9 months

9 months ago today we adopted Emily! She is still our favorite thing to wake up to every morning, and everyones favorite thing throughout the day, and the one that gets her face kissed off before she goes to bed. She is still sleeping so amazingly well. We are so beyond thrilled with that. She is such a happier baby too.  At nine months home, Emily's favorite things are:

 Walks around the block although the stroller is waning in popularity, she used to love it a lot.

 Being outside is always the best! If she spies someone going outside without her, oh my watch out. Her tantrums are the only thing about her that is 2!

 The swing set is the best! I love her end of the day hair. And her morning hair. All of her hair!

 Peek-a-boo. At all times.

We left Em for the first time with our girls for longer than a few minutes. We went to a conference for our church, and were gone for about 3 hours. About 20 minutes into the conference, I got this text from Lily. We laughed and laughed about it. She was well taken care of!

 

This little chicken will find water. The local splash pad is so perfect for her. She loves it. The other evening we were outside and the neighbors sprinklers came on and she was in them faster than fast. She loves water!!

 4th of July! Loved the fireworks and of course more swimming.

 Em LOVES her sisters. Each one is so wonderful with her and to her. Lily walks her. Everywhere, all the time. When no one else will walk with Em, Lily will.

Chloe sings to her and plays hide and seek. Emily loves to play, and Chloe gives her lots of play time.

 Austri is her other mother. Austri makes her laugh harder than anyone. Austri is also the only person next to dad that gets hugs.

Our favorite thing TODAY is that Emily started WALKING!!! She just up and walked across the room to daddy! AMAZING!! She is a darn heavy little tiny, and her walking is going to be so nice!

What a blessing this girl has been to our family. We love her more than we can say. She is just the coolest thing ever.  We really got her from new born on. She couldn't even hold her head up when they handed her over to us. It was so scary! There were a lot of unknowns with her. The only thing we knew was that she was meant to be out daughter. Everything else would have to sort itself out.

We cannot believe how far she's come. All the way around, she's about at a 12 month old level. In all of her therapies, she was soooo delayed, they all placed her at newborn status. She is doing amazingly well! There is still a lot to do, but she's progressing just beautifully and we have no reason at all to believe that she won't be completely caught up in another year.  It's been fun to get to witness all of her stages.

The Boy on the other hand is at his age level already. It's going to be a whole other story with him. He can walk and talk and hear, and he understands Chinese, and he is very aware. It's going to be different but oh my we cannot wait. Our documents are on their way to China. We didn't get the June LID that I was so hoping for, but we will get a July date. This means that the soonest we can possibly travel will be November, but we'll take it. Let's just get him home.

8 months

8 months ago yesterday our adoption was finalized! Yahoo! At 8 months, Emily is loving summer and being outside so much! We spend lots of time on the swings and the trampoline, on walks, and in the grass. She LOVES outside. She is a total water baby. She will seek out any water, and get herself wet. 

 She is so smiley and happy! Em is so close to walking!! She can totally do it, she just won't. Stinker. We spend our days and nights like this...

...or this.

 Our favorite thing lately is that Emily sleeps! She has played musical beds like crazy. In our room, in her room, in Chloe's room, in her crib, in her bed, in my bed, and my personal favorite for the past two weeks, on top of me in the guest room!

Earlier last week I went into her room and she reached out for her crib. This is a far cry from where she has been, but I stuck her in it, and from that day on, she's loved her crib. Again. She has been sleeping all night, waking obnoxiously early, like 5, but sleeping all night. It's been nice.

 The crown hair do. Our favorite.

 The carnival came to town. She wasn't feeling well, but tolerated it ok.

 Emily loves Austri so so so much!! She prefers her to anyone. Gary is next in line. His identical twin brother stayed with us this past weekend, and Emily had two dad's! Awesome! I'm in third place, or sometimes 5th place if anyone else remotely interesting is in the room.

 best. bed head. ever!!

The Boy:

We got his primary immigration back and it is presently being sealed and authenticated at the state and federal government levels, and also at the Chinese Embassy. We will send it off to China hopefully in 10 days! We are still on track to potentially travel in late October, early November. I'm counting on it. I need the boy home! I have requested an update, and new photos, but I haven't heard anything back. I want to hear about him so badly! The poor little orphanage workers have such a tremendous job simply meeting so very many children's basic needs that pictures, updates, and paperwork don't always happen. Our next thing that we are waiting for is a Log in Date (LID) to China. When they receive our paperwork, they log us into their system as adoptive parents.  We can travel as soon as 4 months after LID. I'm praying for a June LID.

The Boy

As I am typing this, Emily is trying to go to sleep.  She struggles with sleep and hence we all struggle with sleep. We try this and that and everything in between. I think it's just going to take a lot of time. The boy hopefully will sleep.

I am having so much nostalgia.  Last year this time we were matched with Em. We thought about her all of the time. Everywhere I went I thought "In a few months I'm going to be doing this with a baby!" Now everything I do I think "In a few months I'm going to be doing this with two toddlers!" Sometimes I have to stop myself because I want him so desperately bad it physically hurts to not have him here.

His story is such a testament to me of how Heavenly Father is so present in the details of our lives. We are a family of girls. We never wanted boys, we never thought about boys, we hoped that each of our pregnancies were girls and when it was time to adopt, we felt we were having girls!

We are doing the boy's adoption on Emily's paperwork. You can do two adoptions on one dossier but it has a time limit.  Right after we got home from China, I was way too overwhelmed to even think about adopting again. Gary asked me one night, "Would you do it again?" My answer was "No.  Too hard." His response was "I'd do it again in a second, that was amazing!!" I thought for a while that Emily would be the tail ender, sort of an only child, and it will be fine. But the nagging continued.  I couldn't leave it alone. We looked at a couple of files, but it was all wrong. I couldn't figure out why or what, but I was unsettled completely.

One night, my awesome friend (the one that originally opened up China to me in the first place) sent me some pictures of 4 little boys. They were adorable to say the least and for the first time in my life I considered a boy. When I prayed about it, it was a boy! That was my answer. I was no longer unsettled, I was on a mission! I had been looking at the wrong files, girl files. In January, I was completely anxious. I knew something was happening, I just didn't know what. One morning, I got online and CCAI had posted several new children. I immediately looked at the boys.  I opened up a file, and there he was. My little boy.

I knew him immediately, he was ours for sure. I emailed right away and got the response "I'll add you to the list, I can't believe how many people are interested in this little boy!" NO NO NO NO NO!! He was mine! Only one family at a time can look at a file, if they say no then it goes to the next family. Where was I on the list? #5. 4 families would have to turn him down! I prayed like crazy for the next month. I checked on him 20 times a day to make sure he was still on there.  I was sent another file of a little boy who had the "severe" special need of low birth weight.  I tried to love him. I tried to make him mine, but in the end, we felt nothing at all for him.  We gave his file back after only a day.  A couple of days later, CCAI called me. She said "Do you know that that baby is healthy? You turned down a healthy baby. I have to ask why?" "He wasn't mine." it was the only response I could give her, and it did not satisfy her. I told her "We know how it felt when we found our daughter, and that little boy was not ours. We would not take him from his family just because he was healthy." She scolded me a little bit and sort of told me that we were running out of time, and we needed to do XYZ if we were going to get a second baby. I was so frustrated! I knew my little boy! I told her that I was still on a list for another little boy to which she replied "Don't get your hopes up for that one, he'll go fast." I hung up and cried my eyes out! I told Gary "He is our little boy, if we don't get him, I will not look at another file ever again. He is my baby." About two hours later I got a voicemail from CCAI that said "You'll never believe that right after we hung up, the little boy's file that you have been waiting on came available!! I'm supposed to get your permission to send it over, but I'm sending it anyway!"  And that is how we got our boy.

We weren't ready to have a boy last year. He was barely born when we were ready to say yes to two. God knew how to prepare our hearts and minds to accept a baby boy and to know him when he came. We have sooo much immigration work to do for him.  It's taking forever! We pray for our paperwork everyday that it will go quickly. We're hurrying as fast as we can and we hope the US Government will do the same!

7 months

One year ago today, I called my adoption agency to see how things were going, and just be nosey in general and ask why we hadn't received a referral yet. The lady that I spoke to couldn't find my file which made me nervous until she said (after several minutes of looking) "It was on my co-workers desk waiting to call you with a referral!"  My heart started pounding so hard, I couldn't believe it! She told me that this little girl had heart defect, cleft lip and palate, severe delay, and delayed mobility. As she spoke, my head was rushing a million miles an hour. Could we handle all of those special needs? That was a lot more than I believed we would get. We had said yes to all of those special needs, but  were we meant to get all of them at at the same time, with the same child? My heart was aching at the thought that this could be my daughter, could I handle all of it? All of a sudden, my mouth opened up and said "Yes! Send her file over, we'd love to look at it!" Gary was in China on business at the time, it was about midnight his time. I texted him and told him we had a referral coming. I waited in front of my computer for about 10 minutes. It never came. I called CCAI and went straight to voicemail. I waited and waited and WAITED some more. Gary texted me nervously "Where is it?? What's taking so long??" FINALLY we got the first of two emails. NO PICTURES!! It contained details of her special needs and I was again questioning if I could handle this little tiny thing that needed so much care! The second email came with pictures. The first picture made me smile. She was very cute.  The second picture, this one, made me gasp out loud. I knew this girl. She was my daughter. Gary knew her too, she was ours.

We didn't say yes right off. She honestly scared me a little bit. We sent her file to our pediatrician. He told us that his initial thought was merely failure to thrive. We got our first lesson in -orphanage records can be pretty inaccurate-! He laughed when he looked at her heart report. He said "I don't mean to make light of a potentially serious situation but if her heart is doing what they say it's doing, she'd be dead. It's not even possible." Through a lot of prayer, we knew without question that she was our daughter. Her special needs scared us less and less as the days went on, and three days later, we called our agency to tell them that we would happily accept this little doll with "eyes that were round and black like little grapes." We then began the crazy intense paper chase to complete all of her immigration  paperwork to bring her home.

 1 year later, she is the center of our lives. She has 5 people at her beckon call. She is our favorite thing, the best part of our day, the happiest little bit of our lives. She is so loved, so adored, so sweet and cute and cuddly! 

 We have been living adoption now for nearly two years. It's constant. We are still missing one. We feel him, we love him, we pray for him, we name him daily, we wonder about him all of the time.

 Understanding the reality of an orphan, of having a child on the other side of the ocean, of having my heart fragmented again, makes this wait intensely more difficult. It is twice as long, and 100 times more difficult. Knowing how easily and deeply and completely we fell in love with Emily, my heart honestly aches at all times for my little boy.

 We work fast and furiously for a few days, then we send that off and wait interminably it seems like. Then we get something back and work like maniacs for a day or two, send if off! phew!! WAIT and wait and wait. It's hard. Adoption is not for the weak. It's so hard!!

 But sooooooo worth it!! It's the most amazing thing ever!

A few more months to go, several actually, and we will be living life instead of living adoption. We will be together as we were meant to be. A family of 7. We will say every day several times just as we do now "What would we have done without him?" and we will thank Heavenly Father every day, many times, for leading us to our precious babies in China.

6 months

 I can't believe it's been nearly 6 months since we met this chicken with the amazing bed head!! It seems like we've had her forever! I still wake up in the night and pinch myself. I can't believe she's home. We love her so much!

 Easter was fun. Em didn't feel well, and we later discovered two molars coming in!

 She actually does get dressed from time to time and isn't always in the penguin jammies. I know we've had this conversation before but I need to start using a real camera. The iPhone isn't cutting it!!

 Adored by her sisters!! and Adoring of them.

 Loves her stroller and being outside

 Loves her tubby!

Best decision ever. We can't even fathom what we would have missed by not going to get our daughter. When we began our adoption in 2011, I knew in my heart that we had two kids, two girls I thought. Hence the name of this blog. When we only got one, I prayed and prayed to know about my second child. The answer I got was carry on. So carry on we did, in complete and total faith that Heavenly Father is in charge. We are so excited to announce that Emily is going to be a big sister! We are heading back to China for a little

BOY!

The Ekker girls are getting a brother hopefully by the end of the year. Our girls could not be more excited and we are shocked a little bit that our last is a boy, and not the girl that we thought.  We are in love with this little guy and are so excited to bring him home to complete our family.

5 months

5 months ago today, we stood outside of  a tall white building in Zhengzhou, Henan, China.  We were with 12 other families all waiting to have our lives changed inevitably for the better as we received our new Chinese children. We had worked, waited, worried and worked, waited and worried some more over these precious little orphans. Finally, we were going to get them. 2 of them were already there, waiting for their parents!! It was one of the coolest, scariest, unique, amazing, and fabulous moments of my life. 5 months later, we are LOVING every single minute of our little China girl. So here is my picture heavy report of 5 months later.

 Em is so happy! She loves to play, loves to love, loves to kiss, and be kissed on. If anyone fusses over her and gets too close, they'll get kissed!

 She has the BEST bed head!! EVER!!

Her bed head get's photographed daily, it's so funny. As I'm looking at these, they aren't even funny ones. Sorry.

 Because of her cleft palate, her ears were in such a condition when she finally received her surgery, that we have reason to believe she couldn't really hear at all whilst in China. We don't believe that she had any concept of language at all, partially because of her ears, and probably because of neglect. She has started responding to language for the first time in the past couple of weeks. She'll sign on her own, she'll show us signs that we ask her to show, she'll give you a kiss if you ask for it, and she'll get excited over things. It's so awesome!

 In her silks for Chinese New Year.

 She loves her sisters, and is adored by them! Her therapists have been telling me "You guys need to quit rescuing and doing everything for her!" What??

 Lest we forget the child is indeed Chinese, she makes her awesome Chinese face upon request. So funny.

 My favorite thing ever, Emily is mobile!! She crawled across the floor 4 days ago completely on her own, and emptied out the diaper bag!! Best. Day. Ever! She is soooo much happier. She hasn't quit exploring all week long! She goes non stop! She also on that same day quit sleeping. For real. She doesn't want to stop going for any reason. So, we're tired. Again. 

 The high chair is her favorite place! She eats! She loves all food at all times. 

 We can't wait for summer. Em loves being outside. I wonder how much time if any at all she spent out of doors in China. She loves going out, and we can't wait to spend all of our time out rather than in.

 Em loves music and watching her sister's dance classes are happy times for her. We are excited for her to be able to dance herself. She loves any and all music.

We love this girl more than we can say. Adoption has been a tremendous blessing in our lives. She has brought so much more joy and happiness into our lives than we could have ever imagined.