Home Study and Keeping the "Overwhlemed" At Bay

Today we started our homestudy! Except for a slight miscommunication as to where we were meeting, I think it went well. What they say about what happens when you assume is true. Jeff and I both had the day off today so we spent the morning putting up pictures (which needed to be done since we've been in our house 6 months now!), cleaning and picking things up in general. So the meeting wasn't at our house, but at least we got all that stuff done!
As for the infamous Babies R Us registering experience. Looks like I am not the only one who feels completely overwhelmed by all that STUFF! Jeff suggested we concentrate on getting all the adoption paperwork completed before tackling what stuff we'll need, which I thought was an excellent idea. So far I feel I have been successful with not being completely overwhelemd to the point of loosing sleep (yeah yoga!).
When we are ready to look at what baby stuff we'll need, this link is to a website dedicated to a book called "Baby Bargins". Recommends what stuff you actually need and rates the best brands. Whoo-hoo! This book might be the answer to my prayers :)

Bottles, Bottles Everywhere

Went to Babies R Us with my mom today and registered. HOLY CRAP, there is a lot of stuff for babies. As with pretty much everything these days, I am trying not to get to overwhelmed. At one point mom suggested I should have brought someone with me that had a baby recently. She couldn't believe the amount of stuff you can buy now compared to when I was born. I told her it was much more fun to go with her and both be lost :)



I must say, the thing that kinda freaked me out the most was the baby bottle aisle. After looking around for 10 minutes or so I had to walk to a different aisle. My outlook throughout was to keep everything simple, but for some reason I couldn't figure out what that meant for a bottle.



So any sueggestions would be greatly appreciated!







If you wanna take a look at the few things I actually had the courage to put on our registry click here.

One of the reasons for registering is that Jeff and I got our first present for the little one! Too cute, take a look :) A winnie the pooh moble.

Painting the Nursery

Prepping the room

Wow! That's green, but we love it :)

Making sure the crib has all the vital parts

Painting done & crib sort of put together.

This coming Sunday mom and I are headed to Babies-R-Us to have some fun!!

Officially Official

Yesterday we went to the agency an turned in some important paper work, set up to start our home study, and paid our money. I guess that makes this all official!

Jeff and I also actually worked on the text part of our profile (the advertisement I wrote about in an earlier post). We discussed how much we wanted to write, what we wanted to write and who was going to write what, etc. I feel like we are making some progress on that part of what we need to complete.

Also last night we had a couple of couples over to the house. One couple we met at orientation last weekend, and the other was a couple who had adopted using Abrazo. I thought it was an educational evening overall; learned more about the adoption process, the agency we are working with, and the couples we had over.

The first part of our home study is scheduled for the Monday after Thanksgiving! Should be interesting!

More Pics & A Big ThAnKs!

At Irenie's wedding last year

Jeff looking very official at work

The House

Mom emailed me this pic last night. It's a few years old, but I think its cute. So it is being added to the growing pile of pics.

We really appreciate all of the well wishes & sweet comments we've gotten from everyone! Thank you for all of your support.

Now that the profile is underway, the other BIG thing on a very long list of things, is getting the homestudy process begun. Tomorrow I am headed to the agency to drop off more paperwork and to find out what needs to be done to get that part going!

Other things that are up and coming that will need to be done at some point: (not close to being everything, just the stuff I could remember off the top of my head)

• physicals for both of us
• TB test for me (Jeff already has that for work)
• employer references
• background check and fingerprinting

Of course there is also the fun stuff like:

• Painting & decorating the baby's room
• Registering for stuff
• Picking names - (we'll take suggestions right now, but reserve the right to change our minds later)
• Looking into re-vamping the crib my mom has in her attic

Possible Pics For Our Profile

Yoga & gardening

Jeff posing with new kayak equipment

Me Running

Jeff & I in Mexico

Advertising

As with most things, you concentrate on the entire process and all the stuff you have to get done can seem overwhelming. So, right now I am concentrating on getting a handful of things done in the next few weeks. Once those are done I'll look at the next stuff. I just have to keep reminding myself that this is a marathon and not a sprint :)

One of the things we are working on right now is our profile. Basically a little pamphlet we put together showing and telling who we are as a couple. Lots of pictures and little notes to hopefully create an accurate feeling of "us".

This Friday we are getting together with a couple we met at our orientation weekend who also live in San Antonio. Wine and food are going to be involved, we'll see how much we actually get done. But it will be fun!

I'll post some of the pictures we already know we are going to use.

Naming of the Blog

Great and awesome last 2 days with the adoption agency we have decided to use. Sooooo much information I'm not really sure where to start or what to post. One of the many things that stick out in my mind is the suggestion that we actually start putting together and decorating a nursery. Hence the name. Jeff is pretty set on using the Winnie the Pooh theme, so this afternoon we went to Barnes and Nobles for a Pooh book and took it with us to Home Depot to pick out paint colors. So far we've picked a color called "celery bunch". Light, minty green....I know everyone is really surprised that we picked a color in the green palette ;)