adoption
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december 2015.
Fall has lingered in South Carolina this year, coming late to us because of all the rain, so as I look outside this afternoon I still see colored leaves drifting lazily to the ground. The windows are open to the fresh 70-degree air, even as the lights twinkle on our Christmas tree across the room. What a lovely December. Last Christmas season, in the midst of baking and Advent hymns and whispered secrets about gifts, I carried an ache deep in my chest. We were waiting, waiting for Baby Gentino, and each day I begged myself not to live on pins and needles, straining my ears for a phone call…
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seven months.
Yesterday we celebrated our seven-month anniversary with the boys by going to court to finalize our adoption. We’ve been in touch with our lawyer through the different steps of our legal process in these last months, and we knew that our hearing was coming up. We prayed all along for it to happen by Christmas, but were squeezed in at the last minute this week! David cleared his work schedule yesterday, and we all woke up early, got dressed, and took our Cheerios and coffee to go in the van for the hour-and-a-half road trip. Poor Amie had been sick with a fever for three days, and we hated to…
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fall.
Fall comes slowly to the south, and just overnight, it seems, I look out my front window and see the trees turning colors, a dusting of leaves on the ground. It’s our first fall with Gabe and Noah. I get dressed in the morning and put on a sweater against the chill in the air and Gabriel says, “Did you get a new jacket, Mommy?” I blink at him, because I’ve had this sweater for years, but of course he’s never seen it. He was a spring baby, come to me at the end of April, after we’d traded our winter layers for t’shirts and flip flops. We’ve passed two…
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lately.
Happy Halloween! Everyone in our house is pretty excited about trick-or-treating tonight, and David’s busy giving the big kids tips on how to remain focused in order to maximize the amount of candy they can gather. I find myself enjoying the start of Adoption Month 6. God gave us wisdom and help from a variety of sources in October, and answers to some burning questions. So I enter November a little calmer and more determined to celebrate the very small victories. One of those is noticing that lately there seem to be fewer times in my day that I feel totally frazzled. Another is that God is helping me with…
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six months.
Day 1: Day 184:
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adoption bookshelf.
When we turned in our adoption application with Bethany Christian Services last year, we were giving a reading list. Back then if I could’ve moved our process forward with sheer will power and frenetic busyness, I would have, as if by turning in a sheath of signed forms ahead of schedule or speed-reading books on adoptive parenting I could bring a child home faster. These books were helpful in the way that books on marriage are helpful before you actually get married — as abstract bits of advice that you have to strain to make fit your real world. Because the truth is, in your real world you haven’t adopted…
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five months.
Our boys have now been with us five months, and we have wonderful moments and other moments that can only be described as desperate. I took Gabriel and Noah to our pediatrician soon after they came home in April, and she told me, “Expect a good six months’ adjustment period for every member of your family.” I so appreciated her wisdom. I was worried about many things. But she said she didn’t want to consider any kind of next steps until we reached that six month mark. She said, “The very most healing thing for all of you is to be home together as a family. Just be patient.” That…
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4 months.
Gabe and Noah have been part of our family for four months now. There’s so much to say, but I’m struggling to form coherent sentences these days, so I’ll try to stick to a few points. Here’s one really hard thing about the 4-month point, and three things that I love: The hard thing is feeling isolated. At the beginning I was caught up with the novelty of being a mom of four and mostly I was just trying to survive each day, but now I think the reality of my life is setting in. I remember a few years back, a friend was contemplating having a third child and…
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family of six.
Many thanks to our good friend, Ashley, of Ashley Nicole Photography for capturing our first photos as a family of six. We’ll treasure them always.
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a little vacation.
We took our first ever vacation as a family of six this week. We discovered this hotel on our trip to Myrtle Beach with the Gentino’s last month and enjoyed it so much that we decided to head back for three nights. David and I love our Columbia life, but we were tired and in need of a break. I’m so thankful for a chance to leave town and just focus on each other and our kiddos. We chose a smaller suite with an ocean-side view, and it was absolutely worth it. Neither of us have done much vacationing in hotels, and I was surprised at how much I loved…