pictures, and a little more of the story

All my boys!

The family shot

Jacob abosolutely loves Josh. He keeps saying "hi josh!" and "oh, brother!" Also, won't keep his lips off the baby! It melts my tender heart.

This was the first time they "met". Both asleep. Obviously, quite excited.

A few minutes later:

These last 2 may be the photos used in the announcement. I love them. Aren't those lips the most beautiful you've ever seen?

I have an unexplainable need to know that the children that wind up with me are the ones that are "supposed" to be with me and our family. The Sunday morning we learned about him, I had a moment of worry that I didn't yet know that Josh was supposed to be ours. Now, I feel quite silly for worrying. When the adoption case worker called us on the 19th, I had chills all over my body as soon as she told me "there is a baby that needs a home." I think I 'knew' then. Also, on that phone call: when she told us the cost of this adoption, it was the exact number that just one day previous we had chosen for our adoption budget. As soon as she told me the number, I started crying - it seemed just perfect. After the case worker picked us up at the airport Monday, she told us a little more about the situation. She got a phone call earlier than us on Sunday, obviously. She is not usually the person who would recieve those phone calls and match babies with adoptive families, but the case worker whose job it usually is to do that was out of town for the weekend, so this case worker had taken over doing the mandatory things. Well, this case worker - we'll call her Jodi - thought of a family for Josh. She called the number. It rang, and then disconnected. She redialed. It rang and disconnected. So Jodi went back to bed and decided to try again later. After all, she never carried names or numbers of adoptive parents with her, so there was really nothing she could do right then, anyhow. As she was trying to go back to sleep, something kept telling her to look in her day planner. She was kind of confused; like I said earlier, she never keeps adoptive family info with her - that wasn't her job at the agency. Finally, she looked in her day planner, and found our name, phone number and information about what kind of baby we were interested (we were not gender or race specific). So she called, I answered, and the rest is history. Later that first family Jodi called got a hold of her (I guess the number showed up on caller id), and the hopeful adoptive mom on the other line said that she heard the phone ring, and tried to pick it up each time. Sure, this could all be one big fluke - the money matching exactly, us deciding just days before Josh was born that we needed to put our name in with agencies really soon, my deciding to call this agency just 2 days before Josh was born even though I didn't think we could afford them, Jodi not being able to get a phone connection with the first family, Jodi having our information in her day planner, etc. But it's not a fluke. Josh is supposed to be in our family. It's 4:30 am. I've been awake for an hour. It's better than Christmas morning, because in 3 hours, we will leave my sister-in-laws home to go to the hospital for the last time. Last night at 11 pm, Josh received his last dose of antibiotics. I don't remember if I included the information about his pneumonia in the last post: he inhaled meconium and amniotic fluid when he was born, and got pneumonia. All signs of the infection were gone within 48 hours, but Josh's doctor wanted to run the full 7 day course of IV antibiotics just to be safe. It's been breaking my heart to leave him at the hospital each day, but I'd much rather be safe and have a healthy baby. Anyway, we get to bring him home with us today! Bring on the midnight feedings! We will be in Utah until at least Tuesday, but it's looking more like Wednesday or later at this point, which has me frazzled and frustrated, but trying to mellow and go with the flow. We need an agency in CA to accept the paperwork that will allow us to cross state lines with the baby. The agency that did our homestudy is doing our postplacement visits (we will have 3 visits from a social worker in the next 6 months to make sure Josh is safe in our home; then the adoption can be finalized in court), but has not yet gotten permission from their "higher ups" to accept our paperwork. (insert rolled eyes here) I get to bring my baby home in 3 hours!!!!