Adoption Day and First Christmas!

I feel poorly that I haven't written in a long while.  So much has happened since my last post.  Here's a bit of a catch up.  Rose is now almost 10 months old.  She's doing so well!  She's crawling, pulling herself up, and standing.  We had a tough month when teething threw a wrench into our sleep.  Our champ sleeper was waking up crying and upset.  Her first two bottom teeth are now in and she's resumed her champ sleeping habits!  I unfortunately can not remember who gifted it to her, but she has a cloth doll that I finally dug out of the toy bin in her closet.  For a few nights and naps she was crawling off of her low mattress on the floor to the shelf and getting her doll.  We decided that she was trying to tell us that she wanted to sleep with the doll, so we now put her down to sleep for naps and the night with the doll.  She's getting into things she shouldn't, lights up our days with her smiles and laughter, and is a beautiful, happy, strong, smart, sweet, and determined baby.

ADOPTION DAY!
The biggest event was the finalization of Rose's Adoption.  The finalization of Rose's adoption took place on Thursday, November 6th, the day she turned eight months old.  My parents and Mike's mother were here for the occasion.  I was frustrated because the court changed the time of the hearing and then the night before, I received an e-mail wanting to change the time yet again.  I had people to coordinate with, rides and cars to organize, and the court was not right around the corner.  When to leave, getting there, etc. was going to take some planning.  OK, I admit it; I am a planner.  I was so incredibly anxious with the multiple and last minute change of time.

The actual hearing took about 5 minutes.  I remember feeling so incredibly disappointed with the brevity of the event.  It just did not at all seem to reflect the importance and sentiment of the occasion.  Yet, it happened, and that is the important part.

11/6/2014: Rose's adoption day!

The day after the finalization I was absolutely EXHAUSTED!  I believe it was the fact that this day was the culmination of a five year journey to become parents, including fostering Little D. and a failed adoption and losing Russell.  Too, the stress of the changing time and organizing the day wiped me out.

That weekend we hosted an open house party in celebration of Rose's adoption and her baptism, which was set for the following day.  Our house was filled with people who have loved us and seen us through this journey.  I felt incredibly blessed!


Later that month we celebrated Thanksgiving with my aunt, uncle, and two cousins.  We had so much to be grateful for!

ROSE'S FIRST CHRISTMAS

As is our tradition, Mike and I made and decorated some homemade sugar cookies.  I remember three years ago, I had an emergency appendectomy on December 15th.  I was not up to making sugar cookies that year.  Mike, missing the tradition (and the cookies), went and picked up a bag mix of sugar cookies.  He mixed them up and we sat on the couch with a table in front of us and A Christmas Story on tv and decorated cookies.  He then announced that they were nothing compared to my yummy homemade cookies.  So, we make it a point to make homemade sugar cookies every year.  As you can see, Rose was more interested in the clicking of the camera timer than helping to cut out cookies.  ;)

Yesterday we celebrated Rose's first Christmas!  What a wonderful day!  We celebrated at home, just the three of us that morning, opening gifts and just being together.  Rose received gifts from us, her grandparents, aunts and uncles, and her birth family.  Here are some picture highlights.

 Here is a photo of Rose inspecting the box of Christmas prezzies from her birth mother and family.

 I waited so long to be able to hang our child's stocking for Christmas.  My mom made these stockings for all of us and Rose was gifted another stocking by a friend of mine.

 One of the gifts in Rose's stocking was a cloth photo album including photos of our family and Rose's birth family.

 I know the photo's blurry, but I love the smile on Rose's face as she holds a stuffed owl from her birth aunt.

A family Christmas photo

My aunt and uncle who live nearby came over for Christmas dinner.  Our dinner included homemade sourdough rolls.  Moving to higher altitude of Colorado has thrown a wrench in some of my baking, but I got this recipe from a high altitude baking cookbook my mom gifted me a couple years ago.  I started the process three days before Christmas with the yeast starter.

WHOLEGHAN

Growing up, Mike and his family had several  afghans.  One of them was quite large.  They began referring to the large one as a wholeghan and the smaller ones as halfghans.  A few years ago he asked me to crochet him a wholeghan.  I dragged him to the store with me to choose the colors.  Well, three years in the making, I furiously worked to finish his wholeghan for his Christmas gift this year.  I did it!  Here is a photo of my very tall hubby wrapped up in his wholeghan.

A WHITE CHRISTMAS

We did get a white Christmas this year!  It started snowing around 3 p.m.  It was beautiful to be warm inside with the Christmas lights, warm drink and food, and the snow falling.  It did take my aunt and uncle a while to get home though because of the slick roads.  We don't usually get enough here where it accumulates or sticks around long enough.  We have a south facing driveway, so we don't often have to shovel, but we got enough snow and are expecting cold and even negative temps in the next few days that Mike shoveled the driveway this afternoon.

PLAYING GAMES

Playing games is a big tradition of ours every holiday.  This year Mike gave me the game of Mancala for Christmas.  After the dishes were washed and put away, the kitchen cleaned up, and Rose was in bed, Mike and I sat by the fire and played some Mancala.  We had actually seen Rose's birth mother and sister playing the game the last time we video chatted with them a couple weeks ago.  It's a fun game.  In this pic, Mike was winning!

We hope for you that this holiday season and new year are filled with love, joy, and peace.  Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!  I will try to post more often as we approach Rose's first birthday in March.

We're Up and Running!!!!

After months of going back and forth with our letter and photos, we're now up and running on the agency's website.  We also have adoption brochures that will be sent out to potential birthmoms who fit our profile.  I kept feeling frustrated and anxious that it wasn't happening fast enough.  But now we're set and the waiting game continues.  I'd appreciate you all sharing the link to our profile.  You never know who knows who and how we will make a connection with a birthmom.

Check out our profile and please share it with others!
http://www.iheartadoption.org/users/mikeandkristinv

Updates

Wow, it seems like a long time has passed since I last wrote.

My Mom gave me a wonderful book, Baby, We Were Meant for Each Other: In Praise of Adoption by Scott Simon.  It is Simon's account of how he and his wife adopted two girls from China.  It includes stories from other adoptive parents and children as well.

We met with the caseworker from our Colorado agency to do the homestudy update.  That's all done and we're waiting for our criminal background clearance to take place before that's all accepted.

We're dealing with a lot of looming paperwork.  That's been difficult.  I'm of the personality that I have a goal and I just want it all done.  Having something hanging over my head is difficult.  But, we're slowly but surely getting it done.

This past weekend Mike and I went to a weekend intensive workshop at the California agency.  It was good to spend some time with my family during our trip.

The first day of the workshop was difficult.  Mike had flown into San Diego the night before and neither one of us slept well.  We then got up early and headed out from my parents' house to go to the agency in LA.  It was a long day and we addressed many things that we'd already dealt with doing our foster parent training.

The second day of the workshop was so much better!  We had a same sex couple who just adopted a baby girl who was ten weeks old come and speak to us about their experience.  Then there was a woman who is a birthmother who placed her child for adoption about 8 years ago.  It was really nice to hear stories from both perspectives.

We were given by the California agency two books to read.  One is Secret Thoughts of an Adoptive Mother by Jana Wolff.  I finished reading it this morning.  It is about a caucasian, Jewish couple who adopted an African-Mexican-American baby boy.  It was a wonderful book that I highly recommend.  There are comments from readers who are adoptive parents, biological parents, birthparents, and psychologists.  I think it was raw, honest, and supportive of adoption without dismissing the challenges faced by adoption or transracial adoption.  The second book that we were given to read is Children of Open Adoption by Kathleen Silber and Patricia Martinez Dorner.  I will start reading that perhaps tomorrow.

This has been a difficult time.  I am feeling overwhelmed.  I went from not working at all to beginning a Masters of Music Education program through Boston University online, giving private voice and piano lessons, teaching those at a music lesson studio, involved in two choirs, teaching a vocal workshop, filling out adoption paperwork, and of course housework (which I'm never good at letting go).  I've come to the conclusion though that I'm glad that I'm really busy rather than having a lot of time on my hands.  I think I'd go crazy with the anticipation and anxiety of waiting for a child if I didn't have things to keep me busy.

It's tough too seeing so many family and friends expecting babies.  I'm so happy for them and do not want to deprive them of this amazing, incredible, and joyful time and experience. Yet when you are experiencing infertility and so desperately want to be a mother, it's difficult to see.  When we were doing our foster parent training, we took a newborn care class at the hospital.  It was so difficult to be in that room filled with women 8 or 9 months pregnant and think of all the things we'll miss out on by not having a child through natural means: pregnancy, birth, breastfeeding, etc.

The next step is to finish that lingering paperwork.  I went into the doctor yesterday to have her fill out the medical evaluation I needed.  Mike and I are going to work on our dear birthparent letter this weekend as I've heard it can take a few months going back and forth with revisions.  I'm starting to collect pictures of us as a couple, with family and friends, and with children (especially our awesome nieces and nephew).  If any of you have any pictures like that that you think I might not have copies of, please feel free to e-mail them to me.

I'm including in this post two pictures.  One is of my family during this last weekend.  The other is of me and Mike with two of our nieces.  These will definitely go in our profile.

L - R: Riley Jayne Myers, Mike Vredevoogd, Hope Myers, Kristin Vredevoogd

L - R: Mike Vredevoogd, Kristin Vredevoogd, Janet Megill, David Megill, Hope Myers, Holly Myers, John Myers, and Riley Jayne Myers

Home Study and Trip to CA

Yay!  We've trudged on through a lot of the paperwork we need for the CO agency and written a few checks.  Saturday the social worker is coming over for our home visit and to begin the update to our home study.

We have our trip to CA for the intensive weekend with the out of state agency scheduled.

I feel like we're making progress.  Slowly, but still making progress.

So Glad I'm Not Working Full Time

Well, today I took a huge envelope to the post office to mail to the Colorado agency.  It's taken a few weeks, hasn't it?  It turns out that I was e-mailed probably every form there could ever exist to fill out.  No wonder I was feeling overwhelmed.  Mike sat down with me and took stock of what we had and what we had to do.  It turns out that we had more of the paperwork done than they initially need, so that's great.

Yesterday we figured that Mike and I would go to the sheriff's office to get our fingerprints taken.  We get there and are going through the security and are told they are only open for fingerprints from 11 a.m. - 4 p.m.  I went and did my grocery shopping and Mike went to work.  I then went later in the day and Mike caught the bus from work and got there just before they closed.

I'm so glad I don't work full time.  How can one do this with a regular work day?  It is time consuming and overwhelming.  But, I know that all the emotional roller coaster, financial cost, and time will be well worth it in the end when we have our beautiful baby.

Paperwork

And so the endless paperwork begins.  Our printer's getting a workout printing out many, many, many forms we need to fill out, have signed, etc. for the Colorado agency.  I'm glad I'm not working full time.  This is a process that requires a lot of time with phone calls, e-mails, and paperwork.

Visible Steps of Progress

The preliminary application and payment have been sent in to the Colorado agency.  They're sending us the next paperwork.  We're getting the next set of paperwork from the out of state agency to register for the intensive weekend where they'll help us with the Dear Birthparents letter and our online profile for parents to view.  Our caseworker with Boulder County who did our homestudy before fostering Little D is going to forward it to both agencies.

I finally feel like we've have some visible progress being made.  I'm so glad that I'm busy.  I'm on the sub list at two Montessori schools, am giving piano and voice lessons both at the music studio and at home, am teaching a vocal workshop with elementary children, and am taking violin lessons.  I'm also doing some composing.  To top it all off, I'm waiting to hear if I've been accepted into an online Masters in Music Education program.  If I wasn't busy, I think I'd go insane with the waiting that we're going to have to do.  We've been told that the process will take around a year.