Saturday, January 10, 2009

PIP I, II, III and IV

Patrick and I completed 4 of the 5 PIP (Parenting in Progress) classes we need to take before we are matched with our baby. The classes were supposed to be yesterday and today from 9:00am to 3:00pm in Omaha. (For those who know me well, 9:00am on a Saturday morning HURTS!) I say supposed to because we got done at 2 yesterday and at noon today. All in all, it was a good class. We talked a lot about our baby and the adjustments that they will have to make when they come here. We learned the importance of talking with our baby about their Korean heritage and watched videos of kids who have been adopted. It gave me some things to think about and gave us some good references to go forward with.

I pray that God would give us the right words to say and things to do to help our baby be well adjusted and have a good sense of self. I also pray that God would shield our baby and us from all the "well-meaning" people who may say hurtful things about/to us, our baby or the adoption. Before anyone asks, no, we haven't gotten any yet but just want to be prepared for the future.

We were in the class with 2 other couples so it was a small class. I was hoping to meet another couple that was adopting from Korea, but we didn't. The one couple is doing China's Child of Promise program and the other is adopting from Ethiopia.

Yesterday I was so tired after the class that I took at 3.5 hour nap when we got home. I was sure that would mess me up at night but I was able to go to sleep last night with no problems. Guess I just needed a little extra rest.

I still need to get the I600A paper work in the mail and get some supporting documents to a grant organization I applied to, we plan to do most of that tomorrow. So, hopefully early to mid next week I will have some more adoption milestones completed!

My friends Sharon and Aric are also in the process of adopting a baby in the US. If you could, I would just ask for prayers for them during this time. That they would find things to occupy their time as they wait for an expectant mother to pick them to be the parents of her baby.

Thank you all for caring about us and for being with us on this journey.

2 comments:

Laura Nero said...

I can't wait to meet my new niece or nephew (thinking nephew for some reason) or is this another issue with the "like family" thing-lol. I often think of what the meeting will be like - definitely in your mom's kitchen as I struggle thru the rest of the ppl in the house to get there and snatch him from someone's arms :) to just love him/her up. I know this is going as fast and as perfect as He wants it to. You have been so patient with everything that has happened since August of 2006, and I know you have the patience to get thru the year ahead. Keep your chin up and that beautiful smile on your face and we will all get by this waiting period. I do feel like I should say, if you do get twins, I don't expect you will be 'trying' to get p/g until you are like 45. LOL I love you, Patrick and baby Marshall and I am praying for you all the time. <3

Toni said...

Hi Jen! This is Toni, Roe's wife, and cousin by marriage on the Mahan side. Pat sent me the link to your blog and I was going to wait to comment until I had read it all, however your comment about saying "hurtful things" struck a chord. We adopted our daughter Kayla from Honduras, who arrived home in Oct 1986 at 9 1/2 months. We never had a moment we TOLD her she was adopted, it just was always part of her life story, and therefore, she always felt normal about it. When people would ask her where she was from, she would say Hoover, Alabama, or "Where is your real mother?" she would say "she is at home, work," or where ever I was. I guess what I am trying to say is that when you raise a child in love and to feel that their life story is just that THEIR life story they don't think anything about it or than Kayla kind of always thought people were not very bright to ask her such questions. I also remember when she was about 10, after a week at the beach and tanning briliantly through SPF 50 sunscreen her coming home one day and asking if she were black. I told her no, but it wouldn't matter if she were. Amazingly she told me that she had told the child who asked almost the exact same thing....she told them her skin was browner than usual and she didn't think she was black, that she would ask her mom and that she didn't think it would mean anything if she was....moral here is raise a child not to tolerate prejudice and they don't really get it so it doesn't seem to hurt...just puzzles them as to why on earth people feel that way. She still feels that way at 23.