Monday, June 30, 2008

June in Review (Part 1)

There are a lot of pictures that were taken in June that have not been posted. I may try to do a couple of posts this week of various pictures from June.

Noah sitting in his chair. Look at that smile.


Joel water painting. Thank you Aunt Susan!


Mommy & Noah:


Joel eating refried beans with his hands:

Going for a walk in the triple stroller. There are 2 seats and a place for Joel to sit or stand in the back. Since Hannah is not here yet, Joel usually rides in a seat.

Joel is helping to clean the windows.

Joel playing with his cars and trucks.

And in a diaper box:

Noah in the exersaucer. He is just recovering from being sick so his face looks pretty thin.

Joel often covers his face so we can not take a picture.

The Many Faces of Joel

Joel loves Noah and is excited to get Hannah home. Almost daily he asks "Is Hannah ready to come home?", or "Can we go get Hannah?", or "I am ready for Hannah to come home." A few days ago we were talking about Hannah coming home soon and he said "There are going to be a lot of us!" This made us smile that he knows that Noah and Hannah are part of "us."

Joel does not like to have his picture taken very often, but one night he wanted to make lots of faces for the camera. This is only a sample of all the faces he made and pictures Jason took.





Sunday, June 29, 2008

Hannah Is Legally Ours!

We got an update today about Hannah's progress since she has gotten out of PGN. Her birth mother has signed off for the final time and the adoption was registered on June 2oth. This is when she legally became OUR daughter. Our file was submitted to the civil registry from the region where she was born on June 25th for a request of a new birth certificate with our last name on it. That particular region sometimes is very slow to issue the new birth certificates. Hopefully it will not take too long for Hannah's. We are still guessing she will come home at the end of July, but still are not sure.

Monday, June 23, 2008

Look Who is Starting to Crawl!

Noah is getting on his hands and knees a lot is is starting to crawl. If you put something he really wants out of reach he half crawls half falls from his hands and knees and pushes with his feet. Before long he will be taking off.




Saturday, June 21, 2008

Grammy & Pop Were Here

Grammy & Pop (Shannon's parents) came last Sunday and stayed the week with us. They were planning on coming sooner after Noah came home, but because we were all sick they postponed their trip. They were supposed to stay until tomorrow and then go visit more family in the Austin area, but Mom (Grammy) thinks she is getting sick and did not want to spread it to other family members and wanted to get home before she got worse. We do not know if it the same thing we all had or something different. Hopefully she did not catch it from us or our house. We had lots of fun while they were here. Dad (Pop) did a lot of projects around the house and it was a great help. While they were here we went to a petting zoo at our library, went to Chuck E. Cheese (although Joel wanted to leave pretty quickly), went swimming, went to a great playground/fort, and played a lot at home. Here are some pictures:

At the petting zoo at the library:


At the pond at the library:
Mama and baby ducks:
At Chuck E.Cheese:

At Legacy Play Village:

Swimming at a public pool in Lubbock:
Around the house:
Joel, Daddy, & Pop made a cool ramp for Joel's cars:


Eating some of Grammy's yummy cinnamon bread:

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

HANNAH IS OUT OF PGN!!!!!

Hannah was approved from PGN this morning!! What exciting news! We are so very glad to have her out of PGN. This means that the Guatemalan side of the adoption is complete and that within a couple of days she will be legally ours, but it takes several more weeks to get her new birth certificate with our last name and get all the things done for her to enter the USA. We posted a list of all of the steps on the blog on April 15th when Noah got out of PGN. If you would like to see the list you can find it there. We picked up Noah exactly 1 month from when he got out of PGN, but everything went very quickly for him. We will be expecting more like 6 weeks for Hannah, but it could be longer or shorter. It is too soon to tell. It is such a relief for her to be out of PGN. YEAH!!!



P.S. After almost 3 weeks of being very sick around here, we are finally all well.

Monday, June 9, 2008

Hannah's Birth Mother Interview Complete!

We got an email this evening that Hannah's birth mother's interview was completed on Friday. We are so relieved to have this step completed. Her case is now just waiting for a final signature to be released from PGN. We have no idea how long this will take. They have just started releasing files again after about 6 weeks. It does not seem like they are necessarily releasing them in the order of the interviews. There are also no guaranty that when a file is released that it will be approved. It seems like there are still giving a lot of cases previos (kickouts). This will be a very gut wrenching wait until we hear that she is approved by PGN.

Thursday, June 5, 2008

Update on Hannah

A couple of days ago we got 2 sets of pictures of Hannah. One set from her 8 month doctor's appointment and one set from a social visit (where all the foster mothers get together and one of things that happens is taking pictures of all the kids). Both sets of pictures were taken on the same day, June 2nd, and you can see she is wearing the same outfit. At the doctor's she weighed 15 lb 4 oz. The report said that she is very alert and shows interest in all that goes on around her, appears to understand some simple words and turns to things that are named, she also imitates some of the movements she sees (rising eyebrows for example), is able to keep the sitting position and will try to pull herself to the standing position, she also puts herself in the crawling position.

As far as her case, we are still waiting for the additional birthmother interview to take place. We are not sure why it is taking so long. Many people from our agency have already had this done. It could be that the birthmother can not get off work or can not get to Guatemala City for the interview or something else. We are not sure. We are very anxious to have this done. She can not exit PGN (Procuradoria General del Nacion) until this is completed and even after it is completed it could take a while to exit. The first case from our agency to exit from PGN since the new requirement of the additional birthmother interview just happened this week. Their interview happened about 3 weeks prior. Hopefully this process will speed up. We are very ready to have Hannah home.

Here are the pictures from June 2nd-

Social visit pics:



Doctor's visit pics:



P. S. Noah and Shannon are both still sick, but they may be doing a little bit better.

Monday, June 2, 2008

Still Sick!

Well, we are still sick at our house. Joel finally seems to be doing better today. He is acting much more himself although not quite 100%. Yesterday evening Noah started with the sickness. He has had a pretty hard day. If he does not seem better tomorrow we may need to get him into the doctor. I am a little concerned about him staying hydrated. He will drink, but it is hard to keep it in him. Jason & I have not necessarily felt our best, but have not felt too bad. Hopefully things will not get worse for us.