March Mayhem

I'm not sure where the past few weeks have gone. It feels like so many aspects of our lives have encountered change recently. I've started two seasonal part-time jobs, tried my hand at a craft show and we've decided not to move. You'd think the decision not to move would put life back in order, but that's where you'd be wrong. In preparation for the move and with the expectation of downsizing, I had sold some furniture and packed a few boxes. So, now I have three boxes of teacups and china in our pantry and no china hutch to put them in. We've moved my desk in the office/craft room and I need to figure out where my vast collection of craft supplies are going. The rest evened out in the end as we were given some furniture...a lot of furniture and a ping pong table (which I'm still not sure what to do with) and volunteered to store some things in our garage for friends and family. So, this threw our household into chaos. It took us a couple weeks of lugging furniture up the stairs, and moving other furniture down the stairs as we and our friend/roommate figured out how to make everything fit. There's still a random assortment of stuff waiting for me to go through upstairs, sitting in a pile at the top of the stairs...a job for next weekend. Our former guest room is now fully our roommate's room as we removed the furniture we had in there and he switched it out for his own. It always amazes me how the same room can look so drastically different given what you put inside.

I've started looking around at our master bedroom, mentally arranging a crib and changing table as I hold myself back from re-painting and laying out our nursery nook. I plan to re-paint in a month or two, after my part-time jobs have ended. I'll clean out the small closet in preparation for Baby Shoe's things, move our two bookshelves to the other side of the room and find a new spot for a small desk. I bought grey, mint and white felt to make a banner. I've printed out pictures of us and our dogs that will go on the gallery wall above the crib...I have it all laid out in my head. It keeps me up at night, imagining all the possibilities.

Just yesterday, we finalized all the changes on our adoption profile with our graphic designer. I'm so excited to see it in print. The colors are amazing, the pictures are great and it just feels like us. I can't wait for our agency to be able to show this to birth moms. We're working on our initial paperwork for the home study and plan to have it into our social worker by the end of the week. This is the big one - where the state certifies us and our home as safe and ready for a child. Whew - no pressure. I'll be updating more on that process as we go through it. The list of items they need is an entire page long, ranging from baby CPR certification to physicals to dog vaccine records. One step at a time, we'll gather it all and submit it.

We have our adoption auction happening this weekend (March 20-21) hosted by our amazing friend, Kimberly from Walker + Cole (Instagram: @walkerandcole). I am so hopeful about this auction and can't wait to see what God has in store for it. All proceeds will go directly to our adoption fees.

So, in the midst of the upheaval, the change, the preparation, we hold tight to hope and we wait for Baby Shoe.