Happy 2nd Birthday Auden!

 In keeping with the tradition of writing Auden a letter on his birthday every year, below is his 2nd birthday letter that has been a work in progress since his birthday on the 12th of February.  

Dear Auden,

Happy 2nd Birthday little monkey!  What a big boy you are now!  You were born smaller than the size of a football and now you hold it high above your head!



2 months old (due date, approx. 6lbs) 



This year we had a small birthday celebration with mostly family, because let’s face it, we will probably never be able to get away with doing that again!  In honor of our airplane theme, we went to the air and space museum in the morning which you (and your cousin Reegan) loved running around, had a neat birthday cake with an airplane on it, and Grammy and Grandpa got you a cool toy airplane that you love flying around the house.  Here are some pictures of your special day:

I can’t believe how much your little personality has been changing lately.  You have become very attached (dare I say-clingy) to mommy and daddy (especially mommy) in the past two months. You frequently want to be picked up and carried these days...which we really don't mind:-)  You are still very good when it comes to sharing and are almost a pushover when other kids take something from you, you just move on to something else (which they then usually take from you too, ha).  Right now your “big issue” is patience, or lack thereof!  When you decide you are thirsty, we can’t get the water or milk out of the fridge fast enough for you.  When mommy says you can pick out a book after you get your pajamas on, you are not a happy camper.  And your teacher says trying to get you to put on your jacket before you go outside is no easy feat- you just don’t want to bother with it!  Oh yes, I should mention that in the last three months you decided you hate getting your haircut.  After mommy had a mortifying experience at the barber shop and you left with half a hair cut, we have since resorted to daddy cutting your hair at home!  It still is not pleasant, but at least it is in the privacy of our own home.  And we have to give daddy credit, he is doing a pretty good job!

So, what do you have to say lately?  Everything!  When you are around the house with mommy and daddy, we call you our little parrot because you repeat everything we say.  We can’t keep track of how many words you have anymore, I would guess over 200 by now.  Everyday you try to put more and more words together.  It is so fun that we can actually have a “conversation” with you now!  You point at something you want and you say “I want it please,” you point at the front door and say “go outside, park?,” you go to the basement stairs and say “down, purple choo choo train,” during our bedtime routine you always say "more books please" in efforts to stall and in the car you always point out the “yellow school bus” and say “see big crane” when we drive by the construction site every morning.  Your newest discovery is sizes, everything is “daddy size,” “mommy size,” or “baby size.”  Whether it be the different size mustards we have in the house or the dinosaurs in a book...it's so cute!

You are getting pretty good with colors, you can say them all but still confuse red and green (crossing our fingers you aren't colorblind, ha).  You can say and identify the majority of the letters of the alphabet now and currently we are working on singing the alphabet song.  With your birthday came the love for the number “2,” but other than that, your interest in numbers isn’t quite there yet.  Your teachers still can’t believe how much you sing all day long and insist you are going to be a very musical person (which makes daddy and I laugh since we are not at all).  Most importantly, you have been learning very good manners and we are so proud of how you remember to say “please” and “thank you” the majority of the time.  You even say “thank you” when you give people stuff, which we aren't quite sure how to correct, ha.  You are definitely a typical boy, you LOVE trucks, tractors and planes!  You have been working hard at saying “motorcycle,” “helicopter,” and “excavator” for months and I think you are at the point now where someone else (besides mommy and daddy) can understand it!  You love running around outdoors more than ever...mommy and daddy are working hard to give you a wonderful BIG backyard very soon as we are currently under contract on a new house!

In other news, you have been off of the medication prevacid for three weeks now and doing great!  We have tried to get rid of it in the past without success so we are thrilled right now that no reflux signs have crept back yet.  We couldn’t be happier that you are down to only one medication now (heart meds) and hopefully that will be gone in the next year too.  We are thrilled about how well you have been eating lately.  You have never been much of a breakfast or snack kid, but you have nice big lunches and dinners.  You ask for “tots!” almost every day but you also like meatballs, turkey meatloaf, breaded fish fillets, ravioli and chicken dogs/hotdogs.  You have always loved fruit, veggies and yogurt so that makes us parents happy for sure!  At your 2 year well visit with the pediatrician you weighed in at the 25th percentile where you have been since 9 months old, so it looks like you are probably just meant to be a skinner than average kid, nothing wrong with that!  You did fall from the 75th percentile in height to about the 60th percentile, but let’s be honest, it was only a matter of time with these genes!

Auden, we are so very proud of you and are nothing short of amazed at how far you have come in these 2 years.  I'm sure that as you grow up you are going to get sick of hearing how you were a preemie and about your rough start into this world.  But you see, when a mommy spends the first 47 days of her baby's life sitting at his bedside in the hospital, watching her son turn blue in her arms countless times when he “forgets to breathe” it's impossible to forget.  It makes everything you do, that much more special in your daddy and my eyes.  We can’t believe what a strong and healthy little boy you have grown into, we feel blessed beyond reason.  Happy Birthday sweet Auden angel! 

Embracing Confusion?

     If I could sum up where we are in the adoption right now, I would say- confused. 

        January started off promising when we moved up 3 spaces in the Korea girl line due to 3 families switching to boys.  This brought us to #8 on the waiting list.  This sounds promising considering we started at #21 in July, but unfortunately it is anything but.  You see, with the new year came more disappointing news regarding the program…that there are going to be a lot less referrals (children to be matched) this year due to the government lowering the quota of kids to be adopted internationally every year .  The government is only suppose to decrease the quota by 10% every year but for some reason the impact seems to feel a lot greater.  So, where we stand right now- we could be matched with a Korean boy immediately because our agency has no families waiting for a boy right now.  And if we choose to wait for a girl, the director is still hopeful that we will be matched by July.  But I’m not holding my breath on that statement.  

       Unfortunately, waiting for a girl referral is not the only problem with the Korea program.  There are two other major issues- the yearly quota of number of kids that can leave the country creates a backlog that is causing travel times to grow and grow.  Right now they estimate it will take 18 months to go your child from the time you are matched with them.  That is 18+ months watching your child grow up on the other side of the world with a foster family.  To make matters worse, every time a politician questions an aspect of the adoption process (typically post-adoption procedure), they freeze all granting of visas indefinitely.  Right now they are in one of those freezes.  People who thought they were going to travel to go get their child this month are just sitting and waiting for things to resume.  This, as you can imagine, just makes the travel times even longer for everyone else as well.   It is easy to see that things are stacked against us with this program, yet it is so hard to walk away from it.  My biggest frustration is knowing that if we started this process a year earlier than we did (not that we could have), we would likely have our baby girl by now and if we started the process a year later, no way in hell would we have ever chosen this program.  We just went into it at the worst time where things were just starting to slow a little but they had no idea how everything would play out.

        So what happened to China?  Despite our original excitement about the program, the more we think about pulling the trigger (putting $$ into it) the more apprehensive we are about it.   I think we would feel a lot more comfortable if we were adopting a child 2-3 years old and could see pictures, videos, reports about them walking, talking, etc.  But due to Auden’s age they would match us with a baby around 12-15 months old (and we want to go in birth order as well).  Babies that are institutionalized all have development delays.  It is not uncommon for a 12 month old to barely be sitting up on her own yet and a 24 month old to just be learning how to walk.  This is understandable when the vast majority of babies in China spend most of their day in orphanage cribs.  So, when you are dealing with accepting a child with a special need, in our case a minor/repaired heart condition, it would make us feel better to see that the child is in good enough health to be walking, talking, etc.  If we are matched with a baby under 15 months, we will not get this reassurance by pictures/videos/reports.  And unfortunately we hear that sometimes medical profiles are less than accurate or something gets lost in translation.  I do think it is an amazing program, but I can’t help but think we (and when I say we, I mean Cody more than I) would be more comfortable adopting an older toddler with likely a repaired heart issue where we can better assess their general health and development delays.  So, maybe our third child will be from China?  Or who knows, maybe we will find ourselves still without a second child in two years and we will pursue it then since we won’t be restricted to babies?  Or maybe we will just take a leap of faith and just do it now?  This is where the confusion comes in.   

         Additionally, we recently received information about another couple (friend of a friend) in our area that was successful with quick private domestic adoption.  Cody has an acquaintance that also did this type of adoption fairly quickly as well.  When I say private domestic adoption, I mean “Juno” style.  Just like in the movie, you advertise yourself to find a birth mother, no third party agency to assist.  There are several reasons why a couple may choose this route instead of going with an agency.  I’m not going to go into them now though.  Hearing the latest couple’s story, intrigued us enough to set up a consultation with their adoption attorney who knows everything there is to know about private domestic adoption.  I’m not sure where it is going to lead us, but at this point Cody and I are just trying to cover all our bases and gain more information. 

          Now can you see how confused we are?  

         But I am learning from it.  I am learning to let go of any control I thought I had over this process.  I am learning to accept the fact that it may be years before we meet our next child.  I am learning to be okay with the idea that Auden may be 4 years older than his sibling.  Because honestly, in the grand scheme of things, none of this matters.  We will eventually succeed in adopting a child- and that child will be meant for us and we will be meant for that child.