Alex's Birthday!

It's been awhile since I posted anything and alot of exciting things have happened!  Most importantly - our son had his first birthday!   Alex turned one on October 14th.   It was such a bittersweet day.  I hated not being able to be there on his big day.  God-willing, this will be the last birthday that Alex will have to spend as a child without his mommy and daddy.  Doug & I didn't know how to celebrate without having him here with us - so we did the next best thing and went out for Chinese for dinner!   We had fun and so did big brother Samuel.   My fortune cookie actually read that night "Your ability to love, will help a child in need."   It brought me to tears and Doug wondered if God wrote those things! 

In the past few weeks we've gotten our I800 paperwork in and also got all our paperwork in to get our visa's to be able to travel.   So, it's just a waiting game now.  We're waiting for our travel approval - which will give us our actual travel dates.  We're still hoping and praying that it will be before the end of the year.   It's funny - because I've been so busy with paperwork since all of this started that I have been wishing for this break to come when I didn't have any to fill out....and now that it is here...I don't know what to do!   I feel like I am missing something and there should be something that I need to fill out.   I'm trying to take this time to get ready for Alex's arrival since I know the paperwork will start back up again soon.  I'm working on cleaning out his room and getting it ready for him.  I'm also trying to sort through Sam's clothes and old bottles and stuff like that.   It's challenging with an energetic 2 year old in the house who desparately want to help also!

We're thankful for the blessing of Alex and can't wait to get him home.   We pray that God will keep him safe and healthy while we all wait for his perfect timing.

We got updated measurements

I'm so excited!   I woke up this morning to an email that had Alex's updated measurements in it.  Alex's birthday is Thursday this week (Oct 14th) so a few weeks ago I hunted down a company in China that will deliver care packages to children in orphanges.   We wanted to send him some things that he could keep and bring home with him.  Hopefully this will ease his transition as he will have something familiar to hang onto.  So, we had the company send him pj's, a blanket, a stuffed animal and some toys.  They also sent a letter that we wrote to Alex (translated in Chinese so the orphange workers could read it to him) and a soft photo album that had pictures of Doug, Sam and I.  I am thrilled with the way it turned out.
Well, when the company sent this care package to him, they also asked the orphange for updated measurements on Alex.  We were told originally that they weren't able to get them because the province office wouldn't allow this information to be shared until we were there to pick Alex up.   However, today I received an email with an update.   At one year old he is 19.1 pounds (15% on US growth charts for weight), and 26.4 inches tall (3% for height).   Looks like we're going to have another "vertically challenged" son.   I'm so happy to have received this information this morning and thank God for all his blessings!

Paperwork, Paperwork, and more Paperwork

That pretty much sums up how I am feeling today.   We finally got our I800 sent out on Saturday after waiting a few weeks to get approval from the state on our updated home study.   We needed to update it because we were previously approved for a healthy girl, but we are bringing home our Alex (special needs boy) instead.   Today I got an email from our adoption agency with the next step....which is travel.   I am now working on the paperwork to get our visa's.  This is a long, tedious process - but when I think about having Alex home - all I feel is excitement and joy.