Adoption Fatigue?

I stayed home from work today.  I couldn't sleep last night and felt awful this morning.  I was in bed all night, wide awake, with a slight sensation of anxiety.  For whatever reason, I could not stop replaying a scenario in my head in which we could not adopt either Elsa or Asegre (we had to choose) because our agency had failed to realize that the kids would be sharing a room until after we had accepted our referral and now they would not let us proceed as planned.  This is NOT AN ISSUE TO WORRY ABOUT.  I know this.  I knew it last night.  We specifically asked early on in the process, and both AAI and our homestudy agency told us that they were fine with kids in our requested age range sharing a room due to their young age.  Brent and I do not plan on renting this house for too many years beyond this, despite how much we love it, and will move up to a 3 bedroom in our next move.

Regardless, it seems the adoption is starting to stress me out a bit.  (Don't worry - I am keeping my promise - no whining - just processing) I have heard from many people that have adopted before us that this stage, the stage where you know who your children are and are just waiting for everything to fall into place so they can come home, is the hardest.  For some reason I did not think that it would be for me.  I thought the waiting to find out who they were would be the most challenging - I hate not knowing.  I just want to know immediately; waiting doesn't make the information any sweeter to me.  But then again, we didn't really wait to find out who our children were at all.  The day after our homestudy was complete our agency told us about Elsa and we began the journey of learning about her and, shortly after, Asegre.

I guess there must be some sort of subconscious feeling that just leaves you uneasy until they come home.  The "what ifs" creep in at night, even when you feel comfortable with it all during the day, and you can't sleep.  Guess I'll have to just accept that this is a very normal part of the process and somehow figure out how to make sure I can sleep.

I do have to admit that the short timeline we have found ourselves working with has put the pressure on.  I learned late last week that we need to get the kids' Welcome Bags put together and send them to Washington state by September 10th so the director of AAI can take them with her on her next trip to Ethiopia and give them to Elsa and Asegre (and let them know that we are their new family).  This set in motion a frantic series of events, all with the goal of being able to take a picture of the kids' room so they can start to imagine their impending lives in Ventura:

• Brent had to finish up the chicken coop (which needed to be done anyway as the chickens had grown A LOT) so we could move the chickens out of their kiddie pool in the garage and some of our old furniture out of the kids' room and into the garage.  
• We bought new twin beds and mattresses from a somewhat creepy guy on Craigslist (the beds have never been used though and we good a really good deal).  
• I went to IKEA down in L.A. and bought bedding - super cute and inexpensive.
• We started painting their room on Sunday.  We chose some great, bright colors (torquoise and with a an orange stripe on the bottom- I'm not one for pastel kids rooms), but realized after the fact that the colors we chose are horrible to work with.  We painted all day on Sunday and more last night.  We have put 4 layers of the orange on the walls now and it still doesn't look perfect, but I think we're done because we're out of paint.  I'll see what Brent says when he gets home tonight.  
• While we were waiting for the paint to dry on Sunday, we gathered photos for their photo books and uploaded them on Snapfish.  
• Hopefully, we can pull the tape, set up their beds and snap a picture to include in their photo albums for their welcome bags.

In the meantime, we asked our friend Linsey, who is a graphic designer, to design custom t-shirts for the kids.  The t-shirts will be included in the welcome bags and the kids will wear them to announce to their orphanages that they have an adoptive family.  We gave Lins very little time to work with, but nonetheless, she came up with an awesome design!  She even included a photo of Buster and Lola in the design.  The shirts are scheduled to arrive on September 2nd.  Check out the shirt design below.

We also need to write short letters to the kids and find a couple of small toys, but that shouldn't be too hard.

And that's just the welcome bags.  There is so much more we need to do to get ready.  Not to mention, we still need to raise some more money for our plane tickets to Ethiopia - our shorter timeline is definitely going to make that a more of a challenge than we had anticipated.  We had originally thought we would have an extra 6 months or so while waiting for a referral to raise extra money.  I am currently working on a grant application for a grant from an organization that tries to make the up front costs of adoption more reasonable - keep your fingers crossed on that one.

So, yes, there is stress and I must be feeling fatigued.  However, all I have to do is look at the kids' pictures and I know its worth it.  I know that they are our kids and that we are supposed to be together.  I know that it will all come together as it is supposed to - it always does (I just need to repeat this mantra to myself at 3 AM).

(Sorry for the babbling nature of this post - I am still pretty sleep deprived.)