Thank Heaven for...

Little Boys and a little more time!

Yesterday we received a phone call from our social worker in Utah that our baby's birthmother had another ultrasound.  I guess the last ultrasound was really just to confirm pregnancy and they didn't really do any measurements.  They were using her best guess to set her due date.  This time she had a more targeted ultrasound and they were able to set a more accurate due date.  Well it looks like we won't have a 2012 baby after all (unless it decides to make it's appearance naturally and a few days early) but we will have a 2013 baby this time!  Her new due date is January 5, 2013. I may or may not have let out a cheer when I found out we had a few more weeks to prepare.  These past few nights have been hard.  Jeremiah has not been sleeping well and the thought of adding a newborn in a month was a bit overwhelming.  The downside is that I will be out of work for the opening of our new hospital (as long as the projected opening date stands.)  I am disappointed to miss the excitement of that and I know that my managers are not going to be super excited about the change in plans...

The other exciting news from the ultrasound is that our little one decided to cooperate a bit better and we were able to see that Jeremiah is going to have a little brother!  Robert may have jumped up and down at this news.  I am really starting to get outnumbered in this house.  We better get some girl fish or something to even the score. :)  We are so excited though for the boys to have each other.  I can already picture them out on the basketball court together.  It's also a blessing because we already have a lot of the baby gear we will need from J.  

So that is the latest news in our adoption world.  Just when you think things are starting to come together there is a change in plans.  We are so excited though for this new blessing in our lives and are thankful for the extra time to raise funds, prepare our hearts and home, and grow Jeremiah just a bit bigger.  He will be almost a year old instead of 10 months! This sounds so much better to me. 

A picture if worth 1000 words

Adoption is a unique way to have a baby.  Your pregnancy is paperwork and your labor pain is fundraising but I am pretty sure that your joy is just as overwhelming when you see your sweet baby for the first time.
    With Jeremiah we only had 3 days notice that he was going to be our son.  We had prayed for him for many months. We wondered if he was conceived yet, what he would look like, if he would be a boy or girl.  We dreamed about all of the things we would do with him once he joined our family and we didn't get a glimpse of him until he was 24 hours old.  I will never forget our first look at him.  We had just stopped to get gas in the middle of snowy Wyoming.  I had been texting with our social worker in Utah all morning getting updates on when his birth mother would sign over her rights and we could finally see his face.  It was the best feeling in the world to finally get a picture.  Rob and I could not stop looking at him. (I'm pretty sure it is more dangerous to look at pictures of your newborn son on your cell phone while driving then it is to text. I tried to keep Rob focused and only allowed him short glances at the phone while driving. :)) We gushed about how cute he was and how big his eyes were.  He was the cutest little baby we had ever seen!  

Sweet Baby Ivy #2

  This time around we thought the experience would be the same, so what an unexpected and sweet blessing it was to open an email from our social worker last week and find a picture of our cute little peanut attached.  Rob was at the library studying and I was at home with J.  I called him to tell him to open his email.   Rob's first comment was "it looks kind of like a t-rex baby to me." :)  I assured him that it would not be a t-rex but a little human. I don't know if he was excited or a bit disappointed at that news. I have studied that little face over and over now.  What a blessing it is for an adoptive mom to get a peak at her newest little sweetheart before he/she is born.  It's a rare treat that I honestly never thought I would have so I want to share it with the world. :)  Here he/she is in full black and white glory.  Isn't that just the cutest little baby you have ever seen?  I thought so too. ;)

Update of the adoption process for #2:

• Had our one necessary home study visit last Wednesday to update Jeremiah in our home study.  We are now waiting on our background checks so that our home study can be cleared.
•  Working on filling out grant/loan applications so that they can be mailed off as soon as our home study is approved.
• A few of you have asked how you can give.  If you are interested in giving to our MICAH fund and would like to send a check now you could make out a check to MICAH Fund and mail it to our home address and we could get it to the office once we have final approval.  If you would like to give online I will give details of how to do that once we are approved by them. Any gifts given before we are officially approved would just go to the general fund not to us, so please wait a few more weeks to give online.  :) Thanks!

Why Blog?

I am going to attempt to start another blog.  This blog is designed mainly to keep our our family and friends (and whoever else is interested) up to date on our lives with little ones.  Yep we do mean little ones.  We are going to adopt Baby #2 in just a few short weeks (there is another post to explain that).  Thanks for checking in.  I'm going to try to be good about posting a few things every week.  Our lives are full and God is good.  We want to share that with all of you.

The Story of Our First Adoption

(photo taken by First Day Photo: Jessica Person)

For those of you that may have found our blog through a series of clicks, welcome. We are the Ivy family. Robert, Christi, and Jeremiah.

Robert is a seminary student in his 4th year at Bethlehem Seminary in Minneapolis.  Christi is a Labor and Delivery Nurse and Jeremiah is our almost 9 month old son.

We are both Army kids who grew up moving all around the country/world.  We were blessed to meet each other the first time in the 6th grade when we lived across the street from one another in Kansas. We weren't really friends at that time but our mom's were in a prayer group together and in that group they prayed for their children's spouses.  Little did they know that just 8 years later we would meet again in a mess hall at the United States Military Academy one summer evening on a Sunday School teachers retreat.  Robert was a cadet there and Christi was visiting.  This began a long email friendship that later turned into romance and ended in marriage.  (that is the short version of the story)  We were married in June of 2007.

Adoption was something that had been on Christi's heart for a long time.  After traveling to Romania two summers in high school she knew that her heart was being pulled to adoption as the way that God would build her family.  Thankfully Robert shared the same passion as he began to study the Bible more and began to love the plan that God had to bring us into his family.  Ephesians 3 says "in Love He predestined us to adoption as sons and daughters"  What a beautiful way to have a living reminder of God's love for us at our dinner table every night.

In November 2010, after traveling to Ethiopia together on a short term mission trip, we began the process of adoption from Ethiopia.  All the while our prayer was "please close the door God if this is not what you have for us." We applied and were working with an agency locally who later ran into some troubles with the Ethiopian government. After 8 months of praying and waiting they were closed and we took that as God closing the door to Ethiopia for us.  We began our home study and started the process of domestic infant adoption.  How thankful we are in hind sight for God's leading in that direction.  In July 2011 we started our home study process.  In Oct 2011 we finished and in November 2011 we had our first match.  A little baby that was to be born in a few weeks in Mississippi.  We were able to talk with the birth mom on the phone a few times and we started to prepare our house and hearts for a new baby.  Sadly December 16th when that little girl was born God had another plan for her, the birth parents decided to parent her.  Our hearts were sad but we knew that it was God's doing.

Just a few short weeks later, one of the craziest weeks of our lives began.  Christi's sister-in-law, Meg had a skiing accident on New Years Eve day in New Mexico.  She had to have major surgery and was unable to do much for herself for a few weeks.  Christi traveled to New Mexico to help her.  While she was there God was unfolding His plan. On January 6th we were contacted by an adoption agency in Utah that a little boy was to be born January 10th and they would like to show our profile to his birthmother.  We enthusiastically asked them to please have his birthmother consider us. January 9th Christi flew back to Minnesota and turned her cell phone on as the plane taxed in to the terminal. As her phone turned on she received a text from Robert that "she chose us!" The baby was to be born the next morning and we were going to be his parents.  We were overjoyed!  Christi went to work that night and the next morning they packed their car to head to Salt Lake City, Utah.  On January 12th, Jeremiah Michael Ivy was lovingly placed into our home for adoption.  The last nine months have been such a joy. Everyone always tells you that you will never know how you had so much fun before you had children and it is so true.  J is such a sweet, joyful baby.  We are so thankful for him.  We are looking forward to the next chapter as well.

Hold on to your hats!

Ladies and Gentleman hold on to your hats..
Jeremiah is going to be a Big Brother!

Yes you did read that right.  Baby Ivy #2 is set to make his/her appearance November 18th.  In 6 weeks we will be a family of 4! (that blows my mind)  

All right so now that you have caught your breath let me share a bit of the back story.  Just before Labor Day we received word from our adoption agency (who we were not in the process of working with might I add) that Jeremiah's birth mother was pregnant again. She had contacted the agency to see if they could get in touch with us because she wanted us to adopt this baby too.  At first we were shocked.  Jeremiah was only 7 months old.  How could we have another baby.   As the emotions sunk in we knew what we had to do.  We had to keep siblings together and God must have a big plan in all of this so we would go ahead with this adoption.

This new bundle of joy comes with many mixed emotions.  Sadness that J's birth mother finds herself in this place again.  Exhaustion at the paperwork and fund raising that must go on in a few short weeks while also caring for a very busy now almost 9 month old.  We feel inadequate and needing to learn to rely on God more to care and train another little one.  The overall feeling though is joy at the thought of another little one in our home. 

Would you please pray for us as we work on paperwork, prepare our hearts to receive another baby, and seek God for His provision.  Would you pray for the birthmother as she travels to Utah in a few weeks and thinks of giving another baby away.  Pray most of all that she would know the love of God in a powerful way.  And pray for this new baby that he/she would grow healthy and be born strong.  Would you please also be praying about partnering with us financially.  Adoption is not cheap and because this is our second adoption in a year we have not been planning and saving for this adoption.  We trust that God will provide as He did with Jeremiah but we are going to need the help of others. In the next few weeks we will, Lord willing, have a matching grant available if people would like to give a tax deductible gift that will also be matched dollar for dollar.  So stay tuned...