Another School Year Down

Today marked the end of another school year. It seems like time passes so quickly these days and with all the excitement thus far in 2010 the days of this year have been no exception. I loaded up Little Buddy, Babycakes and my handy little pocket camera and headed to the school to support the boys on their last day. Cade had a mini "play". They call it Reader's Theater. Unfortunately it fell right at 10am which is when Elaina eats and she was letting me know it.

Rhett was just happy to be there. He loves going to the school and pretending he's as big as his brothers for a while. He wanted a picture with Cade in his classroom cubby.
Cade's year was quite productive headed by his great teacher Mrs. W. He came out advanced in reading as well as math this year.....spelling? Not so much. You can't win 'em all.
Grant had the first real love of his life this year.......Mrs. Cole. He refused to leave early on this day and insisted he go ahead and ride the bus to school for the half-day. He didn't want to miss a minute with her. And on a sad but sweet note, on the last day I found him in his room crying his eyes out because he "didn't WANT to leave Mrs. Cole. No one was ever going to be as nice as her". She has set the bar high.
I quick snapped a picture of his best classroom bud. This picture is definitely true to form with these two!
In an effort of celebration we headed to Moe's with some of our besties for some lunch. Nothing says "yea it's the end of school!!" like a burrito. Well, whatever. We don't have endless choices here in the Hill.

All the clowns gathered for a group shot.
Cade snapped a picture of me signing the one thing I will not have this summer.......peace :)
After lunch we headed to Gigi's for some sweetness. The size of these cupcakes never ceases to amaze me. There just seems to be something wrong with eating a dessert that is quite possibly the size of your head. But, man, it sure is good!

Somebody was super excited about eating and entire tub of icing neatly placed upon an adult size piece of cake:
Being that the cakes were LITERALLY the size of Little Tee-Tiny's head, I made the executive decision not to let her have one. And, well, she's only 3 weeks old. That and the fact that all that sugar would definitely keep her up all night. Wait.......she's already up all night.
Another school year down in the books. Now it's time for summer fun and figuring out how to lug a newborn to all of our summer festivities and still have her on a decent schedule. Impossible you say? Only time will tell!

Home, Sweet Home!!

I can't even express how happy I was to pull onto our street yesterday! I almost cried. I know I've almost cried a ton of times in the past 10 days but give me a break people! I've been under some serious stress! We had a little balloon welcome sign on the front porch. I have to give my bud some props for lugging that flower pot from my flower bed onto the porch. She didn't realize it was solid iron! I had another compadre lingering in the background of our homecoming, determined not to miss the day that she, too, has prayed for for three years!

I was mobbed getting out of the car. Well, I should clarify, the backdoor that would open to reveal the tiniest new Morgan was mobbed. I stood by the wayside saying, "What about me???? Didn't anyone miss ME???" With quick kisses and a few, "Well, yesssss's" I was once again pushed out of the way so that they could catch a glimpse. I weaved my way through them and pried Little Tee-Tiny from her carseat. The boys ran to the couch and somehow Grant ended up being the first holder.
This kid was grinning from ear to ear. He's the one that stood in her closet about a month ago and sighed, adding "We have waited for this for SO long......". Makes my heart melt!

Cade could hardly stand to put her down. He had to hold her before he went to bed. He sat in her little rocking chair in her room looking at her and said, "Man......I could do this ALL night." So sweet.....and if he were just a little older and slightly more responsible I would totally take him up on that!

Rhett started passing out kisses to her little head immediately.

This picture cracks me up. I can just hear him doing a nervous little laugh telling himself, "I cannot BELIEVE she's letting me hold this baby. She must have totally forgotten how dangerous I am!"
You notice his holding method: The securing-the-child-with-a-full-palm-over-the-forehead maneuver. We are still working on proper holding technique.
One thing he doesn't need lessons on is the kissing. This baby has definitely had NO shortage of love since we walked in the door.
Welcome home, Elaina! You can kiss the quiet time you had at the condo goodbye! Your real life starts today!

10 Days

So, we made it out of the hospital but there were still 10 days to wait. Ten days for Babymama to change her mind (ugghhh...),  at least ten days to get legal permission to cross back into our home state with Elaina. Lucky for us, a very generous couple let us stay in their condo in the state we were in. That made the time pass much more comfortably than if we had had to stay in the Holiday Inn. I don't even want to think about that. I don't even take my shoes off in the Holiday Inn.....feet touching that carpet.....ick. Weird but true.

We tried to stay busy but really there is not a whole lot you can do with a newborn that you don't want to expose to germy hands and just.....germs.

Little Tee-Tiny made her first trip to the Aquarium. She loved every minute of it. Her favorite thing was the Baluga Whales and her hand looked so tiny petting the stingray at the petting pool. She screamed her head off when we had to leave. Okay. Not really. She was cocooned in her covered stroller and her eyeballs never saw anything but the insides of her eyelids. And for the record, I don't do the "fish petting"......do you know how many nasty hands have rubbed the backs of those stingrays? Eww.
We were also able to have dinner with friends that lived in the area. Yummy kabobs of chicken (only a couple charred pieces :) ) and fresh pineapples and strawberries. It was great to be able to get out and see something other than the walls of our lush condo!
Tee-Tiny became a regular at a restaurant called "Shout". She was happy to watch me eat Mahi Mahi and I was happy to get a great dinner. If I had a dollar for everyone that wanted to peek at that baby and then tell me how great I looked for having a baby that small I would've been able to bribe my way out of the state a little earlier with a serious cash offering.

Luckily, this morning at about 10am I got the call I had been waiting for: "You're ready to go!! The paperwork is complete!" My mom and Bobby were very happy as well, because they knew that one more day away from my other kiddos and my nice, warm bed were going to result in some serious tears from me! I was ready to get on with it!! Bobby had already left on Wednesday so mom and I scurried to pack up the car and get the heck out of dodge. The Interstate Compact paperwork is finished and as of today we only have 3 more whole days left in the semi-scary waiting period.......the potential period for mind changing. Right now though I'm focusing on one thing.........GETTING HOME!! Wahooo!!!

Signatures a flyin'!

Today, Thursday, finally brought about some promising news. Our babymama was taken off all medication at 9am and the paper signing was set for 2 o'clock in the afternoon. It really didn't change our routine much. We were still staring at t.v., staring at each other, and then, of course, staring at the baby....and well, a little more staring at the clock than usual. At least now we had a time frame to be counting down. 

I decided to put my time to good use and give babycakes a little washin'. I was ready to get her out of her hospital issued garb and into something much sweeter. I added a bow to her little hospital cap (which, unlike the sleeper, I found to be quite cute).

She was really giving Bobby the once-over. "Ohhhhh......so you're going to be my daddy??"
Two o'clock came and went. As well as 3 o'clock.....and the 4 o'clock. By then I was really nervous that something wasn't going quite right. Bobby gave the hospital social worker a call just to check. Thank goodness every thing was going just as planned with the exception of a late to arrive notary. Thanks for the myocardial infarction people.......

Shortly after our conversation with the hospital SW, our social worker, Carla showed up with a pile paper and a mouthful of legal jargon.  I will admit that when she read the first line of "On May 6th, 2010, we accept the female child born the 4th day of May, 2010, as OUR CHILD.........blah, blah.........and give her the new adopted name of Elaina Marie..." I nearly spilled some tears. I had a huge knot in the ol' throat but managed to maintain my composure. I didn't want my signature to be all gobbledegook on those 800 pages. After all the signing we had a brief meeting with Babymama. It was a very bittersweet time but I was thankful for the chance to hug her neck one last time and let her know there is someone on this earth that loves her and will think of her every time they look at the big brown eyes of their Hondurican princess.

Here is sweet Carla (with closed eyes) on my right and the late, but friendly, notary on the left.
With an out loud, "Thank You Jesus!!" we were ready to snap that sweet thing into the car. Elaina is ours. Two years, 9 months, 1 week, and 4 days later. What a wait.....but oh, what a blessing!
When we started our adoption, I planned out a timeline in my mind (and maybe on paper a few times). I gave myself the timeline that the agency quoted me (which by the way would've had us already home with a child for over a year), then I made for myself what I called "the very generous timeline" so that if things started to not happen as quickly as I thought I could say, "well, we're still in the generous timeline.....". The ending point for my very generous timeline? Spring 2010. I had said to Bobby numerous times, "I think we'll bring her home in the spring of 2010." Little did I know that God had planted that seed in my mind and then just when I thought my timeline was going to be blown, He made it happen. HE MADE IT HAPPEN!!!

I'm beside myself with excitement. Now, we've got 10 days to count down. I think my tenuous stomach will let me branch out and eat some salad tonight. I just got a newborn baby girl, people! A BABY GIRL!!!! Woot, Woot!!!

Ohhh, The Waiting!!

We got back to the hospital this morning at about 8am. I wanted to be able to give the baby her bottle. We made it just in time to see the doctor do her little check up. To our surprise he gave her the green light to be discharged. Unfortunately we have to wait for the birthmother to be off of her medication in order to sign the papers so that we can formally be discharged. Paper signing is not looking good today being that she's on a morphine pca pump. Waiting. So.much.waiting.

Bobby took his turn at feeding the tiny sack-o-sugar.

There's really not a whole lot to do while you're waiting on a birthmom to come off of Morphine. We were so thankful that the NICU nurses let us camp out in a rooming in room that, praise the Lord, had a television. We caught ourselves watching a little Maury Povich in disbelief, then we stared at each other and then stared at the baby.......then we stared back at each other. Finally we challenged one another at a travel game of Blokus.
Time to hold the baby again. Feed the baby, burp the baby, change the baby, stare at the baby. Repeat every three hours. Take trip to bathroom because your GI tract realizes that you are indeed still waiting for papers to be signed so you can then call the baby by the baby's name. The name you don't actually want to say for fear that something may go awry.
Kiss the baby.
We've had great nurses that have been very kind. I tried to get them to violate HIPPA and tell me how the birthmom is coming along with the whole Morphine thing. I don't get why they can't just hike it down there and check it out. Why can't I just go down there and discontinue the pump? I surely know how. And besides, I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night. Now I'm overqualified.

Unexpected

I had things all planned out. My calender was marked up with things to do, places to be, errands to be run. I was counting down the days until our Babymama's scheduled c-section. Eight more days. Eight more days until I see my baby.....or so I thought. 

This morning at 10am I get a phone call from our social worker. "Your baby is coming today!" Ummmmm. So sorry. Whadusay? Yep. My Babymama was going early due to high blood pressure. She would be going into surgery at 12:30. Too soon for me to make the trip in time to be in the delivery room as planned. You know what they say about the best laid plans.......

We got to the hospital around 6 and had to walk into quite a stressful situation that neither of us were prepared for. The first time I put my eyes on the tee-tiny little face of my daughter she was in the arms of the woman who so graciously decided to give her to me. (But who had also said she wouldn't be seeing the baby. at. all. A million horrid thoughts run through your mind at that time.)

We spent about an hour with Babymama and her boyfriend while they held little baby. Stress.Full. Finally, babycakes was taken back to the NICU where she would remain for the duration of her hospital stay. Not for medical reasons, but the hospital protocol for adoptions. We had to wait for shift change to be over and then FINALLY Bobby and I got to spend time alone with the babe we had waited so many years to hold. This is how I felt by that time:

Ha. The charge nurse gave report to the night nurse and when the night nurse asked if I had any other children the charge nurse said, "I really don't think so. She was so frazzeled this MUST be her first child." Oh my. If she only knew :)
I fed her a bottle that night and marveled at her petite size. 5lbs 9oz and 18 inches. Much smaller than any baby I've ever birthed. Bobby was in awe as well.

We said many praises to God who orchestrated this whole adoption and we are so thankful that even now He is blessing us three-fold for the years of waiting. Beautiful. Healthy. Hodurican. What more could I ask for?? It didn't take me long to squirt some jelly in that baby's hair and stick a bow on that tiny head!
We stayed at the hospital until about 11pm. Just holding. Staring. Not believing that our day had actually come. What a blessing.
Now, if my stomach would just settle and let me eat a little I'd be a bit happier. Stress. It does a great job of making one feel skinny for a day or two :)

H2o....and Lots of It!

The rain started falling on Saturday morning and didn't give us much solace from the beginning. Our backyard turned into a lake once again but this time it was much deeper and larger than the time before. Bobby's golfing green was obviously submerged but the flag was still poking out of the top of the water about 12 inches. One bright side, as suggested by a friend, was that if we ever decided to put our house on the market we could advertise as "seasonal lake view". Ha.

Our house has been the gathering place for friends during times of inclement weather. We had buds over for the blizzard of twenty-ten and when the rain showed no signs of ceasing, we called over the troops again.

Once the rain stopped and the waters receded, we sent our boys outside with Bobby thinking they were just going to look at rogue logs, dead fishies, and miscellaneous junk that ends up in our yard when it floods.

Nope.

One minute things are fine. Everyone is looking. Next thing you know, shirts were shed, shoes thrown off, and we've got 8 boys doing swim races and cannonballs. Apparently Bobby wasn't paying attention when the news guy sent out the warning that it wasn't safe to play in flood waters due to contamination by sewage.....yum. My germophobe self was cringing.

I felt better after giving them soap and making them take redneck showers outside.
It doesn't look like anyone minded.

Nothing like having friends to keep a smile on your face......even in the midst of never ending rain. Praise the Lord that we, personally, were not devastated by this flooding. Those who have lost all are in our thoughts and prayers.