Vaccinated!

Yesterday, Shea and I went to our local travel clinic and received all of our vaccinations (aka shots!) for our trip to Ethiopia. Shea was lucky because when he traveled to Africa in 2004 he had to get a round of shots, and most of them were still good. So he ended up with only 2 - Hep A (2nd dose) and typhoid. I, however, ended up with 6! And for those of you who know me and how much I hate shots, it was not fun at all. The whole time I kept trying to think, "This is for Truman, this is for Truman..." Somebody at work told me to think of it as my form of "labor", and if that's the case, I'm sure I got off extremely easy! Anyway, I ended up with Hep A (1st dose), typhoid, yellow fever, polio (adult dose), tetanus, and meningitis. We actually both thankfully responded well to the vaccinations - no problems except sore arms! We also received prescriptions for malaria medication and cipro (which helps with traveler's diarrhea). So we should be all set now. It was a little intense to get all of the shots in one sitting, but we're both glad that we are done now! One step closer to our little guy! And no, we are not going to subject you to pictures of us getting shots in our arms :-)

WOW

Wow is all we can say. Today, Alison's school psychologist coworkers threw a baby shower in Truman's honor, and we were literally astonished by the kindness and generosity that we received! There are no words strong enough to express how appreciative we feel. As you all may know, we are currently living in North Carolina while all of our family members live in New York. Well, today we certainly felt surrounded by family! We know that we will not be alone in welcoming Truman to this beautiful state!!

To provide some more details, several of Alison's coworkers volunteered to throw a shower. We quickly chose a Mexican Fiesta theme (you all know Shea and Alison love Mexican food!). Well, Shea and Alison arrived this afternoon and the conference room at Alison's work looked beautiful! There was a table with a beautiful spread of homemade food stuffs, including an inflatable sombrero filled with ice and drinks! And yummm, the food was delicious! Here's a picture of the delicious foods that were brought:

Then, people began showing up and mingling! It was really fun for Shea to finally meet Alison's coworkers, who he has heard very much about the last 2 years. And there was such a good turnout!


Then, at each table, every person at the shower was given a blank scrapbook page and some stickers and markers in order to make pages for a scrapbook. It was the coolest idea ever!! And Alison's friends picked out a beautiful cover with hand-cut ribbon. The pages that people came up with were so creative and touching! All we have to do is add photos once we meet Truman, and shazzam - scrapbook created! Here are some pictures of pages that people created:



And Alison's friend Carey made an unbelievable diaper cake! We are still amazed by her craftiness!

And we ended with presents. And holy cow, it was pure craziness! We are still in shock over how many great, wonderful, useful items we got! As you may know, we were very shocked by the early referral of baby Truman (we weren't expecting a referral until late fall or early winter!) so we really have no baby products. Well, that's definitely not true anymore! Here's the craziness before we began opening the presents:

And here's some pictures of Shea and Alison opening the gifts:


To complete the Mexican Fiesta theme, there was a fun lion pinata full of baby products like pacifiers, spoons, and wipes! Here's a picture of Shea swatting at it :-)

Here's us filling up the "school psychologist shopping cart" with our gifts to carry them to the car:

And here is our trunk literally overflowing with kindness:

When we got home, we decided to sort Truman's special presents by category (Alison actually borrowed this idea from another blog that she follows). Here's a picture of all the clothes Truman was given:

We call this category "books and toys":

And finally, "essentials":

And then, of course, there were the gift cards...no picture necessary :-)

So yeah, can you see now why we are so overwhelmed? We will never be able to put in words how lucky we feel to be surrounded by such great people, and will never be able to show enough thanks for the wonderful friends who put this shower together for us. So we'll just end with a great big THANK YOU!!!!

More Presents...

For baby Truman! This weekend we ran into Alison's work friend Nissa (who is currently pregnant with her first child) at Target and she insisted on scheduling a time to meet up this week so she could give us a gift for our little baby boy. Yesterday we were able to meet early in the morning to exchange presents. Truman was given a beautiful puppy outfit (look at the cute feet!), some wash clothes, and some essentials like baby lotion, baby powder, and baby soap. Thanks Nissa!!! We can't wait until we can schedule some playdates with Truman and Jackson :-)

Photos of the Suprise Shower

Here are the promised pictures of Alison's surprise baby shower at her elementary school:

Surprise, Surprise!

I (Alison) was extremely surprised, maybe even shocked, today when some of my teacher friends at one of my elementary schools threw me a surprise baby shower! We had just ended our usual Monday afternoon intervention support team meeting when one of the teachers said "Let's have some snacks". I looked around quizzically wondering if I had forgotten to sign up to bring a dish. Then, I noticed other teachers who were not part of our team walking in and I became even more confused - until somebody finally yelled "Surprise!" while looking at me. Still being slow on the uptake, I scanned the room and asked "what's the surprise?" My friends began to laugh and said "it's your baby shower!" "Me?" I asked, still not comprehending the extreme kindness being shown to me. "Do you know anyone else having a baby?" they said and laughed. Wow is all I can say! I immediately shed a tear or two (or maybe even three) and turned bright red (as usual!). Then I noticed that the food that had been brought included homemade cupcakes with baby decorations on top!

Let me just tell you, I am still in shock over how generous and thoughtful my coworkers are! I am continuously blown away by the support that Shea and I have received throughout this entire adoption journey. But a surprise baby shower? That's pure craziness! It also reminded me of why I really love my job - all of the great people I get to work with!

And as if it weren't enough just to have the support from these fabulous people, they brought gifts, too! As many of you know, Shea and I were shocked to receive the referral of our sweet boy much sooner than anticipated - which translates into us being very unprepared for his arrival! Well, now we have tons of cute clothes, toys, and even some diapers and wipes! I really cannot put into words how much it meant to have the support of these great women (yes, they are all women!). And what was even greater was to hear some of their first hand advice regarding parenting - I'm very open to advice at this point :-) I can't wait to be able to introduce Truman to my kind-hearted coworkers, and some day be able to tell him about how much love he had been shown even before his arrival in the States!


And for some comic relief, here is a picture of Sophie's favorite present - a tiny cardboard box (that once contained a very cute onesie) much too small for her body that she decided to stuff herself into, anyway :-)


(FYI - I hope to be able to publish pictures from the actual shower soon. The pictures were saved onto a floppy disk - weird, right? - and our floppy drive at home does not seem to be working. Hopefully I can find a drive that works at one of my schools tomorrow and upload the pictures there)

Hanging In There

Well, no news today. But at least we are still flying high from our new picture we got yesterday! We both have just been staring at him all day (don't tell my boss!) It's very difficult to focus on anything when you know your son is half-way around the world. But even though this process has been very tough, we've been really touched lately about how much love our little boy is already receiving. Everyone we talk to is just so excited to meet him and love up on him! We feel so lucky to be surrounded by such great family and friends. Truman is going to be one lucky boy, and we are going to be the luckiest parents alive to have him in our life!

In other news, yesterday we received our baby carrier in the mail. And lucky Oskar got to participate in testing it out - hence the double-meaning for our blog title :-)

Honestly, Oskar seemed to enjoy it. We're guessing Truman will be even more comfortable in it!

Yay, It's Monday!

At first, you might think the title of this post is sarcastic, but I assure you it is not. That's right, we now kind of dread weekends here at the Bernard-Bigsby household. Why, you might ask? Because nobody works at our agency on the weekends, which means we can only receive new updates about Truman Monday through Friday. Shea and I both had a feeling we would get some new tidbit of information today, and we were right! This afternoon we received a 2nd picture of our son - woohoo! And he is beautiful! Upon first glance of the picture we thought, is this the same boy? He looks so different! Our first picture was kind of washed out and Truman's skin looked very pale, whereas in our new picture he has beautiful chocolate brown skin. And while our new picture is a bit blurry, we are better able to see some of his facial features, including beautiful big lips and a possible chin dimple!!! I really wish we could post his picture up here for everyone to see, he really is gorgeous.

Hopefully this new update can stave off our restlessness for a little bit longer :-)

Is he real?

Wow - what a crazy couple of weeks this has been. To be honest, our amazing high of our referral last week has been followed by a period of restlessness, confusion, and disbelief. Sometimes I (Alison) look at Truman's picture and have to ask Shea if he is real. Is he really out there? Can this perfect little boy really exist? Sometimes it seems like his picture is just a two-dimensional representation of what we are hoping for, and that any second someone is going to tell us "Just kidding, he's not real." Hopefully we will hear soon about a court date and travel plans. We also think that receiving more pictures might make him feel more real - but maybe we just have to meet him before we can believe it...

In the mean time, we're just continuing to get our house ready for Truman's arrival. We've started stocking up for items for our trip to Ethiopia. Some of you may not know, but Shea and I will be staying in Ethiopia from court until embassy date (somewhere between 4-8 weeks) so we have a lot of planning to do concerning how many supplies we need to bring with us. We are allowed to bring 4 big suitcases total (each weighing 50lbs or less). We're thinking we'll fill one up completely with formula (lots for Truman and a bunch to donate), one with diapers and toiletries, one with clothes for us and Truman, and one for more donations. We'll see if our plan actually works though. I have a feeling that our 4 suitcases will fill up much quicker than we're hoping!

Since putting the crib together, we've gotten all of the bedding set up. It's so darn cute - here's a picture (but to be honest, the picture doesn't even do it justice!):

Special Delivery!

Today we received 3 special deliveries! First, UPS came and delivered our crib. Then, moments later, FedEx came with our crib mattress. And then this afternoon we received our most exciting delivery, more information about Truman! While we unfortunately didn't receive any additional pictures yet we did get more information about his eating and sleeping habits. It sounds like he is already on a good schedule, so hopefully we can try to stick with that to make his transition easier (though it will probably be hard to stick to a schedule on a 30+ hour plane ride...).

Anyhow, tonight we were able to put together Truman's crib - yay! First, our cat, Sophie, had to investigate the new piece of furniture:


Then, we put a few screws here and a couple of bolts there...

And within no time, Truman's crib was complete!

And here's a picture including our soybean mattress:

(Shea would like to note that while Alison is not in any of the pictures, she did, indeed, help assemble the crib. In fact, some might say she did more than her fair share...)

Tomorrow we'll do some laundry and get together all of the linens so we can show everyone the completed project :-)

Updates and Care Package, Oh My!

So things have been moving pretty quickly around the Bernard-Bigsby house lately! We are still in shock over our very unexpected referral and are falling more and more in love with our son everyday! We can't wait to meet him and bring him home :) This week we were able to send a care package to WACAP's transitional house where Truman is staying (oh yeah, did we mention that we are naming him Truman?) The only catch was that we could only send what would fit into one gallon-size ziploc bag. And honestly you don't think about how small a gallon-size bag is until you are trying to send all you can to your son who is currently living across the world! We ended up settling on 2 onesies, a blanket, a rattle, and a crinkly picture book containing pictures of us and our house.


Then we had to stuff it into our bag (no easy feat, we might add!) Here's the final product of our efforts


We sent it to WACAP and they'll mail it over to Ethiopia for us. Hopefully it will help Truman get the slightest sense of his soon to be parents!

In other related news, we got an unexpected update concerning Truman's growth - he has gained 1/2 a pound in the last 2 weeks. Yay! This made us very happy to know that our little boy is growing big and strong! It also made us a little sad to know he is growing up without us, but we know we will be there with him soon. We're still waiting on additional pictures of him (we still only have the one referral photo, though it is the best picture we have ever seen of anyone ever!). We're just trying to hang in and anxiously awaiting news of our travel dates. Hopefully, pretty soon we'll have more information to update you with!

Referral!!!

We are so excited to let everyone know that we received the referral for our son this week!!! He is the most beautiful little boy we have ever seen (and no, we are not biased at all!). He is 2-1/2 months old and is absolutely perfect. As of April 24th, he is 21.5 inches long and weighs 10lbs! We are in complete and utter shock right now! We have never felt so happy, blessed, excited, or lucky in our entire lives!!!

Keeping Busy: Gardening

So we've been trying to keep busy while waiting for our little guy. This weekend we decided to create a small above-ground garden in our backyard. Though we are definitely not gardening experts (yet) we were pretty impressed with ourselves! Luckily, a nice guy at Home Depot gave us some tips regarding what we needed for our garden bed. He also convinced us to build the base out of wood instead of using stones - smart move! So here's what we did.

First, we chose a suitable location in our yard:

Then, we bought our supplies:

Then, we built our base:

Then, we put down a base of cardboard and newspapers and then filled it with a lovely mixture of top soil, manure, and peatmoss:

Finally, we planted some seeds and seedlings and voila! Instant garden!

Here's a list of what we planted: cherry tomatoes, beans, green and red bell peppers, summer squash, zucchini, and carrots. Hopefully some of it will actually grow! In any event, we now have a nice little space where we can hone our gardening skills. And maybe sometime soon we'll be using our homegrown vegetables to make some delicious baby food :)

Welcome!

Hello everyone and welcome to our blog! We have decided to start up this blog as a way to stay better connected with family and friends. While we'll try to include information about our daily lives, we're sure the focus is going to be on our adoption journey (as that is always forefront on our minds these days!) We have been on the waitlist to adopt a boy between the ages of 0-12 months from Ethiopia since January 11th. While we are glad the dreaded and infamous "paperchase" is long over, the waiting has been harder than expected. We're just trying to stay busy and slowly get everything ready for the arrival of our son. Hope you all enjoy reading about our journey!