Preparation...

So, what are we doing while we wait for our referral?  We want to be as prepared as possible to parent our new little person so we've taken some steps to gain information.   I'm a part of a couple of Yahoo! groups.....one group is an IA (international adoption) agency research/ethics information board and the other is a group for parents of adoptive children to discuss topics pertinent to adoption.  These posts fill my email inbox daily but contain some highly important info....both for now and when our kiddo comes home.

I'm also doing a fair amount of reading.  I just finished an IA memoir a man in his twenties wrote about his experience discovering the origins of his four adopted siblings.....funny, truthful, heartwarming and a little unsettling.  I plan to read "Toddler Adoption" in the near future since our little girl will be mostly likely be in that age-range when she comes home.   With my highlighter (so we know this book is important folks!), I'm in the process of reading "The Connected Child" by K.Purvis.  This book seems to be THE resource for parenting children from "hard" places.  There are gems on every page.....not only for parenting adopted kids but for parenting my boys too. I'm getting some extra good hints in the "managing behavior" department (I can always use help here).  In fact, I thought of the author today when the boys were yelling and kicking one another in the backseat of my car.  What would Ms. Purvis have suggested?  I don't think she would have cranked the car radio volume to drown out the noise :)  

Prayer has also been a big part of our preparation.  Seems like the topic of adoption is consuming my conversations with God. There are so many ways in which I need His intercession (which could be a whole other blog post). 

Would love to write more but this girl is up way past her bedtime and needs to get some sleep! The boys have not gotten the memo that summer = sleeping past 7:00  ~sigh.....