Little Star

I am very proud of an old friend, Anthony Destefano. We used to work together at Priests for Life. Add this book to your Christmas Wishlist!! He was recently interviewed on EWTN Bookmark. Check it out.

Milestones

Our sweet baby boy has taken his first steps! Like any other parent, I captured it on film and am dying to show them off. It is so difficult to keep from sharing all the adorable pictures and milestones. I have this vision of making a video for adoption day and catching everyone up with pictures.

In just three weeks, he will be celebrating his first birthday (we will be having a "Gymboree Style" party in two). It was a bit interesting composing the invitation. I ended up with "Our Darling Son is Turning One" and leaving out a name altogether. In this in between time, he is becoming less of an "SBR". On video and in his baby book, I try to limit my writing of his given name, though his name does appear frequently in both. This is who he is right now. Maybe I just need a better nickname??

H is super excited about the birthday party. I think she is still holding out hope it will actually be a party for her. She talks about it all the time. I feel so bad for the baby...I rarely get a picture or video of him without her jumping in front of the camera and begging me to film her instead. For the first steps, I had to sequester her to her room...even still, the video is full of "MAMA DO YOU WANT SOME COFFEE??" as she is shouting in the background.

Over the last month or two SBR's bio dad has composed several letters to be read to his son. They are really sweet...and they tear at my heart. Dad clearly has not let go (again...we are thinking this will be an involuntary termination of rights) and talks about being together as a family, etc. It is in these instances I realize how different this process is from a traditional adoption. Even though birth parents most always long for their child....they are willingly giving them up. It adds an extra dimension to process when that is not the case. I am not sure exactly what to do with these letters. One may go in his baby book, but we are now considering a memento box to keep the rest tucked away. The last one especially....I have a hard time thinking of giving to him. I am so glad he has bio parents who love him so much. I really imagine it would be harder (eventually) if that was not the case. But, figuring out where we all fit together is the challenge.

We are traveling to VA for Thanksgiving (6 hrs) and so thrilled to spend the holiday with family and new babies we have not yet met. For Christmas we are driving to FL (20+ hours). It will be a crazy season of traveling. I am sure I will have some stories to tell.

God bless everyone reading and may you have a wonderful blessed Thanksgiving!!

on the topic of name change

A few weeks back, Paul and I simultaneously poured over an internet site for hours one day and came up with a list of potential names. It looked like TPR might happen by the end of the year and we wanted to have our name picked out by then.

So we set up a picture of our foster son and set out to decide. We crossed off names from each others lists and ranked our names. We came up with a top 20, then scaled back to top 12.

We have recently narrowed it down to one. We have decided on the first and middle name we would like to give this little boy, should he become ours. Meanwhile, TPR was pushed back to the end of Feb. :(

With our daughter, we had decided to wait to find out gender and announce her name upon her birth. It is sometimes easier to not have well meaning feedback from family.

This is so different. Now that we have a name chosen, I am getting the itch. I get to look at this beautiful little happy face every day. I get to hold, snuggle, sing him lullabies to sleep. I am his mama and I want to call him by name. Well, not only that...I kind of want to tell everyone.

We chatted today and Paul feels it is too soon. I understand his reasons. As he is not yet ours, he would rather hold off until there is more certainty. I have not conceded entirely. For now, I will simply share the name with our sweet boy in his lullaby. For you...well, you will have to keep praying for us. And you will know soon enough.

moving forward, working backwards

Just a blog update...now that I have been reading other people's blogs this past year, I have figured out what I like. I am going to work on adding some of those features to this blog. I am working backwards to tag posts. And I have no idea what happened to the profile gadget. I think it is blogger wierdness.

The Parade of Social Workers

The parade continues. Last night we began our adoption home study...and specifically, the child profile. We have added another organization and social worker to our lives. Gearing up for the individual interviews in two weeks (Paul loves these, me...not so much!).