thank you so much lydia!

wow! thanks Mom!!!

I600A

By some miracle the missing link arrived today. I really didnt expect it to show before late next week at the earliest. so it is SENT! on its way! it will be there tomorrow(even though they wont) so I know it will be right there waiting on someone's desk come Monday morning. now if we can just get that background check back so we can finish our homestudy!!

ps maia was so sweet yesterday. she said to kaylin(carolyn) that she has a big surprise for her. I was wondering what in the world she was talking about so I asked whats the big surprise and she grinned from head to toe and said We are getting a new brother AND a new sister! she is so precious.

it occurs to me(again)

that the state park we go to all summer long does not have a very handicapped accessible beach. My kids are small enough I could probably carry them if necessary but what about those who are older or adults? they would have to drag themselves through the boiling hot sand to get to the beach and then go over a ledge because there is no access for wheelchairs. My kids arent even here yet and I have begun to think in different ways. and I am really becoming aware of how life can be disabling to those who are differently abled. I plan to send a letter to the park in the hopes that they will build an access. I would hate to have to abandon our favorite park and its so close! but if I cant take all my kids I will opt for the pool in a neighboring town.

Thank you Cliff and Wanda

thanks soooooo much for your donation to bringing home our kids. We are thankful for friends like you. Have a great time in Sicily and send us a post card!!!

sophie and bryce(I think) here we come!

talked with social worker. just waiting on the adam walsh background check. and employment letter and medical. so eric is getting the employment right now. need to do the medical and the adam walsh is out of our hands. its just wait till it shows up. still need her to stop in at the house too. but other than that its mostly a done deal. now to get on that dossier. I have several qs in to meredith on that topic. have some documents already and will have to work on getting the rest of them together. Of course we cant copy erics passport until it arrives!!

homestudy preview

I previewed the homestudy and am supposed to call the sw tomorrow to verify or fill in any gaps for her. now if that stupid background check would come back we could finish up and move on!!! one step closer to our kids!!! waiting on the last doc for the I600 and praying that they are still moving quickly at the st paul office. now on to gather everything else we need. every thing under the sun. and of course not like you can gather them all in a day or two. oh no it has to be harder than that. but thats the hurdle we must jump so jump we will! jump jump jump!!

Bryce. I think.

trying not to worry

the country where our children are is planning to plan on a temporary stoppage of adoption. right now they are talking about planning from what I hear. which means it could turn out to be nothing. but knowing how our adoption went last time with the other country in that part of the world I worry. these kids need to get home! HOME HOME HOME! not orphanage home, not baby home, not institution home, but family and love HOME. so if you had a moment maybe you will think good thoughts for our kids and our adoption we would be grateful! I dont know what we will do if we have to go through this again...... we had a child in mind in a country that closed its doors and never did reopen. its much like losing a pregnancy. losing the child, as well as all of the dreams you had for him or her. and then what? do you move forward somewhere else as if it never happened? not to mention the loss of money put in. At this point we dont have a lot of money invested that cant be turned into another country(ie homestudy )but our hearts are deeply invested. as are the hearts of our other children. these two kids have siblings who can hardly contain themselves waiting for them to come home and share their lives. how hard it would be to tell them sorry it isnt going to happen like we thought. so please country of choice let us get them home asap and dont hold us up! they dont know we even exist but we know they exist and a lot of hearts would be broken if they were unable to come into our home.

oh DARNIT!

DRAT! AND OTHER NASTY WORDS!

I thought I had everything for the I600A but it appears we are short one divorce and of course its in a county that is a pain in the neck to deal with and they cant even answer the PHONE! and vitalcheck doesnt have it, I already tried there. Looks like come Thursday someone is going to be driving down to that county to get what we need. Geez if you cant even SPEAK to someone in the office how do you know where to send or how much money or what hoops you need to jump. GRRRRR. This paperwork really STINKS! and its only the beginning.

making progress!

sending out I600 this week. today if possible. but Ethan is clingy today so not sure I will get to it today. need to make doc appts for medical forms and get erics proof of employment for hs and dossier. need to make permission slips for the scout outings coming up. and here I am watching corrina corrina. I have NEVER seen this movie from start to finish. always come in somehwere in the middle or miss the ending. hope to get a rough draft of the hs this week.

it occurs to me

that my future children will be facing difficulties due to the arthrogryposis in doing things like sports. What if they want to do that? they are mentally intact and special olympics says its for intellectually impaired. wht is available for kids who are differently abled but not developmentally disabled?

cleaning cleaning cleaning

like a mad woman. Want the house to look nice when social worker comes next weekend. and since Eric is on call there isnt any place else to be so I have cleaned and organised and organised and cleaned and it looks GREAT! now I have to try and keep it this way. I think with pratice we could keep it nice. but its gonna take work...on everyone's part. The kids have SO MANY kid books we had to add a bookshelf to the living room area. Thats ok though because we read a lot of books and since we are no longer spending so much time in the basement this will make reading more accessible.

I am having a really hard time finding just the right name for the little boy. Help me out. tell me your favorite boy name or even what you think he looks like.

A big thank you for some generous donations. I am surprised at the kindness of strangers. Thank you for restoring my faith in humanity that there really are caring people out there who do for others just to be nice. So thankful to all of you.

update

the homestudy visit was simple and laid back. basically just refreshing what is in our old hs. now to get on those other documents. The hs agency has everything they need minus 2 forms. I am waiting on my background check from local police. the homstudy doesnt need it now they said but I do for dossier so I didnt cancel it. and eric doesnt like court or truman so we are thinking bryce or riorden. of course I change my mind a hundred times a day. I can get a name in my head and think its perfect then I look at his little picture and find that it isnt perfect after all. sophie just looks like sophie. I could find a million girl names I like. why is the boy name so hard?

homestudy stuff

heading out to talk with social worker today for homestudy. meeting in the office because we will be in the area. She can work on writing things up then and stop by the house sometime later. cutting it awful close as Eric was on call last night and STILL isnt finished working!
not to worried but hoping all goes well. Really after talking to the agency and the worker several times already I think it should be fine. but you never know. yesterday someone who was going to write a letter for me to the agency said they woudlnt so I had to scramble to find someone who would. her beef was that I am not the believer that she is and she isnt sure about bringing the kids home because what if they died? what would happen to their soul? like the orphanages in EE are passing out the word of god. right. whatever. anyways I have to get erics birth cert so I can send in the i600a. hope all falls into place quickly here!

and I THINK I have narrowed little boys name down to Riorden Truman and Courtland

thanks georgie. it means so much. you really have no idea.

more names

courtland
courtenay
hunter
elijah hayden
holden
jada jade jaden
jessiah (jesse)
Jordan
riordan(rory)
ash
Trueman (true)
Kai

I have a huge pile of papers to send off today. almost done with the initial paperwork, homestudy stuff. then it will be on to dossier papers. one more big hurdle nearly jumped. one step closer to the kids. Thinking of calling little boy Holden. Having a little trouble finding people to write letter of recommendation for homestudy. One friend I have known for all of my life will gladly do it, another friend said she would but two others declined. I get the feeling maybe they dont think we should adopt. so now I need to find one more person to write. Eric and I are each other's best friend we do not have a lot of outside friends. well I need to get my papers in order and get them in the mail or it wont matter who writes it will be tooo late.

boy names

I havent asked hubby yet on any of these because I am not at home. feel free to vote on which you like or dont like.

Parker(what we are calling him now because I cant think of anything else that fits, but I am not sure its the right name)
Sebastian or Sebastiaan
Andre(Andrei)
Luka
Theodosius (husband really likes theodore so this might fly)
Mikhail(call him Khai)
Nikolai(Nik)
Mateo
Pacy(or Pacey) and yes I know its from Dawson's creek which by the way I loved.

I feel a little bad that NO ONE has donated ANYTHING towards helping our kids come home. they will donate to save the zebras but not our children. they will buy expensive coffess but cant donate. They want us to donate for their schools. Our magazine fundriaser has raised nothing. The only money I made off of it was my own when I ordered some magazines. and some people have money falling into their laps. How does that work? We are prepared to foot the entire bill but it might have been nice to see that someone cared enough about us to care about what we care about. My mom said we shouldnt do fundraisers like asking people to buy things, we should just outright ask them for money. So I am asking. donate to help us get these kids home. Once they are here our entire life is going to change, we will need a new van to acommodate them, we are already planning to rearrange the house for them. there will be plenty of medical bills for them. therapies, surgeries, doctor visits, adaptive equipment. our expenses do not stop after we get them home. gathering documents is expensive in and of itself. 75 dollars for a couple copies of birth certificates is a lot! but its what we need so we do it. Tonight we drove to Milaca for fingerprinting. that was another 20 plus gas. it adds up fast! I always think I can count on people to help out. I wish they wouldnt prove me wrong so often!

the naaaaame game!

more documents obtained today. I can not even believe it cost me SEVENTY FIVE DOLLARS for two copies of two kids birth certs and 2 copies of mine. SEVENTY FIVE DOLLARS! and ten for the copy of the deed to the house. thankfully I had the money saved to pay for it. We are trying to come up with a name for little boy. so far we have parker and jackson and ian. But since we already have an ETHAN I wonder if Ian is a little too close? we always used to talk about having an Ian. but does he look like an Ian? I really like Jackson but Eric's nephew is Jacob and goes by Jack. not sure how you get Jack our of jacob, usually its Jake. I like unusual names but not so bizarre that people think I am crazy. just a little different than your usual jacob and emily. so we are thinking Sophie or Ana for her and what for him? what does he look like to you?

its a sign!

eric and I have this thing we do. it all started when we were looking at residencies. we went to one and really liked it and on the way back there was a small day sailer on the side of the road for sale. Eric loves sailing. and he just about drove off the road when I saw it and screamed IT'S A SIGN!! so whenever we have ongoing discussion over some decision if anything related shows up somewhere else in our life we say "it's a sign!" so last night we watched a movie. the movie itself was somewhat disturbing but anyways there was a girl on the movie and guess what her name was? SOPHIE! he looked at me, smirked and said very calmly and matter of fact, "its a sign." I nearly choked. he is so funny.

baby girl and the little boy

When you give birth there is a frantic moment when you think OHMYGOD! WHAT HAVE I DONE???? How will I ever manage this? what was I thinking? and you wish you would stay pregnant forever rather than change everything. I am having that moment. We decided to bring home the little boy too. he is very cute and said to be very smart. and I am frantic and panicked that the hs agency wont approve us for both and little boy will be left behind. and I am frantic and panicked that all will go as planned and both will come home and life as we know it will be forever changed(for the better I hope, but still changed) I imagine its much like that moment I mentioned above where you decide that since all this change is suddenly inevitable you dont want to risk it, its too scary. Adopting one is scary. adopting two is terrifying. I am already quite outnumbered in this house lol, I have 4 kids afoot already. Their medical needs do not scare me. the paperwork scares me. the millions of things to do and not being abel to do any of them. The fear that something will go awry along the way. There is fear of who they will be when they get here. seriously....afraid of paperwork? come on, you say. Having previously adopted from Russia, we have a paper nightmare as our frame of reference for these things. Everything that could possibly have gone wrong DID go wrong. so I dont know how it feels to have things sail along smoothly. and right now I am just panicked to think about going through a nightmre like that again. oh why didnt I choose an easier country? Oh, right, because our kids are not in an easier country. they say you can choose your friends but you cant choose your family. I guess that's true even in adoption. so hi ho hi ho its off to crazy I go, to do paperwork. and get fingerprinted. and hope it all falls into place.

more paperwork

filled out a bunch more papers for the homestudy. need to get birth certs and marriage certs and get the local PD to help with fingerprinting. and get a local background check. gosh it was SO MUCH easier last time we adopted! I dont understand why I have to pay SO MUCH MONEY when I am doing all the work! essentially all the hs agency does is look about your house and spend a couple hours with you and says yay or nay (after a adam walsh background check of course) I feel like my hands are so tied. I want to get stuff done and be finished and just concentrate on waiting but there is so much to do and each thing cant be done unless something else has been done. Cant file the i600 until the hs(at least that is what the hs agency is telling us to do) cant gather dossier until the hs is done. cant do home visit until reams of paperwork is finished and we have gotten the local pd to do a background check. if these kids are sitting there just waiting for a home then why isnt the process more streamlined and not done in procession but rather all at the same time? well I know I cant change the world but I just feel that things are not moving fast enough for my liking and I just want it over and done and get our babygirl home. And I am a worrier. I keep trying to get this form that I am supposed to do but I am discouraged because I still dont have it. I dont want to lose out on my Annie. and again its the weekend and mothers day at that so very much NOTHING I can do. tomorrow. tomorrow is monday. I can wait one day right? I have to anyways.

how come other people's families and friends are supportive of adoption and help them and donate and what can we do to help you? but our family? not so much. I am not having a good day today, the world is crashing in on us due to all the crappy things going on right now and all I want is to bring home our little girl. not one person in our family or friends ordered magazines donated money. I sent out a mass email and got one reply from a most unlikely source. I guess I am feeling very unsupported in a lot of things right now. They are all piling up. Adoption is just ONE of those things. today I would like to take a nap but instead I have to go to a birthday party and an evening barbecue when all I want to do is stay home and cry. I dont know if this belongs in this blog or the other but this is where I ended up so here is where its at.

the all important homestudy stuff came today. took a week to get here. a week we dont have. and looking through it I can say NOW I am officially overwhealmed. last time was way easier than this and it was RUSSIA! I suppose thorough is better so tht there will be no question of our competence when it comes time to go to get her. I am a bit annoyed though that I was JUST at the county building yesterday and didnt get birth certs because they said they ddint need them and NOW I get the info and it says they need them. maybe its general? and since they hve a copy of our old hs they wont need them? if they do its hi ho hi ho off to the county I go....an hours drive away. oh! but we have orthodontist next week so have to swing through that town anyways I guess I could pick em up if I had to.

since yesterdays wicked witch call I didnt get to Milaca. going today for sure. gotta get my baby girl home asap!

and Eric found out for sure he has enough vacation time accrued to go with me on both trips. YEAH! YAY!

hopefully the adam walsh background checks will come today so we can get those in the mail.
Still no word on whether or not I can take the big kids with us. Their dad isnt returning my calls.

I reclaimed a bunch of Maia's dresses that she outgrew to save to baby girl and suddenly maia wants them. she says she will share everything her toys her mama her attention but I think its gonna be a little harder than she thinks after being the baby for 5 years.

copy of old homestudy received.
copy of old homestudy sent off the new hs agency.
expecting next step in the mail today.

heading to milaca for documents this afternoon and passport for eric.

good news

Eric and I had planned to travel together trip one(Yeah I know its required) and bring CHrysta along. And on trip two I would travel back and bring Cody along and Eric would stay home and work. but it turns out he has a lot of sick days he can use, AND he has more vacaation days coming than he believed he did and he thinks he has enough to come with me BOTH trips! When we brought Ethan home it was such a special time together and I would really hate for him to miss out on that with this little one. and it isnt something you can get back. so if he can go with me that will be outstanding and awesome and Much to the dismay of my friends I really DO love spending time with him, and we love to travel together. He is such a gift to me. I still dont know if cody and chrysta can go with us or not. Still waiting to hear on that one. waiting for a return call.

today

at the zoo I was noticing all the little blondies and wondering if my little blondie will look like that or do this or that. of course I had to remind myself that she may never do all the things those kids were doing but she will have a chance to do SOME of them and without us giving her a chance she wouldnt get one at all. I know this is my child. I know she is. but even when you grow a child yourself there is a time from diagosis of problem to grieving for the child that will never be. I am happy with her the way she is. I will give her whatever I can to help her get the most she can possibly get out of her life. but I still grieve for the child she will never be. she will be ours. we will love her. the fact remains that she will have limitations in what her body allows her to do. I am coming to terms with that, and starting to see how my little pipe dream is really doing to be a little different than I had in mind. differnt isnt bad, just different. and something to get used to.

silly man wants to change her name now. = )

Help us bring Ana home!

magazine fundraiser! we get 40% of sales towards our bring Ana home fund. Ana doesnt have a lot of time to lose. we have got to get over there and get that angel home. No child belongs in an institution! they belong in a family where they are loved and cared for and taught all the things a child should know. here is a link to our fundraiser www.magfundraising.com/Enberg_adoption tell your friends, and family! bring our angel home!

bah! its the weekend!

generally people say oh good its the weekend. not me. the weekend is two days each week that NOTHING HAPPENS towards bringing home our Ana. There is no one to contact. no calls to make. no paperwork. Its so hard to sit and do nothng! I mean there is plenty of stuff I could do around the house, but no adoption specific activities. And all I want is to get that babygirl HOME! I imagine it is hard to put pants on with her legs permanently bent and her unable to stand. SO I am thinking chubber covers and dresses. thankfully I have another daughter who will only wear dresses so I think I probably have plenty of dresses I can hand down. I suppose I should get out my serger and whip up some chubber covers so I will have enough. thats something adoption related right? so I could feel I accomplished SOMETHING? maybe?

check check check

reeces rainbow stuff sent out CHECK!
homestudy information, contract, and money sent out CHECK!
anxiously waiting CHECK!