7 Months old and the 7 things we love about you.

Ok in true blog fashion someone special is 7 months old today. So Baby T here are 7 things we love about you without even meeting you.
1. your huge brown eyes
2. your super long lashes (you will fit in with the Albrights for sure)
3. your tiny little toes i just wanna nibble on
4. sweet little lips i can't wait to kiss
5. How happy you look in the pictures we have
6. Your adorable facial expressions (you sure have alot)
7. How gorgous you are even in pink "you rock it little man"
We love you baby boy and we can't wait to come and bring you home.


ok so far i was dealing well with this stage of waiting because i know we have alot of things to finish up around here before we bring him home but it just really really hit me...my baby boy is 7 months old...I'm sitting here now in tears wishing i could hold him...I wonder how his birthmom is feeling today its been slightly over a month since she relinquished him..how much heartbreak is she feeling..
Please pray for her..that god would give her continued peace in her decison and comfort her heart.

Baby Boy's gift package.

Ok so as many of you know we are now allowed to send a gift to our baby boy. One of the things it must contain is a photo album . Its not easy to choose which photos to include to give your child his first glimpse of his new home and most importantly his forever family. We didnt include a picture of the guinea pigs due to space issues but we did include one with the dog in it. She's the little monster most likely to be terrorizing umm I mean playing with him anyway. We also tried to pick pictures of mommy and daddy that didn't look to scary haha.

Here is the picture of what I was hoping to send. There is also a photo album that I didnt include in the picture because it has a picture of baby on the cover. Unfortunetly I couldn't make it all fit so the yellow outfit isnt going.
Here is the baggie stuffed and ready to go.

So what's next?

Our agency received our offical acceptance paperwork today. Tomorrow our paperwork should be submitted in Ethiopia for a court date. We should know in 2-4 weeks when our first and hopefully only court date will be. Please pray that we get a quick date.
This weekend I was finally able to buy some clothes for our baby and I hit those clearance racks at Carters so much fun. We are also putting togeather his "baggie of love" this is the one gallon zip lock bag of presents that we are allowed to send to our baby. At this point i'm hoping to stuff in two outfits, a photo album, a lovey blanket and a little stuffed moose. I'll let you know how that goes and take a picture before we ship it off.
For now we wait on that all important court date.

Just a little update.

Ok just to let everyone know we didnt fall off the face of the earth. We have been busy with that beautiful little packet that you saw in my last post. Monday we had a conference call with our agency, tuesday I emailed all our babies information to an international adoption clinic and we have been busy filling out lots of wonderful paperwork. Today has been a wonderful day. This morning Ups dropped off a package...another baby gift My Aunt Pat and Uncle John send us our baby monitor. Thanks so much for the wonderful gift. Then when ya think your day can't get any better cuz really baby gifts are pretty cool right?? Our wonderful case manager calls..now i'll admit I didnt expect a call from Christy so when AGCI popped up on my screen I freaked a little bit. But I answered and she said "you might want to check your email" now for those of you that don't know we only received one picture with our referral and have been anxiously awaiting more. Well we received 2 emails today from Christy and each one contained 20 photos umm yeah thats right 40 photos of our handsome little dude. And quite a few are of him with his birthmom what a blessing those are to us now and will be to him in the future. Of course some of those pictures will be used to embarrass him when he brings home his first girlfriend because my sweet little boy is totally rockin a pink sleeper with teddy bears. This afternoon the day got even better we had our call with the international adoption clinic and they said everything looked great so I emailed Christy and let her know we are definitly moving forward. At this point they can let Almaz and the ethiopia staff know to start getting our paperwork togeather with baby T's to submit to courts. We will be mailing in our referral packet hopefully on Saturday.

An Important little package.

Ok so the long awaited referral packet is here. By far the smallest yet most important and life changing packet of information AGCI has sent us. We can't wait to dive into this round of paperwork. We are waiting on more pictures of our little guy but i have things lined up with the international adoption clinic to review his info and give us a report within 48 hours. We will have a conference call with our agency next thursday and hopefully by that time the rest of this magic packet will be filled out and ready to return. We can't wait to complete this so that things can get moving in Ethiopia to bring our little guy home.
I didn't get a picture of the Ups truck because they snuck in and out like a thief in the night. Ok so they came in the morning but seriously i heard no noise and the dog never barked..how very stealth of them.

Our crazy wonderful day and a beautiful baby boy.

Ok so I promised I would give more information on how everything went down. So this is what happened. Since last night we knew that we were #1 and the call could very well come today. I hardly slept last night but in the little sleep I got I dreamed that our son's name started with a T. (remember this for later). As the name we have chosen for him is Noah I didnt know what the dream really meant. The day was dragging and at about 3pm I was extremly anxious. The phone finally rang and I took a long deep breath before answering. I knew it was christy because the name comes up on my screen. The way she started the conversation asking about our christmas and everything i was thinking ok this is not the call she's going to give us a #...and the call made a turn something like this.
me-yeah so we got alot of neat stuff for the baby so that was cool
c-great well that will come in real handy because i have a referral for you
me-shaking about in tears...omg are you serious a referral
c-yup
me-omg but sean isnt home (mutters something else)
c-is he available by cell we can conference him in
me- ummm uhhhhhh can i call and see if he can come home and then we can call ya back
c- giggles (yes i swear i heard a giggle) sure that would be fine

So i think i said goodbye i dont know my hands were shaking i had tears in my eyes i was fighting to breath..i fumbled to find seans # on my cell and get him to come home. And then i proceeded to call people and email people while i waited because i had no clue what else i should do. When Sean got home we called back and Christy called his cell to conference him in (our phones don't have speaker phone). We heard all the information about our sweet little boy and then ran to the computer as Christy hung up to see the first picture of our little boy. Now during the call when christy was telling us our babies information she was spelling his name. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to post it but it starts with T. In those few moments of sleep that I was able to get God sent me a sign. T is a little older then we had hoped at 6 months but one look at his picture and i'm totally smitten. He has those huge brown eyes and tiny little toes that I just wanna nibble . He's small for his age but I have no doubt that Almaz and the special mothers will fatten him up in good time. He came to Hannah's Hope on dec 23rd so he's a newbie.
After seeing his picture and reading thru all the information in the email (because everything she tells you on the phone will be a blur) we had a bazillion phone calls to make and emails to send. We only have one picture of our boy but should be getting more soon. There is a disc of photos on its way from almaz to agci and christy didn't want to hold up our referral waiting on them thank god for that.
For all of you that said i took to long to post i'll remember that when you get your referrals haha. And I do pray that you get them soon. #1 is a hard place to be and I was only there for a day.

The Most wonderful Present ever.

Ok so this year I asked for one thing for christmas I wanted to see our sweet little boy's face. Here is the kicker I didn't say who's christmas. You see tomorrow is christmas in Ethiopia and today i got my wish. After 5 months and 3 weeks We have a beautiful baby boy who is about 6 months old. Tiny for his age but absolutly beautiful and i'm so in love already. I'll write more about how the call and our day went later just wanted to get this news out there for those that are waiting.

A new year,good friends, and more baby gifts.

So its a new year and I"m happy to put 2008 behind us. It was a year filled with much stress, mountains of paperwork, dr appointments,home visits by several different agencies, interviews with a social worker ,fingerprinting..etc . This will be the year that we see our little guy's sweet face and get to travel to Ethiopia and bring him home. 2009 will be the year we become a family and I finally become a Mom (to something other then animals). I couldn't be happier to bring in 2009. Our agency reopens on Monday and we are hoping and praying that a flood of referrals are coming. I would love to be able to make another post very soon saying I have a little boy. Alot of families have gotten thru courts and will be traveling this month to bring home their children and we pray for safe travels and an easy adjustment for those families. We also pray for those still waiting for courts,travel and referrals that they will find peace in the wait and trust in god's plan for their journey.
Yesterday we got togeather with friends that we didn't get to see around the holidays. We had a fun night of dinner ,dessert and games. I think Sean and I need to study our disney movies before we have a rematch. We had a great time and received some more awesome stuff for Noah. I have said it before our little man is so loved already and so many people are waiting to find out who he is. I have no doubt he will be a spoiled little man.
Thank you Monica, John ,Cathy and Cayla for all the great gifts. I'm sure Sean and Noah will have lots of fun with the football. We can't wait to show you guys pics of Noah.