One of my biggest struggles in preparing for our baby was figuring out what to buy when. Should I go ahead and buy that beautiful crib while it is on sale, or should I wait to buy a crib until we are matched with a placing mother? When should I buy and read parenting books? Should I keep some formula on hand in case we have a last-minute match? What about a car seat?

Ultimately, I decided to wait on purchasing most items until we were matched with a placing mother. I did this for a few reasons:

Grief... more

Most of us have known at least one pregnant woman who appeared to become slightly insane as the birth of her baby approached. Some pregnant women start cleaning out their refrigerators at midnight; others decide to rearrange the furniture. One of my pregnant friends was completely obsessed with finding the right valance for the nursery. No matter how many times I told her that the baby would not care if he had valances or not, she ran from store to store with an urgency that made me question her sanity.

... more

The next few weeks were surreal. Overnight, I had become an “expectant mother” whose baby was due in a mere 7 weeks.

My sister said the first thing we needed to do was to register at Babies R Us. I did not know the first thing about what I needed. It had been too painful to even think about, much less read about, babies for the past 4-1/2 years, so I did not have a clue about what I needed to purchase other than diapers and bottles.

My sister met me at the store, and it was a complete mind warp to walk in. This was the store that I... more

I was really lucky with my first son in that the two doctors who delivered him were also the doctors who did his well baby check ups. They were both family practice physicians and so could handle it all. Eventually we switched to someone a little more local to us but we were with them for a couple of years. I really didn't feel the need to go to a special pediatrician for a healthy baby. Family practice did us just fine.

But for Little J, our second son who was adopted from Russia at 15 months, we really needed to find more of a specialist. Children adopted internationally need lots more tests and titers and poking and prodding than a healthy infant either born or adopted domestically.... more

If you have older members in your family, you will probably understand what I say when you read through this post. You know ... "baby showers are for INFANT BABIES...you CAN'T have an adoption shower"!

Any hopeful adoptive family dreams about having some celebration to honor their pride in adopting their child, and in my opinion, it's a wonderful thing to do. However, you get many skeptics raising their brows... who, what, when, where, why, and how come at you from all angles.

Who are you adopting? What do they like? When are you adopting? From where? WHY are you adopting? How come you're having a party ... if you can't afford the child, which is obvious if you are throwing... more

My husband and I have already designed one room, thinking of our future children.

We know we are going to have boys...we're too high strung to not have boys. LOL

So, our first bedroom we've redone was done in a VERY cool theme.

The room is a darker royal/sky blue. We got our paint at Ace Hardware, for a SUPER price. Here is our tip. If you don't have your heart set on a certain color, go to the hardware paint departments and ask them if they have any "mis-tints".

A mis-tint is when they make a color for a customer, and either the customer doesn't like the way it looks after mixing, or when they get it home.

Well, I knew I was going to paint clouds... more