This comes with a big question- how much do we want to do while we wait? There are obvious pro's and con's on how to approach this piece:
1. Pro- the more prepared the better off we'll be if we are matched quickly.
2. Pro- once something happens, it's going to be quick- better to already have things checked off the list.
1. Con- what if we aren't matched quickly? Then we're just looking at all this baby stuff every day.
2. Con- what if we are matched but it ends up failing? Won't it hurt to be ready for a baby that's not coming yet?
At the end of the day, I'm a planner. So, regardless of the timing and worrying about when something is or isn't going to happen, I know I'll feel better having done as much as possible to prepare for baby. Then I can just close the nursery door and be ready to open it whenever something happens. So in that spirit, we've tried to focus on areas where we knew we could go ahead and get ahead of the game without taking away any personal preparations we'd need to do once we found out more about our match.
Through the holidays and this past week we've:
1. Painted the nursery (shades of neutral gray to compliment the white built-ins. We got lucky here as the built-ins were already a piece of the room)
2. Painted the nursery furniture (Annie Sloan did WONDERS with this old furniture- no final pics yet as I'm still deciding on hardware, but it's a thousand times prettier)
3. Put together a crib (Mr. A calls it a jail, but it's super cute, promise. Traditional Jenny Lind crib and the white looks really nice against the wall colors)
4. Registered at Buy Buy Baby
The last piece has definitely been the more fun of all of the "to do's" on my list, yet it came with it's own set of challenges as well. The first being the due date. See, when you register, you need to provide a due date. We don't have one so we just picked a date (June 1st) as a placeholder. The sweet gal at BBB was a little confused (I think we were her first adoptive couple) so we had to go into a little more detail than I would have liked (see previous post) on getting her on board with what we were trying to do. But after some explanation, questions and more explanations, we got our scanner and were off and running.
Mamas-to-be- a piece of advice. Let your hubbies handle the scanner. Mr. A. was thrilled and immediately started scanning everything in site. Now, full disclosure- I went online later and did a little "editing" but it helped him stay into the process and watching him try to figure out what all the gadgets and gizmos were about was extremely entertaining!
For us, we concentrated on the "must have" pieces of the registry and really did not try to add on anything that would be specific to gender or age. Yes we needed a changing pad. Yes, we would need burp clothes. Everything is in shades of green, gray and yellow as I'm sure once we know what's what we'll have plenty of pink or blue options to choose from.
There were a couple of pieces I wasn't sure about-
1. Diaper Genie- really? Is a trash can not up to the job? Please advise!
2. Travel System vs. Car Seat? We registered for both as we had 2 different associates sell us on the merits of them. Not sure how we feel.
3. Rocking Chair vs. Rocker vs. Glider. Help!
Yes there are still things we could do, but for the most part, having these projects and items to work on really has helped me stay calm about the whole process. I knew the waiting would be what drove me crazy, so I'm sure there will be more projects to come.
Thanks for staying involved in our journey! To learn more, please visit:
www.youcaring.com/carradoptionfund
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