We are going to be parents soon!

Oh where do I start? I keep trying to figure out what to say and what to start with and I want to say the right things, but here it goes.

We are hoping to adopt a newborn baby boy soon! This will be a private adoption, meaning that we did not use an agency to find the birth mom, we just happened to come in contact with each other through friends. She is a very smart young girl (not really a girl, but I call myself a girl still) that got pregnant and wants the baby to have a better life. She is fully capable of being a single mom, but chooses not to be and I am so proud and amazed at her decision to give the baby to us to raise. In Oregon, the birth mom can not sign away her parental rights until after the baby is born. So the adoption won't be final till then, which is usually done at the hospital, so it's still pretty scary for us but everything seems so right and Hannah, the birth mom, seems so confident in her decision.

I am so excited that we might be parents soon! Hannah's due date is March 29th, so just under 8 weeks to go. Even though it's a private adoption, there are still a ton of things we have to do to make it legal. We already completed a ton of paperwork for our homestudy. On Feb 16th, we will have the actual homestudy done and then that should take two weeks to finalize. I need to call our lawyer this week to see what our next step is for paperwork. Hannah is calling her lawyer this week to check in.

Not required, but fun stuff... I get to go to Hannah's next doctor appointment on Feb 20th. I haven't been to one yet, so I'm very excited, excited to hear the heart beat and meet the doctor and see what all he does during the apt. Soon the birthing/lamaze classes will start and Hannah's mom and I get to go, which will mean I get to be in the delivery room. Dan has decided he will wait in the waiting room till the baby is born.

Tomorrow I will try to post some pictures of the baby room... the former craft room. No more scrapbook stuff in there. It now is painted, two walls are a sort of milk chocolate brown and two are tan. The chocolate brown is actually called Chipmunk. There is a crib, dresser, shelf and rocking chair in there now. I have the closet set up for more storage. I already have some clothes that I have gotten as gifts and from a local "used baby store" - that's what I keep calling the place and Dan makes jokes about it that they sell used babies there. They were having some super good sales, so I had fun picking out some clothes. Newborn and 0-3 month size clothes don't get used much, so they are in perfect condition. I've also been at the Diaper Swapper website and browsing other cloth diaper online stores such as Cotton Babies, GMD, and WeeBunz.

More updates will come. I'm excited for this change. I'm excited that this blog can be used as a journal for what's to come too.