Auden Update- 2.5 years old

Last week Auden had a half birthday, which gives me an excuse to update the blog with all the fun stuff he is doing lately!  He is such a little boy now, he will tell us what he thinks about everything and is definitely testing his boundaries like toddlers do.  He is eating great which is such a pleasure for Cody and I after all we have been through.  His favorite things right now include puzzles, jumping on our neighbor's trampoline and putting his head underwater at the pool, see pictures below:-)  We transitioned his crib to the "toddler bed" last month which went smoother than we could have ever imagined.  He doesn't seem to fully realize or care that he can get out of bed now when we are not in the room.  He will still lay in bed and play with his stuffed animals until we come into his room in the morning, which is quite funny.  We are having a great summer riding around in our new jeep, Auden loves wearing his shades with the top down.  He is at such a fun age right now, we love watching him explore and discover new things every day! 

                                                        Swimming under water at our swim club

                                                         Jumping on our neighbor's trampoline

Auden being chased by our adorable neighbor

 Our home made slip n' slide

                                                   New toddler bed

                                                  Cody refurbished his childhood rocking horse for Auden

                                                       Crusing in the new jeep

                                  Some professional pics we got done for our domestic adoption website 

                                 

Here We Go- Switching Gears!

I can’t help but to laugh as I write this.  Boy, how much has changed since I first started this blog in the beginning of 2011!  Let’s see, we chose Korea because it was a stable and predictable program over the last four decades.  But as soon as we got approved everything started to change and slow down drastically.  We said we didn’t want to pursue domestic because we didn’t want a newborn.  Lately, Cody and I find ourselves getting super excited at the thought of a little baby in the house.  We believed domestic adoption was not right for us because we weren’t comfortable with a birth mother in the picture.  Now I love the idea of our future child knowing where they came from and being able to ask their birth mom questions one day.  

We are now days away from starting to advertise for domestic adoption.  To contradict ourselves once more, we decided to completely go for it and advertise nationally with the website www.parentprofiles.com.  We feared we could be spinning our wheels advertising locally for months without any leads, whereas this site is extremely popular and will get tons of views every day.  This week, we have been working hard to write a good “Dear Birthmother Letter” that is seen on the site, as well as fun photographs that give a peak into our lives.  Today we got our “baby phone,” also known as a cheap cell without a contract that we can add minutes to whenever.  This is how any interested birth moms are going to reach us.  Of course we need to be prepared for scammers calling; we have been educating ourselves regarding how to identify a scam vs. regular birth mom. 

It’s funny, the unpredictable nature of domestic that once scared us has actually become exciting.  After we go "live" on the website, every day we wake up could be the day we speak to a birth mom that wants to make an adoption plan with us.  Of course, being in our new house makes timing so much less important now thankfully.  We could even be ready tomorrow if we need to be to bring home a baby!  Let’s hope we can give Auden a little more notice than that though, ha.

Who knows what is going to happen with this but for now it feels good to be doing something while waiting in the Korea line.  I’m thankful it has been so easy to get started with domestic with very little additional paperwork on our end.   I could have never ever predicted that this is where we would be right now but I love that our hearts and minds are completely open.  It’s amazing how life works, maybe we were meant to wait in the Korea line for the past year because it wasn’t time for us to meet our child yet?  We are looking forward to see what the next few months have in store for us!