There was this day back in September.......

September 17th to be exact.

It wasn't one of my Tuesday's to work so I dropped Georgia off at pre-school and drove downtown...to Jefferson street.  There are two important things on Jefferson.

St. Mary's hospital, where Georgia was born and....
Catholic Charities,

our adoption agency.

I went to the latter.

And I met with a social worker about starting the adoption process for a second child.  Yes. Yes I did.

Chris and I decided last spring that we'd table adoption talk and putting pressure on ourselves to make a decision until the fall (we kind of always follow that pattern I guess).  Then of course, like it always does, fall crept up on us.  We didn't feel peace with saying we were done with kids.  We didn't feel peace saying we wanted more kids.  We didn't feel peace.

Last time we felt like that we started the adoption process one step at a time.  So that's what we decided to do this time too.  One. Step. At. A. Time.

Our social worker assured me that was a perfectly healthy way to go about it.  She'd done the same thing.

So I sat in that waiting room...........

And I took a picture to document it.  I promise I wasn't angry.  Just scared.

And my meeting went well.  And I walked out of there with all the paper-work that I needed to get this done and the assurance that a second adoption would be much less paper-work and "we could pretty much have your profile ready to show potential parents in less than a month."

And cue the nausea.

I took that paper work and stared at it for a week.  And Chris and I had lots of conversations that never got finished because we didn't know how to finish them.

One step at a time.

The next Tuesday I dropped our medical clearance paper-work off at the doctor's.

And then I started asking God for signs that we should do this.  Even though I'm not a big 'need a sign person.'

Whatever.  Who isn't a 'need a sign person'?

And that day this article from Adoptive Families screamed into my inbox totally unsolicited.  And an hour later this post showed up in my Facebook feed from a kids website here in town.

And then of course there was just the nagging feeling that wouldn't go away that maybe, just maybe, we should do this.

But still we waited a bit.  Chris got a new job, things were crazy for me at my job, Christmas was coming (in about a month and a half--but still….it seemed like a good excuse to stall), and we were……..scared.  Scared of doing it all over again.  And by "it" I mean it all.  A newborn, adoption, meeting another family, re-defining our own family, and in the midst of it all thinking about how this would and could affect Georgia….a factor that we didn't have to consider the first time around.  And when you're adopting as the way to add to your family there are a lot more moving parts that your oldest will be exposed to--moving parts that can feel scary.

But in January we told our social worker, 'let's get this going.' She came out and updated our home-study, we got fingerprinted (again), we answered essay questions, and I created another profile book.

And today….I turned it in!

And we are officially on the waiting list as prospective adoptive parents….for a second time.

And we are just so excited.
To see what is before us, how this will change us, how this will grow our little girl who is absolutely ready to be a big sister, and what adoption will be like the second time around.

We know more about adoption now…..so ignorance is bliss doesn't apply anymore……I suppose.  We're concerned that maybe we won't get to have as open of an adoption this time as we do with Georgia's birth mom…..but maybe we will….hopefully we will.  We worry that we'll have to wait a long time compared to Georgia's adoption--where we didn't wait at all……but maybe we won't.  There is no typical in adoption so we have to pretend that it's the first time a little bit.

I'll keep you updated here and there when there's something to update and just like the first time we did this and the years that have followed I love to answer questions about and talk about adoption--so never hesitate to ask something if you're curious.

Thanks for being excited with us!