I realized it’s been a little while since I posted any updates on our adoption process here on the journal. I’ve been sharing updates on a more frequent basis on a facebook page I created for our adoption (Ryan and Stephanie Adopt). Feel free to follow us there if you’d like. Otherwise, I will periodically post updates here with you too.

It feels like simultaneously a lot and nothing at all has really happened since I last shared an update with you. We’re still simply in wait mode here. Waiting for an expectant mother to choose us parents for her child. It could happen next week, it could happen two years from now – we just don’t know. So we continue to wait and prepare for our little one – whenever they find their way into our lives.

Having something to do makes the waiting easier. I’ll be honest – waiting to adopt is a lot harder than the waiting during our fertility treatments. When you’re pursuing fertility treatments you have something to do, things to track, appointments to make. Even if you aren’t making progress, you feel like you’re doing something. And that can be really helpful. But with the adoption process, you eventually hit a point where there’s nothing left to do but just wait and that can be really hard.

So in order to help pass the time, we started working on the nursery. I think I mentioned in my last update that one of Ryan’s aunts wanted to donate towards the progress in the nursery, and we were able to use her donation towards a crib. It wasn’t long before I found myself spending a weekend pulling everything out of the spare bedroom and re-organizing it for the nursery. And then Ryan got to do daddy duty and build our convertible crib for our little guy or girl. It felt really liberating to have all of that done, and it was starting to look like a nursery.

We got most of that done before Ryan’s birthday party at the end of January. But I found myself growing antsy again and feeling the need for progress. So we went to the hardware store and started looking at paint. I had always known I would paint this room when we had a child. The original paint in most of the house is eggshell because it was far cheaper when we were rebuilding. But I eventually had hoped to repaint each room (over time) with a semi-gloss paint. So that’s what we did in the nursery. I wanted a neutral but cozy, warm, and inviting color since we have no idea if we’ll be matched with a son or a daughter. So we chose a nice creamy yellow tone. Over the course of about a week, we painted the whole room and added our own little creative touch of a patch of birch trees on the wall behind the crib. We got everything put back in place and were quite pleased with our handy work.

With all the satisfaction of wall painting done, the less than lovely doors started to stand out like a sore thumb. We had never actually painted the doors when they were first installed. We just left them as their pre-primed factory set up. So I figured now was the time to go ahead and get that done because with a little one here, it would be far harder to complete that task. So a couple weekends ago, Ryan took down the doors, and my dear friend, Kayla and I knocked out all the painting on them over the weekend. Ryan put them back in place and added the cute little knobs to the closet doors.

We were also blessed with some things from our amazing friends! My wonderful friend, Sarah knew that I was interested in maybe doing the cloth diaper route with our kids and since she has her little girl using cloth diapers, she not only imparted her wisdom but also donated her excess diaper liners to us too! Those will definitely be put to good use and are such an awesome blessing! The brown curtains you see in the nursery images above are also from her! They are the perfect touch to the little room and will definitely help to keep it nice and dim when baby needs to sleep. Sarah even gave us a bag of random little odds and ends they received from the hospital, like baby formula, bottle nipples, pacifiers, etc.

Our awesome friends, Jerry and Leah, gave us this wonderful little baby bath time sling. We had actually just stopped by to visit for a while and they surprised us with this awesomeness. It was so crazy because I had just talked to Ryan that morning about how we’ll need to look into bath stuff. So how serendipitous that they would give us this bath sling right after we had just talked about it that morning!

It’s definitely starting to feel more like a nursery, and I’m feeling more and more prepared. There are still some things to do, but the big work is over. It’s a relief to have it done but I know with less left to do, I’ll have to find something else to help pass the time as we wait. There are days I just sit on the floor in this room and dream of when there will be a little person in here to love and make this room their own. There are days that dreaming makes me cry because it feels so far away and my heart aches for this child we’ve been waiting for for almost six years now. I know it will happen in God’s time. But waiting never gets easier.

In the meantime, we just continue to pray for the birth mom, our future child, and focus on preparing our home and lives for our perfect little love.