Eye Candy of the Junior Mint

One of my nicknames for his is "The Junior Mint".

On this morning I noticed my son is GIGANTIC!!! Where did my baby go??

I spend my days separating him and the dog. They just want to love on each other but it ends with one or both of them getting PO'd! Plus nothing is as much fun as a dog toy right?

His last month's birthday portrait. Attitude all the way! He ripped off his sock and flipped up his collar!

Is he going to bite me or kiss me? It's hard to tell. LOVE LOVE LOVE him!!

He's Here!

Mr and Mrs H are proud to announce the arrival of Baby H!

I can't believe it! We got here at 3:41 am on the 29th. 6#13 oz, 20 inches long. He arrived at 9:54 am. He was delivered by the anthologist! MC went from 6cm to "omg he's here, he's here I have to push!"

"You can't push you're at 6"

"NO HE'S HERE - I HAVE TO PUSH"

"you can't...."

I'm looking down there, I gulp (and gag a little...i mean ewwwww) and sure enough...He was here! He shot outta there like a canon after a tiny quarter of push.

I was all teary and sniffling..It was disgusting and awesome at the same time! He was covered in the stuff (which I'm too tired to think of). They had a hard time getting it all off him. MC didn't want to see him right away...she was in a lot of pain. They did the initial assessment, I cut the cord, i went to get the fathers....stepped out of the room for 3 secs and then had to get into fight with an old lady nurse/gatekeeper to get back in there. She was misinformed about how MC wanted to see him. I got back in with Mr H. The birthfather had gone to the restroom. The old lady had taken off with the bassinette so the anesthesiologist wrapped him up tight, scooped him off, and sprinted down the hall to the other side of the birthing center to our room where further assessments were made.

I'm in love...it wasn't instant. It was weird at first. I'm looking at this baby looking at me looking at him! It's 135 am now and they've got him in the nursery doing a bath and his 2nd 8 hour assessment.

Everything is going great with the birthparents. It's been very, very special. Sweet and heart wrenchingly wonderful.

The Calm

Things are calm currently. No calls from the lawyer. No calls from the emom. No news is good news it appears. Although she does have the flu. Apparently, Medicaid only pays for 3 prescriptions a month so we helped with some meds for her. A few days letter and it appears she's feeling better.

I got a exer.saucer from my sister's neighbor for $15 and a couple of outfits. We had a coupon for Babies.r.us plus hit a buy one get one sale and got some bottles. We are also the "proud" owners of two packs of diapers, some wipes and a few other things. The crib is arriving this week. We got a crib mattress Friday night. I feel confident in saying if he arrived tomorrow we'd be prepared (except emotionally of course :-).

I'm really enjoying getting people's congratulations and how excited everyone is for us.

Does anyone have any adoption/story type book recommendations? I know I've read them on other blogs but I haven't had much lucky finding posts I remember.

We're going to see the emom over labor day. Advice? Is this a gift bearing occasion? Anyone? I guess I have the next week to obsess over that.

Our baby is due in now less than 2 months!!

It's True!

We ARE in fact, matched! Our facilitator has taken us off the website. Of all things, not seeing our picture up under "Waiting Families" is what has finally made me believe it's true. We ARE going to have a baby! I AM going to be a MOM. I AM going to be a MOM!

Bonus!

I admit...i can almost admit it to myself....We have a match! (pretty much I think). I'm on the verge of panic attack half the day and most of the night.

Any way...our emom is near enough that we don't have to fly!! YAY!! I'm so very excited about that. I was not at all excited about taking a newborn on a giant germ tube.

Another bonus is that we can finalize before we leave the emom's state. Which leads us to the biggest bonus! We won't have to deal with our dipshit social worker once we get home!! Thank you Jesus. Unfortunately, I will be seeing her next week to update the homestudy. I don't know if I should take the entire day off since there's no way to tell when she might show up (despite making an appointment).

I'm still pretty much in disbelief. We haven't really told anyone IRL. My two best friends know because I was freaking out since Mr H is gone. The girls at work know because we work in an open office and i'm constantly on the phone with our lawyer, the lawyer we hired for her, and the facilitator. It's been crazy. I can only imagine it's going to get crazier. It's really hard for me to enjoy this and allow it to be real....no matter how it turns out.

The Text!

I get a text from a friend today saying "If I ever heard about adoption possibilities do you want me to tell you?"

um.........

YES!!

A friend of hers (acquaintance of mine) has a friend who is 4 mo pregnant with her 3 child. She had two little ones already and cannot imagine being able to raise another child. (sounds good so far). She is very serious about adoption and the acquaintance has told her all about us, shown her our FB adoption page etc.

The emom lives on the other side of the state.

Now Mr H has to go to the Philippines for work at least once a year. I've gone with him previously. The acquaintance believes the father is Filipino. (Is that a sign or what?)

I've forwarded our adoption profile to the friend, who has forwarded it to the acquaintance who will forward it to the emom, contacted our facilitator (which gave me no small amount of angst)(who knew is was impossible to edit a pdf that you yourself didn't make?) and left a message for our lawyer friend.

I'm trying not to get my hopes up.

.....it's not working. I wonder if this could be it?

Home again

We had a fun filled whirl wind of a weekend in NYC! If I lived there I would totally spend all my money on theater tickets. There were so many shows and so many that I wanted to see!

We went to Mary Poppins (awesome!) and A little Night Music with Catherine Zeta Jones and Angela Lansbury. I was within inches of CZJ when she went in the stagedoor before the play. It was a total accident. She is skinny skinny skinny and gorgeous! We ate lots, walked lots, and slept late. It was a nice break.

City wide garage sales are this weekend. Last year a got a huge load of baby stuff, a changing table and lots more. I don't think I can bear to go this year.

I gave up Facebook for Lent. Now that I'm back I see a lady that runs and adoption support group I'm part of got the call and her son arrived while I was gone. Although I'm happy for her I can't help being jealous and sad for me. Human nature I guess. They had already gone through one disruption a few months back, too. How is it they were matched twice and we haven't even been matched once? ugh. I told the girls at work I was over "the whole adoption thing".

It's not true though.

I've got mail!

Mr H and I are members of Postcrossing. It's the coolest thing ever! You sign up and then send a receive postcards from all over the world. Well, I got this little gem today!



But that's not the cool part.........

This is:

I've been feeling down about adoption. How awesome is this to receive in the mailbox? According to her postcrossing profile she looks to be freshman in college. She's laughing and has a great smile!

Update #2

Nothing new to report. We've had two letters go out so far this month. Of the 11 to 13 moms we've already been profiled to she said none of them have made a choice for or against anyone.

C also said a bunch of new adds are dropping this month. She said October was kind of slow but it looks like November is going to be booming judging from the activity she's already had in the first 10 days.

A day last week was really strange to me. I think it was wed or thursday. Baby Mac finally arrived, a friend with PCOS was unable to conceive and whose medical condition was so bad IVF couldn't even be attempted (who has 2 adopted kids) gave birth to her biological child, and an internet friend had a match fail. All in the same day! Adoption and infertility is a strange, strange world.

our Profile is Active

Forty bound copies are in the hands of C and about to be sent out! We'll be on the web in a few more days. It seems like it's been so long already but many assure me we are moving at lightning speed. It seems like EVERYONE is getting matched these days! I hope we're next! I'll see if I can figure out how to upload our letter/profile. If you really want to see it I can email you the pdf (if you give me your email :-)