Getting Ready for The Wait

Where have the Lutes' been? Busy busy busy. Nothing big to report on the adoption as of yet. For the past month, we have been focusing on getting everything together for the home study and completing our adoption profile. The home study interviews were done last month, however there is a list of 15 documents required for home study approval. The adoption profile is the booklet that birth mothers see when they sign up with our adoption agency. The profile is a sneak peek into our lives - we have supplied 40 pictures and wrote 12 pages of information on us and the graphic designer puts it all together in a neat little book. When we have
a finished product,we'll post it on our blog. Our social worker has suggested that we wait until we are done with our adoption profile before we get our home study approved. Reason being, we cannot go on the active Waiting Families list until both are completed, and your home study is only good for a year or so. Then it has to be updated. Adding to the fun - this is a very busy time for Dan's business and he has been travelling every week. We have been doing a lot of phone calls and emailing changes on the profile back and forth.

Aside from getting the last few things completed to go on the active list, we have been enjoying our summer with family and friends. My best friend had her beautiful baby boy last month. We joke that she had to check my purse on the way out to make sure I didn't take off with him! He's so cute, I just wanted to gobble him up. We've had a few birthdays in the family including our 2 year old niece, and had my dad in town this month. It has been wonderful sharing our adoption news and experience with everyone and makes us all the more excited for when our child can join in on these family memories.

We are looking forward to this weekend when we will pack up the car and head to Chicago for Memorial Weekend. Can't wait to reconnect with my sister who I haven't seen in too long and watch two of my older nieces graduate junior high and high school. We are so completely proud and thrilled to be a part of such a memorable time in their young lives.

As if we haven't been busy enough, we are in the middle of planning a VERY fun trip. CALIFORNIA! We will visit San Diego, LA, Hollywood and possibly a few other places along the way. California is one of the top 3 places we have wanted to visit in the next few years. Every year we say, Oh - we'll go next year, and that turns into the next, into the next, into the next . . . So we decided, to heck with it! Let's do it. It'll be a wonderful diversion for us and will keep our mind off the impending wait.

Another step we have taken in getting ourselves as well as our family prepared for the new addition is giving them all a copy of Adoption is a Family Affair, by Patricia Irwin Johnston. This is such a great book regarding privacy boundaries for families built by adoption, what is okay to ask about, etc. It has lots of information about who can adopt, why people consider adopting and how kids understand adoption as they grow up.

We hope you all are enjoying your summer (especially these beautiful days in St. Louis before it gets to be unbearably humid). Keep following us - hopefully the next post will be that we are ACTIVE and WAITING. We hear that is the hardest part of the process, the wait. Not knowing when we'll get "the call" and how much to be prepared for when we get the call. Those of you who know me, know that I don't usually have time on my hands, so I'll be keeping busy. Suggestions for a new hobby? :-)