Saturday, May 7, 2011

Brothers…

So technically Luke & Tobin are half-brothers. Same dad, born to two different moms (although they have the same mom now – yay me!)

Tobin is the weirdest sleeper I’ve ever seen. He moves around so much in his sleep, he’ll probably need a rail on his bed until he’s 20. 3-5 times an evening (this is between his bedtime and mine, so just about 2 hours) we are startled by a loud THUMP as he rolls over and hits the wall. Never waking up.

Last week, I went to check on Tobin before I went to bed and found him like this:



Sound asleep. Even when the flash went off. Didn’t wake up when I moved him back onto his bed either.
Luke is not quite as heavy a sleeper, but he is HILARIOUS if you have to wake him up. If we have meetings at the house in the evenings, Luke gets to go to sleep in our bed and read until his bedtime (he also gets to go to sleep in our bed if one of us is gone for the night/evening. Why is that such a treat? I don’t know, but he loves it!)

When we go into wake him up and move him to his bed, he is often very disoriented, and very often yells odd things. “It’s the HAMBURGER! GET THE HAMBURGER!” Ummmmm. OK? And as you’re steering him (now that he’s too big for even Matt to carry) to his bedroom, if you take your hands off him for a second, he turns and goes the other way. Matt gets mad at me if I move Luke without him, because it’s such entertainment.

The day after the picture of Tobin above, we had a meeting to plan summer Bible study stuff. After everyone left, when I went to move Luke, here is what I found:


Is being able to sleep in weird positions genetic? And if so, which parent do you think they got this gift from? (hint: it’s not me.)

Friday, May 6, 2011

Easter Celebrations!

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We had a delightful Easter.
We usually spend Easter weekend in Iowa with Luke’s grandparents. Julie (Matt’s first wife & Luke’s first mom, for those of you less aware of our family’s backstory) went to be with the Lord in early April, so we always like to spend some time with her family during that time of year.
This year, however, some close family friends had a wedding Easter weekend – and asked Matt to officiate for them. The wedding was Saturday afternoon, so we were here in town Easter Sunday. We missed time with the McCutcheons, but it was fun to be at our own church to celebrate the resurrection.
DSC_7826A few weeks before, to begin to anticipate the sadness and joy of Easter, Tobin & I planted an Easter garden (Luke would have loved to help, but he has been super busy – between soccer practice and practice for the 5th grade musical, he’s not home much in the afternoons anymore.)
I got the idea from Ann Voskamp’s blog, and am SO GLAD that we decided to make a little garden this year. We made pipe cleaner figures to act out the crucifixion and Easter morning in the garden – both boys really enjoyed that, and I think anything hands on like that really helps younger kids to understand. As a bonus, my friends at Tabletop Truths talked about Easter gardens on their blog, and ran a contest: The first 3 families to send pictures of their Easter Gardens got free Easter placemats. SCORE. Love those placemats so much! And love our Easter garden.
DSC_7820 (We made the “tomb” mountain out of dough, from a recipe in Noel Piper’s Treasuring God in our Traditions… And it got moldy. Next year, we’ll use clay. We threw the tomb out – it did last long enough to bury and raise Jesus – and we’ll plant the rest of the plants in planters outside.  Yay!)
After church (and college group), we headed out to Grammie & Papa’s for Easter dinner. Fun times with cousins!
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IMG_1506My contribution (along with making resurrection rolls with the kids) was a Honey Bunny from Great Harvest Bread Co. We got a cinnamon chip one for breakfast, and took a whole wheat one to Grammie’s.
Tobin LOVED it. I almost wondered if we wouldn’t be able to cut him up. But we started from the tail, and managed to not break our soft-hearted boy’s heart.
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We also did Easter baskets Sunday morning. I go back and forth with Easter baskets – we don’t pretend they’re from the Easter bunny, but we do give them gifts. Some years we’ve done just things that will help them grow spiritually – but this year, it felt like I’d just be doing that “because”. Neither of them need new Bibles, and I had already given some books and CD suggestions to grandparents, so we didn’t need anything else along those lines. So we just gave them summerish toys. And stuff I’d bought for Tobin for his birthday, but then decided we had plenty.
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I don’t know. What do y’all do for Easter baskets? I so want Easter to be about Jesus and not presents… But I like giving my kids gifts, and we really don’t buy them things except at birthdays and holidays.
And yes, they’re still wearing their Christmas PJs. Mostly because they like to match, how cute is that?

In case you’re wondering what’s going on with our adoption… I’ve moved all adoption related information to a separate (protected) blog, available to personal friends and family (Blogger only lets you have 100 readers on protected blogs, so you'll have to be someone who knows me IRL). Comment or email me (reemeyer AT gmail DOT com) if you’d like an invitation to that blog!

Thursday, May 5, 2011

So, what's going on with your adoption?

 Hello sweet friends & family!
Judging by the number of times I’ve been asked, many are wondering WHAT in the world is going on with our adoption plans.
I haven’t had much to answer, since until a few days ago we were just in the waiting loop.
We’re actually still in the waiting loop (and will be all year, in case you’re wondering… adoption is basically like the process of moving from one waiting room to another.) BUT several of the sets of papers we’ve been waiting on are here – my birth certificate had to be ordered, I must have lost it somewhere in the move and name change paperwork when I got married. And our home study arrived in the mail today. Woo Hoo!!
We’ve been in contact with our babies’ home, and will ship our home study, along with some other paperwork (all of which I’ll have to get notarized in the next few days.) From that point, we’ll wait to be invited for our first visit (at which time we’ll serve at the babies’ home, get to know the children there, prayerfully be matched with our future Meyer, and file the legal guardianship paperwork in the Ugandan courts.) We really have no idea how long that wait will be – it could be as long as six months, or pretty fast (since there are not many families interested in toddler boys.) After that first visit, we’ll wait to be assigned a court date – again, that wait could be long or short, there is no telling. We also will be waiting at that point for approval from homeland security to immigrate our new Meyer back to the states after we are granted legal guardianship, which reportedly takes 6-10 weeks.
So here are the next steps for us…
  1. Pray pray pray pray pray. It is reassuring to me that financially and logistically, we are in a position that enforces trust: If God is not in this thing, it is NOT happening. We TRUST His timing, we TRUST His heart. And there is the reality that since we are feeling led to not adopt a baby – our child will be between 2-4 likely – that child is already born, likely living without a mommy and daddy, possibly with health concerns. Help me Jesus.
  2. Continue raising the prayer support/financial support that we need. In addition to needing the Body to pray with us for our little Meyer-let out there: It will be several hundred dollars to send our paperwork to Uganda… $600 to file for USCIS… $3-4K for the first trip to Uganda, assuming it’s both Matt & I. I’d really LOVE to not go alone. And Luke really wants to come, but we just don’t know if we can afford it. Plus on that first trip, we’ll begin paying the legal fees, our attorney, to file in court etc. (that will be several thousand as well.) Again: Help me, Jesus.
  3. Assuming we have the $600 (I think we do, thanks to GENEROUS donations to our fund, plus my etsy sales), we will file with the USCIS for approval to adopt. We’ll need approval from them before we can get a visa to bring our child (once we are granted legal guardianship) home to Nebraska.
  4. In the next few days, I’ll get the last few pieces of paper notarized, and we’ll ship our paperwork to Uganda.
And then, we’ll move to the next waiting room. :)