Tornado Tuesday

Crazy day today! And it wasn't just the weather. Wylie had a hearing test and he totally didn't want any part of it. He was so mad at mama for making him hold still for the doctor. Apparently despite the fact I used to muscle around horses, I don't do so hot holding an angry toddler who doesn't want his ears checked. :\ So anyhow, we have to go back in a week and try one more test -- hopefully he'll be able to sleep thru it this time! Fingers crossed.

After his failed audiologist visit, he went to visit Grammy Vicki so I could run to the county court house and get copies of our marriage license. My odyssey to the court house basement (which was leaking because of all the rain) only cost $10! Woo! The county clerk even put everything in an envelope so her ink stamps wouldn't get smudged on the trek back out to the car. Foreign governments don't mess around when it comes to messy stamping and I'd hate to have to come back and re-do everything. But don't worry -- I checked all the clerk's stamps again when I got to the car and there is no smeared/missing/overlapping/double stamped text, so we should be good to go on that! If only getting copies of Dan's birth certificate had been that easy. Note to the state of Wisconsin: for what we paid and the hoops we jumped thru, we'd better not be getting that same xerox of a copy of a mimeograph of a faded papyrus you handed out when he was born... ugh. I expect something legible and much more legal/official looking this time! Ha ha.

The next and final mandatory stop for the day was to the BMV to get dad's Jeep re-titled. My mom signed it over to us last week (which helps us out because we'll have plenty of room for 2 kids and their stuff now). So I met up with Dan and we did that. Yay for online appointment scheduling! After we got our temp plate, we went next door to Tuesday Morning to pick up a couple of girly goodies. Dan got a kick out of the not-so-girly tutus they had on sale. I think those are on his shopping list so that we don't have a house full of pink when Eileen gets here ;) Honestly, my mom made sure I had purple or blue instead of pink growing up, so I can't say I'm really attached to that color and don't blame him for wanting something different.

We ran over to my mom's to pick up Wylie and collected an awesome rocking chair. My mom's friend gave it to her after she had me. It's the same color as Eileen's crib that we got on sale last week, so it'll be perfect in her room! Dan and I are very happy to have it. We managed to get home before the bad storms hit St. Joe county where our parents all live. They had been under a tornado watch since around lunch time. When we got to Elkhart, the sun peeked out and Wylie got to run around the yard. Glad all the hail/wind passed us by!

Ain't no moss on me!

As in the ball/stone is rolling. Our first home study visit will be May 14th and we have physicals set for May 5th. Eep! Any advice for a home study child proofing check sheet? We have gates and cabinet locks and safety devices on the appliances, but you never know what each person's standards are until they actually get to your house. Thankfully we'll have a second visit to correct any issues our social worker sees the first time around.

I have a list of paperwork to go collect. We have our birth certificates. Dan's passport is en route. We really can't go get much of our dossier paperwork notarized until Dan's passport number gets here because that number appears on the top of most of the paperwork. Bummer!

Busy Weekend

Whew! We were busy bees Saturday and Sunday. I rearranged Wylie's room a bit to make it easier to move around in there. We worked on the blog template. We organized our receipts and paperwork that we've done so far into a binder. And our home study social worker got our application documents to us, so we filled all of those out. Several friends and a couple of relatives have graciously agreed to act as our references (THANK YOU!!! xoxo). So first thing Monday morning we'll be sending out the first installment of our home study fees, after which time our social worker will set up our first meeting. We're looking forward to working with her. She seems very reassuring and explains everything well. That's exactly what we need, because I'm sure the going will get tough at some point.

This morning one of our cars sold on eBay. That should help us pay for some of our document fees while we're working on our home study and dossier. We plan to apply for grants and adoption scholarships once our home study is complete, but we still need to come up with other fundraising strategies. I'm thinking maybe we'll try a yard/bake sale in my mom's neighborhood to start. We did two yard sales last year at our place -which went great- but at the time we were just doing them to have some extra cash. Now our goal is a little bigger, so we'll have to think bigger also. We've been haunting the Reece's Rainbow message board and there are some great ideas. Time to get cracking.

In the last post I mentioned that Eileen's "real" name isn't Eileen. One of our friends asked what that meant. It's more of an alias. Each child that goes up for international adoption in Eileen's country is given a different name from what's on their birth certificate to protect their identity while they are listed for potential parents to choose. We probably won't have any idea what her birth name is/was for quite some time. So for our purposes we'll continue to call our little girlie Eileen until we legally adopt her. Once we're officially her parents, we'll start using which ever name we pick out for her. We're totally open to suggestions, by the way! Before we knew Wylie was a boy, we had a HUGE list of girl names and basically zero boy names. Now none of the names we liked before seem to fit Eileen. Funny how that works out, huh?

So stinking excited!

This little cutie pie stole our hearts. Her name is Eileen (well, sort of... we'll talk about that next time). She's about 6 months younger than Wylie. It'll be several months before we'll be able to travel to Eastern Europe to meet her, but we'll wait as long as it takes! Eileen has a cleft palate and some delays and will no doubt need some help when we get her home. But, LOOK at that little face! It's going to get lots of kisses. And maybe a little slobber from our dog, Butters.

We explained to our parents this week what we have been working on. My mom was pretty shocked. Dan's parents were surprisingly not. Dan's grandpa is visiting this month from Washington and we got to tell him too. Grandpa Kime is all about having more great grandchildren. Over all, I think they expected us to have another child somehow and it's not too much of a stretch that we'd want to adopt one. Dan and I are kind of different. In a good way, really, I swear! Ha.

In other news: we're live on the Reece's Rainbow Family Sponsorship page! I'll get a link up on the sidebar this weekend. Dan and I are happy to be getting to know all of the other great families adopting through Reece's Rainbow and appreciate those of you who got in contact with us this morning :) You are all so very sweet. We are very comfortable now that we know we're in the company of great folks.

The Starfish

"Why?" is a question we're expecting will come up quite a lot when we go public with our intentions to adopt a toddler from overseas. And that's okay! We can't expect everybody to understand at first. You care about us, you're trying to look out for us, you're worried we've lost our minds-- and we really do appreciate the concern. ;) Our intention isn't to become the Jolie-Pitt family, start our own reality show or end up with enough kids to have our own sports team. Plainly, we can't imagine our lives without Wylie and we'd love for him to have at least one sibling. We could have another one of our own, but we really want to do something that would make a difference for one small person who deserves a family just as much as any other kid. We have drafted a letter to our family and friends to send out at Easter explaining what we were doing and inviting them to keep up with us on this blog. Dan, Wylie and I are excited to share all of this with you. We know it will be a total roller coaster ride of craziness and we hope you understand how grateful we are that you're coming along with us.

There are many families adopting through an organization known as Reece's Rainbow who have online "homes" (including us). The Abell family posted this great story about starfish on their blog. In the end, we learn that the boy tossing starfish off the beach and into the ocean hasn't set out to save every single one. He knows that would be too large a goal. Instead, he endeavors to save just one starfish's life at a time. Each one he rescues has a second chance that it wouldn't have had otherwise. The boy is but a small part of a larger picture and he is comfortable in that role. So are we.