A baby turns two

Sophie Girl turned 2 years old this week! She is turning into such a beautiful girl! I finally have decided to share a few more details of Sophie's birth. I find that as time goes on, I tend to forget the small and beautiful things that happened along the way of getting that child here...so her is the short.long version of her birth.
It was a Monday in April, the last one to be exact and I was on my way to the gym. A weird phone number called my phone and usually I don't answer those calls, but I decided to this time. As soon as the lady said this is so and so from your adoption agency, I knew she was talking about our baby. Tears filled my eyes and I really was having a hard time focusing and speaking. She tells me that a birth mom has chosen us, she lives in Indianapolis, but we are going to fly to Kansas for the adoption because the adoption laws are really great there....she is African American, as well as the birth dad and a girl! a girl! my heart was singing praises at this point! oh and the baby is due on Friday....do you think you can make it to the birth? YES! YES! YES! Well, you should probably hang up the phone and ask your husband what he thinks. ummm no that's OK I already know he is going to say yes. she replies with " mam, I need you to hang up the phone and call your husband and see what he says" I reply with "OK I will call you back" so I start calling Dan and after about 50 million times he finally answers the phone. he can barely understand what I am saying but i think he gets the gist of it....we are going to be adopting a baby girl African American and she is due any day now. we need to get our stuff ready! I hang up the phone and call our case worker back. we set up a time to speak with our birth mom and discuss logistics. By this time, I realized that I had ditched my friend at the gym and that I was parked in a very random parking lot, so I decided to run in and tell her I wasn't going to make it.....everyone probably thought I was crazy as I came in crying, and all crazy like to tell her I wasn't going to make it to class? Anyway, we proceeded to call our family our excited news and that night I went to bed on cloud 9....one of the happiest days of my life!
the next morning we spoke to our birth mom for the first time, and she was so nice and polite. she asked if we would make it a priority to be in the birthing room with her....of course we would! A dream come true! she explained that after speaking with the doctors, they were planning on more like Monday for baby to come so we decided to fly out on Saturday so that we could have a couple days to get to know her before.
The next couple of days were a whirlwind of making sub plans, writing my whole 2nd year teaching portfolio,getting a nursery put together, figuring out where in the world we were going to come up with the money for the adoption and buying as much pink as possible...all I could think about was buying more pink clothes and accessories, I think that it was kind of an addiction and something that I am still working on! So many people gave us gifts and we so so so kind and generous.

Saturday came and my dad drove us to the airport. As soon as we walked into the airport, I was a blubbery mess. I just kept thinking this is our last flight as just the two of us...our return flight we are going to be a family of three!
It was so lovely meeting our birth mom, we were able to get to know her and she was able to ask us any question that she wanted. On Monday, we went into the doctor and he said that the baby was not coming today and he wasn't sure when she was coming! we sat up an appointment for Thursday...Oh, Thursday seemed so, so far away! After all the scrounging to get here, and now just to wait!   I now realize that it was just Sophie saying, "I am coming! I will get here! I want to make a grand entrance!"  sometimes I feel like my life is one big waiting game! I am always waiting for something. but you know know what I just learned? It is good to always be waiting for something because you always have something beautiful and wonderful and exciting to look forward to!So, waited we did. We hung out a lot with our birth mom, we took a day trip to visit family and we celebrated our anniversary in style at a fancy movie theatre that had recliner seats and brought you dinner during the movie.

The day we visited family was one of my favorites of the trip. we went to a church sight and asked one of the workers to give us blessings....as you can imagine we were kind of stressed and overwhelmed at this point and each of blessings were so calming and reminded us that this time was but a minute, our baby will get here and all will be well! It was nice to catch up with family that we rarely get to see because they live so far away.
Thursday came and we went to our appointment and luckily the doctor said that if she didn't get here by Friday then she would induce Friday night or Saturday! Yay! At least we narrowed down a date! The doctor did say that she needed to be walking around so walk is what we did! We found a beautiful park with lots of trees and a playground. Dan played with her 14 month son while I walked and walked in circles with our birth mom. we talked about high school, and the very different choices we made as teenagers. we talked about motherhood and how she was so fertile, but wasn't ready for a family and how I was ready for family but not fertile. we talked about hair! how in the world was I going to do her hair??? (i still haven't learned that one.....her hair is so beautiful and wild! what do I do with it?) we went home Thursday night very tired and excited for the next day.
3:00 we get a call from our birth mom to come to the hospital because she is in labor!!! What? After all this time....it was finally happening! I think that we both were experiencing lots and lots of excitement, concern, stress and maybe a tad freaked out!we gathered our stuff and got to the hospital.
by the time we got there, she had an epidural and was pretty comfortable, we just had to wait a little longer for Sophie to make her appearance. Around 10:00 in the morning our birth mom said, "she is coming, get the doctor,"the doctor came in and probably not even 10 minutes later of pushing, Sophie came out, screaming and all covered in goo, and I knew that she was mine. We were long lost friends destined to be together, we just needed someone to get her here. The doctor screamed at me cut the umbilical cord and so I did and the nurses rushed her off to clean her. the next thing I know the nurses are pushing us to a different room and telling me that I need to give her a bottle and then have kangaroo time to bond. I don't know if anyone else has felt this way after a birth of child, but I felt like the heavens were open and angels were right there in the room with us. Sometimes, when I feel like I am getting impatient with that toddler girl, I think of those first few hours that I had with her, just me, her and her dad. bonding, becoming a family. memorizing each others features. of course she was perfect. every baby is perfect in every way. she was the most beautiful baby I had ever laid eyes upon.

we spent a couple nights in the hospital and then brought her home to our attorneys house in Kansas. the heaven feelings just carried on over to their home. On Monday we stood before a judge and declared our love for a child we had barely known for 2 days but yet forever at the same time? we promised that we would always do our best to take care of her and be the best we can be for her. maybe every parent should have to make those declarations to a judge?
on Wednesday Dan had to go back to work, but Sophie couldn't leave the state so my dear sweet auntie came to our attorneys house to help out. she took half the night shifts, helped wash bottles, helped with bathing...in a plastic basin!Oh the days that Sophie could fit in a plastic basin! she helped was more bottles, oh and took us shopping because I realized that i did not have near enough necessities, but plenty of cute clothes...that seems to be the case a lot with my child:)
the next Friday my mom and brother and sister came. they drove all the way from Utah to Kansas to bring me and Sophie home. (i was just not ready to board a plane with her)

Saturday we started the 16 hour trip home which is a lot easier with a new born than a two year old by the way. we stayed with a dear friend in Colorado Saturday night and then got home to Willard on Sunday. And as they say, the rest is history. This girl has brought so much joy to our home! joy! joy! joy!

love,
Emily