Rough waiting week

This week has been hard for me.
The urge to be a mother and the yearning that is inside of me just won't go away.

We received an email about another situation in Texas, but once again we had to say no. I won't give many details, but I will say that the fees were much, much too high for us.      To say no to a child because of money is heartbreaking and it makes me feel like the universe is telling us NO.  

Brandon tries his best to reassure me. He tells me that our time is coming and that we haven't been waiting that long.    In my mind, I know that 6 months of waiting is just the tip of the ice burg for many adoptive families, but that doesn't make it hurt any less.

Luckily, I belong to an online community of women who have adopted or are waiting to adopt. They understand all of the feelings that I have and can say "yes, this hurts like hell, but I promise, there is an end."   They say that when the time is right - when it is OUR baby out there, either the money will come or it will fit our adoption budget.   I have to believe that they are right.

I needed a day to cry about the hurt, but then I got back on my feet.  I started a twitter account to network, have asked friends to help in making some flyers (after I double check the legalities in our state), and have gotten back on the bandwagon for preparing for our future child.

Then this morning, after waking up and laying in bed, I started to cry.  All of a sudden I was very sad.  I had a feeling of loss that I couldn't explain.
Then I remembered my dream.    I dreamt last night that I had a baby. Not only did I have a baby, but I was trying to breastfeed.      

I'm ready to start a new week of waiting and have it be a better one.  There is one good part of waiting - there is always hope that today could be the day that we get "the call".   

Nursery Project!

As some of you know, what will become the nursery is currently my older step-sons bedroom.
We decided that when the boys are here, they will share the larger bedroom in our upstairs.    The nursery will be the small bedroom.     Obviously, because this will be my first baby, I am VERY excited about decorating the nursery.  I have been thinking of ideas for months, but before we could get going on many projects, we had to do something horrible.
We had to remove wallpaper.
Now, I've done this chore before and knew that it would be difficult.   Luckily though, only one of the walls in the room had wallpaper on it - in the form of a jungle themed mural.

On a whim, Brandon and I started to rip down what we could on Sunday.    It was slow going and I was getting annoyed.   On Monday, we decided that we needed to use some hot water.   This did the trick!  It didn't take much once we sponged hot water on, then scraped it off.

Here are just a couple of photos of me working on the last little section.

And no, I will not be keeping those dark green walls... or the very dark green carpet!!

Nothing new on the adoption front

I cannot believe it is March already.   Soon we'll be hitting the one year mark since we started researching agencies, going to informational meetings, and starting the process of the training and home study requirements.
We have been officially home study ready for over 5 months now and we haven't heard anything lately.

Working with two agencies, one local and one in a different state, I thought we would start hearing more.   We haven't.  Not since I last wrote about the couple possibilities that didn't work out.
Between telling everyone we know, posting our video, continuing to update our Facebook page and hand out business cards, I don't know what else to do.   I just hope to get "the call" someday soon.

Meanwhile, I find myself still pushing to get the house ready.  We are getting closer to the point of being able to ready the nursery and I have taken on the additional project of redecorating our bedroom.

My older step-son was in a "Readers Theater" play and did a wonderful job.  Now, we're going to surprise the kids with tickets to a local dinner theater in about two weeks to see Hairspray.  Hopefully it will be a fun night for the four of us.

I'm going to try and update the blog with some pictures in the near future too. The boys are turning into young men now and are so tall and grown up.  I'm pretty sure both of them have a slight mustache now....