You Know When You Are An Adoptive Parent When....

1. The fact that there are 143 million children without a parent to kiss them goodnight has made you lose sleep.

2. You realize DNA has nothing to do with love and family.

3. You can't watch Adoption Stories on TLC without sobbing.

4. The fact that, if 7% of Christians adopted 1 child there would be no orphans in the world, is convicting to you.

5. You spend free time surfing blogs about families who have experienced the blessing of adoption.

6. It drives you crazy when people ask you about adopted child's 'real' parents. (so freakin’ true)


7. You had no idea how you would afford to adopt but stepped out in faith anyway.. (in our case - 2 times, and are planning on a third!)

8. You believe God's heart is for adoption.

9. You realize that welcoming a child into your heart and family is one of the most important legacies you could ever leave on this earth.

10. You have welcomed a social worker into the most private parts of your life.

11. You shudder when people say your child is so lucky that you adopted them, knowing full well you are the blessed one to have him or her in your life.

and, my own additions to the list......

12. You jump every time the phone rings, thinking it may be THE call......

13. When you hear of someone else becoming pregnant, you are happy for them, but deep down there is still the jealousy, anger, and sadness that will never go away.

14. You HATE the look strangers give you out in public as they look at you, then the kids, then you again.........COME ON PEOPLE!!!!

15. When women who can get pregnant complain about waiting 9 months to see their baby, when for adoptive parents 9 months is as long as it takes to fill out the damn paperwork!!

16. My own personal issue - the fact that when most people want to have a baby, they go to the bedroom. When we want to have a baby, we have to go to our credit card company to get an increase of our limit, go to the adoption agency and get drilled about every aspect of our life, go home and proceed to fill out more paperwork than it takes to buy a house, turn it in only to be told that we forgot to dot our i's and cross our t's, take 8 classes about parenting and filling out more paperwork, have our home inspected by the health inspector and the fire inspector, have a stranger come into our house and interview us about our childhood all the way up through our sex life, wait until they type up the interview, and THEN wait for our baby. After we get our baby, we have to go through the entire process again, but throw in a 6 month wait period for the baby to officially be ours. *whew*

with all that said and done, ya'll all know that i wouldn't change in my babies for anything. we are having some tough times with shorty's adoption, and i am just being a grouch (hence the picture). i just want the papers to be signed and her to be ours. not too much to ask, right?