It is Emma again!  If you know me, I barely have time to wash my hair, let alone write a blog post! Sorry it has taken so long for my second post to arrive. As I type right now, I am sitting outside of my nephew’s school waiting for his talent show to begin. Any-who, back to business! Check out my first blog post, Unexpectedly Expecting to catch up if you have not already read it!

After the phone call had been made to this sweet little child’s caseworker, things were moving much quicker than we expected. We were asked if we have a car seat and told that she was going to work on getting us to be able to pick the baby up from the hospital. WHAT??!!! I had barely even told all of our immediate family member and we were going to get a baby from the hospital that day?! Luke and I went to lunch, which was already planned and then were headed to the store to get stuff to bring a baby home. We literally did not have one thing that would equip us to have a child at our house.

While we were eating, we received a call back from the caseworker that she could not get us approved to pick up the baby, she would have to be placed in an emergency foster care placement and that she would call us after court the next day. After this bit of news, which was so very anticlimactic, the next few weeks would continue to follow that pattern.

The next morning we were given a phone call to inform us that the case had been transferred to a different county and we would be getting a new caseworker to contact. Not only did we have a new caseworker, there was also a separate organization involved, 30 Days to Family. This organization is amazing, but caused the process of getting this precious baby into our home to be much longer. As an organization, they work to place children with family members. This means every family member over the age of 21 had to be contacted. The caseworker had to do extensive research on her family from both her mother and fathers side.

Luke and I began clearing out our second bedroom, but very slowly. I was trying so hard not to get my hopes up, knowing that both parents have large families and any one of them could be willing to take the baby and we would be off the table as an option. I would like to think I was keeping a brave face. Acting as if I would be fine if she was placed with her family member, but the longer I thought about her, the more I fell in love. So much love and I still had not even met her! We were entering in the beginning of the application process for fostering, we were attending meetings for her, we decided what we would call her, and we had still not met her!

17 days… we had to wait 17 days to get the answer we had been waiting for. Of course, during this time, my phone never left my side. I was impatiently waiting to hear who the baby would be placed with. Finally, on day 17 I got another phone call, we had been chosen! All we needed was a judge signature and she would be coming to our house!! Easy, right?! It was a Thursday and we were told we would be getting another member of our household before Tuesday!

We kicked it into high gear! We painted, we bought a crib, we bought clothes, formula, bottles, all of the accessories that were mandatory for a newborn and waited. And waited. And waited. I refused to leave the house Monday or Tuesday, knowing that I could get the call at any moment that they were on their way with her. We were not so lucky. It was Wednesday, when I finally talked myself into leaving to go work at my business, which had been taking the back burner to the baby preparation when the caseworker called. I had barely even made it in the door of the shop when I got the call, packed back up and headed home.

A few hours later, she was there! I will never forget those moments. Staring out of the living room window, waiting for the car to pull up, finally seeing it and rushing out the door. I will never forget the tears as I grabbed the tiny baby from the caseworkers hands. Crying as I tried, but failed to listen to the caseworker walk us through a packet of legal work. Beginning to memorize everything about this sweet little girls face. Kissing and holding her.

Our waiting had finally ended. She was in our home, dropped off without any directions, much like having a baby of our own. We were left to parent and love this sweet one.

Luke is working on his first post about adoption, while I work on a post about the first time I heard Luke agree to adoption!