On the Edge of a Cliff and Ready to Fly

Yesterday Joshua’s adoption was finalized!

We were at the courthouse at 1pm. When we got there, one of the attorney’s mentioned that the judge was gone because his wife was in the hospital, and they were trying to find another judge to do the adoption finalization. Well, the other judge was busy. Around 2pm, our attorney found out that the original judge was going to come back to do some work and then go back to the hospital. The judge was back about 3:30pm, and we were done by 4pm. Our party was supposed to start at 4pm, but luckily we got a hold of the only person that was coming by early to let him know it wasn’t starting until later.

When we finally got into the courtroom, Joshua was hungry so I was finishing up a feeding. He decided to spit up, projectile style, all over my glasses, face, and hair. (you can’t make this stuff up) Donald was trying his best to keep from cracking up, but he graciously cleaned off my glasses. The attorney and the judge swore me in and asked me questions confirming my willingness to adopt Joshua. I started BAWLING and couldn’t answer the questions in a coherent manner, but we got through it. It was a great feeling when the judge said “The court concurs that they should adopt this child.” It’s FOREVER!!!!

Check out the photos on our flickr page!!!

While Joshua has been napping, I’ve been trying to unpack. Our adoption finalization party/open house is Wednesday from 4pm – 9pm. Email me at watermelonjessie at yahoo dot com if you didn’t get an evite.

I warned people that our house was still going to be a disaster for the open house, but I really wanted to do a little something to celebrate his finalization on the DAY his adoption was finalized. It is going to be awesome! I am so happy that we’ve had him with us since he was an HOUR old…definitely a big blessing! Some adoptive parents don’t get their kids until they are much older.

I have been a little nervous taking a full week off work unpaid, but it had to be done. There was no other way to get out of our old house and into our new house without taking off work. Donald has been working this weekend and will work tomorrow. He’s also going to work on 4th of July, so those hours should give us some good holiday pay. I’m on a bilingual committee at work so I have some things to do for that, but after that I will work on a proposal to make our company more friendly to adoptive families. I will keep you all updated as I work on that.

Still no word from the biological father, so we are all hopeful that everything will go ahead without a hitch on Wednesday!

Tuesday is the first day Uncle Drew is going to watch Joshua, and his own son Jaxon, at the same time! I watched them both on Friday and it was a challenge. Jaxon was great; he was in a good mood and laid down right away and took a GREAT nap. My son, however, just started becoming “clingy” with me. He wanted me to hold him the whole day. Well, when Jaxon needed something Joshua was just really unhappy, so for a couple hours there I was trying my best to fit two crying babies on my lap. It’s been fun, though, that Joshua knows I am mommy and the only thing that settles him down is me holding him, so that was a nice feeling. I just really wanted to do some laundry and get the kitchen unpacked.

Oh well, holding a baby is more fun than laundry or unpacking, wouldn’t you agree?

Wasn’t sure how much I blogged about his….basically, our home SALE went off without a hitch, there was only the SNAFU with the date the guy could move in, but that worked out.

Since our home appraised low with our lender and they wouldn’t budge, we had to go to plan b. Plan b is we are renting our house until we can get financing. (which is GREAT that the sellers are being so nice about this.) We met with another mortgage broker today, and he’s confident he can get us a Rural Development Loan through USDA (Gardner is still considered rural believe it or not) or an FHA loan. The appraisal this person had done came out way higher, so it should work out. We imagine we’ll be able to close within a month or so….

This will be quick as I am tired….yesterday we got EVERYTHING out of our house and we moved into our house in Gardner. It was a huge blessing to have hired movers and Donald’s brother Drew helped us a lot with last minute items. Tomorrow the boys (Donald, Drew, and a friend of ours, Dave) are going to clear out the storage unit and put the stuff in the garage. Awesome!

It’s been tough being so tired and then basically being up all night with a baby…I wouldn’t trade it for anything, but today I hit my cracking point. We have made 4 trips to the cable place to get the cable put in our name. They kept stating that we needed various documentation to show we owned the house and/or the prior owners had to cancel the account. In the middle of FINALLY getting them to give us cable, Joshua was crying. I went out to the car to change his diaper; I laid him on the seat with the back door open. Some man was super impatient and was sarcastically saying “Oh, no, take your time, I don’t have anywhere to go.” What a jerk!

So, I scooped Joshua up quickly to take him to the other side of the car, a diaper loosely around his waist. Well, Joshua decided right then would be a good time to soak me, himself, the blanket, and then the seat of the car. I got him cleaned up as best I could and sat down to give him a bottle because he was hungry. In the middle of taking the cap off to put the nipple on, Joshua’s legs flailed and he dumped the formula all over me. So, I was sitting in the back seat of my Impala, covered in pee and formula, I had just been yelled at, and I burst into tears. I just kept thinking “I just want to take a shower, I haven’t showered since Monday….”

When Donald came out to the car after taking care of the cable business, he was sympathetic but I could tell he thought it was funny. I thought  “Well, it will BE funny in the future, but it’s not funny now.” My hubby took care of Joshua so I could change and take a good shower, and then we met with our social worker Susan for the last time. After this coming Wednesday, he is officially ours FOREVER!

We wrote the birthmom a letter…I’m not sure if she’ll read it, but I wanted to let her know how much we love Joshua and what a brave decision she made. It was good for us to write it.

Well, it’s 8:18 and the baby is sleeping…I’m going to bed!!!

Friends and family came over to help us pack yesterday…what a HUGE blessing. Everything is in boxes except everything we absolutely need – the baby stuff, our medicine, some clothes, and the pet stuff. I called the movers and they said they could take whatever boxes that we need – so we’re just going to let them take them for us!

We get the keys to our new house tomorrow…probably what we’ll do is get our bed frame and headboard set up and get some clothes and stuff moved over into the house. It seems so weird…it’s awesome that we’re finally getting into a bigger house!

I am so excited about our yard and having more than one bathroom…you have no idea!!!

Joshua is at Aunt Delaina’s this weekend….it was nice getting a full night sleep (I went to bed at 8pm and woke up at 8am…it was awesome!). I miss him SO MUCH. I never thought I could love anyone so much. We’re seeing Wicked this afternoon – can’t wait to get him back after the show is over!

Joshua is doing better; no more explosive spit ups. We did soy formula for a day, then switched back to regular, he seems okay. Last night was a fussy night so I didn’t get hardly any sleep, going to crash here in a minute.

We got our hospital bill for Joshua for the two days he was there…guess what our out of pocket was?

$38.00! Awesome!

The OBGYN that delivered Joshua and gave his Birthmom her prenatal care charged us only $1500 for ALL the prenatal care AND the delivery, which is just awesome! I guess that’s a pretty sizable discount, I had in my mind that it should have cost around $3000. I guess this OBGYN does a lot of adoption deliveries and we feel so blessed he gave a discount like that – some things work out!

The appraisal on our house is getting closer, they’ve worked the guy up to a more reasonable amount, so we may be able to get the ends to meet and get our loan to go through. Our realtor and the seller’s realtor have been working their tails off presenting more information to the lender to advise why his appraisal is unreasonable. What a crazy situation! I am glad I don’t buy or sell houses very often, I think it’s given me an ulcer.

I was sitting at work today and my hair was driving me nuts. All last night when Joshua was fussy he would GRAB and yank on my hair. I decided, on a whim, to get my hair cut over lunch.

It is VERY short, but I think it’s cute. Actually, it could look crappy and I really wouldn’t care, I was tired of my son yanking on my hair and trying to stick it into his mouth. I took some photos, need to have help from the hubby to get them on here so you can see.
I showed my hair off to Jennie at work and she said, “Yep, it’s a new mommy haircut, you just had to get one.” Fun!

Oh Lord, I of little faith. What good news has been coming in lately.

1 week till we move!

2 weeks till the adoption is finalized! We haven’t heard anything about a biological dad coming forward from the newspaper advertisements….please pray with me that it stays that way!

We sent the birthmom’s best friend another set of photos and a quick update, that way, she’ll have them to look at whenever she’s ready. I want to write her a letter to tell her how blessed we feel to be Joshua’s parents, but I haven’t been able to come up with the right words…hopefully, they will come to me when the time is right.

I have no words.

We found out within 24 hours 2 pieces of bad news:

Our new Gardner house appraisal came back low, which means our loan on our new house may not go through.

The guy buying our house somehow thought that he could have possession of our house on May 21st rather than May 31st. So, we need to get out of our current house and into our new house in less than 24 hours.

Luckily, the people in our new house are moving out this weekend, so they are GRACIOUSLY letting us start moving in early.

Our loan, however, is still up in the air. We may need to “rent” the house in Gardner for a while until we can find a loan, but it’s awesome that the people will buy the house from are even allowing us to do that. Not the ideal situation, but doable.
We were pretty angry and upset this morning, but we’ve calmed down. This was just nuts that things on both sides of our house selling and house buying experience were one big ________ (fill in the blank.)

Bleh. Thanks to everyone who is helping us with babysitting, packing, cleaning, etc. What a mess.

Joshua has been gassy and spitting up the past week. However, last night he spit up so much I had to change him and his bassinett 3 times – one of those times was PROJECTILE spit up – it woke me up!

Our social worker mentioned African American babies have a greater tendency to be lactose intolerant. So, I have some lactose free formula. I just fed him 2.5 ounces of it, and he didn’t seem to mind it. I will have to see if this decreases the spit up, gassiness, and overall unhappiness. I have got to remember to talk to the doctor on Friday.

Joshua was with Donald’s Aunt Delaina all day yesterday! They said that he was good and they had fun babysitting him. Aunt Delaina offered to take him the WHOLE next weekend (even overnight on Saturday) so we can pack and get ready for our move on May 21st! What a BIG blessing! Also, Donald’s friend Becky offered to still take Josh on Thursday even though Donald doesn’t have class, so that should help as well. I didn’t get as much done yesterday as I wanted…except, I took a HUGE nap. I packed probably half of the nursery stuff that we aren’t really using (big clothes, the crib stuff, and decorations). I am not sure why we set up the crib since he’d be little enough to use the bassinett until we moved. I guess we set it up so we could feel like it was really happening.

Oh, yea! It’s mother’s day! Donald got me 2 charms for my italian charm bracelet, one says “Joshua”, the other says “Arden”. Mother’s day the past few years has been so hard for me.

Now that I’m a mom, it just feels like a normal day. I have been praying off and on for everyone going through infertility today; it’s a rough day to go through. Looking back, infertility is such a dark and cavernous pain. What makes it worse is that people don’t understand how bad it is, people seem to try and talk you out of how bad you’re feeling. They say things like “Just relax” or “Other people have too many kids that they can’t afford” or “You’re lucky you haven’t had a bunch of miscarriages” or “Well, you just have a lot more money without kids.” I guess people that have cancer or difficult life circumstances go through the same barrage of ignorant comments, it just seems more poignant when you’re in the middle of the infertility roller coaster.

I think the best thing to say is, “I’m so sorry, is there anything I can do?” That will keep you out of trouble in a lot of hurtful life cases.

On the adoption front, our social worker came over on Wednesday. We have 1 more meeting with her on May 23rd in our new house. She said that one other couple that she works with is having their finalization on May 28th as well, a little bi-racial African American girl named Emre. I think that is a cool name! It will be fun to have another couple there. Our social worker mentioned that the other family is in the middle of moving as well; they’re even putting off their move by a couple weeks until the adoption is finalized. Everybody has been paid, the “advertisements” for the biodad are in the paper, the only thing to do is show up on May 28th and get it finalized.

Keep checking Joshua’s Flickr page (there is a link on the upper right hand corner) We will put all the pictures there. It’s in order of most recent to oldest.

Our normally perfect baby has been cranky the past couple of days, just hasn’t wanted to nap. He’s been very gassy, so Mylicon has helped some. Stuff has come out of this baby’s diapers that I didn’t think was possible….

Came home tonight from work and Donald looked EXHAUSTED. I guess Joshua has been fussy all day and hasn’t wanted to really lay down…I’m in the kitchen with Joshua in the bassinet so Donald can have the bedroom to himself and have a break.

This weekend we went to Cade and Becky’s wedding, it was a TON of fun! Everyone kept commenting on how cute Joshua is (which, he is!!!) It was rough driving with a baby and feeding him and having to stop all the time for changing, but it was worth it. It was a wonderful ceremony and it was neat to see them finally tie the knot!

I am working from home tomorrow and Wednesday…my boss has been cool about me working from home. It’s nice! It slows me down some, but it’s nice to feed Joshua and hold him while I’m working on things. I do like being in the office and seeing my co-workers cause they’re a fun bunch of people, but it’s still nice hanging with this little guy!