The funny thing about adopting, rather than being pregnant

When you're pregnant, you know when everything's going to happen. Right away you have an idea about when your baby's birthday will be - and when he or she will join your family. At 18-20 weeks you can find out if you're having a boy or girl (if you choose to find out). You know how long you have to buy a crib and toys and get a nursery ready. And you have a general idea of how big your baby could be when it comes - and at the very least you know how old it will be.

When you're adopting, you don't get that. You don't really know when everything's going to happen, or what your baby will be like when it joins your family. It's most likely that the process will take a long time - years even. But it's also possible that it could happen much sooner than expected.

So how do you prepare? So far we'd decided that it would be better not to have lots of baby stuff around the house, reminding us that we don't have one. But then we thought about it a little more, and whenever it happens, it'll happen, and very quickly. When we get our proposal we'll have just 3-6 weeks to get to South Africa to pick up our child, and that's not much time to make travel arrangements and set up a nursery and get everything a baby needs. So? We shopped!

We're now the proud owners of a travel system, pack'n'play, and swing. We're keeping them in their boxes and storing them until the time comes, but we agreed that since the exact stuff we've been looking at was ridiculously on sale, it only made sense to buy it and store it, than to wait a few months and pay full price.

I have to tell you - it's pretty exciting to see these boxes of baby things in our living room. I managed to fight off the urge to get a sleeper with ears. And the little socks with little rattle duckies on them. Yeah. My baby's going to have such awesome crap. :D