Day 101

While we wait...

Because we won't have any news on the adoption front for a few weeks (until the home study is written and submitted by CW), I figured I would keep you up-to-speed on how I'm passing the time...

• First off, I'm a student so there's always homework to be done--or put off--depending on my mood [smile]. The first point of business, is to finish assembling our profiles. It was fun for about the first 5...then it quickly turned laborious. Turns out 300 pictures double glued (paper, then profile) is a LOT of work! I try to get a few done each night. We have 50 to assemble and I have about 15 done. However, all the pictures are cut, now, so it should go a little quicker!

• Next on the list...going green-er. I've tried to adopt "green" principles into our everyday living. I've started slow, but the small steps have already turned routine. So far we've changed all the lighting in the house, cut our trash in half by recycling, started a garden for organic produce, and use our own cloth bags for shopping. The next areas I want to tackle are baby products and health/beauty items. I'm easing into these areas because I don't want to spend a lot of extra money, but I do want to use more natural products that don't contain such harsh chemicals. My friend got me hooked on checking out the toxicity reports of all the products I use, at http://www.cosmeticdatabase.com/. Wouldn't you know my makeup was rated #8 (on as scale of 1-10)? I finally did some research and broke down and bought my first mineral makeup kit, from Bare Essentials (I am now at #3 for toxicity!).

The best part was that Target has all the Bare Essential Starter kits marked down this week from $50.00 to $35.00! We'll see how it goes! Once I get the makeup part down, I'd like to move on to baby products, including cloth diapers.

• Each night before I go to bed I read through a few pages of baby names...what a fun job! We have about 4 boy names that we love...but no girl names, yet...It's a fun process and a great way to pass the time...

• Next on the "to do" list? Lose 5 pounds. Yup. For those of you who don't know me, personally, for about 10 years of my life I weighed the exact same. After we got married I definitely started to look more curvy (I was only 20 when we got married!), but liked it. Last week was the last straw, however, when I had to go buy bigger jeans because none of mine fit anymore! I only bought two pair because I'm not quite ready to give in to the next size! I'm only 10 pounds up from my wedding weight, six years ago....I figure 5 pounds will put me back in all my clothes. Although I'd love a new wardrobe--I'm not loving the love handles that have begun to muffin-top over my pants! Ben has already been following a disciplined health plan, so it's easy to mooch off his research and follow along! Ben's lost 25 pounds since last summer and has managed to keep it off--even through the shoulder injury, downtime. We are simply counting calories and making sure our activity weighs out the calorie mark. I love structure and spreadsheets, so I'm pretty excited to start the count. I even bought a cute journal for recording my daily log! I'll let you know how it goes...
  

• After perusing the adoption selection at two different bookstores--Borders and Family Christian--I quickly went and bought this:

• I am shocked by the selection...truly. Family Christian had one (one!!!) book on fostering and no books on adoption. Unreal! I have already begun to create a series in my mind...and I think I'll also swing into the children's market. My sister was telling me the other day, how annoying it is that she can't find a book that represents their family (black man, white woman, bi-racial child). I want our babies to read books that embrace culture and ethnicity; I want them to read books that relate to their family situation. I know there are some books that can be ordered through the agency, but I want to do a whole series like the "GiGi, God's Little Princess" series. Why not? The President, at the College I work at, has written several books and I've begun to tap into his expertise...after I give this book a read, I'll hopefully have a better idea on where to start!
  

• Other items on the list include working on babyheart's quilt and merging all my blog posts into a digital scrapbook.

So far, the waiting has been good. I'm completely at peace and drinking in this last leg of the journey.