last night, we posted a picture on Facebook to announce to the world that we were adopting! This picture sparked an amazing number of likes/comments/private messages and we are overwhelmed with the amount of support that we are receiving from friends and family! Thank you! But something else pretty amazing happened when we posted this picture. We found another family within walking distance who is also adopting. She reached out to us via facebook and we found that we are both in the dreaded waiting period. I'm so excited to have found someone so close that is going through the exact same thing as we are. I think I actually asked "can we be best friends?!"

Jealous Juno...

Already "parents" to our two dogs, a 5 year old American Eskimo and an 8 year old Beagle, Juno and Solo have been the center of our lives. Until tonight...we recently hired a trainer to assist us with 1. teaching Juno manners, and 2. preparing both Juno and Solo for our future lives with a baby. The trainers advice: "get a baby doll that cries". So, $15 and a noisy trip down the baby doll aisle at Wal-Mart later -- we emerge with this:

It didn't take long for Pete to figure out how to multi-task! We dressed this baby in a onesie that was given to us (we are already accumulating hand me downs!) so that it would smell like something other than plastic. Little one sucks on a bottle and when you take it away, it cries! Juno is alert and slightly interested, but we can already tell he's JEALOUS! Solo -- she hasn't moved from her bed throughout all of this! Surprise, surprise...

Here's to hoping that we don't come home from work one day with a chewed apart baby doll!

~WORDS~

What is in a word? So many things! Adoption has evolved over the years, it used to be a secret, and birth mothers were often thought of as promiscuous young girls without a future. Adoptive parents were always white and their babies were always from an Asian country. The children were "rescued" from a life much less desirable than what a wealthy American family could provide. My, oh my, how things have changed! Children are no longer "given up" or "put up" for adoption. A phrase that dates back to the times of children being physically placed upon crates in hopes that the passing train would pick them up and take them off to a better life! Are birth mothers and fathers giving up their parental rights? Yes. Are they giving up on their child? No! In open adoption, birth parents make a plan for their child and that plan includes an adoptive family who will accept the responsibility of raising their child. Gone are the days of "real parents" and "adoptive parents" -- we will simply be parents. Our child will have a birth family, but they will be our child. They will be your grandchild, your niece or nephew, your cousin, etc. They will be wanted and loved by all of their family. The journey of adoption is never ending. We encourage you to educate yourselves with positive adoption language, to avoid the negative, old school phrases that have so often been associated with adoption.

What Kind of Parent Will You Be?

Ummmm -- a good one, duh! This was the question posed to us tonight at our Adoption Meeting. How do you answer a question like that? Our obvious look of concern, confusion and general lack of knowledge of all that goes into parenting a child was a flashing light to the social workers -- a light that they assured us that they see every time they ask this question. So, what did they do? Continued to ask us more questions -- more things to ponder...at what age will your child be allowed to have their first sleepover? When will they know their full story, even if it involves some less than ideal details about their birth family? How will you react when people ask ignorant questions about 'how you got them?' or make snide remarks like 'well, that's their birthparent coming out in them'. Who will stay home when they are sick? HOLY SHIT -- THIS IS REAL! We have talked about some of these things, but we obviously have a lot to discuss before we bring this baby home!

Up until now, we've been so excited to move through the process, because our ultimate goal has been to bring home a child and start our family. We haven't thought much about what is going to happen the day after we come home with said child. PS: there is no book for that, I checked on Amazon already.

This week has been trying on us to say the least. Monday, the world was blessed with a little angel =) and both sides of our family suffered a loss. The day was compounded by an attack at The Navy Yard in Washington DC and while it did not touch our family and friends first hand, it did make me sit back and wonder what it was that we were doing?! In a world filled with so much hatred and violence, why on earth did we want to bring a child into that? I don't know if I can really answer that question -- what I do know, is that we have been called to adopt, something deep down inside told us that the right move for us was not to continue to pour our heart and soul (and life savings) into IVF treatments to create our own biological offspring. Somewhere along the line, it became apparent that God had another plan for us, that His plan involved the life of another family, and another child whose DNA did not match ours -- that we are being blessed with the opportunity to parent a child who is doubly loved and who may not have had the opportunity to attend schools in one of the areas best districts, or may have never had the opportunity to have a backyard with a dog, or be signed up for soccer or dance classes.

The Cat's Out of the Bag

Meetings have been held, we are elbow deep in paperwork, checks are clearing and we've officially notified all of the key players that we are moving forward with our plans for adoption. Tears were shared all around, some of excitement, some of apprehension and some of downright fear. We are excited to move forward and can't wait to see what the future holds.

A few weeks ago, we had some Pre-Adoption photos done by the wonderful Courtney Anton Photography so that we could begin to enhance our Dear Birthmother profile. She's given us one sneak peak so far:

Once the rest are edited and sent over to us, we will send out official announcements, make the blog public and get our Adoption Bug fundraiser going to help us raise funds for our travel costs and the Birthmother Fund. 

And So The Journey Begins

Today was the big day ONE of our adoption journey. Yes, we've already filled out the application and met with the social worker once, we attended the information session; but it wasn't until today that I felt like we've jumped feet or head first into this...more like a tumble, end over end. But an amazing feeling to know that walking out of that agency today, that we had landed our first tumble, conquered it even. We spent an amazing 6 hours surrounded by other families in all walks of life and two amazing social workers that eat, sleep and breathe adoption every single day of their lives.

We met a birthmother today -- the first we've met thus far and I don't think the agency could have chosen a better person to come and speak to us. She did more than allay all of our fears that our future child would be coming from a 15 year old "crack-whore" who could name 1/2 a dozen people as possible birth fathers and planned to be giving birth in a prison. Dramatic? YES -- but maybe not. The Lifetime movies I grew up secretly watching, depicted every birth mother in this light, and made them all seem like they were either too lazy to parent, not smart enough to make another plan or just didn't care. Today's birthmother was an amazing woman in her early twenties with more insight on her own life and the world around her than many adults that I know. She told us of a journey, not only that led her to creating an adoption plan for her child, but the wonderful bond that she has with the adoptive family. She's a strong, independent woman who, even years after making her plan, still gets choked up when talking about it. She's a real birthmother.

I'm left with a lingering thought from both the social workers and the birthmother, "go forward with eyes wide open". No matter where this process takes us, we must continue with eyes, hearts and mind wide open.

History Has Brought Us Here

Where to begin?! A chronicle of one of the hardest decisions my husband and I will ever make. The beginning to the miracle of family creation for our family. An insight for our families, friends, nosy facebook stalkers and anyone else interested in the five Ws.

Who: Pete & Nicole -- two people incredibly in love who want nothing more than to add a two-legged child(ren) to our family...yes, we already play Mom & Dad to two amazing canines.

What: Paper Pregnancy -- that's what they call it these days? We are adopting

Where: In PA -- surrounded by our glitter and glue!

When: We are (im)patiently waiting!

Why: Why Not? There is a child(ren) out there with a loving birth family, who will hopefully entrust us with the ultimate gift of raising their child. Through Open Adoption, we hope to grow our family, not only with a child(ren), but also with the birth family.