Our Road to Building a Family - Supervised Visits, New Furniture, and Zone Defense

I think I've said this previously when I've written about our experiences in navigating our way through the adoption process, but my wife Jill has done an extraordinary job of keeping a running narrative going of all that we've been through over in her blog, The Truesdale Times. People have made me quite bashful over the years by pointing out how well I write but I will be the first to tell you that my wife's writing style captures a range of emotions that I know I've only rarely, if ever, been able to convey with any substance. That said, if you would like more frequent updates about our journey, please stay tuned to her blog. She adds entries quite frequently, which is another ability she has that I don't when it comes to writing; it might take me a week to write a blog; she wrote one while we were driving home from dinner a few days ago.

To catch you up on things from where we were since I last added a submission to my "Our Road to Building a Family" series, I'll begin by saying that a lot has changed for us! In my previous entry, I relayed how we were at a point of frustration with the process as it seemed that we weren't getting anywhere. Despite my wife's best efforts at being an advocate for us, it didn't feel as though we were being kept in the loop about the goings on of what may or may not have been happening on behind the scenes with the various organizations with which we'd been working. Then came the afternoon of June 19, 2014.

My wife and I were on our annual vacation to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina and we were making our first visit to WonderWorks. (As an aside to this, I will say I'm not a fan of WonderWorks - it could be fun, but it was way too busy when we were there. The crowd made for a scene that was chaotic, and it was made worse by the fact that there's not enough guidance or direction to how the whole thing is laid out.) I was in line for one of the attractions when my wife & I received phone calls, one after the other, from the same number but one that neither of us recognized. As it would turn out, the call was from an adoption specialist contacting us about the fact that we'd been selected as a potential match for a sibling group of three children.

Yes, you read that right - three children, ages 6, 8, and 10. Two boys and one girl.

The rest of our vacation was a blur, and to be honest the time since that phone call has been a constant whirlwind of activity. We have gone through the paces of learning more about the children, their individual histories, their background, and essentially everything a prospective parent could hope to know - on paper, anyway. I point that out because one of my recent frustrations has been the fact that my first knowledge of these children came in the form of a 3-ring binder as thick as a soda can is tall filled with documentation. I understand that the paperwork is there for a reason as it unveils every facet of their lives, and it is most certainly an effort towards the organization we're working with covering their butts as they'll be able to say "Well, we told you so..." But as I have told my wife and many others, I truly wish the process was reversed so that you could meet these little people first, then be handed their details.

As you might gather from how I worded that last paragraph, yes, after pouring over literally hundreds of pages worth of records we did decide to go forward in trying to make a connection with this group. And yes, we realize that to go from no children to three children is a lot in a short period of time. Trust me when I say that I've grown tired and a bit annoyed by the fact that more than a few folks have seemingly gone to great lengths to remind us of the fact that life's about to change if this works out the way we're hoping it does.

Really? Life's about to change? You don't say! Like when life changed when I moved away from home, got married, bought a house, and started a new job? It feels like the last decade of my life has been nothing but change.

Ever since we've been together, Jill and I have always said we wanted 2 or 3 kids. In my eyes, this is no different than when people become parents via more traditional methods. What if Jill and I had been able to have kids naturally and we'd wound up pregnant with triplets? Or if we'd staggered the births of our children over the course of a couple years yet still wound up with three? Would we still be getting told "Life's about to change!" in a way that makes it seem like the person voicing that comment is telling us we're about to make a mistake? Some folks need to work on thinking before they speak and learning that when you apply inflection to a statement the connotation of those words changes significantly.

My frustrations aside, I have to say the process has gone quite well for us, and quickly at that. We were able to meet the children for the first time during a supervised visit that involved having lunch at Mellow Mushroom Pizza then going to EdVenture, a children's museum and activity center. It goes without saying that I learned a lot that day, both about myself and these kids. First and foremost, kids don't care that a pizza is artisanal - there is no point in paying $20 for a pie that, to them, is no different than a $5 from somewhere like Little Caesars. (That's not a knock on Little Caesars, their pizza is quite good to be as cheap as it is.) Second, when visiting an attraction like EdVenture with three kids who are full of pepperoni and soda, you'd best be wearing good shoes and be ready to play the finest zone defense of your life.

What I mean by that is this: I understand now that supervising children as a parent isn't so much about keeping your kids from doing things as it is keeping track of where they are when they're doing things. Sure, you don't want "doing things" to involve stuff like jumping off a balcony or drinking water out of an unsanitary basin, but so long as they're not destroying property or hurting others whatever they're doing is probably alright.

EdVenture is an expansive facility filled with activity stations that are spread out across several floors. Keeping track of these three quickly became a test of our skills of being able to read & recognize their movements, tendencies, and preferences. I truly am convinced that being a parent is about being able to understand the concept of zone defense. When the play begins, everyone on defense (read, myself and Jill; in this instance, we had a third member of our squad, that being the kid's adoption worker) has a zone of the playing field to cover. It's an effective strategy, so long as everyone does their job. I'd say we did pretty well that first outing - at the end of the day, everyone was still alive and still equipped with all their fingers & toes.

That's how I'm measuring success now as a prospective father: Limit property damage to a minimum while keeping everyone alive and as intact as possible.

We have had a second "play date" with these kids since that first outing and it involved lunch at Zaxby's as well as bowling. Things learned from that get together include the fact that not all grilled cheese sandwiches are created equal and that bowling isn't as appealing as the bright, blinking lights of arcade games. I can't say as I disagree much with the second part of that statement because only God knows how many quarters I plunked into arcade games when I was their age. Despite my former fascination with them, nowadays my opinion of arcade games is that they are essentially wooden boxes filled with strobe lights and MP3 players loaded with bad music that require a person to connect the business end of a shop-vac directly to their wallet in order for them to work. And by "work" I mean kick off a game that's configured in such a way that you'd have to be the 1972 Miami Dolphins of video gaming in order to get past level 1, stage 1. Seriously, I don't remember games being this difficult when I was a kid. I watched these three play and it was like they were getting beaten about the head by a technological behemoth.

The kids came to our house for the first time this past Friday, August 1. We were able to have lunch together - everyone made their own personal pizza, pizza being a recurring theme with this group as if you couldn't tell - and spend a few hours roaming around the house, allowing them to learn the ins & outs of what up until now had been the personal, exclusive space of my wife and I. I think that may be the biggest hurdle I have to get over, the fact that suddenly there will be three small people living with us. Not just living with us but depending on us for everything.

At this particular juncture, we have decided to change our outlook on adoption when it comes to these children. Up until now we had been working under the pretense that we were hoping to adopt children instead of being involved in a foster-to-adopt scenario or serving as a foster home . In order to speed up the process of them being placed in our home, we have opted to get on a foster-to-adopt path specifically with these children. What that will mean for us is that they will be moved from their current foster home and placed with us. (We will not be a traditional foster home in that we could be contacted to provide shelter for kids in need at a moments notice.) At that point we will be functioning as foster parents with the ultimate goal still being adoption. This changes a few parts of the process but it will be beneficial to all involved seeing as how the kids will be with us, we'll get to build our relationships, and they'll be in a stable environment where they'll be able to move forward with their education and development.

I have long believed that if the opportunity presents itself for you to shop local, you definitely should. People get attracted by big national ads for chains and they forget about the fact that there's probably a Mom & Pop establishment not far from where they live that would be able to get the same or comparable wares and for less money. That's exactly what we did when it came time to refit two rooms in our house so that they could become proper bedrooms for kids. Grubb's Furniture in Saint Matthews, SC is a fantastic purveyor of furniture as we were able to get exactly what we needed at a real bargain price and delivered quickly.

From here, the timetable is tentative in terms of what happens next. The plan is for them to have a weekend visit with us in the near future and then they will be able to move in on a date soon thereafter. At that point, we'll officially be their foster parents. I don't know how long it will take but their becoming our children will come sometime thereafter, depending on the swiftness of how things go once they're placed with us.

Jill and I have the great fortune of having a tremendous support structure around us. We couldn't do this if not for our parents and our families. It means the world to us that everyone has opened up their arms to these kids because they are great kids. They are not broken. They are not damaged goods. They are normal, vivacious, energetic kids. I can't wait to see them flourish once they can be in a stable environment that I believe we'll be able to provide.

Our Road to Building a Family - The Moment Things Got Real

I will fully admit that I haven't written much about the experiences my wife & I have been through in trying to adopt children. I don't want it to seem like I feel it's not important enough to chronicle here - gosh knows all my thoughts on professional wrestling, movies, and the like deserve their space - but Jill has taken the reigns when it comes to keeping all those stories together in her blog, The Truesdale Times. (That blog was originally supposed to have been a shared space for the both of us. Over time it's metamorphosed into her personal chunk of blogging territory just as Redbeard's Rambling is mine.) She's done a fantastic job of documenting our every move and what it amounts to is that I simply don't think I could do a better job, so if you're curious to read more about what we've encountered thus far please take the time to check out her entries. They're quite insightful, especially for anyone who may be thinking of or otherwise already involved in dealings similar to ours.

That said, I wanted to share an update with you, dear reader, about a realization I had recently.

Truth be told, Jill & I have been having some frustrations with this process here lately. We've done all the paperwork, we've gone through all the inspections, and we've gotten our approvals. It is my understanding that where we are at this point is more or less a waiting game. When it comes to adoptions through the Department of Social Services here in South Carolina, there are boards in place the members of which work to try and pair up children with prospective parents. We're to the stage where it seems like the best we can do is hope we get noticed - to make a sports analogy, it's like we've declared for the NFL Draft and our Wonderlic scores came back high but we don't know which team (if any) will give us a chance to prove ourselves.

Jill has gone out of her way to be our own best advocate. That she has done this was no surprise to me. Jill is her mother's child; when I say that, I mean to point out that - much like her mother - she is not content to merely sit idly by when it appears that there's work to be done on something she's passionate about. (I added that last bit regarding her passions because while my wife will not hesitate to assume the role of master and commander when it comes to a situation in which she's emotionally invested, I have yet to have her sprint to action over matters of state like laundry, cleaning the house, or dish washing.) She has done all she can to investigate details on children, those in South Carolina as well as in other states, who are available for adoption by contacting the agencies providing them care. On top of that, she has sent countless emails and made Lord only knows how many phone calls to our own social worker.

I understand that everyone is busy these days and that it seems like every government office is having to learn to do not more with less but more with nothing. (Having worked in the public sector for more than 6 years, I can tell you that statement is true on a variety of levels.) Be that as it may, it's been difficult to get over how uncommunicative certain entities have been with us now that we are where we are. You're in the office 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. Did you forget your voicemail passcode? We rarely get a callback, and when we do it's typically not in a timely manner. How hard is it to reply to an email? We're not expecting a message that's 10 paragraphs in length, just a simple acknowledgement that you are still there and that we're not wasting our time by contacting you is more than enough.

I feel like patience is one of my better virtues, and as it relates to the adoption process I have done my best to be patient in navigating the various twists and turns. When we got into this I knew it wasn't going to be something that came to fruition within a couple weeks. For that matter, I knew it was going to take a number of months if not more than a year for our efforts to pan out. (People I know and work with ask me often how long it's been since we've been at this; I try to keep it in perspective by remembering that were we genuinely pregnant we'd only be about 7 months into the delivery. In reality, were things to have worked out differently, we'd still have at least a little ways to go.) As much as I would like for it to be different, this isn't a situation where you can force someone's hand with sweet talking, threats, bribes, or even litigation (which would probably draw it out even further, more than likely). Jill, on the other hand, has never been a particularly patient person. Try as I might to remind her of the teachings of Master Yoda ("Patience you must have, young padawan..." is a favorite quote of mine to use on her), I've learned over the course of our relationship that there's not a whole lot I can do to divert her away from whatever path she's on. I'm not saying that her desire and passion is a bad thing, especially in these circumstances, rather I merely wish she would understand the subtle difference between persistence and insistence (she knows I feel this way, so don't go thinking I'm taking to my blog to air dirty laundry).

Be that as it may, within the past week we made contact with an out-of-state agency about a child in their care and they responded to us almost immediately (as in within 24 hours; that's a precedent no other group has lived up to). The agency said that they were fielding a number of inquiries about the child and that they were in the process of trying to narrow down prospective families but they felt we would be great candidates, part of their reasoning being Jill's experience as a social worker. They granted us an opportunity to learn more about the child's history at which point we were required to sign confidentiality waivers which is why I have to be somewhat guarded in saying what I'm going to talk about next.

There is no reason a child should have to endure what this one has. The report we received spelled things out very clearly and concisely, detailing the data they've collected over the span of time the child has been in their custody (roughly three years). As painful as it was to read, it was more painful to come to the quiet realization that it didn't seem like there was an opportunity for us to help. The list of issues they are dealing with felt insurmountable in my mind, and the fact that the child has begun to develop defense mechanisms in order to deal with them made their plight that much more awful.

It wasn't until I read the report that it dawned on me, this is the kind of abuse that gets found out and these are the kids that we'll be adding to our family. It hasn't dissuaded me from the prospect - not in the least. However, it has made me come to terms with the fact that we're all broken in some way, shape, or form. No one gets through life without chips, dings, and cracks. Sometimes the damage is so bad it seems like it can't be fixed, and even when it can be sometimes you have to admit, no matter how bad you want for things to be otherwise, you aren't the one to handle the repairs.

I mentioned earlier about how the agency representing this child made a point to bring up my wife's career as a social worker. A close friend of ours made a fantastic comment about this and it is one that I'm sure we'll need to be reminded of again as this process continues. The comment was that my wife isn't going to be our child's (or children's) social worker, she's going to be their mother. While her experiences in social work give her a unique perspective, she shouldn't have to be saddled with that role because it would undoubtedly get in the way of the bigger task, that of being a parent.

We decided this particular child has needs we are not prepared to tackle. We have had a tough time of admitting this because we don't know how many opportunities like this we may get. Sure, there are thousands of children out there, but there are potentially as many prospective families. As odd as it may seem, this is something of a competition. What's more, we've both felt in a way that we're letting the child down. Even though we'll never meet the child and the child will never have any idea that we made an inquiry, it's been as though we had to tell the child "no" face to face.

That is what's broken my heart. Two letters, one word, and yet so much hurt it can cause.

Our Road to Building a Family - The Story So Far

[AUTHOR'S NOTE: My wife has done an auspiciously better job of detailing how far we've come in this process than I ever could in her own blog, The Truesdale Times, so please check it out as well - http://thetruesdaletimes.blogspot.com/]

"When are you going to have a baby?"

"You guys do want kids, right?"

"How much longer are you going to wait before you start a family?"

"You're going to be an old dad!"

I don't know that people understand how offensive or otherwise poorly timed their words can be. I can't count the number of instances where the questions above, or a variation on them, have been posed to my wife & I since we've been married. (I'm so jaded about it that I'm at a point where when I hear of a couple being pregnant, especially through some cutesy, staged announcement, my reaction is to smile and mutter a very sternly worded assault of their character, occasionally sprinkled with expletives, under my breath.) They've come from members of our family, friends, and people we barely know. The answer was always the same for us: "We've been trying - so whenever it happens, it happens." We were putting on a good face, as it were.

Except nothing happened. At least not what we were expecting to happen.

I've had a difficult time of convincing myself that I should write about this, mainly because it's a topic that involves some of the most painful realizations I've ever had to deal with. I wasn't sure I wanted to share those moments with anyone other than my wife, for various reasons all of which I'll leave to you, dear reader, to interpret for yourselves. Even so, I find that the path we're on now is one best not walked alone. For that reason, I am putting pen to paper - or finger to keyboard, as is actually the case - in an attempt to convey what I, we have been through in the process of building a family.

After my wife & I got married in May of 2010, we were living in a house in Orangeburg, South Carolina that I'd been renting since I moved into town back in February of 2008. It was a good bachelor pad and more than enough room for one person, but neither of us wanted to live there forever as we both had dreams of owning our own home, somewhere that we could settle into and enjoy as it would be ours, not just a space we happened to be inhabiting. My wife waited patiently as I asked her to give me two years to work on getting to a place financially where I felt like we'd have more stability. Truth be told, I had a plan in mind; first would come the house, then we would work on our family (not to say a baby wouldn't have been welcome before then, just that in my head that's the way it would've panned out best). Call it a blessing, clairvoyance, or just dumb luck but we closed on our house June 1, 2012.

So I needed an extra month. Sue me.

It was time to get down to business, and that became a problem for me.

I'm not going to beat around the bush here. Making love is awesome - or at least it should be. When it becomes a chore, you know something is wrong. And in my mind, when we were trying our hardest to get pregnant the whole thing lost its appeal. Sex had become not something we were doing for fun anymore, instead it was this thing we were doing because we had to and in my head that made it less desirable. It wasn't that I wasn't attracted to my wife, it was the stress and the pressure from the mindset of, "Okay, we've got to get this done now...If it doesn't happen now, people are going to keep bugging us about it and even though we're never going to live up to their expectations we have to do this or else we've failed as a couple."

Notice the word failed there. I'm not afraid of many things. I'm old enough to have a sense of logic that affords me the comfort of being able to differentiate between what's worthy of fear and what isn't. Failure never has been kind enough to make itself so conveniently sorted. The fear of having done all that I could and still come up short has always haunted me, ever since I was a child. I had terrible stomach cramps when I was in college because I had put myself into a position of being incredibly fearful about whether or not I'd be able to perform (I'd say taking advanced courses in logic and mathematics would be enough to upset most people's stomachs). I still deal with it to this day. It's a debilitating feeling, trust me. People act surprised when I tell them about this because they say I don't have the outward expression of someone who's constantly tied in knots. I guess I've dealt with it long enough that I hide it well, or at least better than others.

That said, the fear of failing in this particular instance was getting to me, mainly because I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what was going wrong or how it could be remedied. My wife had been off of birth control for a while and we'd had no luck as of yet. She was doing all that she knew to do, going so far as to take prenatal vitamins and at-home ovulation tests (she even had an app on her tablet that was supposed to help predict when she'd be at her most fertile, for crying out loud). It dawned on the both of us that we were getting to a point where we would have to look into the possibility of there being medical reasons as to why we weren't seeing any results.

My parents got divorced when I was very young and the only father-figure I had growing up was my Grandfather. Unfortunately, he passed away when I was 12 and as I grew up there was a hole in my life that never quite got filled. I've made it known in previous blog entries that there was a point in time where I didn't believe in the concept of marriage and that I thought I'd never get married. I think the desire to be a father set upon me around the same time that I became mature enough to put away those beliefs. I knew in my mind that I wanted to give a child (or children) the sort of love, guidance and upbringing that I had but in a complete, whole family setting. It had become a dream, the desire to someday go out in public with pride while wearing one of those baby slings you see dads wearing - you know, the kind where the baby is more or less strapped to the guy's chest or back? I wanted to be that guy, in the worst way.

Jill and I finally did consult with a specialist regarding the issues we'd been having in trying to get pregnant, and it broke my heart when we found out that it would be all but impossible for us to conceive a child of our own.

We had picked out names for our children, one for a boy and one for a girl.

To have a dream taken from you is one of the most painful things a person can ever experience. The hurt from that news is still there, to this day. The questions, the wonder about why this happened to us, the urge to shake my fist at the sky and scream with every bit of anger I could possibly muster - all still there and probably not going away any time soon. (I am saddened by the many prospects that were dashed by this turn of events but what weighs most heavily on me now is that the bloodlines of our families will end with us. That's a medieval concept, I know. I've just not been able to shake the hurt from that.) But life goes on, with or without you, and so has our effort to build a family.

We have talked openly about the idea of adopting at least as long as we've been married. It wasn't a stretch for us to discuss that opportunity, what with my wife having a background in social work and several cousins who were adopted. However, I'll admit that I never thought we'd actually pursue it because I didn't think we'd have no other option when it came to growing our family. I know that could sound harsh but the reality of the matter is that adoption prior to now, in my mind, would've been an effort of last resort. As it would turn out, it was always our best option.

Around the end of September, we began the process of getting involved with an organization called Heartfelt Calling which is associated with the South Carolina Foster Parent Association and the South Carolina Department of Social Services. Prospective applicants have the option of being foster parents, foster-to-adopt, or adoptive parents and we at least for now have chosen to take the latter route. We received an application packet from them, which was just shy of the thickness of your average textbook. It goes without saying that the sort of information they gather on prospective adoptive parents is vast (a background check complete with fingerprints, financial reports, a floor plan of our home with an evacuation route, proof of our dog's vaccination records, etc.), and not all of it was necessarily the sort of data you'd expect to have to submit. Apparently it was vital that they know my cholesterol levels as I had to have blood work done in order to get every piece of information required for the application to be completed. As of this writing, I believe the only portions of the application that haven't been turned in are reference letters from a few of our friends (if you're reading this, and you know who you are, GET ON THE BALL).

The paperwork was tedious and time consuming, and so too have been the classes we've had to attend. There's an old joke about how some people should be forced to take a training course before they can be parents. As it turns out, in certain cases, that's exactly what you have to do. When talking about them, I've referred to the trio of classes we've attended as Parenting 101, 102, and 103. Combined, we wound up spending about 20-25 hours in a classroom setting. (None of the meetings we've had to attend have been nearby; even though we're closer to Columbia than Charleston, a majority of the sessions we've had to attend have been in the Low Country, meaning we've sacrificed our free time and put a good amount of miles on our vehicles these past few months as well.) Fortunately the classes weren't a pass/fail scenario as all we had to do was show up and participate in order to receive credit. They weren't so much curriculum-based in regard to teaching people how to be parents or even better parents; they were sessions geared towards preparing prospective foster or adoptive parents for the kind of children who find themselves in this system (kids with disabilities, who have been abused or neglected, or what have you) and the associated issues that they may encounter as a result of inviting such children into their home.

This process of completing paperwork and going to class is leading up to our eventually being licensed to serve as adoptive parents. There's another aspect to all of this which involves in-home inspections and home studies. Thus far we've worked with the local Department of Health and Environmental Control and we're waiting to be seen by the fire marshal as well as a home study to be conducted by DSS.

Prior to the DHEC inspection we went about making a series of changes to our home - "child-proofing", as it were. The cabinetry locks were simple to add as they slip over your existing knobs and handles, however let me be frank in saying that I highly doubt the people who design the drawer latches we purchased have ever had to install them. Those things were an absolute nightmare to get into place because the cabinets we have are made from material that evidently was never intended to be modified. We got them in, though, albeit not without the usage of a variety of colorful metaphors, as Spock would call them.

We emptied out the storage spaces underneath our kitchen and bathroom sinks, tossing out a fair amount of clutter in the process, then gathered together all of our cleaning supplies. Our laundry room is more like a closet than a room as it's situated in the main hallway of our home and features a set of double doors. A friend of mine had shared an article with me on life-hacks a few weeks prior and in it was an idea about using over-the-door shoe organizers to keep all your cleaning supplies together and in one place. This was a brilliant concept for us as we were able to use the organizers and that closet to effectively secure every cleaning product we have.

My wife and I came to the conclusion that the term "child-proofing" is an absolute misnomer. It doesn't matter how thorough you may be or how many precautions you may take, kids are going to hurt themselves because they don't know any better. That's not a bad thing, though. It's how they learn about the world around them. I did it, she did it, we've all done it - we're all still here and more or less intact. One has to hope, as a parent, that dropping a TV on their heads isn't part of the learning process.

We made sure to cover a few other random items before DHEC had their way with our home, such as verifying that the temperature of our hot water didn't exceed 120°, that the refrigerator was at an appropriate level of chill, and that our firearms were stored in locked containers away from their ammunition (because a gun purchased with the intent of being used as home defense is useful in that scenario). Our home has a septic tank and so the inspector would have to walk over it as well - I assume the idea there being that you're in the clear so long as they don't see a puddle of turds and toilet paper in your yard. We felt like we knew what to expect because we were working off of a cheat sheet that had been given to us as part of the applicant packet.

As I expected it would, the DHEC inspection went off without a hitch. (I will add that we did something of a mad-dash cleaning of the house the night before as we were running short on time with all we had going on the week of the inspection.) What can I say, I was confident in the work we'd done. By some odd turn of events, it happened that my wife and the inspector had been acquaintances in college as they were both students at Winthrop University. He was thorough, nevertheless, as he did all the things we had counted on and he even went so far as to check our window blinds in order to determine if they were a variety that could potentially contain toxic metals (that wasn't on the cheat sheet). We were in the clear all around, though, as he signed off on our home without encountering any potential issues.

At present, we need to work on getting a fire extinguisher (which has to be mounted to a wall in our kitchen - I'm not thrilled about that, to be honest) and a carbon monoxide detector as the next phase of this process will involve the fire marshal inspecting our home. I didn't mention this earlier, but part of the applicant packet was a worksheet wherein we had to submit measurements of the openings of our windows. I forget what the specification was but ours appeared to have been up to snuff. It wasn't explained to us as to why the windows needed to be a certain size. I assumed it was to insure they were adequate evacuation ports; this is true but as it turns out there's also a consideration here for whether or not a firefighter wearing SCUBA would be able to get in through that same space. That's an example of the kind of thing that wouldn't cross an average person's mind unless you're being made to endure a process like this.

To that end, it's rather mind-boggling to think about what we've been through so far. We've jumped through one hoop after another in order to confirm that we're fit to be parents whereas there are people in this world having babies every day who don't want them and won't love them. It doesn't seem fair, is what I'm getting at. I'm a natural cynic and I can't help but express these feelings.

Regardless, we are where we are and we know where we're going, and that's what we will continue to focus our efforts upon. Building a family, one day at a time.