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.

Adding to the family

Daryl and I have decided that it is time to go forward with getting licensed for foster care and adoption. We go to orientation on Thursday and then begin classes on May 10th.

Easter Sunday

Daryl and I were once told that the easiest way to get through Sunday School is to remember the 3 main answers, "God, Jesus, Bible".
On Easter Sunday I asked Isabelle, "What did you learn about in Sunday School today?" She said, "Ummm, Jesus.", I thought "Ok, this is a good start, since it is the day we learn about Jesus raising from the dead." So I said, "What about Jesus?" She said "Umm..... God."
I looked at Daryl and we cracked up! He said, "Well, she's got 2 out of the 3 answers."

All my dreams...

Isabelle could not decide what dress to wear for church yesterday. She took 2 dresses in the bedroom to Daddy and then proceeded to tell him which dress he should tell her to choose. We both told her what a pretty dress it was. As we were going out of the room to dress her she said, "Thank you, you made all my dreams come true!"

My daughter dropped the F bomb!

Tonight Isabelle had a rough night. Uncle Lee and Aunt Sarah are here for Lee's 30th birthday. While at China Panda she was completely out of control. She wouldn't sit in her chair, was yelling and screaming, tried to lock me out of the bathroom, and wouldn't eat her dinner.
After dinner she wanted to ride in the truck, and then in the car, and then in the truck. We finally told her she was going to ride in the car. She completely lost it! She was arching her back and fighting so hard that Daryl couldn't get her into the car seat. He eventually buckled her in, and I decided to take her for a drive.
The first 25 minutes of the drive she screamed hysterically. She even took her shoe off and threw it, hitting me in the head. Eventually she began to calm down.
After we had calmly talked for a little bit, I asked her about daycare. She said "Connor said a naughty word to Miss Danielle. It's not nice to say naughty words." I agreed that it's not nice to say naughty words and she babbled a little bit more about it. Finally I asked "What was the naughty word that Connor said to Miss Danielle?" I was expecting to hear "stupid head" or "shut up" She said, "Fuckyou". She then proceeded to tell me, quickly and nearly babbling, that "Fuckyou" is not a nice word and that we don't say "Fuckyou" to Miss Estella or Miss Danielle or any other time.
By the time I was able to cut in, I had heard my innocent little girl say that "word" several times in a row. I agreed with her that we do not say that, and she would be in a lot of trouble if she said it.
At Grandma's later I told her to tell Daddy what Connor had said and she whispered it because she didn't want him to be mad at her. I hope that means she's learned not to use that "word"!

Isabelle's First Prayer

Isabelle prayed by herself for the first time tonight. Usually Mommy and/or Daddy go first and she can copy. Tonight she said, "Mommy, I'll pray and you say it." So, she started, it was something like "Dear God, thank you for the food and that I could play at church.... " and then I don't have any idea what the other things were. I'm glad that she is starting to feel comfortable talking to her Heavenly Father at such a young age!

The Binky bites the dust!

Isabelle's Binky has been starting to fall apart for a few weeks. It started with a small hole in the latex nipple, which, with some help, kept getting larger. I was working on it again tonight while she sat on my lap. I was thinking I could conveniently make it break on Friday when daddy was home from work for 96 hours. Instead of enlarging the hole, the entire nipple popped off! I said, "Oops, it broke." She said, "Fix it." I said, "I don't think I can, let's ask Daddy." The whole time she is trying to "snap" the nipple back onto the hard plastic part. After Daddy told her that he can't fix it. We told her that it is trash and she just said "yeah". She continued to carry it around for a couple minutes, then just dropped it on the floor. Our normal routine is to "get Binky and Bear" and go to bed, but she walked right past Binky telling us, "it's broken." I was thinking, gleefully, "this is going to be so easy!" And it was. Until it was really time to go to sleep. She used every stall tactic she could think of, she was hungry, thirsty, needed to go potty, needed another story, hot, cold, etc. Finally, after Daddy had spanked her for jumping on her bed and scolding her, she asked him to pat her back and that is how she fell asleep. The question is, Will she STAY asleep?