REFERRAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

P is going to be a big brother!!!
A few weeks ago I noticed that our fingerprints were about to expire. I shot off an email to our agency to see what we needed to do to update them. When our social worker called me back, she said that things were looking good for us - that we should receive a referral by the end of the year. I started collecting and organizing the appropriate paperwork, and figured we'd hear the news around Christmas. What a great present!! Three days later, on Friday afternoon, we were getting ready to finally go out and celebrate P's KTA day at the "pencil sharpening restaurant" when my phone rang. I assumed it was my friend calling about plans for Saturday. It was 4:00. CJ brought the phone to me.
"Is it Nicky?"
"Uh, no."
"Hello?"
"Hi, Sandi. This is ***. I have some news for you but I'm not sure how you will feel about it."
"Ok."
"I have some paperwork here. For a little boy. He's really cute. Healthy and developing well. You can wait for the next one if you want, but I can't promise it will come this year. And it may be another boy."
It takes me a few minutes to process this. See, we had told our social worker we hoped for a girl to complete our family, but I think I always knew in my heart that we would have two boys. After all that we have been through to create our family, I am not about to question God's plan. About 45 minutes later, pictures arrived via email. Honestly, what's not to love? This past week has been a blur of paperwork as we prepare to officially accept the referral. Hopefully our boy will be home late spring/early summer. Stay tuned!

Rock star

I've been reading Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, and he talks about how practicing something for 10,000 hours is the key to success. If that is the case, my son is well on his way to drumming greatness. "You better watch out!"

Hallween successes and failures

Halloween '09 seemed to last forever. Is it me or did the decorations appear extra early this year? Around the same time as school supplies? Hubby says it is because the economy is hurting and retailers need to push for every penny. The over abundance of consumerism makes me nostalgic for a time when you could just piece together a creative costume out of stuff in the closet rather than watch your child pour over the party city catalogue and carry it around like a comfort object. With that said, when he decided he wanted to be a ghost I thought, "Cool. I can cut some holes in a sheet." Apparently he spent the evening trying to readjust his eye holes while running from house to house. At one point he ran into a tree. (There goes Mother of the Year award!) He kept making the holes bigger until eventually there was one hole... for his entire head. I would have taken an after picture (of what the costume looked like when he returned from trick-or-treating) but he tore it off and headed straight for the kitchen to investigate his loot.

In the meantime, I had tons of fun coming up with creative dishes for our little get together. And CJ had a ball decorating the front yard. He made a coffin for our "zombie" and had motion sensor lights. (Ok, so we did make a few purchases - we had to do our part as good Americans after all.) Now that it is November, I am ready to rest. But I've noticed that retailers wasted no time with Christmas decorations. Welcome to the two month countdown... ho, ho, ho.

Our little helper

The boy likes to "help" with household chores and has been enthusiastically chipping in with outdoor fall cleanup. However it seems that when he is with his father, the helping is actually productive, versus when he is with me and it appears to be more, well, counterproductive. He regularly helps daddy mow the lawn (don't my boys look cute in their matching ear protection?) and has also helped to rake the leaves and set up for Halloween. I took him out to rake the other day and after making a nice pile for removal, he proceeded to "un-rake" it.