Archive for the ‘Adoption | Domestic’ Category

This post, after the break below, was originally written on July 8th. Life has moved full speed ahead since then! We feel so incredibly blessed. It’s amazing to watch our little family grow. Is every day easy-peasy, no! Of course not! It’s a full life in what our world considers a “big” family. And while four kids may be a “big” family for some, for others, it’s old hat (I do have clients with seven and nine and many more with four and three ya know makes two & three seem easy, eh ).

Since the ‘update’ below we’ve had our post placement home study and are moving on to the final adoption process of sealing the deal before a judge. All a day in the life of! And speaking of the word adoption I think I’m going to have to re-instate some “fresh friday fives” this week – there are some great things I want to share with you, including a blog post on that very topic. On the idea of being “called” to adopt. You’ll want to read it for sure.

In the meantime, I stand by my first thoughts below … it’s a whole new world, yet, one that has always been this way. Those of you with ‘big’ families know what I mean. We may be ‘crazy’ to the outside world, but isn’t the outside world crazy to us? I think know far & away this is the family I was meant to have.

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It’s crazy to think that in just a few days (a week & a few days to be exact but who’s counting?) we’ll have been home for a month. A whole month to adjust to the life of four kids under 5. It’s a whole new world, as Aladdin would tell us. And yet, it’s a world that seems so complete, so ‘normal’, so ‘this-is-how-it’s-always-been’ it’s hard to imagine anything else.

I’ve wanted to do a post for a while now to tackle some questions, thoughts & just general ‘how’s it going’ chatter. Yet I sit down at the end of a long day (not just with two older kids & two newborns, but also juggling visitors, organizing a house of six, laundry and tying up loose ends to go on maternity leave – yes, when you own your own business & your ‘gestation period’ is only about 4 weeks total, that are a lot of loose ends to tie! ) where was I? oh yes, sitting down at the end of a long day – it’s hard to put into words how blessed we feel. How incredible our journey has been & how it’s only just begun.

We met a ton of ‘twin parents’ along the way. It seemed anyone & everyone who had twins would stop us & chat when we were down in Charlotte. (That doesn’t happen quite as much here, probably because our twin population is much smaller? Hard to say.) I so vividly recall one dad passing me by in the mall (where we’d take an afternoon stroll, just to get out & stretch our legs) – making a complete stop & coming back to ask about the boys. With a HUGE smile on his face, he told me about his twin boys – who are now 16 years old – and that they brought them home to a two-year-old, older sibling & they made it! It does get easier, he winked at me. I think about the nurses who gave us meal after meal when we first arrived & told us each & every detail they could think of with how the babies had been doing under their care & little nuances of their personalities. I remember the pediatrician and how wonderful she was. So kind & caring and gentle. She extended a relationship to each of us while caring for the boys. It was no wonder she had studied at the Ronald McDonald Children’s Hospital. She just had that way about her. In other moments I think about chance meetings, like the soon-to-be mama we met in Charlotte via NYC that, funny enough, was once considering our older two children’s names as her child’s name. What are the chances of that? Surely we were meant to meet … for whatever life has in store for us. And the dad I met who himself was a twin & just couldn’t stop smiling. He was a dad of few words, but his smile & demeanor said it all. All this to say, it’s just amazing. It’s amazing what life has in store when you just let it unfold as its supposed to.

One of the questions we’ve been asked is, “are they yours?” to which I love Mr. MachC’s response the most, “they’ve been ‘ours’ since the moment we laid our eyes on them … since the moment we walked into their room & said hello”. It’s so true. We’ve never felt otherwise. Our children had to come to us via a different path than maybe most would ‘expect’, but the funny thing is, I’ve been saying this all along, even about our older children: I truly believe our children find us. However they have to, by whatever means possible, they find us. But I also realize that some may ask that because they are curious about adoption & just don’t understand how it all works. So at this point, the technical answer is yes. We still have to do one more “home study” follow up (many of you know all about this – domestic or international, it’s required) and then we will go before a judge. But really, those are just steps we have to take on paper. They are & always will be our boys. We have three boys now – can you believe it! And of course my rough & tumble girl as her daddy likes to say, “She’s a 5th generation Alaskan Girl. This is how they come.”

I think one of the funnier questions is, “are they twins?” It makes me smile. I’m not sure how else we would have two babies the same age together – other than they are twins – but it makes me laugh cause I just think, wow, this is really shocking to most people huh. I also love, “can you tell them apart?” Yes, we can. They are amazing little people & their personalities are already starting to shine.

It’s hard to believe we have already passed five weeks together. And yet … it seems easy to believe as well … because it’s true and it feels well … ‘normal’ – whatever that is! I look at my “favorite” tweets during that time period & just smile:

What God intended for you goes far beyond anything you can imagine. -Oprah

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PS – this isn’t even the one where I got some smiles!