A new year!!

Happy 2014, ya'll!

So I switched up the look of the blog.  No particular reason, except it is a new year.  And I am blog design deficient, so I just changed the colors and one font, and there you go. 

In just a week and a half, we go to Florida to meet H!  I am so excited and nervous at the same time.  And VERY much looking forward to non-negative wind chills.  I am so happy we were able to email H so often since we were first "introduced", so I do think it will be so much less awkward than it would otherwise be.

We LOVE H.  LOVE her.  Our fears of knowing an expectant mother have been totally washed away.  Again, she is so very much able to choose not to place with us ultimately (although we know it will be because she decides to parent, not because she would want different adoptive parents).  But if that does occur, I know we would stay in touch, and T and I would always want to know how she is doing.  She is genuinely our friend.

We bought this print for the baby's room, and printed a smaller version to put on the front of a photo album we'll give H next weekend.  It makes me smile every time I see it:

I still have so many fears about the adoption in general.  Mostly related to ensuring that we have the utmost ethical relationship with H.  We want to bond with her, want her to feel comfortable with us, but we don't want to ever feel that our relationship coerced her in any way.  It is SUCH a slippery slope, and creates a lot of angst in my head.  It is amazing how differently I view adoption now than I did when it first even came on our radar (when we realized the au natural baby-making method wasn't jiving.)  T and I are thinking about looking into foster-adopt for future adoptions (need to concentrate on this one first though!).  I never thought I would want to do that.  We know that international adoption is completely off our list, due to the huge lack of disclosure about ethics and process.    Domestic adoption has so many ethical pitfalls, but we at least feel like we can educate ourselves to navigate those appropriately.

I love H.  I love the child in her belly.  The key is that I'll still love them both if this adoption ultimately does not come to fruition.  I am not saying that I won't be crying and lost if that happens.  But the complete love I feel is more than enough to help me through that.  We are so unbelievably lucky and are so thankful to God for continually providing us strength.  It has officially been 3 years since we started trying to grow our family.  Happy 2014 - it'll be a doozy.