A realization

As you may have noticed, the blog has been kind of quiet lately, part of that is due to the busy season that we've had. We recently had a trip to Florida, a birthday, and now Easter is quickly approaching.

Another reason that I've been kinda quiet is because I was really unsure as to what to do next when it comes to another adoption.

I know that we need a homestudy, no matter which route we take, but beyond that, I was honestly torn. I would love to have another infant, another baby that we bring home from the hospital. I love the newborn snuggle stage and from our experience with Nate, we know how "easy" it is to bond and feel like normal parents. While all of those things are wonderful, I worry about moving forward with another private adoption. I feel like we got so lucky with Nate's situation. Everything went so smoothly and I worry that our next experience would not be that way. On top of that, the money is a big issue. We don't have $20,000-$30,000 to put towards another adoption.

While watching the fireworks at Disney, I looked over at Nate and it hit me. While I would love to adopt another baby, my heart really wants to adopt out of foster care, even if that means that our next child will be older when he/she comes home. This trip to Disney was his third trip in three years! He is so spoiled and loved and I can't imagine what his life would be like if he were in foster care. It's hard for me to justify spending a ton of money on an infant when there are children waiting for a Mommy and a Daddy. They may grow up without ever experiencing stability and a place to call home.

As the realization hit me that night, I got scared, mainly because I didn't know if Dave would be on board. I worried that this was something that was on my heart and mind, yet not on his. I held onto this realization for a while before expressing it to him. I needed time to think about it and prepare myself for his reaction.

When I finally got up the nerve to talk to him about it this week, I was pleasantly surprised that he's okay with it as long as we stick to our original plan and adopt a child younger than Nate. That might mean that our wait time is long, but we're both okay with that.

Got might surprise us and "drop a baby in our laps" through private adoption, but at the moment, I think we're ready to really open the door to adopting out of foster care. :)