The Latest In Development

The other day, Little Peanut said, 

"Mom, look what I can do!"

And then she proceeded to do this:

Yep, she's pretty proud of herself.

Thankfully we are only going in one direction, but looks like pretty soon we will need to be moving a few things around in the house. This girl looks like she's got her daddy's eyes (mischievous eyes).

Almost Two Months!?!

Little Miss is almost two months old, and we can hardly believe it. It doesn't feel like more than a month has passed since we first brought her home. Since the last post we made was from Florida, here is a quick update of our arrival home in Minnesota.

We had to stay in Florida until the interstate adoption people gave us clearance to leave the state with her.  On the last post I asked that we be able to travel home together so that I (Jenny) would not be traveling through an airport alone with an infant. Thank you for praying. We had originally booked flights home for Saturday January 19 assuming that we would just change them if need be. Well, on Thursday January 17 we got the message that we were cleared to leave Florida. For logistical and cost reasons we decided to stay in Florida the extra two days, but YAY! we all got to fly home together.

The only sad part was that we didn't arrive into Minneapolis until 10:30PM so we weren't able to have all our family meet us at the airport. Instead we got to introduce Moriah to our immediate families over the next couple days.  Pop Pop (Nate's Dad) picked us up at the airport so he got to meet her first.

We still have a few things to complete before the finalization hearing can happen with the Florida courts.  We will need to complete three in home visits with our social worker, one every 30 days. The first meeting went well and we look forward to the other two in March and April. After those meetings are done we can file for a finalization hearing which we should be able to do by teleconference (saving a trip to Florida again).

While she is still a little peanut (she is still wearing newborn size clothes and when I try 0-3 month clothes she is swimming), it is amazing to me how much she really has grown. We have a doctor appointment this week where we will find out just how much. To me she seems so big, and then we hang out with other babies born just days before her and she looks tiny again.  

Lots of you (family) have been asking for updated pictures. So to end this post, here are a few that we took this last week.

Staying Warm in Florida!

Hello everyone!  Don't worry, this one will not be as long as the last one. =}

Moriah is doing great and enjoying life (as far as we can tell at least).  She has already had her first road trip and her first Chick-fil-A experience. On Thursday we left the Miami area and drove up to Orlando. We took it slow with a  long lunch at Chick-fil-A. She did great, sleeping pretty much the whole time we were in the car and ate while we were already stopped for lunch. And, of course, her first family vacation in Orlando.

The continued blessings keep flowing (as if adding a daughter to our family wasn't blessing enough). We intended on finding an extended stay type of hotel or condo to rent, but in couldn't find any in Miami area that were affordable. Thankfully, a friend was able to connect us with someone who donated a week at a timeshare in Orlando. So, we drove up to Orlando.  We cannot say thank you enough to have such a nice place to stay while we are here.

Other firsts: She has been on her first Marshall's run. Like her Mama she had a huge smile on her face while there. She even showed it again when we told the cashier that it would become her favorite store too. She has also been to Disney....ok, not really Disney World. We went to find some dinner last night and decided to stop at Downtown Disney. We walked around for a short bit, and she still slept through most of it.

Some people have been asking for prayer requests and if there is anything we need. Most obvious right now is still that we would like the legal process to continue smoothly so that we can all fly home in about a week.  Please continue to pray for this...I (Jenny) do not really want to travel through airports alone with baby and all our stuff.

Sorry, I don't have pictures here but we will post some again soon.

Fearful, Wonderful, Secret

 

 

 (sorry for formatting problems that may show up, hotel internet not co-operating)

 

 

 

Much like adoption, this post will be long but worth it!  I’d encourage you to read the whole thing and not just skip to the end, because the story is beautiful, and if you make it through, we’d love to introduce you to the girl filling these shoes:

Our adoption blog has always been based on some of the verses from Psalm 139:

“I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.  My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place.  When I was woven together in the depths of the earth your eyes saw my unformed body.  All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”

We have felt God’s leading in this process, and we can attest it has been Fearful, Wonderful, and Secret, but God has been guiding it…and we’d love to tell share that story with you.

We last left off understanding our repetitive cycle: Hope, anxiety, grief, processing.

After changing from Columbia to domestic and having that adoption fall through, we spent December grieving and processing, looking at January to begin the cycle again by entering hope.  Our plan…call the social worker and re-engage in the Columbian process, and we planned to do that late last week.

But Columbia was known to us, and we were being led to something secret.  And so the whirlwind began.

Thursday afternoon at 4:00 Jenny got a phone call from a friend of a friend, whose name we knew but whom we had never formally met.  Jenny then called me at 4:30.

These were the details: There is a baby in Miami that needs placement quick.  It would require a bunch of legal hoops, logistical hoops and financial hoops, but if we were willing to clear our schedules for a few weeks and try, there is a chance we could become parents quickly.  And so we took the risk.

Indebted to many who made it possible, we traveled to Miami on Saturday morning and by early afternoon we were at the hospital meeting baby. 

She was born on December 30^th, so we met her as she was just 6 days old.  From that point on we began caring for her at the hospital, showing up for her feedings and playing with her until she slept again, then leaving to run errands and try to get the legal process in order.

This schedule had its moments of frustration, but they were always brushed aside by the immense joy and happiness we had while being in the room with her.

And so the days came and went, hotel for a few minutes, hospital, lawyer’s office, hospital, shopping, hospital, food, hospital, hotel.  Discharge continually delayed by different people or things trying to figure out if we had jumped through all the appropriate hoops.

The days had their fear, they were filled with wonder, and for the most part, they were kept secret, protecting ourselves and our friends from the highs and lows that would come with another quick cycle of grief if things went bad.

All the while wondering as we changed diapers and fed bottles, is this our daughter?  She feels like our daughter, smells like our daughter, in some ways even looks like our daughter (the nurses think she has my nose), and we immediately loved her like our daughter.  We spent four days seeing her face when we would close our eyes, hoping we’d always be able to see it when we opened them.

But we’ve been at a hospital before, and we didn’t leave with that baby, and so we wondered, can this be real?

During that time, we were pestered by family with the curious questions:

She was born weighing 5lb. 12oz. at 18 inches long (at 2:18 p.m. for the really curious)

She has dark hair now and what we think will become blue eyes.

And she is precious, the calmest healthiest baby you could ever ask for.

We were only holding out on their questions as they would ask us for a name.

5 hours ago (as of this writing), we got to leave the hospital with her.  God’s secret place where He had formed this child finally became known to us.  Miami is the place.  And while the legal process continues to get worked out, we are forced into our first family vacation, in beautiful Florida, in 80 degree weather in the middle of January.

But let’s continue: so we finally called the family with the name.

But there is a story with that too:

Initially planning for our Columbia adoption (many months ago) we had decided only on a girl’s name.  Assuming we would keep the given Columbian name as the middle name, we knew the first name we would choose. 

When we transferred to domestic (and announced that in October) we knew that baby was a girl.  And we decided that we would have birth mom pick the middle name.

On Saturday as we traveled, we realized that when it came to a daughter, we had never even bothered thinking of a middle name, but the first one we had chosen long ago.

The list of middle names stayed very short, and because of our sarcasm and dry sense of humor was more filled with silly middle names than real ones, but just a few hours before discharge we decided.

Her middle name had to be Hope.  She breaks the cycle and is the fulfillment of the Hope that God has given us throughout the process of trying to start our family.  And now that it is started, her name will reflect that Hope God had placed inside us.

And then there is the first name:

Early in our adoption journey, Jenny was reading the story of Sarah, Abraham, and their son Isaac told in Genesis.  This story is filled with a family praying and waiting for their child together, waiting to start a family, and trusting that God might be able to do something about it.  What they ended up getting was a plan that wasn’t their own, in fact it was one they found laughable at the time, but ultimately God fulfilled their hopes.

After doing so, he asked them to do a strange thing.  Sacrifice that child to him as an offering.  Offer their hope, their promised child to God as an offering.  God’s command is summarized in this way:  Take your son, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah.  Sacrifice him there as an offering on one of the mountains I will talk about.

And so they responded with faith and put their trust in God ahead of their own plans and dreams.

As the story plays out, Abraham is spared from having to offer his child to God, and instead God provides a different offering to be used as worship for Abraham and his son to enjoy together.  In the Hebrew tradition, Abraham then names that mountain based on what has taken place there.  Verse 14 states it this way:

“So Abraham called that place The Lord Will Provide.  And to this day it is said, “On the mountain of the LORD it will be provided.”

Mount Moriah, defined by Abraham as the place where the Lord has provided.

As we talked about this story months ago, we knew.  We knew that if we were ever blessed with a baby girl, we would name her Moriah.  We would name her that because God will have started our family in a way different than we might have planned it on our own.  We would name her that because we would definitively know that our family would not have started had the Lord not provided. 

And now you know.  You know we have a baby girl.  And that her name is Moriah Hope Kemper.  And that the story of our family starting is a beautiful one, beyond our wildest imagination and is a gift given to us by a God who creates all of us Fearfully, Wonderfully, and in His Secret place.

           

Meet Moriah Hope Kemper:

 

 

 

(she left the hospital in the same receiving blanket as I did just over 32 years ago)

The Continuing Journey Towards Hope

We have found the journey towards the start of our family so far to frame itself in a cyclical pattern.  Hope, anxiety, grief, processing.  Much like the cycles of nature, this seems to have repeated itself many times, and an aware person of our story and our documentation of it, will find that we rarely know what to say during the times of anxiety and grief.

But today, it is time to write again.

Our last update here had us anticipating and hoping the arrival of a daughter in the beginning of December.  Anxiety came roughly a month before that. In fact, in the span of a couple weeks, we felt the whole cycle as that adoption went from expected to lost. In the beginning of November we got a call from our social worker that birth mom was moving in a different direction. We were heartbroken. And then, a week or so later we got another message…there was potential again.  Guarding ourselves and our own emotions, we weren’t as quick to update during that time, but instead chose to wait until things were a bit more concrete. But we again found ourselves both hopeful and anxious.

We were able to be at the hospital during birth.  That weekend was a feeling extreme anxiety.  We heard baby’s first cry and spent time holding her.  We did the hospital experience for the first day with no understanding of if we were holding a child, or if we were holding our child.  And we slept in a hotel that night, anxious.

The next morning we found out that birth mom had decided to parent.  We spoke with her briefly before heading home—and we grieved.  I always have to make sure to remind people, that a birth mother deciding to parent is a beautiful choice, and while we want a child of our own, we do authentically want what is best for each child.  We hope this decision proves to be best for that child and would ask people to refrain from making this birth mother out to be a villain.  We can’t imagine the emotions and decisions she had to make, and never felt like we were being disregarded, misunderstood, or undervalued.

The grieving process is an interesting one.  It functions very different for the two of us at almost every point.  Verbal processing at times, and silent processing at others.  Blunt and public on occasion, while reserved and withdrawn at others.  Felt at times by one and not the other, and emotions triggered by the silliest, smallest, or strangest things.  The grief of a certain hope lost will never disappear completely, and random things bring it back as felt emotion, but as a standard, we’ve moved to processing again.

What have we learned?  What comes next?  How attached are we to what kind of process?  How may God be leading us?  Questions that guide us through processing with the aim of returning us to a hope filled season of life.

We still believe strongly that adoption is the route for us, and as we’ve processed it, we’ll be continuing to move forward with that in January.  As best as we can tell right now, we’ll be doing so by re-engaging in the Columbian international adoption program.

For many people, conversing with us about the start of our family can be awkward.  It can be hard to read which stage of a cycle we are in, how emotional we might be, or what particular help or encouragement you can be to us.  I understand that.  I wouldn’t know how to talk to us either.  What I do know is most of you have been doing a great job.  You refrain from questions when you don’t know how comfortably they may be received.  You support any good news you hear and offer hugs and condolences in times of our anxiety and grief.  Many of you anticipate hearing the results of our processing, but often do so without pressuring us or nagging us through that time.  In short, you take what could be awkward for all of us and try to make it as natural as possible.  Thank you.

There is a story that travels around about Ernest Hemingway, that one day he won an awkward bet.  Write a short story in under 10 words.  The rumor goes that he considers it one of his finest works, and while the bet can never be proven, there is a 6 word story accredited to his name:  “For sale: Baby shoes, never used!”

Because of my (Nate’s) love for baby shoes (my first purchase and a symbol to us of a hope filled future) a few different people have told me of this story.  They’ve used it very appropriately to express their condolences as I grieved.  And I get the sentiment.  I imagine many can only imagine, but do so sympathetically, with the story of baby shoes bought but never used.

But that was for grief, and grief is only part of our story.  And in our journey so far, hope has always come after and trumped the grief.  So, weirdly, I don’t look at our baby shoes with grief.  I look at them with hope.  Our child is coming.  Our family is growing.  Somewhere, in the “secret” place that God alone knows, our child is being drawn to us.  This process is “fearful and wonderful” and we’ll continue walking through it with hope.

From Flags to Shoes - The Current Story of Our Little One

For those of you who prefer short stories (especially those which re-hash some parts of our story you may already know), here is the awesomeness contained within this story:  

We are expecting Baby Girl Kemper to join our family 

shortly after Thanksgiving! 

Yes, we're aware how soon that is. But we can’t just skip to that part of the story and not tell you how we got there, so if you’ll bear with us, you’ll see how we’ve gotten to this point.

A Recap of What’s Been Public So Far:

It’s been a few years now that we’ve felt ready to expand our family.  The “easy” or “traditional” path to parenting doesn’t appear to have been God’s plan for us.  Infertility was followed and confirmed by testing, which was followed by medical pursuits of pregnancy.  And so again we discovered God had a different plan.We know that confidently now, but it took some discovery along the way.  

This is a better story. A beautiful story.

We’ve seen that beauty unfold as as we’ve turned it over to God, who has had greater plans all along of growing our family.  We decided on adoption and began sharing  this publicly and enthusiastically.

You can read the past blogs to see again that excitement and read the awesome journey we’ve been on.  If you looked at the dates of those entries however, you’ll notice a large gap where the posting seemed to have vanished as if there wasn’t anything to say.  That was far from the truth, we just didn’t know what to make public.

All the Balls Back in The Air:

For a while the thoughts and conversations were simple.  Our hearts had been (and still are) filled with desire and love to adopt an infant from Columbia.  And so we progressed.  Fundraising, praying, sharing conversations and updating our friends and family.  It was a waiting game filled with paperwork, education, and patience.  But we knew what to do, move forward in that process with eyes set firmly on a little child from Columbia.

Our focus and resolve made small talk easy.  As people would tell of us possible adoption avenues, we were resolved to the plan we had…Columbia it is. Our hearts are with Columbia and the child that waits for us there.  The Columbian flags we have purchased and that sit in our office (soon to be nursery) show this part of the story well.

But then God stirred our hearts and emotions again, 

in an unexpected way that would forever change us. 

Earlier this summer, Nate was approached between church services on a Sunday morning.  Someone knew (not indirectly, but directly) of a possible domestic adoption opportunity and felt specifically that we needed to be part of it.  The details were explained in brief and Nate promised that we’d pray over them.  And so he told Jenny, still between services, where he found her getting ready to serve in the nursery at church. 

This wasn’t the first time that someone had mentioned they knew of an expectant mother looking into adoption. But it was the first time that it stirred something in us. Something that begged us to at least asked the question, "Should we consider this?"

Emotions came.

Talk of a baby started.  

Talk of a waiting game pushed forward.  

Talk of an addition to our family seemed more real.  

Emotions came, but that is all that we knew.  

We still needed to decipher those emotions and plan to move forward, longing to be led by God and not emotions.It felt like all the balls were in the air again.  And it was both scary and exciting at the same time.

From Then to Now:

We’ve had many of conversations.  We’ve prayed.  We've found our hearts changed as we are now tied and committed to the process of this domestic adoption.  God has shown Himself faithful to us the entire time.

We moved forward not just in thought but in action.  We decided to put the Columbian process on hold temporarily and moved forward with the meeting of this potential birth mother.  We saw positive signs, we saw uncertain signs, we saw signs we didn’t know how to interpret, and we took steps forward.  

We decided things were too unsettled to be sharing a lot at that point.  And so many of you got silence. 

But silence isn’t fun.  And not knowing isn’t fun.  And so we waited and prayed for confidence, for assurance, and for resolution to this opportunity—longing to know if we should take the leap to the domestic path or return solely to the Columbian one.

And the answers have come.  We are as confident as we can be that we are adopting domestically.  That as we become the best parents the world has ever seen,  that it will start with a baby girl.  That she is due shortly after Thanksgiving.  And that she will change our lives forever.  

We are also confident that when time permits, we will again re-enter the Columbian process to see our family grow again.  This is what we know now.

What We are Up To:

We haven’t been confident of this change for very long.  And so we find ourselves with a two and a half month 'pregnancy.'  Ready for the whirlwind of legal process, home changes, and general giddiness that we’ve dreamed of for so long.  We’ve been working with birth mom, working with agencies, starting to share our news with friends and family and excitedly preparing ourselves for this next chapter of life.

We are excited as we look back and see the incredible journey God has brought us on.  We also recognize that there is still risk and we may find ourselves yet again back at the square one with all the balls in the air.  Trust us, we have enough anxiety for everyone.  

Please pray with us, for ourselves, for birth mom, and for baby.  We know God has a plan for us as parents.  As best as we can tell right now, this is the plan.  I’ll consider this the worry disclaimer paragraph.  There is and will be risk through this story for quite a while.  We are aware and willing to take this risk.  We’ve been thankful to those sharing this burden with us.

But there is also pure enjoyment with this part of the process.  Nate always knew that newborn shoes would be the first thing he would buy when we found out we would be having a child.  So that has been done.  (They can be seen in the picture above.)  We’ve had people excitedly talking about throwing baby showers, people who have already purchased outfits, and people who have graciously donated money for this process. 

Our heads are filled with dreams of our nursery, our conversations full of baby-names and what to register for, and our house has an awkward amount of baby girl’s clothes (not pink one’s though) for a family with no baby.

We have a lot we want to accomplish and even more that we need to accomplish in this short two month period, but we are energized (even in the midst of the stress and chaos) to cross things off the list.

We know so far that the story is bigger than the two of us, is written already better than we could have penned ourselves, and will end up displaying “family” in a beautiful way for the whole world to see. 

Anything But Desperate

Throughout our summer, much of our adoption focus has been on the financial side.  While paperwork needed so far is completed, surprise speed bumps and unique decision points have slowed the legal side of our process, financial progress has remained a focus.

Turns out, adoptions are pretty expensive. Whether domestic or international, the price tag for an adoption climbs pretty high pretty quick.  The numbers can even make one feel desperate.  But through numerous events, we have found ourselves feeling anything but desperate.

We’ve seen friends volunteer their commission to us as we host a product party.  A time where generosity trumped desperation.

We’ve seen family and friends of family (some with no connections to us) plan, organize, and work a garage sale.  A time where hard work trumped desperation.  We even watched as those unsold items were taken to another garage sale, kept separate, and sold again for our financial gain.  A time again, where desperation felt like the last emotion we could feel as we were overwhelmed with the gratitude of so many others.

And we’ve seen most recently money arrive in our mailbox.  People moved by their faith in God, and their understanding of how they may be a part of our adoption story to show that faith trumps our desperation.

We’ve responded with thank you cards, with hugs, with words of gratitude, and often with private tears.  We can’t adequately express the gratitude we feel to those who have helped.  We haven’t been able to yet, and will likely never be able to, but we will try.

But what we can confirm is true is that while the numbers of dollars associated with our adoption process can lead towards desperation, we have instead found the generosity and faithfulness of others. Some who we have extreme bond and connection with and some who are distant acquaintances.  We are filled with faith that we are walking through a journey designed by God for us.  We feel strengthened when we should feel desperate, and confident while we should feel confused.  We feel anything but desperate.