Deshon Is Gone

The judge ordered Deshon to return to his previous foster mom today. I stayed home today and got the call at about noon and had about 30 minutes to pack all of his things up and drive him to our adoption agency. I swung by the office so that Tori could say goodbye.

We are so sad and a bit blindsided since we expected this all to take around six months to a year to be resolved. You know when you sign up to be a foster parent that you're signing yourself up for an emotional roller coaster, but this was our first experience with that. When we first told about Deshon, his circumstances led us to believe that we were really going to get to keep him, but in the last week or so we saw a few signs that the judge might be going in a different direction.

As heartbreaking as it was to say goodbye to him today, I feel good about the home he's going back to and that's the most important thing. His previous foster mom was overjoyed and I could see that there is obviously a lot of love there. Deshon was smiling and giggling when he saw her, so that made me really happy. Also, I'm thankful that everything was resolved quickly. As hard as it was to say goodbye today, it would have been WAY harder to say goodbye after a year.

Those are all the logical reasons why I'm okay with Deshon leaving today, but the more emotional side is that he really is an incredibly good and sweet baby. Everyone who got to meet him really fell in love with him. Good things will come his way.

Today was really strange because for the last five days we were also babysitting two additional foster children -- an 8-month-old and a 4-year-old -- for a total of four kids. We were really wiped out last night when their parents came to get them at about 10pm. So it was weird today to go from a small house that was literally bursting with children all over the place back down to just one.

We loved every minute of Deshon and we will miss his adorable little smiles and screams!

Welcome, Deshon!

Yesterday our adoption agency called to ask us whether we would be interested in taking Deshon. We didn't have to learn too much about him before we said YES! Without getting too much into the nitty gritty of details, Deshon arrived at our home last night at 9:15pm. Tori and I were so excited for him to arrive that we had to play cards to pass the time and calm our nerves (we had already done all the cleaning we could do).

Deshon has big bright eyes and is full of smiles and funny babbles. He didn't seem to have any trouble adjusting to our home, although as it got later and later we were unsure of how to get him to sleep. But once Tori got him to sleep, he slept for 9 hours straight!

We are thrilled to have Deshon here and hope that we get to keep him forever and ever. But, part of the reality of being a foster parent is that we really don't know what will happen. So we're just trying to take deep breaths and hope that Deshon ends up in the best place possible.

Here's a video of Zadie and Deshon together. Zadie is very curious about him, but also likes to stake out her territory with regards to the attention she gets from her moms. She always wants to be held by the person holding Deshon.

Size 23s

Here's Zadie wearing Shaquille O'Neal's size 23 basketball shoes. Our friends Richard and Allard got these shoes years ago and were kind enough to let Zadie take them for a spin. Zadie's donor had a size 16 shoe, so hopefully this is not going to be a sign of things to come! When I was pregnant, Tori used to dream about me giving birth to an enormous foot. It will be interesting to see how big Zadie's feet will be.

Speaking of genetics, I think that Zadie looks a lot like me, but she also has some personality traits that are definitely not from me. For example, she is extremely mechanical. I can barely change a light bulb. She loves to put things together and one of her favorite toys is a set of keys because she tries to unlock everything imaginable (we have locks on one of our cabinets). Tori is also very mechanical, so it's a nice little fit. I, on the other hand, am very verbal -- thus far Zadie has not followed in that path. She is now 16 and a half months and she's only comfortable with a few words: wawa, ball, woofwoof, up, and mama (only when she's crying or really upset).

Despite the fact that Zadie has not made huge developmental strides in the verbal department -- and despite the fact that this weekend one of our family friends told us about a kid who knew all his letters by the age of one -- I am not worried. I just always remind myself about my dad. He didn't go to kindergarten and showed up to first grade not knowing any letters or numbers. As he says, "he was pure as the driven snow" (does that saying even make sense?). Anyway, he turned out to be quite successful, so I'm not going to worry about all this.

This isn't necessarily the best photo of Zadie, but I think it's really cute. Part of why I like it because she has this silly red bead necklace on, which she's been wearing for about two months straight. Normally she has two or three of these necklaces around her neck and I'm always afraid she's going to get so tangled up that she'll end up choking, but so far so good. We took her to a Peace Corps event where all the former volunteers had to wear these red bead necklaces and by the end of the night she had ripped them off quite a few people.

We just returned from a nice weekend in San Diego celebrating Nick's graduation. We're very proud of you, Nick! Nick and Austin are both very good cousins to Zadie and she finds Austin particularly amusing.

It's nice in some ways to be home, but in other ways our place doesn't quite measure up to being at the parents house. We had a great time in the pool all weekend and we should have taken a video of how excited Zadie gets in the water. Shoot!

Zadie Is Part Fish

So I got the new computer and I still haven't been posting. Instead of blaming my old computer this time I'll blame my dear mother because it took me a while to get all the great photos she took while Zadie was staying with them. It's been a few weeks now, but we left Zadie for three days and I think everyone involved had a ball (including Kate and Tori!).

Zadie got lots of time to play in the pool, which she loved. She would start wiggling and flopping around in your arms when she saw the pool -- "wawa" is one of her few words. She's a very good sport about being dunked, but she definitely doesn't get the concept of holding her breath. Her favorite thing to do is just to thrash around with no direction.

So enjoy the pool shots! Shoot, Mom, I wanted to post the pool shots with you and Nick, but somehow that didn't come across in the photos you emailed me. I think I got the first and third set, but not the middle set. Also missing the one of Zadie playing with her sink.