The wait is over

Well lets get right to introductions then I will give you the longer story.  I would like to introduce Evan Frederic Meadows.  He was born on August 8 weighing in at ~4lb 7oz and 17 inches.

Now the long story.  It looks like I last posted on this blog one year ago.  Since that time it has been mostly just waiting.  On occasion we would get a RFS (Request for summary) which means a birth mother wants to look at our information.  For some reason these always seemed to come in groups.  No one would look for a few months then we would get two or three looking at the same time.  At first you would get excited by this.  Sometimes the short profiles of what the birth-mother wants in parents would seem to fit us perfectly and we would feel our chances were good.  I think after enough of these though, you start to not to get excited, just so being rejected AGAIN would not be so bad.  We have probably gone through this at least 20 or so times since we started.  I was just starting to think that we would end the search when our stuff expired next spring.

Well on August 10th we got another Request for Summary.  It looked like a good fit to me but like I said, I try not to even think about it.  The profile was a little different in that that baby was already born - most of these happen several months before the birth-mother is due.  The next day, on August 11th, my grandfather died.  It was kind of unexpected but probably happened at a good time for him.  He lived in Florida but hd just made a trip to MN so I got to see him a month before he died.  He was 91 years old.  The funeral was in Paducah, KY on August 17th.

We took off for Kentucky on the 15th.  On the afternoon of the 16th we stop for lunch in a little diner and before I get our food I get a cell call from Tiffany, out social worker.  She tells me we were selected to be parents to this little boy and wants to know if we can come to the hospital the next day.  I explained why that would be a little difficult since we were in Missouri at the time.  She was a little concerned since if the baby is released from the hospital they go to a foster family and that triggers a whole bunch of stuff that would need to happen before we could take hie home.

We had originally heard he would be in the NICU for 3-4 weeks since he was premature and had low birth weight.  Well looks like he was healthier than they thought since now they were saying he might be released
on the 19th or 20th.  The hospital also wanted us to stay overnight for at least one night at the hospital.  We setup a time to meet at the hospital on the evening of Sunday the 19th.

Lara got her dad to come up to watch Victor.  We made it home from Kentucky with about two hours to go home and re-pack for our overnight at the hospital.  At the hospital we met our social worker and she took us right back to the NICU where that handed this beautiful baby boy.  He was small, but seemed to be a normal healthy boy in every way.  The hospital gave a very good report on his health.  We were at MN Children's Hospital - Riverside, it seemed like a very nice place to me.  The had a nice room for Lara, the baby, and I to stay in for the night.  All the nurses were very nice - they  showed us everything we needed to know to take care of him.  They knew we were a little bit exhausted from the trip and even did the middle of the night feeding for us.  The next morning they checked him over one last time and told us we could take him home.

We decided to stop on the way home to pick up some things we needed and grab some lunch.  That did not go well.  We couldn't find what we wanted, then at lunch they messed up our order three times and finally gave us our money back.  It took a long time so Lara just fed him while we ate.  Then we got a call from the hospital.  Turns out they wanted to do one more glucose test on him since the last one they did was not normal.  We were not far and went back to the hospital.  After a lot of apologizing - they say this never happens - they do the test.  They also tell us it will not really be a good test since he just ate - hmm - so why are you poking our baby if the test is not good.  They want to keep him longer to do a test before he eats - and oh - his feeding was down yesterday - could we keep him another night.

Lara wasn't really happy about this but it seemed we shouldn't go against the doctors recommendation.  I think a lot of the nurses thought we were back because of something we did so they were treating us kind of weird at first.  I decided I would go home to take care of Victor and get the house a little prepared, and Lara would stay another night with Evan.  I brought Victor and Lara's dad to meet the baby.  As you can see - Victor really liked him.

Well, one more night at the hospital and we got to go home again.  I went and picked Lara and Evan up and we finally made it home.  I don't have a lot of experiences with a newborn but I think he has been a pretty normal baby.  Sleeps a lot, except when he wakes us up to eat.  Lara and I are a little sleep deprived but it hasn't been too bad.  I guess the real test is when Lara goes back to work this Friday.

I said the wait is over but that is not totally true.  There are several different things we have to wait on now.  We have to wait for the birth-mother to sign off on it - then there is a waiting period where she can change her mind.  We have to wait to see if the birth-father claims any rights.  Finally there is a 90 day wait before the social worker signs off on the whole thing.

Pray for us and pray for baby Evan and stop by if you would like to meet him!

Now it is waiting time

Looks like I haven't posted since January. It has been a busy time since then - partly with the adoption stuff and partly just with life. In some ways the domestic adoption process has been similar to the international process but in other ways it is very different. We had to do another auto-biography for out home study - it was a little easier the second time around but is still difficult. The training for this adoption was all reading books and online training - while we did more of a classroom setting for our international adoption. There have also been several sessions with the social worker answering lots of questions about yourself.

The biggest difference in the two processes is the "Adoption book". With domestic adoption we had to put together a book about our family with lots of pictures and information about ourselves. It also includes what they call the "Dear Birthmother" letter. Putting this together was way harder than anything we had to do for the international adoption. You are trying to write a letter to someone you don't know - but hope to have a relationship with in the future. You are trying to "sell" yourself while trying to be honest and open about everything. You are trying to feel empathy in the letter while knowing nothing about their situation. It is all a very difficult thing to do.

Anyway - that is all done now. We completed the books and I think they came out very nice. So now it is time to wait. When a birthmother wants to see a profile they send out a request. It has some information about the birthmother/father - and also says what they want from the family. We have had a few of these and sometimes it is obvious we don't fit what the birthmother wants. The birtmother may have very specific requests for siblings or pets or location. We have only been shown to two birthmoms so far - the first rejected us right away (we were kind of expecting that since they did not want any siblings) and the second is looking at us right now. I can tell you the waiting with the international was easier since it was just that - waiting. With the domestic process you have to wait for a profile request, decide if you want to be shown, then wait to hear if they are sort of interested in you or not, then wait to here if they pick you.

Well - that's enough of an update for now. Hopefully you will hear from me again sometime in the semi-near future.

We're back!

It has been almost exactly 2 1/2 years since I last posted on this blog. I have been an at home dad and I have loved (almost ) every minute of it. Victor is a great little boy and I know everyone always says it - but it is true - they grow up very fast. It seems like one second you are wondering if they are ever going to grow up - will they ever walk, will they ever talk, will they ever be out of diapers. Next thing you know they are walking, talking, little people. It is so much fun watching him learn new stuff.

So why am I all of a sudden writing a new entry in this blog. I am very excited to announce that we are currently working on number two. Actually we have been working on it for a while now. Starting last summer we investigated a few different options and decided that an international adoption might not be the best for us right now. We would have loved to go back to Guatemala but it has been closed to adoptions since we adopted Victor - with no sign of opening in the near future. We decided to look into domestic adoption. There were a lot of ideas we had about domestic adoptions and a lot of reasons we thought we didn't want to go that route.

We decided to go to a intro meeting with New Life Family Services. We knew a little about New Life because our church is a supporter of theirs and we occasional see videos t

hat they have put together. After attending the intro meeting we found out that if we were to use them to adopt they require a class on openness that is only offered once or twice a year and it was going to happen less than a week away. A little short notice but we had to attend that class if we were going to use New Life and not extend the adoption search by an extra six months. We weren't telling family what we were doing so I had to tell my parents a "small" fib in order to get them to babysit while we went to the openness seminar.

I can tell you the openness seminar made me feel a lot better about the whole open adoption thing. The seminar was just a panel of three birth-moms who shared their stories and answered questions. Nowadays most domestic adoptions are open at least partially. It can be scary thing for all involved but hearing these moms talk really made me feel that it was the right thing. I think at the time I felt it was really the right thing for the birth-mom, that they deserved it for making this decision. Since then I have done a lot of reading on the subject and now think that it is really the best thing for the child - which is what everyone should want.

Well that all happened back in May and June. Since then we have re-done a lot of what we did with our first adoption. We had to fill out a bunch of long applications and forms. We had to do another autobiography ( that is the fun one). The difference with this agency is that instead of a lot of classes you do a bunch of reading. There are four different books that both Lara and I have had to read. Some of the reading is not fun since it tells you all the stuff that can go wrong - all the problems that can happen. There are also a lot of good stories though and I am learning a lot that will h

opefully help us with issues that may or might not occur.

With New Life there is a lot of waiting. They like to keep just a small group of people at each stage. At any time they only have so many couple working though the social worker part of the process and then they only allow so many to be on the list to be seen by birth-moms. Even after you get to that last stage it could take or year ( or it may not happen at all). It could be long process. Our preliminary application was approved in June. Our full application was approved in September. Then at the end of December we were told we were moving to the next stage which is where we have to complete all our homework (mostly book reading) and we have to meet with a social worker to do our home study. This will be several meetings few week apart so it will take several months.

So it is an exciting (and terrifying) time for us. I can't speak for Lara but it is a little scary deciding to adopt again. I go to ECFE classes and hear all the other Mom's problems and I can't help but notice that 90% of the problems come when you put more than one child together. Hopefully we are up for the challenge.

Happy adoption day

We didn't really know what to expect today.  We have had Victor for 8 months now and this kind of felt just like a technicality - it is not like they are going to take him back at this point.  We had been waiting quite a while for the court case to be scheduled and finally ended up calling the courthouse.  They gave us the choice of three dates so we pick Nov 14th.  November 14th is also Lara's Birthday so it will make this day even easier to remember for us. 

We were supposed to be at the courthouse at 8:30.  Victor and I are both working on getting rid of colds so it was a little early for us to get up.  My parents were able to get out of watching their other grand kids for the day and also made the trip up.  I knew where we needed to be in the courthouse but we went in a different entrance and I was totally lost.  We finally made it where we needed to go and found my parents and Karin from Hand in Hand already there waiting for us.

We had just a short wait in the waiting area before it was time to go in.  The judge said he likes to start the day with adoptions - he said adoptions and marriages are the only cases he sees where people come in happy and go out happy.  The judge then proceeded to ask a lot of questions:

Were you married Oct 27,1990

Have you had Victor since March 12, 2008

Does Victor have any mental or physical issues

Did you get any property or estate with Victor

Is there any issues with Victor being a different race

Do we agree to on religious upbringing for Victor

Are we able to provide for Victor

Do we agree to provide him with the best education

.....

I had to answer all of the questions and then at the end he just asked Lara if she agreed with me.  They were only yes or no questions so it wasn't too bad.  These are all questions that we have answered at least once before this point so nothing should really be a surprise.  Then the judge approved the adoption and said that his name is now Victor Patrick Meadows. 

It was a fun day.  I don't know if we call it adoption day or re-adoption day or what but I am sure it will be a nice memory for us.  

Dinner anyone?

Nothing to do with adoption but I thought I would put in a plug for my current project. Since I am staying home now I have a lot more time for one of my hobbies - cooking. Since I got into blogging here I thought I would start a cooking blog. I am trying to post something at least once a week so if you want to see what Lara and I are having for dinner check it out here:

A Cooking Dad
http://acookingdad.blogspot.com

Check it out and subscribe to get future updates.

Happy Halloween

Victors first Halloween - isn't he cute. It was a warm night for Minnesota (in the 50s) so we were able to go out without too many layers. We made it trick or treating to a total of three houses and Victor enjoyed playing with his candy when he got back.

We also got some good news yesterday. We were wondering how long it was supposed to take to get our court date. We called Karin - our adoption agency person - and she said that we should have gotten it by now. She gave us a number of someone to call in Anoka County. When we called them they scheduled the court date right over the phone. If all goes as planned Victor will become an "official' adopted and re-adopted US citizen on November 14th - same day as Lara's birthday.

We are still here

I don't know if anyone is still reading. Lara tells me you are and that you want more pictures. Well - here you go. I'm not sure where I heard it by I once heard that you can't take a bad kid picture in a pumpkin patch. As you can see that might be good advice. Lara and I took him to a place down the road to pick out some pumpkins. They had pony rides, hay rides, bouncy castles, and all sorts of other stuff that costs money. Well - luckily Victor is not old enough to know about any of that. I suppose next year we will have to shell out a lot more for those things, for now Victor is happy just seeing all the people and kids and climbing on the pumpkins.

Life with Victor has been very good so far. He is 15 months old today. I have been enjoying my role as stay at home dad. We have been going to swimming lessons every Monday, story time every Wednesday, and I take him to daycare at Lifetime on Tuesday and Thursday. Last month I brought Victor to Rochester, NY, where I grew up. He got to meet some of his relatives and had a lot of fun seeing all the sites in Rochester. I was a little worried about taking him on the plane by myself but there was no need to worry. When you travel with a 14 month old they give you the whole row to yourself if possible. I'm not sure if they do it for you or for the other people - but it works out either way.


We are a little slow with the decorating but we finally got it done. Actually it has been done for at least a month now - so it is not so bad. This is the completed nursery. It is done in the Zanzibar theme. There are lots of things in the room that we got as gifts in our showers - or at least bought with baby's r us gift certificates that we got as gifts. You can also see the hand made Noah quilt made by Linda from our church. The grass was all hand painted by Lara and I - that was the fun part.

Want more news on the adoption? Well - technically it is still not complete. Because we didn't see Victor before we picked him up - the Visa that is issued makes us "re-adopt" after we have had Victor for six months. Well - we filed for a court date a few months ago and are still waiting for that. None of this is anything to worry about. It has nothing to do with Guatemala - it is just a US thing.