2 months already!!!

Can you believe that it has been already two months since we got the call that changed our lives. I remember exactly how anxious I felt on this trip to meet Lilli. What if her birthmother would change her mind about the adoption after seeing her? Not a day goes by since then that I think about her birthmother. This wonderful young woman has given us something that nobody else could - our daughter. The dream of being a family. I am wondering how she is doing. Did she like our pictures that we sent her? What did she think about the letter? Would she want to write back? I wish we would hear from her. Our second letter is due and I am still working on it. We ordered the pictures two days ago. Hopefully we will get them soon so that we can mail them to her.

Today is Lilli's 2months doctor's appointment. I am very scared because she is supposed to get her immunizations today. Last week I caught a cold and unfortunately have passed it on to Lilli. Fortunately apart from having a snotty nose once or twice a day it doesn't seem to bother her.

Her sleep patterns are still pretty irregular. While this week she has slept twice from around midnight to half past six, last night she didn't want to go back to sleep around 3 after her feeding. After entertaining her for an hour I was so exhausted that she ended up sleeping next to me in the bed. I am terrified of doing this, but she seemed unconsolable otherwise. This morning she has been fussy. I guess she needs more sleep. Just like Mommy. I just put her down for her morning nap in the swing. After I wash and dress her in the mornings she usually likes to sleep for a while in her swing.

On a different note: I am since yesterday officially an American with a dual citizenship!!! When I arrived at the USCIS office on Friday for my appointment they figured out after two hours that my paperwork hadn't arrived. They send me back home and told me they were going to call me when it was there. Yesterday I finally got the call. I had to take Lilli with me because I didn't have a babysitter on such short notice. I anxiously rushed to the office and had my interview with a naturalized woman from Poland. I was very nervous before the interview. Of course Lilli started getting hungry when I was waiting. I had just started feeding her when they called me in for the interview. I ended up feeding Lilli while having the interview at the same time. After she had eaten she was so happy and laughing and smiling. It was so funny and seemed like she was trying to encourage me. During answering who the vice president of the US is and how the executive of a town government is called I was busy smiling back at her and telling her how funny she was. I am so glad that I am capable of multi-tasking...

After the interview I had to wait for an hour for the check in for the swearing in ceremony. I ended up having a lunch of Falafel and Greek Salad. When I had my first bite I dawned on me that eating that much garlic before the ceremony might be offensive to the other participants. But too late. When I came back for the ceremony-check in I had to wait about another hour. Lilli started to get fussy because she was tired. She was the star in the waiting room and everybody told me how cute she is. There were some ladies that did the Virginia voter registration that wanted to hold her and prove their grandma skills. It worked for a little while. I was praying and hoping that my husband would arrive in time for the ceremony. After my check in Lilli's patience was at an end. She started screaming and I was getting nervous. I picked her up, but had to juggle my paperwork and her at the same time. She screamed even more then when she was in her stroller. I decided to put her back down. She was still screaming and more and more the center of attention. I felt like a bad mother and said that she was tired. Finally my dh arrived - just in time for the ceremony. I handed her over to him and with his magic touch she fell asleep in 3 minutes. She is such a Daddy's girl already.

After the swearing in they made us watch a video message from the president and we listened to the song "I am proud to be an American". I got really emotional during the song and had to wipe a tear from my eyes. It has been a long and not always easy road and I finally reached the goal.

Here is a picture from Lilli's first baseball game.

Welcome Payton!

Please join me in congratulating our friends from our pre-adoption group who just were blessed with a little angel named Payton.. They had decided to adopt with the agency that did our homestudy and until August had only been shown once to birthparents. All the other birthparents were not open for caucasian couples they were told. The agency only places about 30 children a year and has around 60 families on their waiting list. That was the reason why we decided against this agency.

D. had emailed me a couple of weeks ago because they were considering finding another agency. I had highly recommended our out of state agency and they ended up signing up with them as well. And it took only about a month until they were matched with a birth mother who was just going into labor. Their beautiful boy Payton was born on Tuesday and the birthparents signed relinquishments on Wednesday.

I can't believe Lilli is 8 weeks today. We had some difficult nights this week where she didn't want to go down to sleep at night, but last night she went to bed at 10:00 p.m. and slept until this morning at 10:00 a.m. with a few breaks for a bottle...

Tomorrow I have my citizenship test. I have to study a little now. Take care.

Blessed

I feel so blessed right now. Yesterday the package from my Mom arrived. After six weeks on the road from Europe... I thought it was lost. My Dad and my Mom have both written us letters. I was so touched to have received that package. I cried when I read my Mom's letter to us aloud to DH. It was so beautiful. Grandma got Lilli not only the newspaper from the day of her birth, but also a beautiful little silver bracelet with her name on it. As well as some bigger onesies that I am sure she will be able to use soon. But the coolest thing was that she also packed some clothing that I had worn as a baby. It was really funny because there were all these seventies clothes and I was wondering whether my Mom had a problem with her taste recently or why she send me these weird clothes. I only found out about it when I was reading the labels that those were clothes that were from me. 34 years later they might be reused again (at least some of them, because the polyester dresses might be a little out of style). What a wonderful surprise. I didn't know that my Mom had kept clothing from my childhood.

Today was Lilli's baby dedication in church. She looked adorable in her beautiful dress that her godparents have given to her. She was wearing Grandma's and Grandpa's beautiful bracelet. It made me feel like there was at least a part of my parents there with us in church.

We also had a friend in town from Pennsylvania. It was wonderful to have her here. The pastor did a wonderful job dedicating Lilli. We went up on stage with her godparents. Lillian means "My God is a vow". With the pregnancy last year while on the pill we felt that God had made a promise to us. God has kept his promise to us with Lillian. After everything we have been through it was just natural that we wanted to give her back to God.

At church we were quite a big group of people and afterwards we invited everybody to our house for some coffee and cake. I had baked three cakes yesterday and dh made one as well. Usually I am not a big baker. I prefer cooking to baking. Nevertheless once a year I bake a cake for hubby's birthday. My cakes never turn out the way they should. They rarely look like my Mom's who is a fantastic baker. One year I served my husband his birthday cake on the kitchen counter. When I opened the spring form, the cake ran out of the form, because it wasn't baked enough. We had a good laugh about it as he licked it off the kitchen counter. It is a running joke in our family that it is dangerous when I try to bake a cake. The last cake I made was a coconut-cherry-chocolate cake. The cherries were to moist, so the cake didn't look the way I had seen it at my aunt's house. I made it for today and this time it looked and tasted really nice. I also tried out another cake I had never made before. It tasted really good. Also the other cakes were a big hit.

I feel so blessed by our wonderful friends. They were celebrating Lilli's special day with us. They have walked this long "road to adopt" with us and have encouraged us when we were down. They have truly been what friends are for. In good and bad times. There was so much love for her in our house. Sometimes it still feels unreal that we have a real live baby living in our house. It has been just a couple of weeks and on the one hand it feels like it is been forever, but on the other hand it has only been a very short amount of time compared to the time we longed for her and prayed for her. It is wonderful to be able to parent her and I enjoy every moment with her.

Lilli's laugh

Here is the picture that just melts my heart. Lilli has this beautiful laugh.



Today she has been a little fussy. I usually get all smiles when I change her diaper and wash her in the mornings. But today I was on the phone with my Mom when Lilli woke up. She was not fussy at first and I decided wanted to dress her before the Chimney cleaner came. But as soon as she was laying on our changing table she started to fuss and fuss and fuss. She was hungry. And has been fussy nearly all day long with some naps in between.

Tomorrow I do it in my usual routine where she first gets her bottle and gets changed and washed afterwards. Or Daddy gets to do it. I am sad to see that he is missing out on so many things now that he is back to work. I am so used to doing it all by myself during the day that I have to stop myself from just taking over when he is here. I want him to have the opportunity to take care of her, too. It was nice that he actually got up last night and fed her.

Lilli my love!

As I am typing this post sweet Lilli is sleeping on my shoulder. A wonderful feeling. Her warm and cuddly body is so sweet. I just kissed her and she started smiling - in her sleep. She is smiling a lot recently, especially if I talk to her or in the mornings when I change her diapers. Her smile is priceless and the cutest smile in the world (for me at least). She smiles with her tongue between her lips. Too cute. I will post some pictures in a later post.

We sent out the first package to Lilli's first mom. I hope she has received the pictures by now. Every day I am wondering how she is doing. The agency liked one of the pictures we had sent them so much that they would like to use that picture for their homepage. I took that picture and it makes me proud that they like it so much.

We have been busy this morning to apply for a passport for Lilli. Usually this isn't possible before finalization of the adoption. But you guys know that we will be moving soon to Venezuela. When we picked our agency that was one of the deal breakers. If the agency wouldn't let us take the baby out of the country for six months, we would have to find an agency that was willing to work with us. Our agency was very open and had experience with families abroad. But in order to get the passport we need a court approval. Therefore we had a lawyer file a motion for us with the court that allows us to apply for a passport. We had received that motion a couple of days ago with Lilli's birth certificate in the mail. Lilli had her pictures taken and then we applied for her passport.

In the passport office another lady asked about her nationality and I am starting to get annoyed by this question. Therefore I answered "She is American. We are just applying for her US passport". She then said "No, I mean what is her origin?" I said: "Oh, you mean her ethnicity. She is African-American." I don't mind that people can see that she is not our biological child, but I sometimes wonder what they read into seeing her. What assumptions are they making about us? Are they thinking: "Oh, I bet, they had fertility problems and adopted therefore"? Or are they thinking "I wonder whether she had that child with another man. Or did he have that child with another woman?" I can understand when people decide not to adopt trans-racially. People just assume these are your biological children and don't ask many questions.

We automatically stand out as a family. I am happy that we adopted trans-racially and don't regret our decision. We wouldn't have Lilli if we wouldn't have made that decisions. And I love the fact that in our family we all have different colors. But we are facing many questions and curiosity from people on the street that ask about adoption. I am usually happy to educate them and share our story, but sometimes it can get annoying. I wonder how it will be for Lilli once she gets older. She will have to face these questions, too. And I want to protect her from hurtful comments and questions.

First Post Placement Visit

Lillian turned already six weeks yesterday. We can't believe how fast the time is passing. Yesterday night we had our first post placement visit from the adoption agency. I was disappointed that the social worker that had done our home study couldn't do our post placement visits. But she is seriously sick and has to take care of herself right now. Therefore we had another lady come to the house. She was very nice, but she didn't really know us and didn't really know all of our history. I was concerned that she might want to see where Lilli sleeps and her room and everything. Of course we cleaned and cleaned and cleaned to make the house presentable. But she really just wanted to talk to us about our new life. We told her how much we love being a mom and a dad. Our life has changed, but it has been a welcome and long anticipated change.

In the end we also talked about comments from other people that we had received. One question we have received several times is: "What is her nationality?". I guess the people mean ethnicity, but I always play dumb and answer "She has the US citizenship." The other thing people ask us is "Where is she from?" I believe they think we might have adopted her internationally, but they don't know that you can't adopt newborns in international adoptions.

All in all the social worker seemed very content with the visit. She said that Lilli looks wonderful. We are really happy about that.

Today in five weeks we are moving. I can't believe that this day is nearly around the corner....

Here are some newer pictures of Lilli. I caught a beautiful Lilli smile today on camera, but first will need to upload them to the computer.

Two tickets in one week???

We came home on Monday evening. Lilli is finally back on a schedule with the sleeping. We will be moving in October. Therefore I have to get millions of things done before we move. I am currently working on my long list of tasks while Lilli is sleeping in her swing. I am really enjoying motherhood.

Last week when I was in the office I received a ticket because of an expired meter. The funny thing is just that I had put money in the meter at 3:00 p.m. for two hours and received a ticket at 3:18 p.m. for $25. I don't know what happened. Of course I called the number on the meter to complain, but I ended up waiting in a line forever. An automated voice talked and talked and talked. I waited patiently for about 5 minutes, but because I needed to get home I finally gave up. But I shot a picture of the meter with my cellphone. I thought about contesting the ticket, but I figured the court date might be after we have left and then it might be difficult to win. So I just gave in and paid it yesterday.

Yesterday I went into the office with Lilli. She was unfortunately very fussy when I was holding her. Later she fell asleep on my successor's shoulder. It made me feel like a bad mom. When I came out and returned to the car (Just in time before the meter expired) I had another ticket on the car. I couldn't believe it. Our state emission inspection had expired in August. Yesterday was September 2. It was our old car that we are not driving a lot. Just yesterday because dh needed the new car to take it to the dealer. Another $50, this time justified I guess. I am sure you can imagine how angry and upset I was. I went immediately to Sunoco to have the inspection done.