Our boys

This is after the hospital dressed them up. It helped me to know that they really did exist.

The Twins

The doctors show the knot that the twins made with their umbilical cords.

The boys at birth.

This is the first picture we saw. They were 2 pounds each, so Justine had to do complete funeral arrangements.

What a week!

Well, on Wednesday I talked to Justine, birth mom, on the phone. She seems super sweet. She had received information from an adoption agency and her mom told me to call her ASAP and talk to her. I did. I tried to answer her questions as best as I could. She was concerned that we would take the babies and disappear, or that they would be in an unsafe home. I can understand that fear, there are lots of horror stories in the world. Once I assured her that we want to do an open adoption, we want the boys to know the girls, we want them to know who their birth family is, then she seemed very calm. I asked her how certain she was about adoption, She said "certain", I asked how certain she is that we are the family, she said "certain". I asked if we should begin obtaining lawyers and she said yes!
After I stopped dancing around, I texted Daryl, and then called both of our moms. Since then, all I have been able to eat, sleep, and breathe is "twins".
On Sunday, Stephanie, our pastor's wife, asked if we knew if there is one amniotic sack or two, and if there is one placenta or two. She told me about Twin To Twin Transfusion Syndrome. WOW, that is some scary stuff! And of course, our babies are extremely high risk.
We're praying for them daily, along with many others, and we believe that whatever happens is God's will.
I spent a day or two pretty freaked out, but I'm pretty calm about that now.
NOW I am working on figuring out where I am going to stay, since the babies will probably be in NICU for 2-6 weeks. Ventura/Oxnard is a huge tourist area, and not cheap at all! I know that God will give us that answer for this too.
Other things we're thinking about are, what car seats and bottles we need to get. I'm also working on an application for an adoption loan. Ugh. It is super long, and asks a bazillion questions.
That pretty much sums up the last week. Keep us in your prayers, please!

Operation Christmas Child

While we were driving to the store to purchase items for Operation Christmas Child, we were reviewing the plan. This is the conversation that followed:
Isabelle: Mom, what are we doing again?
Me: We're going to buy presents for a little girl that we don't know.
Isabelle: But not for me?
Me: No, I've already bought your Christmas presents.
Isabelle: Where are they?
Me: I hid them.
Isabelle: Well... THAT's interesting.


Where do they come up with this stuff??
She followed up with "And Mommy, in-ter-est-ing is NOT a bad word."

We're having babies!.....well,.....maybe.....

We have been talking with a family for nearly a month about becoming adoptive parents of identical boys. They are due February 22, 2011, which makes them 23 weeks gestation today. This morning we were told that we are going forward with adoption proceedings. What a rush! The excitement and the fear. Law states that they will not be ours until all papers are signed, and papers cannot be signed until the babies are at least 72 hours old.
We are going to continue to leave this in God's hands, as we have since we first heard about the opportunity, but we will be posting more often, and also adding some countdowns here.