Couple things

I got to take some pictures of a friends new baby. His name is Brady and he is 3 weeks old here. He did so well for the photo's.


Just so I don't forget, in a couple months I want to remember this book. I saw it at the library and it has tons of good ideas for food. Hopefully, if I post about it here I will remember it.


And 5 weeks to go till the actual due date now! I'm getting anxious! This last Friday I was able to go to Hannah's doctor appointment with her. So I got to meet the doctor and hear the heart beat. Everything is going well still. The doctor was really nice and very helpful.

Food

Wyatt got some food on his head while eating lunch today.

And notice the cute jungle bib with pocket that I sewed!

Homestudy was yesterday!

We had our homestudy visit yesterday! I'm so glad it's over. The caseworker was super nice. She said it should take her about 2 weeks to write it up. I hope it's done before the baby comes, just to have that checked off and make things go smoother.

She was here for about 2 hours 15 mins. Asked us a bunch of questions about family, marriage, life, discipline beliefs, faith, etc. She was easy to talk to though, so it went smooth. She then took a quick tour of our home and did a home safety checklist. Asked where a fire extinguisher was, asked about smoke detectors and then told us a new requirement is that we need a fire escape plan. I should have known. I knew fostering/adopting through the state would require one, so I should have just had one already made up just in case. So I asked her if it would be ok to just draw one up real quick and she said yes. It didn't take me long since I've helped numerous kids draw their's out for fire prevention. Once I finished, she checked us all off for the safety checklist.

Today we had more snow. It's almost all gone by now, but I'm so ready for nice weather and summer to come! I'm tired of the cold!

Here is my collection of cloth diapers, covers, and accessories. My plan is to use mainly prefolds with covers and fitteds with covers for awhile. I have some all-in-one diapers to make changing easier when we are out, but at home it will mostly be just easy prefolds and fitteds.

Here is what I have been sewing lately. These are cloth wipes and newborn cotton flannel fitteds. I don't want to sew too many fitteds, because what if he doesn't fit right in them. I might need to change the pattern some. I think I'm pretty set on newborn sizes though (hopefully!). Then I made a couple smalls and mediums, but like I said, I don't want to sew too many of those quite yet. They are soo much easier than I thought it would be too. I found the patterns online for free on a couple different websites. I just started doing searches for cloth diaper patterns and there is a ton of information.

Car seats arrived!

I'm pretty big into child car seat safety (used to be a car seat tech at the fire station), so my decision on which car seats to buy was hard, but easy at the same time. I ordered them online at babyage.com. They had the cheapest Combi Shuttle price and you got free shipping with order of the Britax Boulevard. During Feb, Britax seats were on sale, so I decided to go ahead and buy that seat now, even though I won't be using it for a little while. Thanks to my mom, she bought the Combi Shuttle for me. :-)

I'm pretty happy with my choices. If you have any questions, I'd be glad to answer.

Here are some pictures of the seats installed in my car ('99 ford expedition). I'm such a car seat nerd that I played with them a bunch last night after they arrived.

Baby room

Here is what the baby room looks like right now. Not many decorations, but that's the way I like it.

We are going to be parents soon!

Oh where do I start? I keep trying to figure out what to say and what to start with and I want to say the right things, but here it goes.

We are hoping to adopt a newborn baby boy soon! This will be a private adoption, meaning that we did not use an agency to find the birth mom, we just happened to come in contact with each other through friends. She is a very smart young girl (not really a girl, but I call myself a girl still) that got pregnant and wants the baby to have a better life. She is fully capable of being a single mom, but chooses not to be and I am so proud and amazed at her decision to give the baby to us to raise. In Oregon, the birth mom can not sign away her parental rights until after the baby is born. So the adoption won't be final till then, which is usually done at the hospital, so it's still pretty scary for us but everything seems so right and Hannah, the birth mom, seems so confident in her decision.

I am so excited that we might be parents soon! Hannah's due date is March 29th, so just under 8 weeks to go. Even though it's a private adoption, there are still a ton of things we have to do to make it legal. We already completed a ton of paperwork for our homestudy. On Feb 16th, we will have the actual homestudy done and then that should take two weeks to finalize. I need to call our lawyer this week to see what our next step is for paperwork. Hannah is calling her lawyer this week to check in.

Not required, but fun stuff... I get to go to Hannah's next doctor appointment on Feb 20th. I haven't been to one yet, so I'm very excited, excited to hear the heart beat and meet the doctor and see what all he does during the apt. Soon the birthing/lamaze classes will start and Hannah's mom and I get to go, which will mean I get to be in the delivery room. Dan has decided he will wait in the waiting room till the baby is born.

Tomorrow I will try to post some pictures of the baby room... the former craft room. No more scrapbook stuff in there. It now is painted, two walls are a sort of milk chocolate brown and two are tan. The chocolate brown is actually called Chipmunk. There is a crib, dresser, shelf and rocking chair in there now. I have the closet set up for more storage. I already have some clothes that I have gotten as gifts and from a local "used baby store" - that's what I keep calling the place and Dan makes jokes about it that they sell used babies there. They were having some super good sales, so I had fun picking out some clothes. Newborn and 0-3 month size clothes don't get used much, so they are in perfect condition. I've also been at the Diaper Swapper website and browsing other cloth diaper online stores such as Cotton Babies, GMD, and WeeBunz.

More updates will come. I'm excited for this change. I'm excited that this blog can be used as a journal for what's to come too.