Friday, March 31, 2006

Doubly Blessed

We are so grateful to be "doubly blessed" with 2 beautiful little girls!!! Although the "road" God had us take to get to Amelia has been filled with alot of different emotions - discouragement, confusion, frustration and now finally - Excitement - we are so thankful that we have a God that is in control!!! Most of you know, but for those who don't, we started the adoption process 6 months ago with a different birthmother just to find out in the end she was working a scam just to get money. It was obviously a loss both emotionally and financially and we were so confused why God would do that -- but we never doubted that He had the baby that HE wanted for us and that He would bring into our lives. Then God brought us into contact with a wonderful Christian lady that has a organization called Special Link. They deal mainly with harder to place adoptions. She was such a wonderful encouragment and a wise counsel to just continue to trust God to bring you your baby. A few weeks later, we heard of a possibility of a biracial baby girl to be born at the end of March. She sent our profile to the agency and the birthmother picked us! We then were told that unless she delivered sooner the doctors were going to induce her on March 28th -- so we thought we would have a little time to get things ready, but then we got the call on March 20th at 5:30 pm that the birthmother was in labor, pack your bags and head to Florida. Then at 1:03 am on Tuesday, March 21st little Amelia Annaliese was born, 6 pounds 13 ounces and 19 inches long!! We were then able to get to the hospital first thing that morning and spend most of the day with the birthmother. She was a wonderful, sweet woman who I instantly built a friendship with. She kept saying how she "just knew" when she saw our profile that we were the family for this baby. Without making this unbelievably longer, I can't tell you how wonderful it was to meet her and talk to her and to see the whole circle of adoption. I told her that I couldn't imagine all the emotions she was having, but she told me "I've had a couple abortions - that was hard, this is much easier" (Would love to tell that to some people) When she checked out that night, she and I sat there hugging and crying for several minutes and it hit me - we are crying for the same, yet totally different reasons. Here I was crying because I had met and had to say goodbye to this beautiful person all within a 12 hour period, not knowing whether she will want any contact or if we would ever see her again, but realizing that she was in this hospital just so she could give us a precious gift. I'm so thankful that God gave us that time to get to know her.Other than the above, I will admit that this whole adoption process has been pretty miserable. Unlike Isabella's, where I was sending out thank you notes to all the people involved (the drs, the nurses, the agency, etc) this time we'll be skipping all of that. :) From being scammed with the first mother to people being rude and insensitive we realized that we really don't know the mind of God. I think we have once again had to really learn to trust in God and that His way is perfect even if it doesn't always seem that way or even if it isn't the way we had hoped. BUT in the end, we are now FINALLY home and we have another precious little girl that God so obviously orchestrated to bring into our lives. I just pray now that He will give us the wisdom to raise these two precious blessings to honor Him.

On being the big sister




I love my little sister -- I either call her baby "dister" or Milly. I love to sing "Rock a Baby" and "Tinkle, Tinkle, Tinkle Star" to her. I also love to tickle her and beep her nose. When mommy put her in the baby swing today I wanted to push her, mommy says I have to be gentle - I don't know why I love to swing high, I'm sure baby dister would too! I also love to give her the passy - if her mouth isn't open, I try to help her with that too. Mommy and Daddy say I'm going to be a good big sister and they keep saying something about how I've grown up overnight!!

More pictures







Two of the pictures are from the first and second day in the hospital - the other picture (with the pretty pink and purple blanket is from today and FINALLY in her own little bassinett rather than in a hotel room!!