A Little Sister

They seem so normal. 

The boys have a little sister. 

We wanted to wait until we were 100% sure she was ours before we broke the news. 

One morning before school, I held photos of her face down and close to my chest. I asked them, "Who do we pray for every night before bed?" Realizing that our list is quite long and I wasn't getting my message across, I switched tactics. 

"You know that God answers prayers, right?" 

::a lots of head nodding::

I flipped around the photos excitedly and shoved them in their faces. "Who do you think this is?" 

"Our sister?!" Ben asked tentatively. 

They both got huge smiles on their faces and spent about two minutes shuffling through the photos we have. And that was it. They promptly went back to the Pokemon they were watching on TV before I asked them to pause it. Anticlimactic. 

Ben stayed silent even at school until after the weekend was over. On Monday, Ben came home from school and said that he told his teacher and she asked if he could bring pictures the next day. 

The next day after school he reported with enthusiasm that the teacher had him tell the class about his sister, show the photos and talk about where she was from, what her name is and when she was going to come home. After he was done, she got out a map and showed the class where Bulgaria is.

God bless teachers.

We are so grateful to Mrs. Reim for allowing Ben to talk about it and for using it as a learning tool for the class.

It was different after that day. I really think it became more real for him when he got to share in his own words what is happening. Now he talks about his sister and asks questions about what life will be like after she's here. 

Evan still has no clue. All he knows is that this summer he doesn't have to take naps anymore and he get's to move in with Ben. They are so excited to share a room...I give that excitement about three weeks.   

30 days

It's a common statement to say that time is going so fast. And it is. But something tells me this month will be different. Actually, the next seven months will probably be quite different.

One month from today we meet Emily Anche for the first time and I'm wondering how fast a month can possibly go by. This past week we filled out about 10 forms for our agency, booked our flights to Bulgaria leaving on May 10 and sent our I-800 to the U.S. government with Emily's information so from the moment she steps on U.S. soil this fall, she will be a U.S. citizen. 

Several people have asked me what it was like to get THE call. 

First of all, I wasn't expecting it. If you had talked to me in the last several weeks and asked me how the adoption process was going, I likely would have given you my canned answer..."Our agency says 2014 is our year, but I just don't see how that's possible. The numbers show we'll be waiting at least another year, if not two"...yadda, yadda, yadda. 

Guess I should have trusted the agency. 

Naturally when I got the call, Rob was out of state. Ben was at school and I had taken the day off to be with Evan. He and I were at the Elks park on Washington St. and I had struck up a conversation with another mom that was there. My phone rang and saw it was our caseworker and even when there is zippo progress with your adoption, everyone knows you never silence a call from your case worker. I answered it and we made small talk about the beautiful weather and she shocked me with the news I was least expecting. She told me that she had received the referral information of a beautiful little girl that the Bulgarian government had matched us with. She told me she was about to turn two and that she was wearing a really sweet pink dress in the photo. 

I started sobbing. The lady I was talking to started staring. 

I started sobbing harder. I could tell the lady thought someone had died and was wondering if she should come put her arm around me.  

We had finally gotten our referral. 

That was the last thing I heard. 

Seriously. 

Like 10 minutes later Rob would ask
me what she said and I would have to tell him I had no idea. I didn't hear anything, all I knew is I had to get home because her photo was waiting for me on the computer. 

This is Evan at the park that day. Pretty sure my hands were shaking when I took this photo. Little did he know this was the event that secured his position as the middle child. 

It's THAT Post About THAT Call

The way I figure it, we've waited about 900 days to be able to share...

We got our REFERRAL!!

You guys,  she is beautiful and she is ours. Lots of adoptive parents told me that we would know when we found our daughter and they were right. From the second I laid eyes on her, I knew that she was a Peske. Even when we weren't sure what our international pediatrician was going to say about her medical information, we knew she was ours.

Her name is Anche (ann-ch-ae), but we'll call her Emily Anche Peske. She turned two on April 2 and she has the biggest brown eyes. We have a video of her and Rob swears she doesn't blink the entire length of the video. AND she has dark curly hair. If there was ever a "sign" that she was ours, that would be it. Imagine that...a little Bulgarian with naturally curly hair.

Unfortunately, we can show her photo to people in person all we want, but we cannot post them online (blog, facebook, etc.) until after we pass court, which is several months away.

On May 11 we'll travel to Bulgaria for a week for our first trip. After we accept our referral in person, we come home and wait 4-6 months to go through the steps we need to be able to go on our pick up trip (U.S. approval, visa, court, etc.). So it's looking like we'll head back to Bulgaria sometime in October to take our daughter out of the orphanage FOREVER. With a little luck, we should have our little Emily home for her first Christmas. God is so good. He has been faithful and his timing is perfect.

Little Emily is in Burgas, Bulgaria on the Black Sea.