Wow!

Wow! Am I a bad blogger or what? Where do I begin??

On February 19th, just four days after my brothers funeral, I got a call from our social worker. She said that M, the birth mother that we were matched with back in November of 2008, wanted us to adopt her little girl who was now 15 months old! Thank goodness I was working at my husbands school. I went right down to his office & put our social worker on speaker phone. We had a match meeting on March 26th. Just a couple of hours after we left the meeting, we got "the call". M did want us to adopt Ava!! On April 6th, we met with M her mom & sister, & the birth dad & his mother. First we did the cooperative agreement with M & her family. She then went to sign papers while we met with the birth dad. He signed his papers when we were done.

The next day, April 7th, we began the transition with Ava. She spent time at our house with us every day. That went so much better than we expected. M & Ava stayed overnight on the 13th & 14th. I really LOVED having M here! She is so much fun. On April 15th, we had a Blessing ceremony for Ava. That began our life as full time parents. We were still in legal risk until the 20th. Our social worker has been here to visit us once since we got Ava. She was so impressed with how well Ava is doing.

Ava is now almost 18 months old & the joy of our lives!! She is so much fun. We have already been through some teething with her! She is learning new things every day and so are we. When we started the adoption process, we said that we would accept a child from birth to 4 years old. As our wait got longer, we increased that age to 8. I never dreamed that we would have a toddler. We didn't have a lot of time to prepare for her. Thank goodness for great friends who came through in a hurry with clothes & other things we needed. We love Ava so much & are reminded every day about the sacrifice that M made in order for us to be parents. We love & miss M & can't wait to spend time with her again soon.