Happy New Year! We are ready for 2013!

I need to get better at this blog thing.  Most people I see do an entry everyday, or at least once a week.  With the impending arrival of 2 new children, I highly doubt that will be achievable.  Regardless, a lot has changed and happened since out last entry.

Baby in the Belly: Jana is now over 28 weeks.  We have gone through a few hurdles over the past few weeks but are happy to say things are looking good.  Jana's placenta has been, shall we say, not so well positioned and since the 9 week ultrasound at a lower position in the uterus, one that is not ideal for a natural delivery.  With such, we had to have a follow up ultrasound at 20 weeks and again this week.  Can't say I was disappointed, as we were able to see baby in the belly moving all around in there.  With a sigh of relief, we got the results which showed the placenta is moving higher and higher which will allow for our planned home and natural birth!  With that worked out, we have started the planning for the birth and are excited that my mom and Jana's aunts Bev and Steph will be coming to help.

Baby in Ethiopia:  With such good news there is some I guess you could say "not good news" in relation to the adoption.  Since Jana is getting later into the pregnancy, we are approaching the time where she would not be able to travel to Ethiopia for court if we were to receive our referral in the coming months.  As you may have noticed from previous posts, things have really picked up.  We are now number 18, and move nearly 5-6 or 7 spots each month.   With these numbers and with the flexibility of our in referral criteria, we could easily be looking at receiving a referral in the coming month or two.  With this conflict, we had to go "on hold" until early summer at which time we will then go back at on the waiting list (probably at that time will be number 1) and hopefully quickly get a referral and start to next step of the process.  This would put us traveling to Ethiopia as early as August if all goes smoothly. 

Can't say we really know what would have been best here.  Part of us wanted to have the adoption finished before the arrival of biological baby but were scared to think of going from a family of 3 to a family of 5 so quickly.  It is surely disappointing to have to delay the process as this also means we have to update our home study and other paperwork, but this also gives us the time to focus on Baby in the belly, get settled into being a family of 4, then work on number 5.

A special thanks......

to all those that help make our garage sale fundraiser a huge success. We raised a lot of money and are so thankful for all those that helped!  For those that don't know, Jana and I had a humungous garage sale last weekend to help raise funds for our pending adoption.  Friends, family, strangers, neighbors all donated items to the sale making it one of the largest garage sales I have even been a part of let alone seen.

Jana and I wanted to take a moment a once again thank all those that contributed item to the sale:

Courtney Festa

Amy Robinson

MaryAnn Lock

Rich and Bonnie Wallace

Ola Plaskon

Lynn and Lane Esden

Lynn Olmsted

Kevin O'Brien

Sherri Sartin

Our neighbors Heather and Lonnie for the use of their tables

Kerrie Ireland

Over the last month all these people have donated boxes of items that we were able to sell this past weekend.  Initially, Jana and I thought that this was going to be a bust.  At most we might get a few people to donate some small items but it turned out to be an episode of hoarders in our garage the days leading up to the sale. Computers, furniture, housewares, linens, clothes, toys, bikes, fish tanks, movies, books all made up the sale.  From 7:30am until 2pm we had people constantly in and out of our garage. By the end of the day, 3/4 of the items donated and in the sale were gone!

Although we were of course excited about how much money we raised we also enjoyed watching people happy and grateful for their purchases.  Many people from a variety of walks of life benefited from the donations we received and were able to take home with them.

Seeing as this was to benefit our adoption Jana had the great idea of designing shirts for each of us to wear highlighting our adoption efforts (see photo below).  Many people noticed and would ask what the shirt were for which sparked some great conversations about adoption and our personal story with complete strangers throughout the day. 

.............as a side note we moved up a total of 8 spots last month making our new waiting list number 23!!!  When I first saw that number I was in shock.  With the impending arrival of baby in the belly in March it looks like our referral could come somewhere around that same time if it continues to move at this rate.  Of course this would pose challenges for Jana to travel to Ethiopia and thus delay our acceptance of a referral, but I guess we will worry about that when we get there.   That topic can take up a whole nother blog.  In short, we are taking it one day at a time.   :)

 

Now there is something to talk about!!!!

Hello All-

A lot has happened since our last blog update.  We have a new number on the waiting list, enjoyed an amazing vacation in Great Britain, and just recently found out the sex of the baby in the belly!

As of November 1st we moved up 4 spaces to number 31.  Our agency has had some changes in personnel, namely the person that oversees the Ethiopian program at the agency quit and was replaced by someone even better. Since this change, we have been getting detailed updates on our progress, as well as general information on referrals given out during that month to others on the waiting list.  There was a lot of action this month with over 11 referrals total, some from the HIV + list, some sibling referrals (meaning that siblings were adopted together), as well as 4 healthy referrals (which is why we moved up 4 places on our list).  It was pretty exciting to see all this movement since the last few months have been slow. Jana and I feel rejuvenated seeing the progress.

After receiving this great news (we got the e mail while waiting at the airport in Chicago), we were off to the Great Britain for our trip of a life time.  We had a "bloody" good time for the 11 days we were there and felt grateful we found the opportunity to have this experience.  I think the trip could best be described as Pride and Prejudice meets Harry Potter meets National Lampoons Vacation (at times).  Some thought we were crazy for trucking along a 3.5 year old, and at times during the trip I found myself second guessing our decision, but I more often I found myself grateful to have Callie there and to see such amazing places and history.  Highlights of our trip include Chatsworth House (location for many scenes from Pride and Prejudice 2006), Stannage Edge, Edinburgh-Harry Potter Coffee shop, Warner Brothers Harry Potter studio tour, Jane Austen tour and London.  All in all, Callie was a very good girl and I believe enjoyed her time as well (she keeps asking to go back to the Hotel).

We have only been home for 2 days and are already back to the bump and grind.  It was hard to leave such a beautiful place and a vacation in general, but we were excited for our scheduled ultrasound the day following our return.  All is good in "baby in the belly land."  SHE, that's right SHE is growing well and all the right parts are in all the right places.  We are excited to be having another girl although went into the appointment with no preference one way or the other.  There are certainly pros and cons to each side of the coin here, but we find it comforting to be venturing back into more familiar territory, not to mention not having to buy a whole new wardrobe, bedroom set etc. 

So now we can let the rush begin.  I think back to where we were this time when Jana was pregnant with Callie.  We had the name, we picked the furniture, heck we might have even painted her room by now, I don't remember.  Don't they say the second time around you just go with the flow?  I guess that has certainly been the case with us.  My parents come into town in two weeks so we plan on putting them to work if they can find the time.  A new room for Callie is needed and we will begin the prep work in the new room for our first new addition.  Jana has also been busy putting together details for our upcoming garage sale to help raise funds for adoption costs.  Many are surprised to hear the expense of adoption.  We hope this garage sale will help (even a little) in this area.  It is scheduled for December 1st!

Eric and Jana

adoptions, ultrasounds, and baby-moons....o yea!

Hmmm...there has been no movement on the adoption list over the last month.  This was to be expected but it is of course disappointing.  Courts in Ethiopia close during the rainy season thus putting a huge stop of the adoption process this time of the year.  We were told by our agency that they expect things to pick up in the coming weeks as the courts are expected to open, so keep those fingers crossed!  As of right now we are number 35 on the list.

As for the baby in the belly, things are moving along nicely there.  He or She is said to be the size of an avocado.  It will be nice to reach that stage where our future son or daughter isn't described using produce :).  This pregnancy has been harder on Jana in comparison to when she carried Callie (tired, forgetful---for Jana at least)  but she, like always, hardly complains.   Still able to keep everything running smoothly while growing a baby inside her!





We are excited to be approaching that fun milestone of pregnancy where you can opt to discover the sex of the baby.  I don't know how people opt out and wait until the day of delivery.  I can hardly make it to 20 weeks!  Of course everyone has their own predictions, even Jana, but we will find out for sure when we return from our "baby-moon" next month.  That is right!  We are going on a baby-moon!  After years of saying "we should go" or "wouldn't it be nice to" I had a dream a few months ago that we did! I woke up and told Jana about it, and that evening we started to make arrangements to do a long awaited trip to the UK.  Although we are bringing Callie with us on our baby-moon (excited about having her come really), Jana and I are literally counting down the days until we take this trip!

...and then there were.......5

...so by now most know our exciting news......after much surprise Jana and I are biologically expecting.  I guess that is a good way to put our current situation.  We are very excited to announce that Jana is pregnant and we expect a "new new" addition to our family around April of next year. This was a complete surprise to us.  After months of failed attempts to become pregnant we had set out on our path of adoption and were (are) very excited to see what this adventure will bring.  Never a dull moment in this house....I guess we should have expected something like this to happen :)

We have been eager to share this news with everyone but like most decided to wait until Jana was 12 weeks pregnant.  Although it was hard to bite my tongue and keep the secret this gave us some time to put together how we wanted to answer the question that we knew was on everyone's mind and the one that most certainly comes up whenever we break the news......"Now that you are expecting are you going through with your adoption?"  I won't lie and say that it wasn't something Jana and I had to discuss.  We had always pictured our life with a family of 4 and with only 2 kids....two private school educations to pay for.....2 kids fit nicely into our cars.....one adult to one kid etc.  And outside of this, how would this new format offset the balance or formula for our adotive child?  Would this make the process more challenging? Would it make it harder for the adopted child?  In the end the truth is we had already pictured our life as adoptive parents, and to change that felt like something was missing, like something had been taken away.

We look forward to the next 6 months and to keep you all updated on Callie, baby in the belly, and baby in Africa!  I have a feeling there are gonna be a lot more Blog posts to come!

Eric and Jana

an update on life....

Sorry for the delay.  Things have been busy like always but thought now was as good a time as any to get an update out there.

We are continuing to move up the waiting list.  As of the start of August we were number 41, but there were several referrals just days after we got this new number.  Keep those fingers crossed that come next week when we get our update we have moved up more on the list.  We are pleased with the progress but of course the quicker the better.

Callie started school last week.  She is going to a Montessori School here in Clermont and she loved her first two days so far.  The "Montessori method" of teaching focuses on instilling independence and allowing the child to find the ways in which they want to learn the material required. So instead of sitting at a desk and reciting her ABC's, Callie is able to seek out a specific task or tool in the classroom, and through guidance from the teacher or observing other kids in her class, she can learn whatever is required.  I thought it was a pretty awesome way to learn, so am excited to see how things go this year.  If we like it she can stay in this school up until 6th grade.

Jana is fresh out of her doctoral program and enjoying the extra time on her hands!  Not much extra time really, but certainly a sigh of relief knowing that her schooling is over and she can focus on her work and Callie.  After watching the Olympics this year in London, I had a dream that Jana and I visited.  I woke up the next morning and told her that we should go (which we have been saying since we were married).  Long story short, we will be going to the UK for 10 days in November!  Couldn't be more excited.  Figured this would be a "last hurrah" with the impending adoption!

More exciting info to come............I am sure ;)

Eric

Happy 4th of July!......and speaking of 4.....

.....we have moved up 4 spots on the waiting list to number 44!  That is pretty good movement although the more the merrier really.  At this rate we would be looking at a referral in about 10 months!

 Jana and I have joined a closed Facebook group for current and previous adoptive families from our agency, West Sands Adoptions---website www.westsandsadoption.org for those who are interested.  It has been a really good resource for networking with others in our same position, and helpful to see how others are dealing with the waiting, the court dates, the embassy appointments etc.  In some ways, it is cathartic to give some support to others at the end of their adoption journey. It helps take our minds off the long wait ahead and put that energy towards some good use.  Jana and I frequent this page daily looking for updates for others already in Ethiopia either going to court or trying to get embassy approval to bring their children home...just some of what is to come for us in the next year.

We hope that everyone enjoys their 4th of July celebrations!  We look forward to celebrating our country's history with a new family member next year (hopefully).