2016 The Year of Our First Adoption (We Hope!)

Happy New Year! We here at Adoption Pilgrimage are dubbing this new year as "2016 The Year of Our First Adoption." We know this is bold, but we just have a good feeling that it will be this year! (Okay, our adoption placing agency also has only an average of seven months wait time, so it is a pretty safe bet to say it will be this year! We. Can't. Wait.)

To go along with this title we have several New Year's Resolutions related to adoption. Here they go:

NEW YEAR'S ADOPTION RESOLUTIONS:

1.) BECOME INFANT CPR EXPERTS

• This will be pretty easily accomplished as we will be taking an infant CPR class this Thursday. Then we will be trained to save our baby and yours! Motivational speakers also say that it is important to make at least one resolution that you can keep, so here it is! :-) ...but in all seriousness, if your baby is choking, call 911, not us.

2.) BECOME ADOPTION GRANT EXPERTS AND APPLY FOR 4 GRANTS

• Bethany has already done a lot of research over Christmas break (no rest for us adoption warriors!) and we have narrowed the many grants down to four applications sitting on our dining room. (Sadly, there are zero Catholic Adoption Grants!? Can you imagine that? We need to change that as it just does not make any sense. Catholics have lots of adoption agencies. Catholics have crisis pregnancy centers. Catholics have counseling and charities to help birth moms keep the child or to place the child for adoption. But not a single charity - that we've found, anyway - to help adoptive parents adopt and thereby to help birth moms find through adoption good homes for their children who also need good homes? Huh? One day, some way we can do this. If you have lots of money and you want to start a charity, then we suggest you start this one!) 

3.)  LEARN ALL ABOUT PRE-NATAL DRUG/ALCOHOL EXPOSURE

• We have one excellent resource, a book called "The Mystery of Risk: Drugs, Alcohol, Pregnancy, and the Vulnerable Child" by Dr. Ira Chasnoff (how's that for uplifting reading?). If you have any others, then please by all means email us or comment below!

4.) READ UP ALL ABOUT ADOPTION AND ADOPTIVE PARENTING

• Stay tuned for posts about books related to adoption - starting with our favorite - The Connected Child. Really, this is a book every parent should read and re-read. 

5.) ADOPT!

• We are ready to be parents and we can't wait to meet the child God has prepared for us!

6.) PRAY !!!

• Obligatory Catholic Resolution! No seriously, we have been praying every day for our little one, the birth parents, us, the agencies involved, etc., but we are going to ramp up the prayers the closer it gets.

7.) BEFRIEND ADOPTION BUDDIES

• We have been blessed with many family and friends who have been supportive of our adoption journey. However, we have realized we really need to befriend adoptive parents and friends who are also in the adopting process. Through a variety of circumstances, we have a several of the latter (woo hoo - our adopted children are going to be BFFs!!) but only one or two of the former. So we are seeking friends in the adoptive community this year.