Fire update

Well, Bert's called the Fire Marshal three times in the last two weeks and can't get through to schedule the inspection. She intends to try one more time, and if we still can't get put on his calendar, she'll call his boss the Fire Chief and get him to put the squeeze on. She was told when she called that there is only one Fire Marshal for 8 counties, or at least the one that we need has 8 counties, and we have to talk directly to him to get on his schedule... so you could understand why he's been hard to reach.

Adoption Related Prayer Requests:
1. Fire Marshal will answer the phone.
2. He'll have an available slot NOW (though, next week is okay too), or if there's a cancellation they will give us the slot.

I feel the pressure for speed all of the sudden. This could be hormonal, could be part of my previous post about the desperate ache of motherhood needs... but it could also be an intuitive gut thing that I get sometimes that's almost always right and says, "OK... GO!" Therefore...

3. If speed is God's Will, He'll do it fast and now; if it is not His Will, if we need to wait for our child to be ready, that He'll chill me out and calm me down.

Details

Here's more details for you.

She was here about 1/2 an hour, came in and asked to see the kitchen, checked the water temp, asked to see the kid's bath and bedroom (loved the decor!), checked our potential second bedroom (if we needed it as a bedroom we'd move the office upstairs), took a backyard tour, and we were good to go. She didn't even enter the rooms we had really stressed out over! Also, we'd been really stressed out about our cats' worse habits, but she herself has 5 cats and 2 dogs and was all, "Meh, you do what you gotta do."

Sat down and filled out the paperwork; we did have one change to make from what the agency had sent them, but it's not a big deal. We had asked the agency that our bottom age range be "Walking... which is, what? Like... 2? Ish?" and she definitively wrote AGE 2 on the sheet. We wanted more flexibility... my niece just started walking and she's only 11 months. So with our approval the inspector decided to inspect for the 0 - 6 range, so we'll have to sort everyone out and get them all on the same page. Which is fine.

We're approved as-is, since the only thing that needs addressing we had already planned to address.... we had some damage to the play set. So we're good to go!

Now we just have to impress the Fire Marshal. *grin*

Thanks for your thoughts and prayers everyone!

Inspection PASSED!

It went GREAT!! She wasn't here long, just asked to see the kitchen, kid's room and bath, and the backyard; she has a whole lot of pets herself and wasn't phased at all about ours... amazing. Lovely.

I'm gonna go fall down now. I'll post more details later. Promise.

Ready?

I think.... we're... maybe ready? Pretty sure ready? We've got just about two hours, and I'm not sure if we're ready. I've saved our to-do lists in our adoption binder; when we're all set and done with everything and start putting a life book together for our child (like a scrapbook) I'll set them all out and take a picture. Aaaaaallll the many many lists of things. The very last thing on my list is to make another list! Literally... I need to make a list of emergency numbers to put by the phone. Which I will finish when I'm done with this post.

So. Just a few more tiny things and we'll actually be prepared to open the door to the inspector at 11:30ish. Keep praying!!

Gnawing

Anyone who's lived in an area where it snows a lot during the winter understands that feeling that comes around February. The one where it feels like there's something in that space between your stomach and your throat kind of gnawing away and if you don't get to go play in the grassy yard RIGHT NOW you'll explode. It's the house-bound ache that can start to drive you out of your mind if you live somewhere that snows you in for six months of the year. I grew up in Minnesota so I'm familiar with that desperate crazy gnawing.

I never expected to feel that down here in "sunny" SC, half an hour from the beach. This time the ache's not caused by snow or cold or not being able to leave the house. It's still the same gnawing, in the same place... but it's caused by not yet having my children. I've wanted to be a mom... expected to become a mom... a couple of years after getting married. I started looking into adoption via Google at least two years before Lanse was ready to start discussing it. It took us another couple of years to get to the emotional place where we could make the first contact with an agency. And, according to the posts in this blog archive, we placed that call over two years ago. We will hopefully be done with the home study by the end of next month, and that's when the 'waiting' in adoption traditionally begins.

Everyone whose adopting stories I've read has expressed the huge amount of waiting that goes on through this process, but I had always interpreted the feelings as impatience or exasperation, or just a general intellectual annoyance at elapsing time. I really had no idea it would feel like this. Of course, having no recourse against it all I can do is analyze and try to figure out why I feel so weighed down and suffocated with this desire of motherhood; I know I don't need to have my own children to survive, or anything desperate like that. We've done rather well as a couple with cats making it into our mid 30s. I'm studying to be a teacher, and I know that fulfills me. So why this horrible ache for my own?

My child, should you ever read this, know that you are wanted. I want you so desperately that sometimes it hurts in my heart that I have to wait for you to come. I love you so much already, and I don't even know who you are. But some day soon, we will be a family...