Just to clarify!

After being asked by several friends how we plan to hide our baby for 6 months, I realized that I needed to return to our blog to clarify our previous post and explain the adoption process in Ontario...

On March 11, 2008 Grant and I finally received the official signature of approval to be able to adopt. We submitted our profile album to the adoption worker, which will be presented to birth parents and now, we just wait for a successful match! We have been asked not to post about the matching process on our blog to protect the identity of the birth families we meet. And once there is a successful match there are 3 big dates we have to be aware of...although we will be able to bring our baby home directly from the hospital, the birthparents cannot sign the adoption papers until the baby is 8 days old and then they have 21 days to change their mind. The adoption isn't finalized through the courts until after the baby has been in our care for 6 months...We've been advised to wait until the adoption is finalized before we make pubic newspaper announcements, post on our blog, etc. etc. We do not intend to go into hiding for 6 months though. We will communicate the arrival of our newest family member face-to-face, by phone, via email and word of mouth. To us, the child we have in our home will be our son/daughter and we hope to be able to live our life as any new parent, snapping pictures and bragging about him/her to our family and friends - we just have to honour the legal system and right to privacy for the birth parent(s) and their family.

And then we jumped

**We used this picture on the cover of our profile album**

Last night was our final meeting for our home study. We read over the report before signing our names on the last page. Grant & I are finally ready to dive into the pool of adoptive parents and we have been waiting for this moment for over a year. We stood at opposite ends of the hallway after our worker left, Grant in the kitchen and me still at the front door, and individually digested the significance of last night's appointment. At the exact same moment we both started jumping and danced towards each other and shared the longest hug... it's sometimes very eerie how connected we are and how many times we do the same thing without needing to say a word. Before she left, our worker suggested we submit our profile album as soon as possible so the adoption worker can start presenting us to birth parents!! Grant & I have been sitting on our profile for over a year, working on it a little bit here and there, but last night was the motivation we needed to finally complete it. We had it printed and bound today and will be submitting it tomorrow!!!! I returned home from work to find that Grant had finished off the nursery. Being at this stage, the next step in our adoption journey seems so unreal and so exciting all at the same time. The next thing on our to-do list is to buy our car seat because we do not want to be stuck not being able to bring our baby home because we don't have a car seat!

As we move onto this next stage in our adoption journey we will have a "blackout" period on our blog. We wish to maintain and respect the privacy of the birth parents we meet. On the advice of our worker we will refrain from posting updates or pictures (it's going to be very difficult to do) about how our adoption journey is progressing until our adoption is finalized, which will occur approximately 6 months from when our baby is placed in our home...and on that day everyone will know we are the extremely proud parents of the most beautiful and precious 6 month old!!!

This is not a good-bye post, because we WILL post about our newest family member, this is a post to say "see you soon" and thank you so much for your support, your abundance of prayers and your constant encouragement.

Vacationed as a family of two...hopefully for the last time!

Grant & I just returned from a two week vacation - one week in Mexico with my cousin's family and two days at Disney World before our final stop to Sanibel Island with Grant's parents to finish off the second week at the place we were married!! It was quite the whirlwind vacation with a lot of running to catch connecting flights and packing and unpacking and packing up again. Grant & I noticed a slightly different theme and feel to this vacation...we kept talking about how much fun it will be to vacation with our bambino and share the excitement of exploring different cultures and experiencing new adventures with our child(ren). It's probably because we are in the adoption process ourselves, but we noticed a lot of adoptive families at Disney World - mainly white families with little Asian daughters and sons. The next time we return to Disney World we hope to be a family of three or more and introduce our child(ren) to the magic of Disney. Our home study is almost complete. We have our final (hopefully) session next week to read over the report before it is submitted for approval.