One Step Closer

What a feeling! Today, we dropped off all of our adoption paperwork to the agency...all 62 pages of it. We literally worked on that for 2 1/2 months, so it feels like a huge weight has been lifted off of our shoulders. It is just exciting to think that we are one step closer to completing this process. At the same time, it is a little intimidating - for two reasons.

One, it is a little scary to think that we will soon have a child. I'm sure this is the same anxiety that expectant parents experience. Don't get me wrong, we are thrilled about becoming parents, but we are terrified at the same time. :)

Second, now that the paperwork has been submitted, we are stuck with what we wrote. Here comes the second-guessing. Could our answers have been better? What if we sound like complete morons? Should we have written more? In the end, we just need to let it go, and trust that our answers are a good representation of who we are. I am not too worried. We went over our answers twice, and didn't change anything. I think we're good.

Hopefully, we can start the home study process soon. There are four meetings that make up the home study, two at our home and two at the office. Once that is done, then we will get certified by the state. Once we're certified we'll be eligible to apply for adoption grants, so we plan to start working on those documents soon. That way, once we're done, we can start submitting the applications. We'll probably start working on our match letter soon too.

There's lots of work ahead, but we need to celebrate the small steps along the way!