A Shower and Travel Orientation

A lot has happened this week so I am updating two things in one post.

First off, my family threw us a baby shower this weekend. The food was awesome (Asian themed) the decorations were beautiful (thanks Jake for the sign)! And my sister surprised me by video taping herself doing a devotion so that she could "come" to the shower too. Of course I cried! We were overwhelmed by everyone's generosity! We got a lot of really nice stuff! Our little guy is going to be styling in all the cute clothes and he is going to have the best stuff to play with, to take a bath with, and to cuddle with! I can't wait to start using it!

We also went to our travel orientation on Tuesday. This was a meeting at the agency for couples who are waiting to travel to Korea to pick up their child. The program director gave us information on what to do when we get the call to travel. What to do when we get to Korea. We found out that a driver will come and get us from the airport (I am so relieved about that!). We also found out what to pack for us and for the baby. Since the meeting is for parents waiting to travel we were in the same boat as everyone in the room. We all had pictures and we were just waiting to go and get our child. It was fun to talk to other families and to see the pictures of their child, and share our experiences with each other. Every time I leave the agency I feel re-energized about our process and feel like we are getting closer to traveling. It could just be a little over a month now!

WINNER!!!

The winner of the first ever Norman New's blog contest is......


KELLEY!

Congrats! I will send you an e-mail with your choices for scents and I will get an address from you too!

Everyone put a lot of thought and care into their answers, and we will certainly use all of your ideas! Thanks so much!

Ever felt close to a stranger?

Today is September 10th, which means that our baby boy is 7 months old today. I feel like I'm praying for him all of the time, and Fawnda and I make a point of praying for him every night. I'm always looking at his pictures, and we have some limited information on him that I have read through a number of times. So, in a way, I feel that I am already close to him. Then there's a couple of facts that I cannot forget. 1) He's only about 6,221.2 miles away and 2) We've never met.

Among other things, these 2 points seem to continually ignite my burning desire to get over there to get him. I know that this is all part of the adoption waiting game, but I cannot help but feel like I'm missing out on his life. 7 months is a long time to be out of someone's life, and the first 7 months are incredibly formative. For example, at 7 months a lot of infants are experiencing the following:

• He's probably developing his own personality.
• His sitting should be getting better as his lower back gets stronger.
• He might be ready to get moving!
• He might be pushing up on hands and knees and creeping along the floor.
• He may try to stand by himself.
• He may try to balance himself and sit for a while with no support.
• He may like finger foods that let him practice picking things up and feeding himself.
• He may enjoy playing with a spoon and a cup, but will probably not be good at using them yet.
• Seven month-olds often like to be included in family activities, enjoy looking in mirrors and at pictures of other babies, and like to grab, shake, bang things, and put everything in their mouth.

This list makes me smile, but it also makes me sad that I'm not there for all of it. He will most likely be about 9 months old when we bring him home, and both Fawnda and I are super excited to get to know his personality. Rest assured, we plan to make up a lot of ground right away. In the grand scheme of life 9 months is a relatively small amout of time, and we will have plenty of opportunities to make our own memories after he's here.

It's just that on our little guy's 7 month birthday, I wish I was there to have some of the cake.

Please don't stop reading here!

The Travel Thoughts post contains an exciting contest!

Travel Thoughts- with a contest!

We got invited to our travel orientation today. The meeting is set for Tuesday Sept. 16th from 8-10 am so that means that I will have to miss a day of school (bummer!) At the meeting they will give us information on what we can expect once we get there, what to bring for ourselves and our child, information on tours and on how to get around while in South Korea. We are very excited about this and I will probably start to pack a bag for the baby. So since we are thinking about traveling TO Korea, that also makes us think of traveling BACK from Korea and how that trip will be a little more interesting. It will be about 20 hours on a plane with a 9 month old. We are very open in saying that we are a little scared about this part! So, it inspired me to have the FIRST EVER NORMAN NEWS CONTEST! The rules are easy:

• Leave a comment with an idea of how to keep a 9month old busy/happy on a plane.
• Leave an e-mail address for me to contact you if you win!
• US addresses only

Any idea will enter you into the contest. Names will be entered into an excel speadsheet (by the EXCEL master Jason) and a random program will be created to choose the winner. The winner will be announced on Monday Sept 15th after 9:30 pm.


Here is the prize:

• Homemade soap and bath salts by me!


• I will let you choose the scent from what I have and the color! I will mail them to you!

Good luck everyone!!

In Denial!

Tomorrow is the first day of school. You would think that I would be picking out my clothes, getting my lesson plans ready, and preparing my mind for the upcoming school year. BUT for this year, my head is just not in it! The fact that I will only be going back for 6-10 weeks is clouding my brain. I don't even have my seating charts done yet!

Last week we had teacher workshop week. The soul purpose of that week was to get teachers in touch with the reality that the summer is over and they have to go back to work. Trust me, we need this extra week! I know that students think that they don't want to go back to school, but teachers dread this time much much more than any student could! It is not that teachers do not like their job, or even that they don't like the students, we love our job for the most part! But if you had a choice from staying home or going to work, what would you choose?!? So, I came back to workshop week with pictures of our baby boy and I showed them to anyone who would look! Everyone asked what my plans were for the rest of the year and I said with a big smile, "I am taking the rest of the year off." Their next question was, "How can you focus on coming back?" And my reply was, "I am not... want to see the pictures of my baby again?"

So this year, I am sitting here on the eve of of the first day of school thinking about putting on the second coat of paint in the baby's room, ordering replacement parts for our new crib (it got damaged in the shipping process, so the parts are free), putting together the new little stool we bought from Ikea, and generally dreaming of the time I will (hopefully soon) get to stay home with our child! And I am OK with that!