There was this idea of a blog post that was supposed to be
done last Monday or Tuesday, but now it's a full week later and we're finally
getting around to posting. What happened? Well, have you every driven 7 hours
round trip only to get home and immediately be attacked by the stomach flu? If
you haven't, then just let me assure you that it puts a bit of a wrinkle in
your plans. Regardless, we haven't updated this blog in 2 months now, for some
reasons that we hope will become a little more clear, and we needed to let all
of you know what's been happening.
First of all, when we last left you, we were
matched with a birth mom and waiting on her delivery date. We're happy to tell
you now that on January 9th, we finally met our little boy. We got the call
that afternoon that she was in labor and immediately got our things together
and got ready to leave. He was about 10 days early, so we weren't totally ready
yet, but we were able to get out the door pretty quickly. Despite driving
through a bit of a snowstorm and having to navigate the 12 inches that was still
on the ground in central Illinois, we were able to get to the hospital about 45
minutes after he was born. We spent most of the evening in the room with him
and our birth mom before heading back to spend our last childless night at our
hotel. After getting some sleep and debating on how early is too early to show
up to the hospital, we went back to see our little man the next morning. He
wasn't released until that evening, so we were able to spend a good portion of
the day with him. After some paperwork he was released to us to take to the
temporary home that we would grow to hate, the Danville, IL Sleep Inn.
Now don't get me
wrong, the hotel was nice and the employees there were great. If you were going
to spend some time in that town, you could do a lot worse than the Sleep Inn.
The problem was that we wanted so badly to be home and, due to paperwork that
was pending with the state of Illinois, we weren't allowed to bring the baby
across state lines. What made it worse was that this particular hotel was
within about 200 yards from the Indiana border. We could eat breakfast
downstairs and look across a field into Indiana, we just couldn't go to
Indiana.
We stayed in
Danville for a few days before moving to another hotel, this time further south
in Illinois. (We were allowed to drive a few hours to southern Illinois, but
not allowed to go 200 yards to Indiana. Go figure.) We thought that going
further south would make it easier if any of our family wanted to make the trip
over and see Will. That was our idea anyway, but I'm pretty sure that his
grandmothers would have tunneled in from China if that had to so they could get
to see their baby. (By the way, that's happened also. He's "their
baby". Not ours. Weird.)
We ended up
staying in our second hotel for a little over a week before finally getting the
word from our attorney that we were cleared to go home. We got the call around
8 or so on a Monday night. It was a little late to start that drive, and we'd
already paid for that night in the hotel, but we pulled off the quickest
packing job in history and headed out the door. No disrespect to Illinois, but
we're Hoosiers and it was time to go home.
We crossed into Indiana probably around 10:30
that night (at which point I started singing "Back Home Again in
Indiana"...badly), and finally got Will home for the first time a little
after midnight. The dogs were interested, although not super excited yet, to
meet their new little brother, but introductions had to wait until morning. We
were all ready to sleep in our own beds.
The weeks since have been filled with
doctor's appointments, 2 baby showers, and grandparents/aunts/cousins who all
"just happened to be in the neighborhood" stopping by and it's all
been great. We've had more visitors at our house in the last 5 weeks than in
the previous 2 years we lived there and it's been awesome. And our church
family has loved him more than we could even have imagined (somehow he's become
"their baby" too. I don't get it.) It probably has something to do
with us having the cutest baby in the history of babies.
We're
not done with the adoption yet though. The coming weeks and months are going to
bring a lot of hoops to jump through, but we're excited to get through them and
to the point where he will officially be a part of our family, even though he
already is. Just this week we the first of our 3 post-placement visits from our
case worker and we were able to meet with our birth mom again (who's been
great) when she signed the last of her paperwork. There will be a few more
meetings with our case worker and lots of legal paperwork to be done, but we're
marching full speed ahead toward our finalization.
We're also
looking forward to having another fundraiser on April 12. We reserved the date
for this fundraiser before we were matched with a birth mom with the idea that
there was no way we'd have a baby by then. Oops. Regardless, this fundraiser
will go towards finishing up our adoption expenses as many of our fees aren't
due until finalization. It will be a pasta dinner and silent auction and will
be held at Syria Christian Church in Orleans. We'll have more details coming in
our next blog and on our facebook page, so keep checking things out there.
We're looking forward to celebrating this night as the completion of our
adoption journey and hope that you can join us.
Again, sorry for the long wait between posts,
but we wanted to wait until we were home and things settled down a bit to
update you all on what's been happening. We're so thankful to so many of you
who have read this and encouraged us along the way. Please keep reading and
we'll keep posting. We can't wait to see you all on April 12.
