A journey of a 1,000 miles...

...begins with a single step, as the wisdom goes. We're somewhere on our adoption path, but we don't know exactly how far we've traveled. One of the challenges of adoption is that it could happen at any time. While this is exciting, it can also be frustrating. Are we near, are we far? There's no way to know exactly which step we're on or how many miles we will travel on our journey before we get there.

Luckily, there are some ways for us to keep ourselves on track. Susan loves crafts and has been keeping busy with various projects during our wait. For the last several weeks she has been working on a cross stitch birth record for our future child. 

Susan working on the first of the ten blocks. It's the number 1 with a bunny.

This project is also a long journey, but one with clear indications of the progress made. The finished piece will be 12" x 9". There are 6 letter and 4 number blocks around the border. Each of the 10 blocks is a solid 40 x 40 stitches or a total of 1600 stitches per block. The whole piece will eventually have about 18,400 stitches, not including the back stitches to outline elements in the piece and write out our child's name, date of birth, and birth weight.

A work in progress! You can just make out the bunny.

As you can see, Susan hasn't yet finished even 1 block and still has a long way to go. Sometimes we ask ourselves which will happen first, finishing the cross stitch or adopting our child? Of course we hope to adopt first. We know if that happens first this means it will probably be years before the cross stitch gets finished, but we're okay with that. Working on the cross stitch while we wait is almost meditative and helps keep Susan calm and focused. We both look at her steady progress and remind ourselves we're on way and we will get there.

Zoo Alphabet Birth Record designed by Cathy Heck, www.dimensions-crafts.com