Leap Day 2012

The extra day in February did the adoption world good today.

Confirmation that EP's will resume next week and hopefully travel calls shortly after!

Needless to say, we are very excited and my brother and I hope to be in Korea very soon....

and then back with our girly.

Zoey's face pretty much sums up the way we are feeling about it. :)

Just some silly faces.

 From two very silly kids!

Who want to tell their little sister how much they love her!

In one last care package that we sent this week...

That will hopefully be our last...

Before we can have three silly faces of three silly kids...

All under one roof.

She's getting big!!

 What can I say?  Girlfriend is getting big!!  I was pleasantly surprised to receive new photos today as I thought that Holt USA was closed!  I was also pleased to see that her hair is growing!  I think that might be a pony tail back there and I am thrilled!  

I did not buy her this outfit, but it totally cracks me up!

And I love how she's rockin' these ajumma shoes.  

(that was pointed out to me by an actual ajumma, just so you know!)

I cannot believe how much we love this little girl.  

We miss you, we love you and we hope you are home soon!

I love girls.

Need I say more?  

In the words of Chandler Bing, "Could this wait BE any longer?"  

Well, I'm afraid so!  

I will say, I've tried my best to keep my whining, frustration and anger off the internet, and try instead to stay positive and keep hope alive that it will all happen in His time.  And in an effort to keep that promise to myself, I'll just say that we are hanging in there with anticipation of news.  I saw someone post today that they have been waiting 15 months since their referral...they are with a different agency, but my heart literally hurts for them, their child, and the foster families.  As it does for the rest of the children and families waiting right now.  Nothing happened today, but there is always tomorrow...

It definitely lightened my mood when I got an email this afternoon with a new WBC (well baby checkup)! Miss Em is now 19 months old, weighs 26.8 lbs and is 33.9 in tall!!  She is about caught up to Miss Zoey!  She has lots of teeth, is kicking and throwing balls (daddy was happy to hear this), she draws, uses a spoon, brushes her own teeth, washes her own hands (and dries them!),  drinks from a cup, points out her body parts, helps around the house, is a good little mama to her baby doll, and can speak two word sentences!!

But the biggest news!!!!  She is, and I quote, 'TOILET TRAINED'!!!!!

You hear that?!?!  19 months old, potty trained and I didn't do a thing! And all I have to say to that is WOOHOO!  

And I will now be shopping for an even bigger present for her foster mother. ;)

Wordless Wednesday: Hey good lookin'

What a trooper.

Seriously, my son is such a trooper.  

He's been struggling with his eyesight now for a few weeks and I noticed him really squinting to see anything lately, poor guy!  I had the nurse check his eyes at school and sure enough, he failed miserably!  So off to the optometrist we went today and he will now be rockin' glasses!  This is about the same age I started wearing glasses as well (he'll be seven in April), so sorry Braedan! Sometimes genetics isn't all that great, huh?!?!

But in totally chill personality fashion, he shrugged his shoulders and carried on and off we went to pick out some glasses!

We first went to where our insurance is accepted and let's just say, they were in a hurry, their selection was small, (and super lame) and while they made them on the spot, they didn't adjust them correctly and pretty much shoo-ed us out the door!  We upgraded to better lenses and a better frame, because this is what we had to choose from for the 'insurance will cover these' frames.

Are we buying glasses for 80 year old women?!?!

We found these pair from the 'insurance will cover partially' pile and if I do say so myself, this is one cute dude, glasses and all. :)  (these are all from my phone camera, I figured carrying around my DSLR and snapping pics like paparazzi wasn't appropriate in this situation, but I can't say I wasn't tempted!)

We then went to a bit more reputable store where they adjusted the above glasses to fit perfectly on his half asian nose and decided to get a pair he can leave at school too so he doesn't have to remember to bring them back and forth (this pair is a bit sturdier too. :0) and once again, this boy can rock just about any pair of glasses!!

And the doctor asked about sports, etc. and recommended we get a pair of sport goggles...good idea, considering he will start coach pitch in baseball this year and is just finishing up basketball season!  He needs to see the ball!  He pretty much rocked these too. :)

I gotta say, when I was pregnant, I used to give Danny a hard time joking that he would never really have a kid that looked like him, assuming they would all look like me. :0)

When he was born, he had red hair, light skin and didn't look asian at all!  The nurses kept checking to make sure the right baby was in the right room when they would bring him in and see me!  Our ID bracelets were checked a lot!

Shortly after bringing him home, I joked that when he went to school, kids would start nicknaming his 'Brady' and he'd have red hair and glasses. 

I was joking, but clearly someone was listening. :)

I rocked some hideous glasses in my day (I will you spare you the pics) and I am determined to not let my son do the same!

I seriously just love this kid to death.  Glasses and all.

I guess our Valentine pic this year predicted our future!

Happy Valentine's Day!!

Adoption gets chronic speeder out of a ticket.

Here's a little story about two people I may or may not know. 

There's this guy, he is a chronic speeder.  Chronic.

And there's this girl, she's a nag.  Okay, let's be fair, she's a chronic nagger.

Put those two together and usually their car rides are pretty epic.

Speeding tickets are expensive and so is adoption.

Getting a speeding ticket while in process of adopting makes a chronic speeder and a chronic nagger a deadly combination.

Well, today, said chronic nagger wasn't with chronic speeder and so of course, chronic speeder was speeding.  (10 miles over to be exact)

Said chronic speeder gets pulled over by a police officer. (just so you know, chronic nagger would have totally nagged chronic speeder before police officer ever pulled him over, had chronic nagger been in the car)

Ticket happy police officer makes small talk with chronic speeder as he prepares the speeding ticket.

He inquires about the transformer decals on the back of his car that represent his family.

Chronic speeder explains that yes, he has three children, however, one is not yet home as they are waiting to adopt her from South Korea.

Police officer says to chronic speeder, "No kidding?  We have a daughter adopted from South Korea as well! Came home at 11 months old and she is now three."

Asks chronic speeder what agency they are using and turns out police officer adopted through D*illon International but is quite familiar with H*olt International, who chronic speeder and chronic nagger are adopting thru.

Adoptive parent police officer says to chronic speeder, "I know how expensive adoption can be, so I'll let you off with a warning."

Needless to say, after chronic nagger enjoyed hearing this lovely and touching story (and was super grateful to adoptive parent police officer for not writing him a speeding ticket), 

she still nagged chronic speeder about speeding. 

And that's how adoption got a chronic speeder out of a ticket.

The end.

They do listen.

Imagine that!

I was on the phone with a friend today in the car and the kids were with me.

We were talking adoption, specifically about birth mothers and I told her that my kids didn't even know that term...

to which my six year old replied, 'Yes I do!'

(See, he was listening to my entire conversation the whole time!)

I asked him what he thought a birth mother or birth family is, and his response went something like this:

'It means when you have a family, and they can't take care of you, and so another family adopts you.'

Wow.

It's clear from the way he explained it that he totally gets it.

And he wasn't just repeating something I have said in the past...

Some people may say that it's not that simple.

I would have to say, maybe it's not.

But it is to a child.

To this child.

To my child.

To him, adoption is about love.

Simple as that.

His sister's have birth families who couldn't take care of them and so we adopted them.

And now we are a family.  

That's all he sees.

It's all that matters.

And as I finish typing this post thru tears, I am grateful to be the mother to all three of them.

What have we been up to?!?!

Wow! It's been a while since I've posted!  Life has been busy and we've been awaiting news from our adoption agency on when the heck things will start moving this year and families will start getting travel calls!  The latest is that we hope that the Ministry will begin processing EP's by mid-February...I'm not gonna hold my breath, let's be honest.  But we're hopeful, trying to hang in there and preparing as much as we can!!

So, what have we been up to?

Well, crib is no longer in the house!  Zoey, who LOVES, LOVES, LOVES her crib made no qualms about moving to a big girl bed and even allowing an extra one in her room for Emersyn. We figured that the sooner we transitioned her to a real bed and started explaining who else would in there with her eventually, the better.  One less big change when Emersyn actually gets home.  She's been doing great and it's actually worked out that we haven't yet had time to build the frames because girlfriend needs some time to adjust!  I looked on our video monitor the other night and couldn't see her head!  So I went up to check and this is what I found! Looks comfy, no?!?!
(More pics of the new room when it's complete!)

Spending lots of time with family...(here's Aunt Lara and Zoey waiting for food at our favorite Korean restaurant, I couldn't catch them both doing it at the same time on my darn camera phone!)

And loving on our little puppy!  These two are pretty much inseparable, even while napping!

Braedan is still playing basketball and doing awesome! Scored a basket at his last two games!  Zoey is still loving preschool, (though she refused to go when there was a substitute teacher!), Danny began his second to last semester at school and my business has been keeping me busier than ever!

We feel very blessed!

Did I mention we are ready to have our girl home?!?!  

We have the homecoming tshirts and everything!! LOL!

Let's hope February brings good news to waiting families!