Tunnel Vision

I was having a great conversation with a friend yesterday and we were talking about all sorts of stuff.. then blogging came up. I mentioned to her how I've had a really hard time blogging lately - I have only one thing on my mind and I don't want to bore all of my readers to tears by constantly discussing it. It's sort of like when you're pregnant and all you can think of is the baby, all you can talk about is the baby, all your life centers around is THE BABY. That's similar to how I'm feeling... only I can't even prepare for a baby, or a toddler, or a child... I have no idea what's to come.

Of course, I'm talking about our journey to become foster parents. So far we've completed all of our paperwork, background checks, first home visit, and now we've had our first of 9 parenting classes behind us. Only 8 to go.... yes... really.. 8. (one a week... this is going to drag on forever it seems.)

Our first class was Tuesday. We have a very large class, which is exciting!! I even knew a couple that was there so that was really cool to see a familiar face in a completely unfamiliar environment. (besides my husband, of course.) The first class was basically a run-down of everything we should have already done, what we're doing now, and what we'll do next. It was exciting and scary all at the same time. As we watched our first video, they showed a clip of a large group of children waiting to be adopted and I started to tear up. Then it showed a few clips of children that had been beaten, burned... horrible. I actually had to look away and force myself to sing that silly "I'm stuck on band-aids 'cause band-aids stick on me!" song so that I wouldn't break into the 'ugly cry' on my very first day with these people. From what they explained the videos just get worse... so I suppose I'll bring tissue from now on.

Now we will just continue with our classes, and sometime in the next few weeks we'll have two different meetings with our class leaders. They'll spend several hours just talking with us on one day. They want to know everything about you, your family, and they talk to your kids as well. Thankfully I enjoy talking so this probably won't be so bad. (Clayton will hate it...)

The next meeting is our last home visit - the home study. Thankfully, going through all of this with both DHS AND the Baptist Home, our home is almost totally ready to pass that home study inspection with flying colors. I've just got to get some lock boxes for our medicines and we'll be good to go! (oh.. and those safety outlet covers... )

My mind is just racing all of the time. Can you imagine knowing that you'll soon be open to take in children, but you have no idea what children? You don't know the ages, the number, the race, the sex... YOU KNOW NOTHING until you get those phone calls. It's exciting and nearly too much to wrestle with in my mind! Will they call with a baby in the hospital first? Will it be a 1 or 2 year old girl? Will it be a 5 year old boy? No idea...

The crappy thing about that for me is I cannot prepare anything. I can't buy anything... I can't decorate for the new arrival(s)... I just have to sit and wait. I'm not so good at that. I suppose MORE lessons in patience will be gained from this experience. (just when I thought I'd learned enough about that...)

So, if I am a bit absent on my blog in the future that's why. For now this is consuming me and I know that it probably isn't the most interesting thing to everyone else. Hopefully my brain will kick back in soon and the other parts of life will emerge - goodness knows we have tons of life happening everyday!