Babysitting

So a bit slow on the posting huh! Nothing really has hasppened around here. And by that I mean adoption wise. This week I got my hair cut, painted the nursery (almost done), had my dishwasher repaired and picked up a car seat. The car seat is for me eventually but the reason I picked it up from a friend is that I'm babysitting my niece tonight. She is 5 weeks old and I'll be watching her for 61/2 hours, great practice! Today my parents helped me pick up a crib and glider rocker from Sears as I only have a Kia Rio and it totally wouldn't fit. They helped me assemble it (the instructions were horrible, it took all 3 of use and some head scratching to figure it out), so the nursery is starting to look like a nursery and I keep having to look in it. Not really believing it's even possible.

As steps keep being done in this long process, I'm starting to actually let myself believe it will happen. As before I totally could not let myself become too invested, I'm slowly allowing myself to believe. Starting to get excited!

What's Up

So where are things adoption wise now? Well, everything is looking really good. My homestudy is finished, I've reviewed it and signed off on it. It should be totally finished early next week. I applied for an adoption loan and was approved :) So nothing is holding me back now!!! Also my friend with 3 children has offered me some great used baby items, so I'm very pumped to be beginning my baby collection!!

Stress!

Well, now that my plans are settled now the hard part comes. All the planning and trying to finance everything. I am pursuing an international adoption loan through National Bank of Canada. Everything looks good and they have ot sent the application off, but don't think their should be any problems. But and it's a big but, they are insisting that I travel to their office to sign the loan papers in Vancouver. Vancouver is about an 11 hour drive from where I live or generally a $500 flight. Fortunately, there is a seat sale I can take advantage of, which cuts the price more than in half. So it looks like I will be traveling to Vancouver for a ~10 min appointment on Oct 20th. It will be a really boring day that I spend mostly in airports, but I doubt anyone can come even close to the great perks in this loan.
On a better front I am painting the nursery a bright yellow, so it's starting to come together and I'm trying to arrange plans for child care, maternity leave, etc. So I'm trying to take breaths and not be too stressed out about everything!

Decision Made

So on Tuesday I received the info from the adoption agency in Utah. It looked really promising; so Wednesday I called them with the many questions I'd been accumulating over the past few weeks. Again I was really happy with all the answers. So I have decided to adopt throught the US with an agency called A Act of Love. Why you might wonder? Well, they have an African American program as well, so I've not changed things so much and I can get an infant, something I'm really looking forward to. The timeline is really short. Once all the paper work is in Utah, the longest they have ever had someone to be matched in this program is 6 months! So I'm now looking at having a baby in my posession sometime in the spring or summer!!! It is panicing me a little as I'm now where near ready witht he nursery, etc. So I'm going to get busy!