Hoping for News...

The last week as I said in the last post, has been just draining. The good news is Nate is better. He had a scary episode with a fever, but was doing well as of Friday. The fever scared me as one of my fellow mama blanc's is trying to cope with her child in a Haitian hospital suffering from meningitis. He is so ill, yet we have no way of really knowing how he is. She is going to Haiti Tuesday. Through it all, I have spoken with her many times trying to impart medical information with limited return info and just trying to support her. Through that I saw something inspirational. She wants to go to Haiti to see her baby of course, but she has taken this time to champion the cause of all of the orphans. Sh has broadcasted the needs of the orphanage and is using this difficult trip to be a blessing to the other children. She is bringing supplies and trying to meet the needs she can through the grave illness of her baby. Through her grief she reached out to me to see what she could do to bring my own little sick baby home. I gave her some questions I really needed answered and she is on that fact finding mission.

My other mama Blanc friend is traveling too and is bringing my babies a proper mama hug from me, plus something worth more than gold right now...pictures. It is through these awe inspiring acts that I am learning that maybe this long and painful wait is really God's plan to teach us how to be a blessing to someone else. I decided to take my wait and try to maneuver my travelto Haiti to include a long overdue visit with my mom as she moves through her chemo. It turns out I stumbled on amazing airfare out of Chicago. Now, just to get the word to put that plan into action. Until then, I will live out this week being ever grateful to my mama Blanc friends who are taking time out of their own time with their babies to make my wait just a little simpler. I cannot wait to return the favor.

A Tough Choice

The last few days have been laden with ups and downs. On Monday night we heard Nate was very sick. His hemoglobin was dangerously low and the Red Cross in Haiti was out of blood. It occurred to me at that time it was time to trust God. There was nothing for me to do in this situation. I could not magically produce blood even if I were there. God showed up, and showed off. Nate survived the night and sent some friends to our coordinator to donate their own blood so Nate could survive. He is better little by little. This has led us to make some tough choices. We have split his adoption off from Alex. He is much further along in the process and cannot wait until Alex is ready to go any further. Our coordinator estimates that would delay Nate's homecoming by about six months. He nearly died this time, I am not sure waiting for a next time would be best.

So, here I sit, anxiously awaiting another email from our coordinator. Our lawyer is checking on things and we are hoping that we are nearly out of social services so I will have the feat joy and privilege to travel to see my babies. I need to hold my Nate and praise God that he was spared. I need to hold Alex again. Last time I held him he was God's little orphan, this time I get to hold him and tell him I am his mama. I think somehow through this frightening time, I have received several gifts. First, I get to see my babies soon. I wasn't otherwise going to see them until at least January. Second, with them coming home months apart, I will have plenty of time to enjoy each baby as they come home. Here is to hoping I can go soon!

Out of the mouth of...Zachary

It has come to the attention of Tim and I that our six year old Zachary, seems to know things. He told us a year and a half ago, long before Haiti was on the table, that God was sending him a brother. One that was his size and brown. There have been several other things he seems to know. He told me once he remembered sitting with God and making people. He described making people of all colors with straight hair and curly hair and that when they were done, they were really tired. He was 4 at the time. I asked if they had talked about creation in Sunday school, his teacher had said no. So, although it doesn't happen often, we have learned to listen when Zachary talks about God.

Today, I was puttering around in the kitchen doing my prep work for the dinners this week. He was sitting at my bar playing Lego's when he began to talk about Abraham and Sarah. He said, "see mom, everyone told her she was too old and she had a baby." he seemed to have a good understanding of their lives, and the story. He had learned it today in Sunday school. I stopped what I was doing and sat down with him. I hugged him tight and he smiled. I told him this was my favorite story. It reminded me that all this waiting and my advanced age, I am 41, meant nothing in God's plan. The babies were coming, if I can just be faithful and carry on, just like Sarah. Leave it to Zachary, at his ripe old age of 6 to have just the right message. I returned to my puttering, but pausing now and then to watch him with his Lego's and wonder if he had any idea what a treasure from God he truly is.

A Sick Child

There are some big differences between this adoption and the adoptions we completed before. In other adoptions we simply had no information. No updates, nothing. This one I have the privilege of speaking to the orphanage director, and now friend, any time I want via email. This seems like such a blessing most of the time, but there are times it is more of a torture of sorts. Yesterday, I got an email that Nate is sick. He is crying a lot, and he was taken to the doctor yesterday and is quite anemic. He has been anemic before and has even had transfusions. I gave this all to God. He placed the loving orphanage director there to care for him when I couldn't and I know she loves him very much, but still...it is my baby and I want to be there. I cried as I wished I could dry his tears and put him on my lap or squeeze him tight through the blood draws, but I can't. I am frustrated by this too.

Then, a cool day happened. Tim played a breast cancer event with his band. It was a whirlwind of emotions for me. It was the good music and the breast cancer survivors and the texting of my mom recovering from chemo, all of it. It made me glad to be there with friends. After Jack and I did what we do best, shopping. On the way home though, the tide turned again. Jack's throat hurt, he is starting to run a fever and coughing. We came in the house I dosed my child with advil and tucked him into the couch and our favorite holiday movie was on, Christmas Vacation. I know, odd, middle of October, but still. I rubbed his head and took great joy in caring for my baby here. Somehow, I felt through this I helped Nate too. I hate that Jack is sick, but somehow I think God gave me this caregiving opportunity to heal my saddened heart at not being able to help Nate. Now, to take a realistic stance and hope it doesn't spread through the house! LOL!

A Little News...

One of my fellow Mama's Blanc described the emotions that go along wth seeing our orphanage director's name in the address of a new email. There is excitement...would there be good news? There is anxiety...what if the news was bad? On and on it goes. I have been waiting to hear from her for more than a week now. I had several questions, mostly administrative in nature. Finally, today, it all came together. She had received our latest round of paperwork and today, just today, had finally been able to push full steam ahead on our beautiful little Alexander. His papers will join Nate's and we are moving inside Haitian Social Services. That is a very unpredictable process. With Nate I sweated out every day, then we were suddenly done right after we accepted Alex's referral. Pretty quick really. I am hoping Alex's will be just as swift. Now, I can finally hit the pause button again and put this adoption back into play mode. I feel like with the paperwork delay and the decision to bring home Alex, that we have been paused forever.

I would love to say that I was angry about the delay. Say that somehow the time was wasted and now the children are older. I honestly cannot say that. God used that time to tap us on the shoulder and give us the blessing of little Alex. One day, I will look at him asleep in his crib and be able to think I could not imagine my life without him in it. I also think God has big plans for these two boys. Those plans could not have been carried out had we zipped through Nate's adoption ignoring God's plan for Alex, or the blessings he will bring our family.

Now I only hope that things will keep moving. The minute we are done in social services we get to go see our babies again!

A Whirlwind of a Day!

Today marked the official start of trampoline meet season. Jack and I arose at 3:30 am to make it to Columbus for his first event. It was his first time competing as advanced in trampoline. He arrived, and although he would not admit it, I think he was nervous. Then, in the stretching area were four other advanced male trampolinists from a gym in Michigan. They obviously have been advanced a while through the slew of double tucks and double fulls flying off the trampoline. Nonetheless, Jack did fine. He came in behind all of them, and I think was a bit disappointed, but I reminded him he hadn't been advanced all that long. Then, on to the double mini. There he was fourth, beating out one of them. He was happy about that. Then, on to tumbling, where he remains sub advanced this year. Fortunately there was only one person he was competing against there, of course from that same gym. He lost by a couple tenths. Not bad. I think it inspired him to work harder.

The rest of the day was full of adventure for us. Off to Starbucks, our favorite hangout, chipotle, a favorite lunch spot which we don't have in West Virginia, then on to Jack's favorite mall, Easton in Columbus. We used his Easton app on his phone, and covered a lot of ground in a short period if time. He carefully picked out Lego's for Zachary, jeans and a sweatshirt for his sis, ok, I helped with that, and sugar free candy bars from Godiva for his diabetic dad. He got a few things too. On the way home, he talked about how great it will be next summer. He will drive and I can "rest the whole way!" he talked about taking all his little brothers to the Lego store and spoiling them. It made me proud that he would think about what life would be like with the babies. It didn't hurt when he mentioned rest for me! In all, it reminded me that our little adventures will one day be quite different with all the babies, then in another time, our adventures will slow down quite a bit as he moves off to college. It made me happy to have had today. I think the best part was watching him and Zachary carefully making a building out of the Lego's Jack picked out for him, and later watching Katya give voices to the characters they had built. God has given me great babies and there are days I can't believe He is blessing me with two more.

Now...if I could just wait on this whole God's timing thing! LOL!

Big News!

I spent the last few weeks trying to figure out this delay. Our paperwork was delayed with seemingly no answers. A wise friend of mine suggested that God has a reason. Maybe He had something planned? I must admit, at the time I held on to that but was skeptical. I could not understand why God would not want Nate here with us. Then, the plan started to come, little by little throughout the last few days, it came. First a call. My boss called. Not the little supervisor, but the big boss. Oh geez. What did I do? I wondered. The other freaky thing was he called me at home on a day off. Hmmm... I nervously started talking to him. It turns out he was simply offering me to work at another hospital for about three months. I live halfway between Charleston and Huntington. I currently work in Charleston, and he offered me to work in Huntington for a little bit. They were short of nurse practitioners and he thought maybe I would like to help them out. He then offered me a bonus. The exact amount we needed for something we have been praying about.

From the beginning we were approved for two children. Now, we had the exact amount we needed to do just that, adopt another child from Haiti. Somehow we just knew we needed to do it. We had the perfect child in mind. When we went there was one baby not matched with a family. It has haunted me since we were there. Why didn't anyone match with him? I asked some of my adopting friends if they would take him, none could do it. I hated it. Fifteen babies and he was the only one with no mama. We fed him, rocked him and held him when we were there. I laughed at him as he was working toward crawling and he just couldn't figure it out because he had a thumb in his mouth and couldn't use that arm to move. Today, we agreed to be his parents. Yes, another baby. A ten month old boy, yet to be named by us. We are working in that! LOL!

My wonderful friend and fellow Mama Blanc, Denise immediately sent me pictures of him she had taken in January. He was ten days old when she met him. He was in his birth mother's arms. In the other pics, he was snuggled into his crib, sound asleep, same thumb in his mouth.

Here is the thing, after agreeing to take him, we found out as soon as our papers get there in a couple days we are about to come out of social services for Nate. This will put his process on hold until the baby's stuff catches up. It will put us back a few weeks, but in the end a few weeks is nothing compared to a lifetime with a beautiful baby. Besides, I firmly believe God would have put the roadblocks up until we figured out his plan for us was this beautiful baby all along.

The Great Fixer

I believe I have proven today that endless prayer certainly pays off. Today, most things broken got fixed. First, the Internet guy came and I am happy to say during his five minute stay here he it it done. Never mind the painfully simple thing he did! I must admit, I was annoyed at spending half the day waiting on him, but that too was fruitful. I got the bills paid and a pile of mail sorted and my kitchen clean. However, I did have a small mishap there. It turns out balancing my phone between my ear and my shoulder over a sink of pine sol and hot water was probably not the best idea I ever had. Yes, phone submerged into a sink. The good news was it was TOTALLY disinfected. The bad news was, it was TOTALLY broken. That was not awful news though. I strongly disliked my phone. I was impatiently waiting for my upgrade. I was lucky though, I went to the store and I was eligible for a free upgrade! I got the iPhone 4 which I have wanted for a long time. So, that was awesome! On the way home I got the mail. In there was the official letter inviting my oldest two to the USCIS office to collect their US citizen certificates. I have been waiting for this for a long time too! As if it couldn't get any better, the person renting a house we own who has promised to get a mortgage for two years to buy the place, out of the blue has a meeting with the mortgage broker tomorrow!

Tim and I just looked at one another in stunned silence tonight. I think good news on Nate would have just capped the day. We didn't get any, but God blessed us beyond our wildest dreams today. I think we will spend some time sending up some praises for such a wonderful day and see what comes next.