Our new normal

Today was my second day back to work and Em's 2nd day at daycare. All the teachers love her (of course!) and say that she's such a good baby. I am enjoying being back at work and getting back into what will be my new routine. We are all still making adjustments, but it seems to get better each day. Each day we are learning more about parenting and more about our beautiful daughter. Thanks to all our friends & family who have given us such great advice!!

Since the last blog, we have traveled to IL, IN & MO. Em is quite the pro at riding in the car, sleeping in the car, feeding in the car.....actually she is a pretty good traveling companion. We stop for her to eat, we get to stretch our legs, then she promptly returns to uninterrupted slumber. (at least that's how it goes most of the time, she does cry & fuss on occassion) :) Our families threw us incredible Dr. Seuss showers and they helped us fill Em's closet with so many cute clotes from 3 mo - 18 mo!!! As well as give us many much needed baby items. Our latest roadtrip was to Missouri to attend court. That was a huge milestone as we are now legal guardians of our little girl!!! There were several other families there at the same time for the same reason and it was nice to chat with them for a while about their experiences.

She will be 2 mo. on Friday so she still isn't doing a whole lot of "fun" stuff, but we have gotten some really cute smiles. (whether it's gas or hiccups coming on, I don't care - she still has a cute smile!) She continues to be a good eater and boy she knows how to let us know when she's hungry!!! Em is also starting to sleep longer at night and we have been blessed with the timing of it all!! Just as I'm ready to go back to work, she started sleeping until about 5:30-6am (with no waking up from about 9:30-10pm!). Perfect timing! She also really enjoys bath time and getting outside in her stroller for walks and she has truly found her thumb!! (sorry for the next part Aunt Patti...) She loves to suck (LOUDLY!) on her hand and her thumb. We have tried repeatedly trading the thumb for the paci, but to no avail. So, we let her go and let her do her thing. If it's thumbsucking or fussing...I'm all for the thumbsucking. Gotta maintain your sanity somehow, right??

Below are a few pictures of our little darlin'!

Love,
S,T&E


She's smiling because she's excited for "school"!!

The dogs adore Miss Em!

One Month!

Our little girl is one month old today! How time flies!! I'll start you off with a cute 1-month old picture...
She has been a wonderful addition to our family! For the most part, she is a very content baby - except for when she is hungry. She doesn't really do much yet, but we are expecting things to "pick up" soon! Probably right as I'm going back to work she will start to get "fun". :) Daddy likes to read her Dr. Seuss books and Mommy likes to take her for walks on these not-so-hot days.

On our Ukraine adoption front....all I can say is God had a hand in our adoption of Emmy. Just last week we get an email from the agency saying they are closing their doors. Gee...wonder where our money went that we paid to have our dossier registered???!! Not to the facilitator, that's for sure! No wonder we have been getting the runaround from them. We are "exploring our options" as far as what to do with this. Suggestions??? :)

Love,
S,T & E

Adjusting

We have been home for a few days and seem to be adjusting well. Truman went back to work today, so this is my first full day alone with Em. We'll have a good day, I'm sure! :) Our day is about to start with her first trip to the pediatrician here. I'm anxious to see how she's grown in these last 3 weeks. The dogs are taking to our new family addition famously. We thought our older dog would be more of the protector of Emmy, but it turns out our younger lab is the mothering one. Go figure! I did get some CUTE pics of them together that I posted below. Gotta get the little one up and dressed! TTFN!!

Home Sweeeeeeet Home!

We arrived home as a family last night around 9:30pm. It feels so good to be home & back with the doggies! The dogs were so excited to see us; they looked so much bigger to us!! They were also very curious about this new little person who is taking over their room. They are showing their love by showering her with kisses on her feet, hands & nose. She doesn't seem to mind so that is a good sign!! She'll be crawling & pulling tails & ears in no time at all. Our lab, Venus, loves to sit on the bed next to the rocking chair and watch us feed Emmy. One of these days we'll get a picture of that and post it.

So, a little backstory on how this came about....Towards the end of May, one of Susan's aunts sent an email asking if we were interested in a possible domestic adoption. YES, YES, YES!! We tried not to get our hopes up too much because we didn't have all the details at first. After ongoing communication with the birth mother, we quickly realized that this was in fact the path she wanted to go. We quickly set forth getting lawyers in KY & MO, a social worker in MO and getting our homestudy updated. Yes, we had to use our current international agency for that, but it turned out OK. They also required us to take another online parenting education "class". What a crock - because we had already taken the same "class" for the international program. Oh well - water under the bridge now.....We traveled to St. Louis over 4th of July to meet the birth mother and everything went so well. It's like God hand-picked us for each other. Everything with this process went so smoothly, we couldn't have planned it better. We got the call early on 7/12 that she was in labor and we quickly finished some things up at home and headed out. (Keep in mind that she was originally due on 7/21, but was planning on inducing on 7/16). Somewhere in IL we get the call that E.K.C. was born and we were overjoyed!!!! We were able to visit birth mom & baby in the hospital and then b.m. brought E.K.C. to us at my aunt's house on 7/14 -- four days before my b'day. What a gift!!!! We have wanted this for so very long and it's still unreal that we have our little girl!!!

I hope we are able to keep up with this blog and keep you all posted on how our little girl is doing. Next up for us, adoption wise, is to terminate our contract for Ukraine and then do two post placements for E.K.C and finalize this adoption in 3 months. OH - and we will have to travel back to MO for a court hearing in a month or so. Stay tuned in, I know we'll have a lot in store for us over the next few years!!

Love to all,
S, T & E

Can we go home yet??

Nope, we are not home yet. Seems we are getting conflicting information from our lawyers, their assitant, and our social worker. Much like with international adoption, a judge has to make the adoption "legal" and assign us parental rights. We thought that was done last week and now we are finding out that maybe it hasn't been done by the judge?? Hopefully we can get some answers today. We have our home state attny working on it as we speak.
Em continues to be a good baby! But she is ready to get home to her two doggies - as are her mommy & daddy!!! We'll leave you with a couple cute pics!

Love,
S, T & E

Things are going GOOD!!

This is my favorite picture - when I comb her hair after a bath, it naturally goes into this mohawk!

Emmy continues to be a good baby! She had lots of visitors this weekend and they all LOVED her!!! Of course, why would't they? She's a doll. She sleeps really well and eats pretty good. She had her first mall outing yesterday and enjoyed being pushed around in the stroller. We think we will be able to go home on Friday. We are missing our dogs & our house. All three of us in one hotel room is getting a little old!

Love,
S&T

The reason we haven't blogged in a while...

Isn't she precious?? So...about the time we began having issues with our Ukraine adoption and our agency we got a phone call from one of my aunt's who knew of a possible domestic adoption. We will blog about some details later, but the end result is that our daughter was born on 7/12/08 and we are in the home stretch of our adoption journey. We only had to travel out of state, not out of country. We will likely be away from home for another week or so. Words cannot accurately express how God touched this situation. I didn't realize an adoption could honestly go this smoothly, we truly have been blessed 10X over. Thank you to our family & friends who were so very supportive throughout all this!!

Love from two very happy, excited & tired parents!!
Su & Tru