The Morgan Family

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

an emotional day

I have so many reasons to be happy and excited today...and I am.  But underlying those feelings are also some of longing and sadness.  Let me explain...

First of all, a friend from high school and her husband and family are in China right now adopting a little girl.  It is their fourth child, second adopted child.  I love to follow their story and their pictures and go to their blog/facebook daily (more like hourly) to see what's new.  This evening I sat down and saw their trip to see the orphanage where their daughter has been.  As I scrolled through the pictures, the one with all the cribs in a room (17 total) just made me break down and cry.  I am so glad they have found this amazing little girl and have a great orphanage and adoption agency to work with!  But help but thinking of our little boy in one of many cribs in a room.  I know our agency only works with reputable orphanages and that the workers there really do love and care for these babies, but there is no way they can ever get enough attention in an orphanage setting.  It's so difficult to imagine all the babies in all the orphanages and so many who just need people to step up and take them as their own.  It's also difficult that we are ready and willing and able and our baby is somewhere without us right now.

The second part of this is about an email I got from a dear friend today.  A friend of hers has been in the waiting process for Uganda and just got a referral today!  Praise God for this amazing blessing!  Turns out, their family was matched with a little boy who is 21 months old and they were asking for a boy age 6 months - 2 years...hmm...sounds familiar!  I am so overwhelmed with joy for this family that I don't even know.  But I am also so jealous.

I love our family right now.  Jack is at such a fun age and learning new things daily!  And we are still a bit short on our fundraising support and still in limbo with my husband's job.  I know God's timing is perfect and he already has a little boy picked out for us but it doesn't keep my heart from longing.

Saturday, July 14, 2012

Number 24!!

When we started this process, our agency did not go by the standard "you are number XX on the list" way of telling you where you stood in the referral process.  For them, it's not as simple as being a number on a list.  While I completely understand why they did it that way, it has been very difficult in the waiting times to not feel like you're making progress.  For many reasons, they have decided to change their method and are now giving out waiting list numbers.  In addition, they are sharing with families how many referrals were given in the past month and what those referrals were.

Yesterday we received our waiting list email...we are number 24.  What that really means is...well, nothing!  Except for the fact that next month, when we're a number less than 24, I'll feel like we're at least moving.  But all in all, that number really doesn't mean anything.  We are 24 on the list.  Which means 24 people are ahead of us on the list.  But that doesn't mean that there are 24 ahead of us asking for the same thing that we are.  Thus, there could be 2 or 20 people asking for a child that meets the same request we do (a boy, 2 or under).  And there could be people who have a number greater than ours that get a referral before we do because they are asking for maybe a special needs child or an older child or anything other than a boy age 2 or under.  All it means is that when a referral comes into our agency, they start at the top of the list and try to match it with the next available family that meets that referral request.  That number gives us no true estimate of timeline or progress, and yet, it still gives me a warm fuzzy.  Yay for #24 in July!  

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

job hunting...well, not really

Everyone looks at the job postings regularly, don't they?  Maybe I more than others.  Just for the record, I'm not leaving my job anytime soon.  I have a great job that pays me well and gives me a wonderful amount of flexibility which is awesome with my family close by.  But that doesn't mean I don't peruse every now and then.  Right now, my hunt is typically more for teaching jobs for my husband.  But sometimes I look throughout the world...sometimes I look in Uganda.

I don't know what the obsession is.  Not just with Uganda, but with looking for jobs throughout the world.  And yet when I see these different UN organizations (or should I say organisations) and NGOs doing wonderful, life changing things in the world, it does make me wonder...should I be doing that?  Now don't get me wrong, I have my moments of materialism.  I love the comforts of the Western world.  When the pool pump breaks we have major issues in our house.  And yet some of the times I have been most content have been sitting in a village in Haiti feeding a young group of VBS-goers, sitting on a hill in Mexico after just having built a house for an impoverished family, or meeting with college girls daily.  I think we all go through times where we question what we're doing in life.  When I was living in Raleigh I knew that was only for a time of my life but I loved every minute of it (well, not EVERY minute).  I thought counseling would be the next step for me...it was not.  Instead marriage and a baby were.  And taking care of my family is definitely the highlight of my life right now and my most important responsibility.

I know as humans we can romanticize things we don't have or aren't.  The thought of living in Uganda tugs on my heart right now.  But I believe it's purely for the reason of wanting to be near him.  If taking care of my family is my number one goal at this point, then I have to include my entire family, one of which is in Uganda. But moving to Uganda does nothing for me/us right now.  It's just a selfish desire that is not helpful to my husband or my son (really, to either of them).  But that doesn't mean I haven't looked!

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

nesting

One of the many perks for my husband when it came to adopting was the lack of having to deal with a pregnant me.  I am totally and utterly in love with my son, Jack, but pregnancy was not my friend and not something I want to do again anytime in the near future.  I am typically a very logical and rational person.  My husband says that one of my best traits is that I can talk myself out of my own crazy.  Basically, if I have an irrational thought I can usually talk through it and figure it out before any drama occurs.  Chalk it up to being a math mind or my masters in counseling, either way, it is how I function.

That being said, this trait, this magical trait, somehow disappeared when I was pregnant.  It was like I was having out of body experiences and I could see myself being a complete whack job and could do nothing about it.  I hated it.  And this is one of the many reasons our second child will be joining our family through adoption.

There's this other thing that happens when you're pregnant...nesting.  I honestly believed it was the hormones that made you nest but being 10 months into a 2 year adoption process and waiting for a referral has shown me that hormones are not to blame.  About a month ago I started thinking about what changes we would have to make to our home to be ready for James to be here.  Would Jack be ready to be out of a crib by then or would we buy another crib?  Would Jack feel like we just hurried him into a bed so we could use his crib for his brother?  Did it really matter?  Same room or different rooms?  What color? drapes? storage? layout?  That's right, I started nesting.

When I start to get like this, Justin knows to just step aside and get out of the way.  And while my irrational thoughts aren't nearly as overt as they were when I was physically pregnant, there is still some crazy that comes with being an adoptive mom.

The good thing is, we've moved some rooms around (sadly, we couldn't just switch two rooms but had to shift the new office to the old guest room, the new guest room to the old nursery, and the new boys room to the old office.  In fact, Jack is trying to take his first nap in there right now!!  I'm so excited that we are actually starting to make space for James...now if we could just hold him in our arms. As my friend, Eliot Morris sings, all things are made right with time.

Sunday, July 1, 2012

expecting...


preg·nant
1.
having a child or other offspring developing in the body; withchild or young, as a woman or female mammal.
2.
fraught, filled, or abounding (usually followed by with ): asilence pregnant with suspense.
3.
teeming or fertile; rich (often followed by in ): a mind pregnant in ideas.
4.
full of meaning; highly significant: a pregnant utterance.
5.
of great importance or potential; momentous: a pregnantmoment in the history of the world.


You probably have heard that many people inadvertently get pregnant when they are in the process of adoption. Let me just clarify something...we do not meet the first definition of pregnant above, nor are we currently (or anytime soon) trying to become that way.  And yet, I can honestly say I believe we meet definitions 2-5.  While I may not be physically pregnant, we are now approximately 40 weeks away from the end of our official 12 month waiting period.  Because that year long referral waiting list is just a guesstimate, I find it's quite similar to a physical pregnancy.

We are anxiously awaiting the arrival of our son...it just so happens that our son will arrive not as a newborn, not as our same race, not in our same country, not even on our same continent.  None of those things exclude him from being fully our son.

So thank you for walking with us through the paperwork and basically everything we had control over...truly the "getting pregnant" phase (that would be kinda weird if you were having a bio kid).  Now we go through the gestational period.  And hopefully, in just 40 weeks, we will have a referral for a bouncing baby (1 year old) boy!