Tuesday, June 24, 2008

learning to trust HIM

I love this picture in both color and b&w
(if you haven't used Picasa you should try it. You can change your pictures color and add edges, like in these two pics it's kind of a fuzzy edge and you can also make collages)

You know I just wanted to follow up on my post about God answering our prayers. He did answer our prayers and he did so very specifically.......BUT.....it was on HIS terms and it required that we take a leap of faith and trust HIM!! And I wish I could say that was easy to do but sometimes I have a hard time with that because I am such a planner.



Prior to reviewing any files we had created a check list of special needs that we were prepared for or open to. And when Erin called us on that day with a file to review it was of a special need that we had not put on our checklist. Our lil sis' sn is mild cerebral palsy and honestly when Erin said that it scared us to death. Before agreeing to review the file we googled it and read what we could. Then we agreed to review the file. God had sent us our sign but oh my did He throw a wrench into this whole decision!! I am type A, prepare, prepare, prepare....so I spent ALOT of time reading everything I could and honestly by decision time I was on information overload and exhausted. James on the other hand never had fear and said he was fine with mild cp and was ready to move forward. He is usually not so quick to make decisions. He was firm and confident. So you know by now that in the end we did make the decision to move forward with adopting lil sis and obviously we couldn't be more happy and more excited. Once we said yes I felt total peace with our decision.



What we do know about lil sis is that she has met alot of her milestones, which is a great sign. She can roll over, sit up by herself, grasp with both hands, can stand against her activity table, feed herself cracker or hold her own bottle. This was written about her when she was 10-12 months old. So the fact that she is doing all those things is great. If you would like to know more about mild cp this link gives a pretty short explanation http://www.cerebralpalsysource.com/Types_of_CP/mild_cp/index.html , just scroll down to where you see mild cp.



Of course we won't really know anything until we can get to her and get her back to the US to be evaluated. We will just continue to pray that she is being loved and nurtured until we can bring her home.


Saturday, June 21, 2008

Ask and you shall receive....

Working on 'lil sis's room

You know as we started this wonderful process of adoption again we did so after studying China's new changes (and there have been many, especially for the sn route), and researching many agencies. It was really a confusing time and trying to figure out when to start the process was hard, when you think about travel and money and planning for time off, etc. So after spending endless hours studying this whole new process I came to the conclusion that it may take us 3-6 months to get matched through the special needs program and so goodness we better get started. So on May 15th we sent in our application to the same agency we used with Taylor and began the process. I had started praying specifically for our child, that God would have his hand in this whole thing and guide us and our child to each other. With so many changes in place I also specifically prayed that it would be great to have a sign, you know a big sign, that it would be so obvious to us that we would know when they showed us a file that yes this is our child we are looking at. I had also been daydreaming of names and had starting looking on name websites. I wanted a special name, because Taylor was named after his daddy, James Taylor and so being that he was named after his dad it would only be right that our next child have a family name or a special name. For a girl name, I was brought back to childhood memories of the story of my birth that my mom always told me. You see I was the second girl born to my mom and dad. My sister, who btw took after my mom was born with brown hair and big brown eyes and the prettiest complexion. So of course when my mom was pregnant with me she thought I would have brown hair and brown eyes like my big sis and so she had picked out my name and I was to be Rachel LeighAnn. Well God had other plans for my genetics and I took after my dad's side of the family and was born with red/orange hair, blue eyes, and a very, very fair complexion. So once my mom saw me all she could say was that is not Rachel LeighAnn. I just didn't fit what she had in mind and so they changed the name they had chosen for me to Jennifer Michelle. Well in 2005 at the very young age of 54 my mother passed away unexpectedly. She never got to see me become a mother. So as I started daydreaming about girl names I thought well if we get a baby girl from China she is going to have brown hair and brown eyes, so we can name her Rachel Lian and I will love getting to tell her the story of my name and her name and it will give me the chance to talk about my mother, her grandmother. So back to my prayers about our new child, as I was praying about needing a sign, you know a big sign, I thought to myself you know a good sign would be if she had the name Lian(and I even thought of it in that spelling) and we would know she was our Rachel Lian. Well when Erin called us 9 days ago, God had answered my prayers and given us our sign. We are so blessed and so thankful. We have her precious pictures up on our computer and each day my heart just gets fuller and fuller of love for this little face looking back at me. I am excited, and nervous and I already feel as though I am in nesting mode. I just need to be doing something for her and since I can't physically hold her or see her or comfort her I still have this need deep inside to do stuff for her. So Friday she got a new dress, Saturday she got a new dress, and also Saturday we started cleaning out her future room. It gives me a little relief from this great need I have to care for her. And if you haven't done the math yet, no it did not take 3-6 months to get matched, it took less than 1 month.



Friday, June 20, 2008

Big Fun this week

Taylor swimming at his friend Ty's house today, he has on a floatie swim suit, floaties, goggles and a water gun in his hand. This is the first time that he has swam out independently.

Taylor had VBS all week and as you see he was a builder.
Swinging at Ty's house with another friend Ally.


One of those special moments...

James came into the kitchen yesterday morning as he was getting ready to leave for work and he is hugging me and singing some anniversary song and the whole time Taylor is in the kitchen with his pj's still on pushing his lawnmower around, "cutting the grass". Then Taylor says "whoo" (like I am tired), and he says "I go take showa" and he goes and stands in the corner and "washes off". I am so thankful to be a mama!! I am also so thankful that James and I just had our 15 year anniversary. I got so lucky when I met James. We are total opposites and I don't know how it would work any other way, because I need someone to balance me and he does.

We met with our SW yesterday on our anniversary, which gave us a excuse to go to Nashville and out to eat for our anniversary. We ended up at Carraba's, we had only been there once. It was a great dinner, our food was excellent. I'm not sure it was romantic but very good!! We dropped Taylor off at James parents house before we went and as we were leaving he says "don't be long Ma", "don't be long Ba". He also told us he missed us when we got back.

OK, I had to do it while we were out last night. I bought something for our baby girl. There are a couple of very nice consignment shops close to where we ate and actually I wanted to peak in to see if they had a play kitchen but while there I found a adorable little dress and shirt. I bought a 18 month, although today after studying her size I probably should've bought a 12 month, even though she will be 22-24 months when we get her. She is registering at about 5% on the US charts for weight and is not even on the US chart for height. On the Chinese growth charts she is only in the 25th percentile for both. So she is small. You wouldn't know it in her pictures because she has the chubbiest cheeks. Too cute.

We are hard at work getting paperwork done as fast as we can so we can bring her home as soon as we can!! I can't wait!

Monday, June 16, 2008

Excitement is in the air............

Well we had an exciting last 4 days!! Our agency called us at 7:30 am on Thursday morning and had a file of a little girl for us to review. So we decided to persue adopting her and sent in a Letter of Intent to adopt her on Friday afternoon. Maybe one day when I have time I will sit down and describe for you the stress that we went through in those two days but not today. We now wait on China to send us a PA, which is a piece of paper saying they have approved us to adopt her!! That should take 3-6 weeks. Because of privacy rules we won't share much information yet or pics on the blog until we get official word that we can, of course if you see me in person then I will definitely have her picture with me. But trust me, she's a cutie. She is 15 months old now and we hope to get to her before her second birthday in March. We showed Taylor her picture on Sunday night and told him that she would be his baby sister and he gave the picture a hug!!

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Mommy and Daddy time

Having some daddy time on a weekend when mommy had to work.
The boys love to fish!

Arts and crafts with mommy

We are making progress on our paperwork. Taylor even got his passport picture made today. We all 3 had physicals in the last two weeks. I got to use the extra birth certificates and marriage certificate I had from Taylor's adoption paperwork, so that will save a few dollars, not to mention the time of ordering and waiting on them. We have our home study update next week and as opposed to last time we only have to do one visit ("update") instead of 4. It's still ALOT of paperwork but it is definitely easier the second time around.