Nick & Tina Adopting

We are still waiting for that magic call. You know, the one that says, “Hey Nick and Tina, you’ve been matched!” The call that means at last we can start our family. We have each other and now we even have a nutty, friendly poodle, but there’s still a special tiny place in our hearts that will only be filled with sticky fingers and tiny toes.

In the meantime, we are putting up our connection cards, which basically direct people to … here! So if you got one of our cards, hello! We welcome you to read around and learn more about us.

And now that political season is over, we will answer the phone more frequently, and hopefully one of those calls will be the special one.

~~ Tina & Nick

We met with our Social Worker Marcie this past Friday. This was our fourth renewal. It’s such a long road to meet Junior. Hopefully this is the year we hold our baby in our minds instead of our hearts.

~~ Nick and Tina

Sounds like you study your house and make pictures, right? Actually, it’s a bunch of reports and reporting to make sure you’re not crazy people. We have been through this before (this will be our fourth Home Study renewal) for our adoption, so we feel like old pros. Our Social Worker will be meeting us at our house. And she’ll get to meet  Bertie-the-wonder-poodle too.

Today, we are happy to have another guest blogger, Tarrie. We’ve both known her for more than 14 years and are both proud to call her our friend and “chosen family”.

~~ Tina & Nick

Hi, my name is Tarrie and I have known Tina and Nick since before they were married.   I can tell you that they work hard; they are bright and creative; and that they are good financial planners.

But what I really want you to know about them is that Tina and Nick have grown together in their marriage to build a warm and loving home. They bring everyone around them into their extended family that includes neighbors, co-workers, friends and family.  Everyone is welcome. Everyone is loved.

Nick has told you that he and Tina come from hard-working, practical, stock. I can tell you that they enjoy the domestic skills they use together. Whether baking cookies, planting pumpkins, raking leaves, or doing repairs, they see it all as part of making their home a safe and happy place for themselves and all who enter their world.

Throughout our friendship, I have known that Tina and Nick want very much to grow their family even further to include a child. They have room in their hearts and room in their lives to share that safe and happy home with a baby.

If you are pregnant, or know someone who is, please consider Tina and Nick as your baby’s adoptive parents.  They will make good and loving ones.

~Tarrie

~~~~~

If you’re pregnant, recently had a baby (know someone who has) and are interested in choosing us as your baby’s adoptive parents, we can be reached via email: nickandtinaadopt@gmail.com or you can call our 800 number: 866-246-6637.

Or, if you feel comfortable, you can contact our adoption agency, Adoptions Together, (they’re really nice, promise!): 800-439-0233, email them at info@adoptionstogether.org, or visit their webpage www.adoptionstogether.org and look at (or ask for) Nick and Tina’s profile.

(Nick plays Pop Up Peek-a-Boo with our friend’s child Liam)

Nick would make a great parent because he’s so creative and energetic. He’s resourceful and so intelligent. He’s got the energy to change diapers at 3 a.m. and then think about ways to teach Junior how to speak 3 different languages! He’s funny and a kid-magnet. Children, even the shyest ones gravitate to him. I think it’s because they know he’s kind. He’s so full of love too. I know it sounds corny, but he really is. Nick loves with his whole heart and nurtures those he loves.

Lately, whenever we are out and about, if he sees babies or children, he starts making funny faces at the children. They just love him and smile and or wave back. I can’t wait to see Nick holding our Junior and making goofy faces at him/her.

~~Tina

If you’re pregnant (know someone who is) and are interested in choosing us as your baby’s adoptive parents, we can be reached via email: nickandtinaadopt@gmail.com or you can call our 800 number: 866-246-6637.

Or, if you feel comfortable, you can contact our adoption agency, Adoptions Together, (they’re really nice, promise!): 800-439-0233, email them at info@adoptionstogether.org, or visit their webpage www.adoptionstogether.org and look at (or ask for) Nick and Tina’s profile.

There are as many trends in adoption as there are in blue jeans or purses. The latest one we’ve been told by our friends is “have a celebrity tweet about your desire to adopt”.

Naturally, we haven’t pursued this yet. I was mortified to ask our friends to network for us, but they did and did so with such enthusiasm that I was moved to tears. It’s the thought of asking a complete stranger to tweet about us. First of all, Twitter is kind of a wee mystery to us. I have a personal Twitter account, but mainly use it for “following” things I think are funny or interesting. I figure my personal life isn’t either one enough to tweet about 24/7! Who really is going to want to read about the next quilt I finish? Or that our poodle now can roll over? Or that Nick is reading William Faulkner again as a part of his summer decompression ritual? 

Then our conversation turned to, “if we were going to ask a celebrity to tweet for us, who would we ask?” The funny Mila Kunis? Politically savvy women? Would Steve Martin tweet for us? Who wouldn’t offend, but would reach birth mothers? Who would actually loan out their celebrity for 120 characters to help little old us? 

Needless to say, we haven’t pestered a superstar to spread their tweet for our cause. Close to our hearts, but probably low on their priority list.

In the meantime, we just ask our friends to pass along that we are still looking for a placement. Keep your ears open. Even if you’re out of state or know friends out of state, tell your friends. Tell folks about our blog, our FaceBook page, and agency. We have an 800 number now. We are open to Open adoption. We are ready to meet Junior. Twitter, however, may have to wait.

~~ Tina & Nick

If you’re pregnant (know someone who is) and are interested in choosing us as your baby’s adoptive parents, we can be reached via email: nickandtinaadopt@gmail.com or you can call our 800 number: 866-246-6637.

Or, if you feel comfortable, you can contact our adoption agency, Adoptions Together, (they’re really nice, promise!): 800-439-0233, email them at info@adoptionstogether.org, or visit their webpage www.adoptionstogether.org and look at (or ask for) Nick and Tina’s profile.

(Tina poses behind a pillowcase she made for Nick’s parents for Christmas. It’s not button-sewing, but it’s close!)

Both Tina’s parents and mine raised us with one particular principle: self reliance. Some things you should just be able to do yourself. That’s not to say that we could build our own house out of logs or anything, but we can and always have been able to do the basics.

Knowing how to do things like sew on a button, hem pants, fry an egg, bake a chicken, change a tire, check a car’s oil level, do laundry, balance a checkbook, mow the lawn, pick produce, load and run a dishwasher.

Being self-reliant makes you independent. It also makes you appreciate the value of things, and teaches you how to save money. We would like to pass this on to Junior.

We’re not sending Junior off to work in a saw mill or down a mine, but will step-by-step, when they can, teach them these things and give them the opportunity to do them on her or his own while growing up. Some things, of course, you just need to pay someone else to do, but so many things you can easily do for yourself. Tina and I often see people who can’t figure out basic things and constantly need someone to do them.

People are always coming to us to ask “do you know how to …” and we often happily help pull them out of the soup. But then we also show them how they can do it themselves next time. We want Junior to grow up knowing the basics, so she or he doesn’t need to wait around helpless for someone else to do them. If you grow up knowing how to do at least the basics, everything else becomes easier, and you gain responsibility.

It’s a learning curve, but it’s something we are both thankful for. If or when Junior becomes a brilliant neurosurgeon or President and chooses to pay someone else to do things, we’ll cheer him or her on. But in the meantime, Junior can learn the basics.

~~Nick



If you’re pregnant (know someone who is) and are interested in choosing us as your baby’s adoptive parents, we can be reached via email: nickandtinaadopt@gmail.com or you can call our 800 number: 866-246-6637.

Or, if you feel comfortable, you can contact our adoption agency, Adoptions Together, (they’re really nice, promise!): 800-439-0233, email them at info@adoptionstogether.org, or visit their webpage www.adoptionstogether.org and look at (or ask for) Nick and Tina’s profile.

(stock photo from stock.xchng by duchesssa)

(Editor’s note: Erin volunteered to write a guest blog entry for us and we couldn’t be happier, read on!)

If I could choose who my parents would be, you two would be at the top of the list.  There are a bunch of dead authors on the list, too, but for this post, I’ll concentrate on you, my friends.   When you grow up like I did with parents who are extremely outside of the norm of okay, it’s almost a full-time job to look at your friend’s parents and wonder, “Who would I be if I was theirs?  If my life wasn’t full of so much uncertainty, would I be happy and normal?”

I know for a fact that if I knew you as a child, I would have wanted you to take me home with you.  You have a softness about you that children need: a comfortable place to land when life knocks you around.  You have a love between you so grounded and real that all of your friends feel it when we’re around you.  A child needs to grow up in love like that and see an example of a happy marriage and friendship so they can reproduce that in their own relationships.  Now that is quite a gift to give any child.

I would have wanted to hitch a ride into your home because it’s always filled with art and music and good things to eat.  I would have known that you would show me that the world is a place full of wonder and I would have no boundaries on my imagination or dreams.  I would have known, even as a child, that you would encourage me to be me.  I see you guys now, always a new adventure or experience on the horizon, ready to learn new things and meet people from all walks of life and I would have wanted to go with you on all of your adventures, the three of us meeting the world together as a family!

So there you have it:  Even though I’m above the age of adoptability, I am officially asking to be unofficially adopted into your family.  It’s never too late to choose the perfect family and you two would be parents that are close enough to perfect for me.

~~Erin, friend of Tina & Nick, mother of two

If you’re pregnant (know someone who is) and are interested in choosing us as your baby’s adoptive parents, we can be reached via email: nickandtinaadopt@gmail.com or you can call our 800 number: 866-246-6637.

Or, if you feel comfortable, you can contact our adoption agency, Adoptions Together, (they’re really nice, promise!): 800-439-0233, email them at info@adoptionstogether.org, or visit their webpage www.adoptionstogether.org and look at (or ask for) Nick and Tina’s profile.

(In front of The Columbia Restaurant in Ybor City, Tampa, Florida, from when we road tripped down to Florida to visit our family and friends.)

My mother has such a huge sense of adventure. When I was young, every weekend, she found a reason to take a road trip somewhere in Florida. My older sister and I would hop into the station wagon at the crack of dawn and we never knew where we’d end up next. One day, it was “Let’s cross the state to see the other coast.” We went to Vero Beach that day.I remember the beach and the playground near the beach and having a blast. Another trip took us to the Panhandle, where the sands are silky smooth and squeaky too.

I like to think that both Nick and I have this same sense of adventure. We both enjoy going places and doing different things. We also can’t wait to share these trips and experiences with Junior. Watching the world unfold for a child is like seeing it as brand new.

~~Tina

If you’re pregnant and interested in choosing us as your baby’s adoptive parents, please call our agency, Adoptions Together, at 800-439-0233, and ask to see Nick and Tina’s profile (or go to www.adoptionstogether.org or email them at info@adoptionstogether.org). They’re super nice and available 24/7.

Growing up in Florida, Tina and I both took two things for granted that millions around the world covet: great beaches and Disney World. People from across the globe would come just to visit Disney, which we would visit at least once a year because Orlando was relatively close. Tina went more often since she had relatives visiting from Ohio and naturally they all wanted to visit Disney World.

Tina and her family camped there annually. They had their favorite loop in Fort Wilderness and would pitch a tent, enjoying both nature and Disney. Tandem bike rides one day, Space Mountain the next.

Of course, together, we would go there on bargin days, and usually pack in a PBJ lunch instead of the expensive concessions (except for the must-have Mickey Bar which was frozen so hard you had to chew it for a while, which kept us quiet and our parents happy). But we knew all the rides and the songs, and when to see what parade, and where to seek shelter before the afternoon rains set in for an hour, and where to be for the night-time closing fireworks. We grew up with Main Street U.S.A. (and the Electrical Parade), and the Swiss Family Robinson Tree House and all the different versions of Tomorrowland. We knew that once you got off Pirates of the Caribbean or The Haunted Mansion, to run as quickly as you could to get in line and go on it again. We knew that when it got hot out to go on It’s a Small World or the Tiki Bird Room because they were indoors and so were the lines. And as we got older (and snarkier) we noticed all the families there with tired Mom and Dad and the delighted kids waiting to go on the Mad Tea Party (spinning teacup ride, Tina’s favorite) or to take a picture with Mickey or Goofy or Baloo. We saw the utter joy of a kid receiving a Mouse Ears beanie with their name embroidered on the back like it was the best thing they’d ever had. We realized that what makes Disney World fun for adults is the fun that children have there. We intend to visit Florida with Junior often (the grandparents are there already), and can’t wait to take Junior to Disney World and impress her or him with how Mom and Dad don’t even need a map to navigate the park!  We don’t think we’ll ever smile any bigger than when holding up Junior in front of Cinderella’s Castle, and we can’t wait to take that picture. 

~~Tina & Nick

If you’re pregnant and interested in choosing us as your baby’s adoptive parents, please call our agency, Adoptions Together, at 800-439-0233, and ask to see Nick and Tina’s profile (or go to www.adoptionstogether.org or email them at info@adoptionstogether.org). They’re super nice and available 24/7.

As we wait for Junior to find his/her way to us, it’s hard not to see all the families around us. I’m reminding Hubby that we’re still “paper pregnant” and soon we will meet Junior. In the meantime, we’re happy for all the support our friends, family, and extended network of all y’all (as we’d say in the South) have been giving us. Waiting is the hardest part. 

Happy Father’s Day too all Papas, Dads, Daddys, etc., out there, whether you’ve already adopted, a birth father, waiting, or whatever your situation is. 

~~Tina

We’re still here! We’re getting fingerprinted again on Friday. Which begs the question: do they think our fingerprints change from year to year? Ah well. If it’s what we need to do to meet Junior, it’s what we need to do. 

~~Tina & Nick

As wonderful a day as Mother’s Day can be, I’m putting it out there for you to remember those for whom it’s a painful day. I know at least two gals who lost their mothers. I’m lucky enough to have my Mom in my life still and an amazing step-mother-in-law too.

But Mother’s Day for an adoptive Mama in waiting is hard. I’m trying very hard to keep hope alive that our baby is out there. Maybe this will be my last Mother’s Day without a child? *hopes* Maybe we’ll have our baby before Father’s Day?

~~Tina