Grandpa's visit

Today was a great day! And it isn't even over yet! My dad came to take Jaden to school which went really well. They had fun. My dad got educated on how to handle the stress of having a 2 year old! He got some time to chill with Mackenna and he also did some much needed grocery shopping! Thanks, Dad!

Jay, Nik and the kidlets come over in a bit for some fun and supper.

We're home!

It feels great to finally be home! Jaden was so excited to see Mackenna when Grandma Pat brought him over. He even had a little gift for her, a cute pair of booties. Mackenna is officially a night owl! She was awake from about 9:30 til 3am. She is eating like a horse and pooping like crazy! We are on our 3rd outfit of the day and about the 10th diaper and it's only 10:30am. Uffda.

Jaden is at school right now with Grandpa. Hopefully he's doing alright. He's probably showing Grandpa all of his favorite places like the gym!

I am looking forward to a nap later today, hopefully as I think I only got about 3 hours of sleep last night.

On our way home!

We're in the car and on our way home! Today was a great but very emotional day. After our LLS socialworkers got there we had very nice blessing service which we were honored to have a colleague of mine facilitate. Thanks Dave!

We are anxious to get home and settled. It will be nice to sleep in our own bed! My dad comes tomorrow to help with Jaden. He will help him stick with his schedule tomorrow by bringing him to ECFE. I suppose if we REALLY wanted to do the normal friday routine that would also mean going to the Y to watch the swimmers in the pool. Sorry Deb you probably won't have your regular fan to cheer you on!

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38 hours old!

Mackenna is doing great! She's a great eater and a great pooper! I got to change a really good one earlier. She doesn't really cry very much, only when she's hungry or unwrapped. Can't wait to get some swaddling stuff so that she stays wrapped up better.

Satin (our birthmom) is doing GREAT! She is helping me write this. We went for a walk around the hospital and now she's eating out, in my room, that is and we are watching Hannah Montana via netflix. Gotta love netflix except when the stream is interrupted.

Looks like we might get out tomorrow if everything continues as it has so far. Little lady is waking up so I better scoot.

12 hours old!

Drumroll please...............................................................

Mackenna Alexandra Peterson is her name!

Here are some pics of Mackenna over the first 12 hours! I want to write all about it but my one lone hour of sleep is catching up with me!


Auntie Nik with Mackenna. This is one of only a few quiet moments. He would only go up to her when Auntie Nik held her. His first site of her was me holding her and he went ballistic. It should be an interesting week!



Right after bmom and he mom got back upstairs after recovery.




An oh-so- attractive picture of me after being up for 24 hours.




Daddyand Mackenna

Just a minute or two old.

She's here!

Arrived at 4:07am. 8lb 4 oz 21 inches. Head just plain too big for our bmom. Very cute as u can see. Now have to pick the name for sure!
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Into surgery

It's 3:45am and bmom just got rolled out of the room. Baby's heart rate continued to drop and she didn't progress beyond 6. OB/GYN was called about an hour ago.
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Still progressing

Went from 2 cm to 6 cm in 40 min. Some question about how baby is tolerating labor, big dips in heartrate after each contractions. Midwife came in to put internal monitors to keep track of baby's heartrate and contraction strenght. Just a waiting game now.
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Update

We checked into the Hilton, aka, our 6x8 complementary hospital room about 6pm.

Bmom just had a nice cocktail after an hour or so of pretty intense contractions thanks to pitocin. Epireral is on its way so she can rest up for the big event.

We might even get a little shut eye, too.

Nighty night.
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SHE'S COMING!!!

Water has broken!!! To be continued...
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Getting closer!

Looks like our birthmom had a productive weekend, too! A bunch of great (probably not the words she would use) contractions have caused her to begin to dilate. After some time at the hospital last night they sent her home after she didn't progress past one centimeter. She was up most of the night but got some much needed rest this morning. As of noon today she was doing ok but her mom was going to take her into town to do some walking around the mall.

Had a great visit with Disa this morning after a much needed yoga practice. Madison is coming over in a couple of hours and then we'll head back to the Y for a long over due swim in the pool. I've been promising her for ages that we will go. Probably won't get to go NEXT Monday! Hopefully!

'til we know more...

A kick in the pants

My uninterrupted sleep lasted precisely 20 minutes last night! I woke up to our birthmom's mom's phone call telling us that she was having contractions pretty regularly. She said she was goimg to probably take her in and then let us know if it was true labor.

Needless to say now we are a lot closer to a name or at least a couple to choose from and Brett's bag is packed! Yea! No news as of yet so I assume it was a false alarm.

Needless to say neither of us slept too well last night.
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A productive couple of days!

It's been a quiet weekend here in Lake Woebegon. I had a lot of time in my sewing room whipping up a cover for the Boppee we got from Patrice and making some diapers.

My pattern I created for dipes for Jaden is a one size pattern but even on the smallest setting they will be too big for baby sister for a while, so I decided to create another smaller pattern. Suffice it to say, Jaden has a great new cloth diaper for his glow worm!! It was a bit on the small side! Thank GOODNESS I made a sample before I cut out all the pieces!!

Little sister is the proud new owner of some newborn dipes except for one of the pink ones.... hmmm.... I wonder who that one could be for....... as long as we're on that subject, Jaden has a new cousin born on Valentines Day, Olivia Joy! We can't make the trip to Lincoln even though we can't wait to meet her, but with our birthmom being so close to delivering we thought it best to stick around home.

We are closer to finally having a name. Brett, being the thorough person he is, had to go through every single name in the 10,000 names book AND online before we were able to talk about our favorties.

Off to one of my last nights of uninteruppted sleep!

38 week appointment

No baby yet! We had a great appointment yesterday. We were able to hear the baby's heartbeat again which sounded really strong. Our birthmom has been having lots of Braxton Hicks contractions lately which are doing a great job preparing her for the real ones!

The midwife she saw yesterday agreed that she could go any time, so we are trying to tie up the loose ends around home and work so that we can get there as soon as we can when the time comes.

My task for nap time today is getting some of the clothes, including her 'going home outfit' washed and ready to go. I also need to start getting some dipes made for the little lady! That will keep me busy this weekend!

Our birthmom bought the baby a gift yesterday, a cute little bear to put in her bassinet. At our meeting yesterday with the birthparent worker, she gave us permission to post pictures of her and the baby so, here is a pic we took when we had our fun day shopping for materinity clothes on Jan. 31.

Our next appt is next Thursday if she makes it that long. We shall see!

Getting close!

It's been a BUSY couple of days. We have been doing a lot of preparing for baby sister. I completely rearranged my sewing room downstairs to make room for Brett's office. It was great because it forced me to go through some stuff, throwing out a lot of things. Now I'm all set to start sewing some diapers!

On Friday Jaden and I went to visit Patrice and Jay. She gave us some great clothes and lent us a TON! It was a fun day however I was slapped in the faced by reality when I picked up Jay out of his crib. Jaden threw a FIT! He kept saying, 'My mama, my mama!'

Yesterday we moved some of Brett's things downstairs so that eventually his office will be turned into Jaden's big boy room. That won't happen until the fall, though most likely.

Today Jaden and I got set for baby sister, bringing the pack and play bassinet upstairs, moving her clothes into the closet and dresser, and stocking the changing table with diapers and all of the other paraphernalia.

This afternoon our birthmom's mom called and told us that she had been having contractions last night and that when she went in today to get checked she was fully effaced and paper thin! The midwife said she could go any time between now and next week. Woo hoo!! After that phone call I packed a bag for Jaden and one for me. Now we just have to get Brett packed and pick a name! Yippeee!



Cute clothes from Patrice, Shaun, and Jay, Dawn, and Emily finished my sling!



My finds at Once Upon a Child and the Carters outlet on Thursday with Nik.



This pic doesn't do these teeny tiny dipes and covers justice. They are about 4 inches by 4 inches and cuter than cute!



Jaden is ready for baby sister to come home!

Have carseat will travel!

After a long day and night at church I got home to a special box waiting for me! Now it's really getting real! Now that we've got the car seat we're ready.

Tonight I told some of the kids about our exciting news and they were pretty psyched! Now that 10 6th, 7th, and 8th graders know that cat is completely out of the bag!

Tomorrow Nik and I are going to do a little shopping to get ready and for what I'm sure will be my last kid-free day for a LONG time!

37 Week appointment

Not much to report today, which means everything with our birthmom is going great. She hasn't progressed anymore than last week. We are excited to go to the 38 week appointment next week!

We are busy getting ready for her to come home! Emily dropped off my new chocolate brown sling today so I'm psyched to fill it with the little lady! Our new car seat is en route via UPS somewhere. Our earth friendly compostable corn diapers have arrived from Sweden, so we're set in the diaper department for the first couple weeks. After that she'll be chillin' in cloth cuties.

I guess that's all I have for now! Happy Tuesday to everyone!

The tricky art of when and how to let the cat out of the bag

There are many many ideas about when it's 'ok' to metaphorically 'let the cat out of the bag' . A lot of people wait til they are 12 weeks to go public with their news. It's a little bit more complicated with an adoption. When do you tell people about your adoption plans and not just when, but also who. There are so many parts to the process. Applying, the paperwork phase, waiting, getting 'the phone call', having a match meeting, finding out if it's a match, waiting for the baby, the birth of the baby, placement of the baby, legal risk period, and finalization. With any pregnancy there of course is risk involved, but adoption is a bit more tricky. We chose to wait to go public (with the exception of close family, close personal friends, and staff) until the day we actually drove home with Jaden.

This time is really different. We will have her for the entire legal risk period, so waiting until she's legally ours isn't really an option. So, when do you tell? I guess we are learning as we go! Just this morning I had my team meeting with the wonderful bunch of people who are going to pick up the slack when I'm gone on maternity leave. It's fun and exciting to tell folks yet at the same time, it's scary and I still feel like it's not really happening, like we're making it up or something which is a very weird feeling.

So, is our news public? I dont' know. I guess it is to the person who told the lady at the YMCA Child Watch! When Jaden and I arrived on Friday morning before my workout she asked if we were adopting again. She even knew it was a girl! Go figure.

Second Time Around!

We always knew we wanted to give this adoption thing another go but when we entered 'the book' late this fall we didn't imagine we would have a match so soon! Two months and 1 week into our wait we got the call from our social worker that a birthmom wanted to meet with us. We were excited about the possibility of a sibling for Jaden!

6 days after we found out about our birthmom we had our match meeting. We were nervous and excited to meet her and her mom. After a lengthy meeting she came in with one more question for us, that being, "Will you adopt my baby?" We were thrilled. There wasn't a dry eye in the room! Our birthmom is due Feb 27, 2010 with a girl! (or so said the ultrasound tech)

Our birthmom requested that we be in the delivery room with her and be a part of everything leading up to the birth. So far we have been to one dr appointment where we got to hear the heartbeat and I even got to feel her kick! We got to meet the midwives, too.

We also have gotten to spend some time with birthmom and her mom. It has been fun to get to know them. Both birthmom and her mom have great hearts, wanting the best for this little one.

We hope to keep this blog updated so you can be a part of our second adoption journey!