Visions of little bear dancing in our heads?

Some of you may be wondering if we've gone a little nuts. No worries, we don't actually have visions of a little bear dancing in our heads, at least not most days. However, there's not a day that passes without us thinking about our plans for a child once he or she becomes part of our family.

Sometimes we wonder how deeply other parents-to-be envision their child's life before he or she arrives on the scene. We're sure this must vary. After all, every person is different and there's probably as many answers as there are parents to ask. Surely if we asked enough people we'd likely find some parents planning to experience life with their child in the moment as it unfolds, while others think in great detail about the life they will share together.

It seems the longer you wait, the more likely you'll be to fully imagine life with your child. This certainly seems to be the case as we wait to become adoptive parents. Adoption can be a very quick process, even quicker than 9 months of pregnancy. In many cases though, adoption tends to be a longer road to parenthood for many people like us. After all, if we had gotten pregnant when we first began our adoption journey, our child would be well over a year old by now. Our journey has become an extended period to think about many aspects of life with the son or daughter we we hope to adopt. It seems like we've been involved in a very detailed process of imagining our child's life ever since we began drafting our adoption letter back in November 2010.

Some of the many books we've pinned to "Kid's Books We Love" 

This developed vision is largely because when we considered the task of drafting an adoption letter, we decided we most wanted to show the type of life a child would have with us. We opted to talk in our letter about specific places and experiences we planned to share with our future child including a couple particular book titles, "Winnie the Pooh" and "The Velveteen Rabbit". Our vision has become even more detailed as we spread the word about our adoption plans through social media channels like Facebook and Pinterest. We've had a chance to show everyone books that catch our eye, our favorite animals, local places to go with kids, and many activities we think will be fun for us to do as a family.

Sometimes this process isn't easy and makes us sad about what we're missing since we're still not parents yet. For instance it can be hard to reflect on kid's books when we have no idea when we'll be reading them to our own child. However, the process of imagining life with our future child has been beneficial in so many ways.

1. We hope our vision will help a potential birthmother to learn about us and the life we plan for her child if she chooses to place him or her for adoption with us. 
2. Sharing our vision helps us to stay positive and keeps us focused on the future. 
3. It's a great opportunity to recall and rediscover what we loved as kids. (And lots of fun too!) 
4. Developing our vision is also a great learning experience. While the wait to adopt is longer than we hoped, we have learned so much about kids, parenthood, adoption, and much more. 

Susan loved the Little House books as a kid, but will our child? 

"The Wind in the Willows" was one of Mitch's childhood favorites (and still is).

It might seem like our vision is a required list of some sort - to read, to do, to make, or to buy. As we develop our vision, we're the first to recognize it is not set in stone. How could it be? There is one key person missing from the process and that is the child who will ultimately join our family. As we think, dream, post, tweet, and pin, we are keenly aware that we have no idea whether this child will be a boy or girl and no clue as to what his or her interests will be.

We love animals, but Mitch particularly likes the takins...

and Susan likes the red river hogs, but which animals will our child like best?

The real adventure will begin when we become parents and explore the world together. We'll find out which animals, books, toys, etc. are most interesting to our child. Discovering places and sharing new experiences together as a family is when the fun will begin and we understand (and hope) that our vision for the future will shift as we go. This will be the best part and the one we are looking forward to the most. There may be a few things we've pinned on Pinterest that we might miss sharing with our son or daughter, but we know there will be something even more meaningful for us to experience together instead.