Adoption is another word for love...

Wowza... thank you to everyone who read my first post and has reached out to us via conversations or all types of social media.  It means alot to know that so many people are supporting us during this journey! We appreciate your continued support and prayers more than you know!

I titled this post Adoption is another word for love after searching via Pinterest all morning (I apologize to anyone who follows me on Pinterest for the flood of Adoption photos, qoutes, etc!) This quote seemed so appropriate today. I was searching for ideas for our upcoming Adoption Photo shoot (I AM SO EXCITED!!) 

My wonderful cousin Jess of Seedling Photography (if you need photos in the Columbus area- check out her website at http://www.seedling-photography.com) is going to be taking pictures for us at our annual Stotzer family reunion at Glen Lake in Michigan and I couldn't be more excited! Now, this is a newer trend in photography and there aren't a ton of ideas online so I've been brainstorming and searching, talking to friends, and trying to use plays on words for cute ideas. Our vacaction is less than 2 weeks away so I have to get busy if I'm going to be crafty. I found a few ideas, but many of the photo ideas I see online seem to be the same (honestly, there are only about 5 different families who have these types of pictures up online). The few others I am finding are of families adopting from different countries using cute maps and globes as props. So far I have located a child sized rocking chair which seems to be a pretty popular prop. If anyone has any fabulous ideas, feel free to send them my way! 

The only other update I really have is that I had a long conversation with our adoption assessor late last week. She is going to be going on maternity leave in less than a month so I'll have to address other people in the offices for any questions. We talked a great deal about making our Child Checklist broader (that's the checklist of everything from race to sex for the baby). It has a will consider box or will not consider box for like 1000 different things. Ours was pretty narrow and was limiting our views by birthmothers. I found out that if a birthmother came in and said she was drinking or smoking marijuana before she realized she was pregnant, our profile wasn't be shown due to some of our checklist characteristics. I know tons of great Moms who even once they know they're pregnant have indulged in (small amounts) of alcohol throughout their pregnancy. To me, this doesn't make them a bad Mom. Not to mention my assessor told me like 20 stories about babies who's Moms used alcohol or drugs for part or most of their pregnancy and the babies have turned out fine. (No, I am not naive enough to think that is the norm or that every baby who is exposed to these things comes out fine- however everything is a constant risk in life and you have to decide what you are willing to face and where you must fold.)

Anyway, after my conversation with our assessor, I talked to Phil and explained everything to him. Phil and I decided that we needed to change a lot of our checklist. Let me be real here. When we first filled it out, we were... selfish (hard to admit) or concerned with what others might think or assume when they saw us with a baby. We don't have any close friends or family who have adopted. We also have some people in our lives who we aren't completely sure of their tolerance/acceptance level of certain things. However, we've talked alot about it and I know I've prayed a lot about it and have just decided that there are things we left out of our original checklist for the sake of other people's acceptance or comfort level that are no longer a priority or concern. I'm not saying we don't value those people anymore, don't get me wrong. We just decided that we won't let other people's thoughts or opinions hold us back in our adoption process. I'm sure some people are questioning exactly what I'm talking about as I dance around this topic and other people may assume they already know, but I'm going to leave it at that. All that is really important is that we have updated our profile to include children of a variety of races and abilities and we put our faith in God finding the perfect child to join our family. I'm hoping these decisions will open us up to more birthmothers and take us one step closer to finding our baby.

Another thing I learned is that even though there are 20 families waiting to adopt through our agency (there were 12 when we first joined) that summer is a slow time. Last summer the agency only had no birthmothers at this time and this summer they had 3, which is good news. Our assessor also told me that it usually picks up in the fall (hmm... I wonder why? All those summer nights where people are out having a good itme...) so hopefully with our new profile we'll have a good opportunity to be viewed in the fall.

Thank you again to everyone for all of your support, it means the world to us!