The Bag

Hey, remember how we got approved for adoption like 2 and a half months ago?? Yeah, nothing going on with that. Sorry if I got you excited about anything. ANYWAY, to be honest, I pretty much forgot about the whole adoption thing myself ever since we got approved! I guess I just knew that nothing would happen right away, and the whole fall/holiday season was so busy, it wasn't on my mind much at all. Plus, it makes a huuuge difference already having a kid. Especially on those days I am tearing my hair out--I am thinking it's a good thing I only have one!!

But now here we are in January. Infamous, in my mind, for being the most dull, cold, depressing, and generally never-ending month of the year. I mean, it's only January 12th today and it feels like Christmas was 3 months ago. Ugh.

I usually get on a pretty big organizing kick come January. Once that Christmas stuff comes down I just want to clean everything and get everything organized! And this year, along with all that, I have also been beginning to have in the back of my mind the thought that: "oh yeah, we are approved for adoption. Technically, something could happen any time. Maybe I should do something to try to prepare for it."

Enter The Bag.

I have really mixed feelings about this bag. Well, not the actual bag itself. If I may digress for a moment, this bag is awesome! It is black, which means totally neutral not only for girl/boy babies, but also for husband/wife, whoever is packing it around. It is big enough to pack lots of stuff for, say, a car trip, but not so bulky that you can't just throw your wallet in and take it into the grocery store. It has pockets for bottles/sippy cups, little pockets for everything from chapstick to sanitizer, and even came with a cute matching changing pad. To top that off, I bought it with a gift card. Oh yeah. Love the actual bag.

It's really what the bag represents: The fact that I am now actually thinking about the hypothetical, potential adoption we may have sometime in our future. Sometime. That's the fun part! (insert serious sarcasm here) Who knows when it will be?! Do you? Because I sure don't.

Before I started thinking about this bag, I really hadn't been thinking about this adoption (again, hypothetically speaking) much at all! And that was really a blessing! Because now that the bag is back in my life, guess what else is: The Wondering. Always, always wondering. Are any birth moms looking at our profile? Is anyone at all looking at our profile? When will a birth mom contact us? When will a birth mom choose us? How many failed placement plans will we have this time? Will we travel? Will someone local pick us? Will it be a girl? Will it be a boy? Will it happen before we have to renew our profile at the 1-year mark? What will I do about my job when we have a second kid? Will we actually even have a second kid? And on and on and on and ON!

I guess I should actually explain what I'm doing with the bag. It's nothing special, just slowly but surely packing it to have as a "just in case" if we are in need of go-to baby supplies on short notice. I'm packing it with things like a sling, bottles, a formula container, burp rags, baby wash and lotion, receiving blankets, a carseat cover, you get the idea. When I started this little project I thought to myself, "I'm just getting prepared for whatever happens; this is easier than having to frantically dig through boxes at the last second." But what I didn't anticipate is how much it would bring my longing for a new little baby into my mind! How can it not, when I'm sanitizing bottles and replacing nipples and bleaching onesies??

It's not that I feel like I'm inflicting some sort of self-torture, by any means. I am loving the stage we are at in our little family right now. I finally feel like Ashlyn and I have a really good routine down, I feel like I am balancing my work schedule around spending time with her, and most of all we are just having a really good time as a family. I am not sitting wishing my days away for more. But still, it's hard not to feel that pull of wanting a baby in my arms when I'm working on The Bag. And it is taking a lot of my self-control to not get insanely frustrated, again, with the fact that I can't just pick when I want to have a kid, try for a few months, and be successful. Wishing for that will never get me anywhere, I learned a long time ago. But it doesn't change the fact that I sometimes do wish there was an easier way!

So for now, I will keep slowly but surely putting my little baby things into what will hopefully someday be another little baby's bag. I know we were prompted to start the adoption process when we were for a reason, and that knowledge is really keeping me going at some moments. And I also figure that patience must still be something I need oodles of work on, since practicing patience generally seems to be the story of my life! (revise that to say "trying to practice patience!")