My nursery sewing project. . .

This is the cute little valance from Carter's that goes with our nursery decor. I wish it were a little longer, but it fits OK over this wide window. Unfortunately, I have two much smaller windows in the room, as well. In a fit of domestic impetus, I crafted these little valances to go with it:














I found the cream-colored sailcoth at Target - these were originally some cafe curtains on sale there for $14.99. I bought some tan twill and chocolate corduroy (the dark brown trim part) at Joann and put these together in about 6 hours. The leaves are just appliques I made using cotton cut from a leaf pattern I drew. Then, I did a tight zig-zag stitch around the leaves and down the middle to add some detail.

The picture also gives you an idea of the room color. The pictures were taken in the evening with a light on in the room. It looks more glass-green in daylight. Nursery furniture is on order. The room is currently tasked with my latest sewing project, curtains for the family room. These will be 210" panels (4 of them) of spice-colored silk to frame our two-story family room windows. I will post pics of them when they are finished and hung - probably about two weeks from now.

Once the family room curtains are done, I'm somewhat conflicted about how to proceed with the nursery. We don't have placement and probably won't for quite some time. Should I go ahead and put the furniture together and dress the room as a nursery? Or should I wait? Is it really bad luck to set up the crib before baby arrives home? Or is that just an old wives' tale?? I know hubby is definitely uneasy about setting up the furniture. But, as an OCD control freak, I am actually leaning towards getting it done. I'm no longer as sad and emotional about the nursery; indeed, I'm starting to feel like this baby thing is really on the horizon - and I'm in full-on planning mode.

I suppose this it what I would have felt like if I'd been pregnant and awaiting a delivery. . .

1 month and counting. . .

We've officially been waiting for placement a whole month already! It's so funny - everyone talks about how long the wait is for placement, but it seems like it's moving swiftly. There are times when I wish we had a baby already - and others when I am thankful to God that he has given us this time to prepare ourselves.

I think we're going to order the nursery furniture this weekend. I wanted to wait a little since we spent so much on the yard and some concrete work in June/July. Those projects came out really well - and are paid for - so I guess we'll go ahead!

I've started to stock up on little things here and there. So far, I've amassed some bedding (crib sheets, receiving blankets), a few nursery decor items, onesies, some Avent and Dr. Brown's bottles, a pkg. of pacifiers, baby wash, some Dreft, etc. I think if someone handed me a baby tomorrow we could manage, but I'd still like to get a few more things. We really want to give cloth diapering a try, but I'm hesitant to worry about it too much in the first few weeks at home. As a peace offering to Mother Earth, I'm gonna get some Seventh Generation diapers for the first couple weeks, then transition to the cloth. So, I need to buy some of those, too, I guess.

It still feels kind of like a sham when I look at baby stuff; even though I know this is going to happen, it's just not quite real yet. But I'm trying to push myself to get the room organized and ready for a baby - in case we get "the call." I'd really like to modify the closet to be more functional for a small child and I need to come up with some type of curtain or valance project for the windows, too. The pack-n-play arrived, as did the car seat and stroller, but they are still sitting in the boxes in the room. I really don't want to unpack them yet 'cause I think they'll just get dusty.

We are getting there. If nothing else, this whole process is an exercise in learning patience.

And now we wait. . .

Well, we got our homestudy completed last week. Now begins the 6 to 18 month wait for a placement. It was actually pretty anticlimactic, to tell the truth. We looked over the homestudy report that the social worker wrote about us to identify any misspellings or errors and that was it.

In celebration, I've spent almost $700 on baby gear in the past week. Hurray for shopping! I'm trying not to go crazy, but I wanted to round up the basics - pack-n-play, car seat and stroller system, some bottles and a simple layette of onesies and socks and stuff. My mom helped me shop at Babies R Us the other day - which was good because I pretty much had a panic attack in the bottles and feeding section of the store. I think it was just from the overwhelming number of choices and hopefully it doesn't signify a more deep-seated anxiety about the process moving forward. Here's the stroller and car seat we got:

It's a Chicco KeyFit 30 and Cortina stroller. I bought the matching pack-n-play they make, too:

I know that we will be parents in the sorta near future, but it all just feels so surreal and nebulous now. I hate feeling so out of control about such a major part of our lives. All I can do for now is scour the internet and ogle all the great stuff I get to buy that, hopefully, I'll actually get to use someday.

And still waiting. . .

Well, we heard from our social worker at the agency today and she has finished writing our homestudy. But, we STILL have not gotten back darling hubby's background check!!!! The agency was checking into this weeks ago and told us it was done, but they still don't have the results in the mail. Good grief! We submitted the fingerprints at the beginning of the year - first set in January and again in February. This is just ridiculous!!

Unfortunately, the agency can't technically approve us and put us on the waitlist until the background check is in hand because the info has to be written into the homestudy. Whatever. So, we continue to wait.

In other news, we got the rest of the interior of our house painted. It came out really pretty and I was pleased with the color selections we made. The nursery is epecially cute - the color is Recycled Glass by Sherwin-Williams. It goes well with the nursery decorations I've picked out so far. We also got our concrete pathway installed on the side of the house. The price for the job was great, but they pretty much wrecked all of our weed barrier in the area around the path. So, all of that needs to be redone and then we have to move the river rock back into those spots. Hurray for manual labor!

I'm looking forward to having our house "done." All that's left (for this year) is to get the concrete landscape borders done in the front and then I need to make the curtains for our family room. That should keep me out of trouble for a week, at least!

And I'm starting to get the urge to buy baby stuff. It's such an odd impulse - the compulsive planner in me wants to get everything ready as soon as possible, but another part of me wants to put it off as long as reasonable possible. Maybe that's why I'm coming up with all this stuff to do around the house. Hmmmmm. . .

That's all for now, folks. Oh, and I can't forget a shout-out to my (sorta) niece Megan who is turning 7 tomorrow!!

If you like a Frosty, please stop by Wendy's on Saturday, June 20th, or Sunday, June 21st, to enjoy one this weekend. When you do, Wendy's will donate 50 cents for each Frosty purchased to help kids in foster care.

Still waiting. But that's OK. . .

No news yet on the homestudy approval. We finished up the last of the interviews in May and all went smoothly. Hubby's background check FINALLY came back, but my Mom's is missing in action. Now they'll just have to do the old-fashioned name check because we've already sent in fingerprints for my Mom twice. Hopefully, this won't drag out the process. Honestly - a more than four month turnaround for a background check?? Ridonkulous!

I actually did buy some baby stuff the other day. We are going with the Carter's Forest Friends theme for the nursery. We thought it was really cute and had the added bonus of being gender-neutral. I really hadn't planned on buying any of this type of thing before the homestudy was done. But, we are getting the entire house (interior) painted this week and I wanted to make sure I picked a matching color for the nursery. So, I bought the crib set, valances, a lamp, and some wall decals. The first $300 of many thousands I am sure I will spend on gear once I have that homestudy approval in my hot little hands!

I also finished our adoption profile book - and I'm quite happy with the result. I bought 1 copy of the version I had completed so that I could see what the actual product looked like. I am glad I did this - while it was beautiful, I definitely found a few things to improve on text layouts for easier reading and better flow of the background colors on the pages. I am probably going way overboard on this silly book, but it keeps me busy and is the only thing the birthparents may see to make a decision about entrusting us with their child. Now I need to order 10 more copies for distribution to the agency and our attorney. Luckily, they are on sale 20% off!

I've decided to expand this little blog somewhat to start incorporating some helpful stuff for other adoptive parents. We've noticed more traffic on the Nest/Bump Adoption page and I'd like to help out other folks looking for information if they happen across my little corner of the web.