We got video and some new pictures of Sofie on Friday! I can not get over how incredibly cute she is. Unimaginably cute! Beautiful! ADORABLE! I want to squish her! Okay, maybe I’m a little biased but, seriously, I don’t know how anyone couldn’t think she is gorgeous 🙂

We got about five thirty second videos of her playing with toys and I keep watching my favorites over and over. My favorite of all is where they have her in a little rolling walker and keep giving her a little rubber duck. She keeps throwing it and they keep giving it back. Then they try to give her a ball and she whips that out of camera view too, then lays back in her chair triumphantly! I think we have a thrower coming!

The orphanage visit report from our Anido, our Bulgarian agency, gave us a lot of personal information too! She can’t quite walk alone yet but she can when she is holding an adults hand or sturdy furniture. She will walk soon but her little legs are so skinny right now! I think she needs some fattening up and increased muscle tone yet. Selfishly, I am kind of hoping that she doesn’t walk until she is with us. I would love to be there to see her take her first steps!

She apparently LOVES music. Whenever she hears her body starts “shaking”! I love this 🙂 I think we are going to take her to Kindermusic or something of the like in September. That is something I could take both girls too without too much trouble and it is really good for development as well. She grabs and bangs toys together, puts them in her mouth or throws and can clap her hands. I think our initial guess of her development being around the 12 month mark is pretty accurate.

I laughed when they described her personality. Sofie “is quiet, gentle, likes to be pampered and to be center of the attention of the people around her.” Identical to her Auntie Maggy! They are meant to be related! She can also wave hello, pronounce some syllables (like da, ba, ma I think) and likes to explore her reflection. She is curious, maintains concentration on something for a long period of time, shares really well and is not aggressive.

I’m not assuming that all this information is completely accurate but it sure is promising! You know how people always say you get your angel birth child first and then your second is extremely difficult? Does that work for adoptions too? Our first birth child was a breeze. From this description, our first adopted child sounds pretty “easy” as well. Is this a tease to keep us adopting?! Maybe we should just stop while we are ahead! I doubt it….

I think this is going to be a bit of a scattered post…

Livi is doing well… sometimes a little too well for her own good! She is such a character these days and knows just how to make us laugh even when we are trying to be serious. It is not good for our parenting skills! For example: We told her to lay down in bed… so she lay down, on top of her blankets, upside down, tummy down. We told her to turn around… so she flipped on to her back. This repeated through her turning sideways on the bed too. Then it was time for kisses… so she stuck her tongue out for us to kiss! When we told her to put her tongue in back in she pulled it all back in but the tip and curled it! I lost it then and couldn’t keep a straight face. She wasn’t being a complete brat. She was giggling the entire time… and by the end she had me and Jon rolling over too!

For the past four months we’ve had Livi in gymnastics and it is pretty much the best thing ever for her! She LOVES it! She has become less clumsy… because lets face it, her fine motor skills where not her strongest point. When Jon was off for Christmas break he got to come and see her in all her glory! She was quite excited to show off her moves to Daddy…

When the Spring Leisure Guide came out and I found a dance studio that offered ballet classes to 2 year olds! I asked Livi if she would like to go and she literally started doing flips! The day before the class, Livi told every person who looked at her in the grocery store that she was going to ballet. That night she didn’t sleep until 10:30pm! She was way to excited! It was quite cute actually. When she finally got to her first class I think she was a little over stimulated with the expectation. She did really good though! It was perfectly adorable.

Jon is of course very busy at work. A little too busy for my liking some times… but he loves his job. I think there is still some balancing that we need to work out between work and family time but things are falling in to place. He has quite a high stress job and with all the extra cut backs that he has to implement this year (government has to pay for the Olympics some how!) he has been stretched quite thin.

Because of the cut backs, I am now officially un-employed. I was working for Communitas in a group home. I only worked one day a week or so. We were not depending on the money but it did get banked in to our adoption fund. It was more a way for me to get out of the house. Now it is a joke around the house that Jon got me fired 🙂 It is a weird feeling to officially be a stay-at-home mom, not on maternity leave, just at home. That is now my job. It has changed my outlook on what I do with my day, which is a good thing. The house is cleaner and I’ve been putting more effort in to meal planning… which I have never been good at. I knew this was coming, it was not a surprise or unwanted, it is just a weird feeling to officially be a stay-at-home mom. Don’t get me wrong, it is one of the best jobs on earth… I just never thought it would be me.

I don’t think it is much of a secret that I am a planner. I think about things exhaustively and make decisions well in advance. I take comfort in having things organized and planned out well. I generally have a back-up plan or two as well, in case things don’t go according to my original plan. I consider it a positive trait… mostly 🙂 I get things done, am always prepared, and am generally pretty efficient because of the planning. It becomes a bit of a detriment when I am agonizing over something I have no control over or is still very uncertain. Take this case in point…

We have no idea how much longer it will take to bring Sofie home. We have been told anywhere from 3-6 months. Jon and I decided to get a second car when Sofie is home so that I can take her to different doctor appointments and therapies. The question is what kind of car? Basically we are wanting to get either a compact SUV or a mini-van. A compact SUV would be totally adequate for our family of four. If everything goes wonderfully with the adoption, though, a third child may be in our near-ish future. We might as well save the energy and extra money and just get a mini-van. But what if we don’t have a third child? Then there is no need for a mini-van. This feels like a huge decision! I know that I’m getting a little ahead of myself and I’m a little crazy. Either way, we’ll make it work.

We are still waiting for video of Sofie. It is taking forever. The Bulgarian MOJ apparently takes a long time to grant permissions for things. I am dying to have her home. Pray that we get her home really, really soon! I feel so helpless.

Yesterday we got the full files for the two girls that we were initially proposed. In case you are a little confused as to what has happened lately this is it in a nut shell…

-We got two preliminary files, without pictures, that we were told we had to choose from in November.
-We chose our Sofie based on the fact that one girl had a lot more information than the other.  (Choosing one child over the other seemed like an impossible task. Since we had tons of info on the one girl and no concerns, but still had some questions about the little information we got for the other girl, we chose the girl who came with lots of information.)
-Just before Christmas we got sent a picture of Sofie and announced her in our Christmas cards!
-Within a few day our suspicions were confirmed that the picture we received was not of the girl we had originally chosen. We found out the reason for this was that the Bulgarian MOJ wanted us to review the full files of both girl before they were going to let us commit to either of them.  (We were confused. We had already chosen, but then started to fall in love with the picture of a different girl. We had suspicions that the picture we got may not be the right one so I was guarded with looking at it. We wanted to believe it was her though… and even if she wasn’t our original choice, she might be our daughter.)
-Yesterday we received both full files and was able to make a final decision.

Both girls were perfect and we want to be able to adopt both of them. It’s not allowed by BC adoption rules and would not be the right thing for our family at this time any way. So we had to make an impossible decision. There was no criteria we had for our daughter, other than we wanted to adopt a little girl around Livi’s age with Down Syndrome. Both girls were perfect and would flourish in a family environment.

After a surprisingly short conversation between Jon and I, discussing all the knowns, unknowns, and inconsistencies in the files, Jon “logically” decided and I “emotionally” felt that sticking with our original choice was the right thing to do and she was the right child for us. Then we really looked at her picture. Original Sofie is DEFINITELY our Sofie. She has dark brown hair and eyes and even looks like Livi! She is perfect and I can not wait to hold her in my arms. She is so beautiful. Today I was finally allowed to send off our official request to adopt her.

So, if you got our Christmas card the picture is not our Sofie. I have deleted all the pictures of the other girl. I had to, for my own sanity. I had hoped not to see a picture of the girl we couldn’t bring home, but it didn’t work out that way. Her face is now burned in to my mind. Plus, they are in the same orphanage! Am I going to be able to go and give her a hug? Or will I feel too guilty to even see her?  I might not even be given the opportunity to see any of the other children at the orphanage. This process is really teaching me how to trust that God has a plan for our family… even though I’m not completely convinced that is how He works. Hmmm… I feel my theology changing again!

We are getting updated pictures and video next week! I can’t wait to see our daughter playing, exploring and hopefully smiling! I feel like I can really start the attachment process too. We aren’t exactly sure what the timeline is from here. We should have her home by the summer time but hopefully sooner. It depends on how fast the two governments work and available court dates. Pray that it is sooner than later. I feel like our family is missing some one. We need her home.

If you want some of the updated pictures send me an email and I might secretly be able to show you… I want to show her off but can’t put her on any public forums 🙂