Our dossier is almost finished, just waiting on our completed homestudy and it can be sent off, YAY!

I talked to our case worker at the agency today, and she said there are a few other families ahead of us waiting on an infant girl, so it looks like it could be up to 3 months before we get our referral…but she is thinking there’s a good chance it will be sooner.  I didn’t know anyone was ahead of us, so it was a little bit of a bummer, but it is all in God’s timing!  She is thinking we will travel to pick her up anytime between Dec and March (again, hopefully sooner, but she’s trying not to get my hopes up!)

so michael decided last night (with the help of josh and chad…or should i say @jshayden and @cwilkins81) to sign up for twitter…they sucked me in and i have posted my first post…wanna follow?!?!? http://twitter.com/finkmcdinkle

Our homestudy visits are complete, now we just have to wait for the report to be written by our social worker!

We have decided to go ahead and accept a referral now instead of waiting until after the rainy season is over in September, so we should be getting a picture of our sweet baby in the next couple of months (that’s my guess…God is the only one who really knows!)  So I am so thrilled…I can’t wait to see her face and know who she is…to have a face for her name!

Anyway…we are collecting all of our documents for our dossier…seems to be going really well so far…

I was helping Mr Mike with some headshots a little while ago at work, and all of the sudden I turned around and Josh was standing there!  It took me a second to process what was going on!  I was so surprised!  I am so excited that he’s here!

Please keep us in your prayers…that God would give us patience through all of the waiting we will be going through in the upcoming year.  Also for our baby girl and her birthmother, as she is probably going to be born soon…pray that God protects both of them!

Again, we truly appreciate all of your love and support through all of this!

Nat

e learned how to tickle….first he would squeeze his own legs and say tickle tickle tickle, and now he will tickle other people…it’s adorable!  and he also says “poda” and pinches his fingers together (the itsy bitsy spider…)

he is totally weened off of the bottle now, and the dr said to get him to drink around 8 oz of milk a day…he HATES it!  we’ve tried it hot and cold and with chocolate syrup, and he hates it…susu bought him some strawberry syrup and yesterday he drank 2 sippy cups full of strawberry “kuh” (which is his word for drink)…i thought we’d found a way to make him drink milk…but today he started spitting it out again…i bought some soy milk, but he hates that too! 

we got our contract in for our adoption agency, and completed our second homestudy visit monday!  we have 2 more meetings with the social worker for the homestudy next week…still have to send off for our passports…

We have been weening E off of the bottle….we weened the daytime ones first, which were very easy, then the bedtime one, also easy, then the 5:00 am one!  This one was harder, and he fought us a couple of nights, but last night he slept all night (from 8:30 to 8:30)!!!  Now we are just hoping it isn’t another one-time thing (like it usually is). 

He is such a big boy now….he repeats everything we say (or at least tries).  He is learning so much…it’s so much fun to teach him new things! 

We turned our application in to our adoption agency last Monday, and began our homestudy this past Monday.  Things are moving right along with everything!  Our homestudy should take a couple months to complete, then we have tons of documents to collect!   We talked to our case worker from the agency tonight and she is awesome!  She helped us to understand everything we need to do, and made me a lot less overwhelmed!  The other day Michael came home from the store with the cutest little dress for the baby!  It was the sweetest thing ever…it almost made me cry!  I can’t wait for her to wear it one day…

Ender went to the dr a couple weeks ago, and they said he is doing well!  He is 23 lbs 3 oz (between the 50th and 75th percentile) and is 32.25 inches tall (above the 95th percentile).  We now have to ween him off of bottles…so far we have him off of his daytime bottles, and are working on his bedtime one.  Last we are going to try the 5 am bottle (which we should have done a long time ago…we’ve been dreading it!)

He got his 2 normal 12 month vaccines, and since hepatitis A is very common in Ethiopia, they also gave him this vaccine.  He stopped crying as soon as I picked him up…he’s so tough!

He loves to talk, and is so loud!  He says, well, screams really, BYE and waves…he knows what the cow, dog, monkey and duck say…but his favorite word is car!  Everytime he sees a car, on tv, on the road, in a picture, he screams CA CA CA!! He finally learned how to clap the other day, and he won’t stop doing it, it’s adorable!  We say “clap Ender” and he claps and says “cap”!  Sometimes he will even let go of what he is holding himself up with, and clap…he has pretty good balance, but isn’t ready to walk yet.

He is growing up so much, I can’t believe it!   We haven’t photographed his 12 month session yet, we just did a few shots of him and a 3 generation shot of him w/Michael and Mr Mike….

Ok, we have decided to officially begin the adoption process!  We are planning to begin our homestudy sometime in the next month, and we are getting our application to the agency ready to send off. 

Ethiopia has a “rainy season” from mid-June to mid-September, and their courts are closed during this time (so we won’t be able to request a court date during the rainy season). We have been talking to the agency about taking care of the homestudy and dossier, etc…now, and waiting until around October to get a referal.  This way once we receive our referal we can go ahead and apply for a court date and hopefully bring our daughter home as quickly as possible, God willing, of course!  If everything goes as expected, we should be bringing her home sometime next April or May. 

Please continue to pray for us to have wisdom and patience.  Also, we ask you to keep praying for our daughter and her birth mother. 

I will keep this blog updated with info about the adoption, and about Ender, too!

Ender loved his party!   He had so much fun visiting with everyone!  I loved the look on his face when we sang happy birthday to him…he was grinning and looking back and forth at everyone.  And he loved eating his adorable cake his susu and poppop made for him!  When he opened presents, he got excited about each one (and mad when we took them away for him to open another one!)  He got so many great things…toys, clothes, books, puzzles, and an awesome rocking horse from his mimi and pawpaw!~

Thanks to everyone for coming and sharing Ender’s special day with him, we love you all!

Here are some pictures from the big day…

birthday-044.JPG   (i’m ONE)

birthday-060.JPG  (eating onion rings at cheeburger cheeburger with daddy and uncle josh, uncle adam and uncle chad)

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birthday-067.JPG 

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1st-bday-182.jpg

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1st-bday-183.jpg

1st-bday-176.jpg

birthday-071.JPG

birthday-107.JPG (the three cousins)

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Ender’s bday party is Sunday, and we took some pictures of him eating cake here at the studio.  As you can tell, he loves chocolate!   Elijah turns 1 a week after Ender, so he’s in some too!  They had a blast and made a huge mess! 

Hey everyone!
 
As you probably know by now, Michael and I will be adopting a baby girl from Ethiopia!  We feel that this is God’s plan for our family, and we are so excited about bringing her home!  We plan to begin the process in July, and it should take about one year from the time we submit our application to when we bring her home. 

After much prayer and research, we have decided to use International Adoption Guides.  We know two couples that are using this agency (one of which just picked their son up from Ethiopia), and they have both been extremely pleased.  The agency’s website is adoptionguides.org.   
 
We want to ask you for your prayers throughout the process.  Please ask God to give us wisdom through this next year and a half as we make important decisions about the adoption process.  We also ask that you pray that God will provide the financial support we need.  Even though we do not know who our baby is, where she is, or how old she is (she probably isn’t even born yet), we ask you to pray for her and her birth mother.
Thanks for all of your support! 
We love you all!
Michael, Natalie and Ender Landry
 

“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” – James 1:27