Loving this warm weather!!!

A few pictures from Allie's birthday

Happy 2nd Birthday

Last Friday our baby girl turned two! I wanted to post Friday night about her birthday...however it's hard to put into words the emotions we experience on special days such as birthdays and holidays.

On one hand, we feel an enormous amount of joy. Joy that this little girl is more than we could have ever wished for. Joy that we are blessed enough to experience all of her firsts along side her. Joy that God answered our prayers in the most amazingly perfect way when he chose us to love this little girl.

On the other hand, we feel a twinge of pain. The pain comes from knowing that there is an amazing family that isn't experiencing any of Allie's firsts...the firsts that we know they are missing. Pain from knowing that someday Allie is going to wonder why this family isn't in her life. The pain also comes from knowing that someday we are going to have to have these difficult conversations with Allie...and at this point the prospect of all of that is unbelievably overwhelming.

I wonder if, as time goes on, the emotions we experience will change. I wonder if we will ever approach a birthday or Christmas and not think about T and wonder weather or not she will contact us. We never want to erase T from Allie's life. The hardest part is not knowing how she is and not knowing how we will explain everything to Allie in the years to come.

Even though special days tend to be emotionally draining at times, they are definitely days that we cherish with every ounce of our souls.

On Sunday we will be celebrating with my side of the family and we're very excited!!! Pictures yet to come!!!

Tutu cute!

As you can see, Allie LOVES to play dress up! My mom found her this dance outfit and she just loves wearing it around the house...aren't girls fun?!?!?

Easter eggs at grandma's!

We went to my mom and dad's today and decorated Easter eggs. Allie enjoyed herself and Auntie Teresa got in on the fun too. She told Allie to kiss the eggs before she decorated them...needless to say in the end Allie's mouth was blue from kissing all the eggs! It was cute!

Not meant to be

We found out earlier today that the little boy that I fell in love with on the WIC list has already been matched with another family. We're happy that they found a family for this little guy...we just were beginning to think that maybe we were right for him. I think that with the news about the changes in the Ethiopian program, we were doubting weather or not we are strong enough to meet our child and then leave him/her for months before bringing him/her home. We still aren't convinced that we are that strong, however we know that Ethiopia is in our hearts.

8

That's the number of children I always said I wanted to have. Call me crazy, but it's true!!! When Cory and I met, that's one of the first things we talked about and by the time we got married it was even mentioned in our wedding ceremony. When people hear that I wanted 8 kids, they would always make some comment about how after we'd "have a few" we'd change our mind. However, I'm not so sure. I LOVE kids and I've always dreamed of growing old with the man that I loved with oodles of kids around us. As the time passed and life happened, it's slowly becoming apparent to us that our dream of a large family is probably out of our hands.

Today, we received an e-mail from our agency saying that Ethiopia has now changed their requirements. It will now be a requirement to travel to Ethiopia twice to complete your adoption. This may seem like a little, simple change for those not involved in an adoption. However, there's so much to consider. I'm not sure if I am strong enough to meet our little 'baby E' and then leave him/her for 4-6 months before we can travel again to bring him/her home. How can I function during that 4-6 month wait? What will he/she think of meeting us, us disappearing and then reappearing months later??? How will we feel about that?

I keep asking God for signs of what we should do. We feel connected to Ethiopia already. I don't want to close the door on our 'baby E,' but I'm scared at how much Ethiopian adoption has changed in the past 9 months. What happens if we wait another 1 1/2 years for baby #2 and Ethiopia closes it's doors to international adoption?

Last week I called and inquired about a child that's on the waiting international children's list. He's an adorable, precious little angel from Korea. Our social worker was going to look into possibly doing concurrent adoptions (meaning that we would do both this adoption and the Ethiopian adoption at the same time). He said that they had only allowed that with China because of the extended wait time. He wasn't very hopeful about CHSFS allowing it, but he's going to look into the possibility of us doing concurrent adoptions. We haven't heard back.

I'm just praying for some guidance and wisdom right now...