Saturday, September 17, 2011

5 months old

Seriously...isn't she the cutest thing you have ever seen! I might be biased but our little girl just steals my heart with her sweet toothless grin and those beautiful blue eyes. Her personality is really starting to come out and we are watching her become a little girl more and more everyday. Love her bundles!

Here are some stats as she turns 5 months:

-Weighs approximately 19 or 20 pounds (no Dr's apt till next month)
-Is about 26 or 27 inches tall
-Is in size 3 diapers
-Wears 6 month clothes (for now---9 month clothes are washed and almost ready to be worn!)
-Still takes 5 bottles a day but just started rice cereal yesterday and did great!
-Rice cereal is given at breakfast & dinner time (trying to get her ready for regular mealime)
-Sleeps about 10-11 hours a night (from about 7:45 or 8pm till about 6:45 or 7am)
-Seriously loves bathtime...has become our favorite time too!
-Is sitting up (somewhat supported) and is doing great at it
-She loves grabbing pretty much anything that is in her general vicinity
-Loves to drink water out of our cups (she has her own sippy cup but prefers ours!)
-Smiles and laughs ALL the time
-Starting to be ticklish now...especially her neck when we dry her after bathtime

So happy that she is a happy loveable little girl! I mean, can I say how blessed we are more than I already do?!?! Can't wait to see what this month holds!

Friday, September 9, 2011

Outcome of yesterday

I think its funny how hyped up we made our visit from Eva, our state appointed Social Worker. I mean, we cleaned our house top to bottom (which I am happy to be still enjoying!) and we bought some general child safety things for the house and we moved things that might be seen as unsafe in the house (our cleaning supplies are now safely stored in our laundry room on the patio!) But the minute Eva walked in our door, 10 minutes late, I could just tell it was going to be a low key meeting. She sat down and went over some general info and went over what the next steps are in the process (I will go over in a second). And then asked about Emsley and her health and growth. But luckily we have the world's happiest and cutest baby so Emsley was more than willing to show Miss Eva how happy she was being our daughter!

Then Eva walked around the house and scanned each room...no real questions about the safety of our home so it was super easy. I mean, I am always grateful for a reason to have a clean house but feel a little silly about how crazy we got about it. I mean, all we wanted was to show her that we are not a crazy sloppy family who doesn't take care of our child's home environment. Its funny how much we want to impress this woman but in the end, by just being ourselves and showing her how much we love that little girl, we showed her everything she needed to know about us and our parenting abilities. Next time we meet, I will probably still crazy clean the house but my attitude about the meeting will be different. I won't just clean to impress but because its a nice excuse to clean the house and make someone feel at home in our home.

So what is next??? So we have to meet with Eva every 3 months. Our next meeting will probably be another home visit because we will most likely be moving soon so she will need to check out our new home again. After the next meeting, because Emsley will be over 6 months old, it will likely be one of our last because Eva can start to write our report. The report hopefully won't take that long but Eva mentioned that she has a lot of cases so I'm thinking it will take her a few months to complete this. Once the report is completed, we can then petition the court for a court date. Well, by we I mean our lawyer! Then the court date could be anywhere from 1 month to 6 months later (depending on availability).

So I guess we are looking at a court date sometime early next summer. I know that seems far off but for us, that is wonderful! I mean, one year ago we were waiting to be matched and our little girl was a mere 10 week fetus. Now she is a beautiful almost 5 month old little girl who we love to pieces. I think we can be patient for another 9 or 10 months!

Thursday, September 1, 2011

Step 1 to finalization

After another round of paperwork and hoops to jump through, we are finally starting the adoption finalization process. We are so excited because it means that Emsley will be officially ours soon. In our hearts, she has been ours for a long time but to the state and any else who might care, she is our baby girl. So here we are, step one. We are going to be meeting with the state appointed Social Worker, Eva, Thursday, Sept 8th at 10 a.m. Not sure what this time with her will look like but we are going to be working on baby proofing our home this weekend. We know that the state requires you to have your home COMPLETELY ready for a baby...whether they can crawl or not.

At this point, I am really eager to get this step done because I know it can be a long time till we actually get a court date for the finalization hearing. One thing at the time though and we are just so grateful to be moving forward. I look back on this blog and think back to when we said the same thing about the adoption process...that we just can't wait to finish our paperwork and homestudy so we can be shown to birthmoms to start the next step. Weird that is has been just over 2 years now since we started on this adoption journey and now have a beautiful daughter in our family who has changed our world forever! Well, I hope to update after our meeting next week to explain what goes on.

Here's to starting a new and exciting phase in this time!