Sunday, September 16, 2012

A New Chapter: Colouring Our World With Hope

Tonight we "passed" our homestudy.
While the paperwork is not actually in our hands, it feels good to be done with that once again.
So different than last time.
Last time we passed our homestudy, we went fairly immediately to Target to buy a hedgehog baby blanket for our little boy.  And I bawled in the car.  It felt so good to be approved and accepted.  Good to be endorsed in written form, especially after a bad relationship with our first agency's social worker.

This time, Million was already in bed, and my stomach was cramping up from a little too much sitting down in one day (we attended a wedding immediately prior to our social worker's visit), so we nixed the celebratory run to Target.  I camped out on the couch while Michael made me a snack while we watched "My Fair Lady".  There was not really a huge amount of emotion.  Just a "well, that was easy" feeling.  Maybe I'll get around to buying a girly something or other this week sometime.  I'm still working on procuring things for baby #2, so it's hard to focus on items for child #3.

One wise thing our social worker emphasized at our last visit was not to compare adoptions as "better" or "worse".  Each adoption is its own animal.  She said a lot of times people get disappointed or disillusioned with their second adoption because of the rose-colored glasses they had with their first adoption going so well.  (She did note that we might not have this issue because our first adoption process was a little....problematic...but that she just liked to tell people worst-case scenario.)  She said people get upset because the referral doesn't happen the same way, the wait time is different, the online networks aren't as supportive, and they don't connect with their travel group in the same way.  I think this is really wise advice, especially considering the projected wait times are so much longer now (and constantly increasing in length) than they were in early 2008 when we first started Million's adoption, and the general atmosphere of the adoptive community is quite a bit different than it was.

Currently, it's cold outside.  Autumn usually brings a little more Bob Dylan and Etta James into my life's soundtrack...so when I was thinking of a song to mark tonight's accomplishment, I was a little surprised to hear Chicago's "Colour My World" pop into my head. (My dad would be so pleased...)

But it's appropriate.  "Colour my world with hopes of loving you."

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