Still No Eyes!

Today, once again, we were incredibly blessed with more pictures of our little guy. Jaime is happy, since he looks "brown" in these pics. Dan and I are happy because he looks so darn healthy. I know in my head that he is tiny, but he looks like he's got meat on his bones.

These were taken by the gracious executive director of our adoption agency at the beginning of this month. Still no view of his eyes, but if they are half as precious as the rest of him, they'll be stunning. For those of you who remember, Maddie's umbilical cord didn't fall off for 5.5 weeks, and I convinced myself that God had forgotten to make her a belly button. I've developed the same paranoia with Max's eyes. God bless my husband for being the rational one of the family:)

For those of you who did not hear the news yet, Dillon's license with CARA was renewed last week, so there's one less obstacle to overcome before we get to bring Max home. We haven't heard anything about our NOC, which will be the next update we get on our status.

This wait is much harder than I anticipated. We expected our wait for a referral to be much longer than our wait to travel, and I wonder if that would have made it easier. Perhaps not. I saw a sign today that read, "Patience is trusting in God's timing." This shall be my mantra when this wait becomes unbearable. I just hope God isn't running behind schedule.

A different view of Max

I check my email frequently these days. I wait for updates on Dillon's paperwork with CARA, any news of our paperwork (we know it has reached India), but most of all I wait for any snippet of new information on Max.

Today, I feel like I won the lottery. I opened my email and there was an email from Tami titled Rup with an attachment. I opened it to find an adorable picture of our little guy. Tami was going through pictures taken by a family that traveled in February. She found the picture of Max in there. So here's the new pic. He is just over two months old here, so very tiny. I still don't get to see his eyes, but his profile is amazing. I'm more in love with him than ever, and the waiting gets harder.

To the family that was able to capture this early moment in our son's life. . . Thank you SOOO much! We're missing so much of him in these months, that having this early picture is amazing. I'm sure you understand completely. I hope that when we travel we will be able to pass along the amazing favor to one of the next Dillon families.

Going back a bit. . .

How did we come to adoption?

Dan and I have talked about adopting since before we were married. It is something we always knew would be part of our lives, whether we could have biological children or not. Obviously that wasn't a problem for us - we have two gorgeous bio kids, Madeline and Myles (3.5 and 2).

We began researching adoption last summer, talking to a local agency we were familiar with, and deciding what would be a good fit for our family. We decided against domestic adoption because it felt like we would be "competing" with folks that were not able to have bio kids.

My sister, Jaime, volunteered in India (Chennai) for a few months last year, and we fell in love with the pictures she was sending back of the country and the children. We also realize that our community is not terribly diverse, and we needed some way to expose our child to his/her culture. Many of Jaime's friends are Indian since she lived in the international dorm in college (we thank God for what was a housing screw up, He has a funny way of working). So, India it was.

Choosing the agency was easier than I thought. Our local agency recommended Dillon, and after speaking to some families that had worked with them in the past, we were convinced. Dillon has been so easy to work with, despite our long distance relationship.

Introducing . . .

Max Gerald Rup.

We are creating this blog to keep folks informed of what is going on in our adoption. This will eliminate the need for individual emails. There is also a way for folks to post comments to our entries, which we would really love.

We have just accepted our referral. His Indian name is Rup, but we will be calling him Max. He is 4.5 months old, and just adorable. Now begins the hard part, waiting to get him home. This usually takes between 4 and 7 months.

We will add news here as we get it, and perhaps paint a bit of a picture of our family as a whole. We would love to hear feedback and suggestions from other families going through this process, since we do not live in the area our agency is located in.

Wish us luck on our journey.

Disregard the pink, he really is a boy :)