A few people have asked to hear about our adoption process to bring Candace home. Why we decided to adopt, how my pregnancy with Dylan factored in, etc. So I thought this would be a fun place to share!
Steve and I talked about wanting to 'someday' adopt a child even back while we were dating and before we were even engaged! Well, I talked; Steve listened and shared in the conversation. Well, he says my desire grew in him as well and before we were even married we both knew that "someday" we would adopt. We didn't know how, when, etc. but we knew we wanted to bring a child into our family through adoption. I think that we both thought we would do it after having children biologically and even maybe when they were a bit older!
We both loved children and wanted to start a family soon after we were married but it just didn't happen as quickly as we wanted (God's timing and plans are best, but try telling that to someone at that particular time in life!) So I researched adoption a bit more at that point. Then along came Alexcis and then Brittney very quickly afterwards! Alexcis and Brittney are only 16 months apart and although it was tough at first we saw how wonderful it was to have the children close together in age. So when we had a miscarriage a few years later after trying to conceive for a long time again we began our adoption process. We knew by this point that we wanted the child we adopted to be close in age with our other children and not come into the family after they were older like we had originally planned. We spent three months getting "paper ready". The "paper process" of an adoption is unreal!! We were fingerprinted by the FBI and at a local police office, we had FBI background checks and health screenings, we had to write long autobiography's and attend all day parenting classes We had to do tons of paperwork and all the paperwork had to be notarized and then taken to the state capital and 'state sealed' and then that same paperwork had to be sent to the Guatemalan embassy and be looked over by them and given an approval (authentication). I mean they really put parents who want to adopt through the wringer! So finally we were 'paper ready' and then we were matched with an adorable little girl named Ana. Two weeks into the process on the Guatemalan end with Ana the birth mother decided she wanted to parent. I cannot say we were completely heartbroken because we had only had a few pictures and knew about her for two weeks but it was a huge let down! We went on the waiting list for a little girl through the attorney we had already sent our paperwork too. About a month into our wait we discovered I was pregnant!! We were very excited!! At no point did we ever discuss not continuing with our adoption. I mean it was absolutely not even a thought in our heads, In our minds we were committed to a little baby girl in Guatemala and in our minds we had been twice blessed. We ended up waiting two more months to be matched again. I was doing the math in my head and realizing that if we were matched with an infant again the two babies would only be 7 months apart, but I had no doubts that i could handle it. Well, when we received the information on little baby Anyeli, we saw she was 3 1/2 months old so we were excited to see they would be nearly 10 months apart. We began the process in Guatemala again and this time when we were over four months into the process once again the birth mother decided she wanted to raise her baby. This time we really were upset. I had pictures of baby Anyeli up around the house, my mother had pictures up at her house. I was 6 months pregnant with Dylan and I felted stressed and just really upset over the whole process. I know that it is wonderful that the birth mothers have such a long time to work though it and decide if they want to parent or not, but it just didn't seem fair. This time I was hoping we were matched with an older child because baby Dylan was due in only three months. We actually didn't even have much time to process what had happened and I know now that was for the best; my social worker called the very next day and said they had a two day old baby girl for us if we were interested! And of course we were, I figured people have twins all the time right?! We actually got pictures of baby Nancy (to be Candace) when she was two days old, but the quality is not the best and I had trouble posting them. But we received medical updates almost monthly and we would receive about 5-10 photos of her every now and then! Those were the greatest encourager's.
We received the first set of pictures about a week or so after Dylan was born, it was unreal to think that we had a new born and a three month old. Here is the cutest one from that set:
Here is a picture of her taken at around five months old, check out the hello kitty socks:
When the next set of pictures came she was between six and seven months old, they said she really loved her walker. We examined these pictures practically under a microscope. We really thought it looked like her hair was coming in curly but the top of the photo was so dark and with Candace's black hair it was so hard to tell, but in the end we decided that yes indeed her hair was coming in with little curls and we were so excited. Here is the best picture from that set:
About a month before we traveled to bring her home we received what would be our last set of pictures! We were so excited to see that she defiantly had curls! She was also getting so big and it was getting harder and harder to wait to hold her. There was one picture taken of her with her foster mother that just made her look so very big and i was beginning to feel like I was completely missing out on knowing her as a baby! Check out this cute picture:
We traveled to bring her home and complete our adoption at the U.S Embassy in Guatemala City. We held her for the first time on July 12th (exactly 8 months ago today) In this picture we were on a tour of a beautiful old city, Antigua.
We were in Guatemala for almost a week (we had to wait on her visa) and we came home late during the night of July 17th. Here is a picture of Candace on her very first day at home. She was in a state of shock that first morning I believe:
Our transition with Candace was as smooth as I could've possibly imagined. We had to read books on attachment and I was all prepared for it to be difficult but Candace just fit right in where she belonged. One of our neighbors who came to visit in the first days that Candace was home walked in and said "I thought I was coming to see a new baby of the family but she just looks like she is right at home and has been here all along!"
Candace is now 17 months old and doing great. She is into absolutly everything! She recently broke my cell phone when she managed to get a hold of it, broke lightbulbs she got out of a drawer and bit the tip of a marker off and chewed it up and that is all in the last week! She is happy and absoluly healthy, she seems to get sick so rarely! She is just such a blessing to us.
Here she is waking up from her nap, check out the crazy hair!
Here she is all ready to go nite nite. She sucks her thumb and we think it is just too cute!!
"Not flesh of my flesh nor bone of my bone, yet still miraculously
my own. Never forget for a single minute, dear one, that you didn't
grow under my heart but in it."
Candace in her beautiful Easter Dress.
Brittney checking out the eggs.
I tried so hard to get a group picture of the kids!
The big kids are all ready to go. They had to line
Dylan only collected a few eggs, he just wasn't
Candace finding her chocolate lamb.
Candace finding her chocolate lamb.
