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.

So much stuff for such a little guy

I just thought I would post something to see if anyone was still paying attention. The above picture shows all the great gifts Victor has received so far - and he still has one shower to go. There was a shower at out church and a shower at Medtronic. I attended the Medtronic shower since Lara wanted me to meet a lot of people - I think she also needed a little help with Victor. Lara has been working on organizing all the gifts so we know if we need to change things for different sizes, trying to figure out if he will be the correct size for the short outfits during short wearing time, etc. I think so far we have only gotten one duplicate which is pretty amazing.

Today was Victor's ten month birthday (he doesn't get a party for that). Things have been going well. Lara is almost done with her three months off work and I am about to start mine - a little scary. At least I will have some nice weather for my time off.

Here is a little about where Victor is at for ten months old:

• He sleeps - 9pm - 8am and two naps usually.
• He just got his first two teeth
• He is just starting to crawl
• He was on the lite side when we got him - but he is catching up quickly - Lara feeds him a lot and he likes everthing we give to him
• He apparently has no veins - they have tried to do a blood test on him twice with no success.

Home at last

Actually we have been home for a week now. For some reason I have not had a lot of time for finishing up this blog post in the past week. I lot of you have already had the pleasure of meeting Victor - if you haven't I am sure it can be arranged. This is a picture of us with Victor and Hortensia (Victor's foster mother) and Hortensia's mother. Hortensia was crying soon after this picture was taken - I think it was pretty difficult for her.

The next morning I went by myself to the embassy for my 11:00 appt to pick up Victor's Visa. I got there a little early. The embassy was closing early (noon) because of the holiday so I figured I didn't have long of a wait. I had the taxi driver wait for me. Well - I sat and sat. It was 11:30 before there was any activity - they opened one window but spoke only Spanish - so not for us. It was 11:45 before they started calling lists of five names to come up. I thought I heard my name in one of the lists but they gave the packet to someone else. The next group they had a name with no person to pick it up. Well - you guessed it - all the high security - multiple finger printing and DNA tests - and they give Victor's passport and Visa to the wrong person. Luckily the person checked their documents and came running back. Tons of traffic to get back to the hotel at noon. It was still only $10 for the whole taxi ride - including having him wait at the embassy.

That afternoon I went and grabbed lunch for us - McDonald's for Lara and a local sausage sandwich for me. After lunch we went to a local attraction in Guatemala city that Lara had heard about from a friend of hers. It is a relief map of Guatemala that was created in 1905. It is to scale (I think 1:10000). We also enjoyed the ride back to the hotel. We rode through markets and past some kind of large demonstration with people wearing Che Guevara (probably best not to stop at that one).

The next day (Saturday) was time for the long ride home. We took the shuttle from the hotel to the airport. It took what seemed like forever to get through check-in. We finally got through after a few issues and still had enough time for Lara to get something to eat and drink and to get a little food into Victor. Getting on the airplane they had a last minute extra security check - where they told us we could not bring the drinks on the plane - a little quick thinking and we saved the bottled water ( used the baby card). The flights went well - on time and Victor was as good as could be expected. He slept most of the way. We had a couple hour layover in Houston, and made it back to Minneapolis around midnight.

Karin from Hand in hand was waiting for us at the airport with a gift. Victor was very tired so he did not cooperate much for the pictures she wanted to take. I called my dad, who picked us up about 20 minutes later in our car with waiting car seat. After a quick stop by my parents house to drop off my dad (and for my mom to get a quick peek) we finally headed for home.

Once we got home we got our first sign that Victor might not be the perfect baby. He cried for about an hour straight (2am-3am). We thought it might have been his ears since he slept through the last landing so we gave him some motrin. He did finally get calmed down and we made it to sleep.

It's a week later now and it has gone much better since that Saturday night. Most nights he goes to bed at nine and gets up around eight in the morning. I can't say it has been easy but I imagine it could be much worse. I returned to work on Wednesday at GE so Lara has had a few days on her own. We have had lots of visitors (Victor loves the attention) and many wonderful gifts.

Thanks to everyone for all the prayers and support. It has helped a lot though the process. There will probably be a few more milestones that I will blog about so keep reading if you are interested. I will also try to post a few more stories and pictures I have from the trip. It is a wonderful country and hopefully we will get back when Victor is a little older to show it to him.

Almost there

I wish I could post some pictures since he is so cute but I can't from here. I just thought I would let everyone know that everything is going great here.

Our flight was delayed on Tuesday so we did not get to the hotel until 11:43 - we were very tired. We were told to call the attorney when we got in but weren't sure what do do since it was so late. We decided to call - next problem - figuring out how to call. We has three numbers for her but they were all seven digits and all the local numbers seemed to be eight digits. Looking at the phone book it looked like most started with a 2 so we tried that. One of the three numbers went though to something but we didn't know what - we still left a message.

We tried calling again on Wednesday and got right through. Carlota said she was planning to come by in just an hour with Victor. She came by around 11 am with Victor and with the Foster mother Hortensia and with Hortensia's mother. She went through Victor's whole routine - what he eats, when he eats, when he sleeps - that is pretty much his whole routine - eating and sleeping.

Victor is a very happy baby. The first day we decided to venture out a little bit to find some lunch. Lara decided she wanted Schlotzky's - I'll pick lunch some other day. We used our new baby carrier and Victor fell asleep strapped to Lara. We tried out the hotels baby room later in the day. They have two rooms converted into a baby room with lots of toys and other baby's. They also have microwaves, fridge, sink, and internet. It is very well setup. Victor loved the walker. We met some people there that we had met in the plane from Rochester that had just picked up there baby the same day. We decided we would eat dinner in the hotel sports bar. Probably a bad idea - they had a Guatemalan soccer game on TV very loud - and much louder when they scored. Victor managed it very well though and didn't cry at all.

They told us Victor would go to sleep around nine and wake up between five and six. They also said he wouldn't sleep in a crib - but should sleep in the bed with us. We put him in the crib anyways and after 15 minutes or so of messing around he went to sleep.

We had to be to the embassy at 8:00 am on Thursday for the Visa appointment. I got up a little after six and Victor was still sleeping. I showered - then Lara went in the shower. I tried to be a little noisy to wake Victor. He finally woke at 7:00. It won't be so bad if he is like this every day. The Visa appointment is not fun. Sit and wait, pay $400, sit and wait, get called to stand in line, meet with immigration for about 1 minute, sit and wait, get called to talk to someone else for 2 minutes, done. That's about three hours worth of waiting.

We got back to the hotel and decided to venture future today. We got a driver to take us to Antigua. Antigua was Guatemala's original capital and still has a lot of older buildings. We ate in a very nice hotel/ museum that was originally a church and monastery. It was good food in a gorgeous setting. After eating we went through the museum a little which includes the church and some crypts. After that we had our driver take us to the local market. Antigua has a nice local market were they sell locally made craft items. We bought several to give Victor when he is a little older. Next the driver took us to the Central plaza. We walked around a little. They had a old catholic church there and they were busy getting ready for Easter. They have some local traditions which I will mention in another post when I can post pictures. We then were driven to an arch that is the only thing left from an old convent. The arch was so the nuns could cross the road without coming in contact with other people. Finally we were driven up one of the surrounding hills to see a cross that you can see from Antigua along with a nice view of the city. We were kind of mis-informed and did a lot more walking than we needed too. Long day - we had the driver take us back to the hotel. We ate - Victor got a little cranky - think we messed up his schedule. Lara took him to the baby room and fed him a little. He just fell asleep about ten minutes ago and Lara took him to the room while I finished typing (Looks like I am typing a lot).

Probably a little calmer day tomorrow. I have to go to the embassy (I can go by myself for this one) to pick up the Visa. This should be much quicker. Then I will try to convince Lara to try a little . They had street vendors cooking little sausages and they put them in a bun with all kinds of stuff - I want one of those. They also have a lot of taco places with Tacos al pastor (like a shawarma) - I might convince Lara to eat there so I can try one.

Anyway - just wanted to let you all know it is going well and looking forward to being back home on Saturday.