This journey of adoption is like a rollercoaster...sometimes so exciting and then the next minute downright scary.

The things you do when you're hoping to adopt:

1) Buy newborn diapers and store it in your closet, just in case a call comes at any time.

2) Move your youngest child into a big bed, so that the crib is available to be set up at any point. Store the rocker in your master bedroom, because what's the point of moving it down to the basement if you are going to need it soon. Fingers crossed right?!

3) Tons of one-on-one time with the kiddos, so that your youngest will be ready to be a big sister instantly and your oldest knows he's still so important.

4) Analyze over and over again what a birth mother might not like about you...this is the worst part.

5) Check all of our adoption profiles multiple times a week, if not daily. Maddening.

6) Keep yourself as busy as possible, for us that means traveling, just so you can be distracted and not think about the adoption every waking minute.

7) Casually slip into any conversation that we are hoping to adopt and to keep us in mind if they hear of anyone hoping to place.

8) Not so casually slip into any conversation that we are hoping to adopt and to keep us in mind if they hear of anyone hoping to place.

9) Be completely vulnerable by sharing some of the most intimate details of your life with everyone on social media. This one might the hardest. But hey...it only takes one person to know a person, who knows a person...etc.

10) Pray at every chance you can that "our baby and birth mom" will find us or that we will find them. Hope is all we have right now, and we are clinging to it with every ounce of courage we have.