We are simply exhausted.
Every time we think we're caught up on paperwork, we are *surprised* by a new revelation from a social worker or lawyer. Seems like two skills you'd want to have very finely tuned if you work in the field of adoption is communication and organization. These are not skills we have frequently found. (I will give props to our Oregon home study team though!)
Besides finding out the birth state required their own set of fingerprints and background checks ($180), we also were just told yesterday that we need to update our home study! Expiration dates of home studies are different in Oregon than in the birth state. We didn't finish our study completely until June of last year- but more of the papers were signed in March or April. So boom. Another $250 and another set of papers we are scrambling to get in. And our printer just happened to die.
So we are frazzled yet determined. And extremely thankful for God's double grace in letting this baby grow in the womb a bit longer! 38 weeks today!! Definitely an answer to prayer for her development but also seems we needed the extra time to appease the birth state's requirements. And with every extra week and month we can save a little bit more money to help pay for it all. The extra side jobs we've both taken on add to our exhaustion- but we're grateful for the provision. I've really enjoyed teaching a night class this year and Aaron has fine tuned his skills in creating web pages.
I think I speak for both Aaron and myself in saying that we're ready to be done proving ourselves to be acceptable parents. Sheesh. We've done everything, including giving our BLOOD, to prove this. I am ready to stop spending half my days on the phone or writing emails. I realized our 4 year old memorized my 10 digit cell phone number without any instruction...just from hearing me on the phone so much this past year :-/ Thankful he's a trooper!
Yet, in all of this, I am content to wait for our baby girl. I'll give her all the time she needs. We are enjoying our boys and having lots of one-on-one time with them in the meantime. I took my 4 1/2 year old on a date a couple weeks ago with a gift card we'd been saving. We read a story about being a big brother while we waited for our food.
Psalm 46:10
“Be still, and know that I am God;
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth.”