The Shrine Circus is coming to town!

Matthew will be 26 months old on Saturday, March 3rd. On that same day we will be taking him to his very first circus!

I can hardly wait to see the look on his face!

Letting Go

I was reading my emails and there was one we receive monthly from Beechnut that tells about the development stage of your child.

Today we received one about having a 26 month old toddler (which he will be in just 8 more days). The subject line is "26 Months: Giving up naps, healthy snacks and more".

I read it as I do each month just to see where we are at and what we should expect this month. It's funny how each month they almost describe Matthew to a tee!

I realized that Matthew is getting older and becoming a little bit more independent with each blink of my eye. It seems like just yesterday that we were in Kazakhstan with a little baby who had a size 2 diaper that about fell off, now he is in a size 4 and is continuing to change.

The email ends with the subject of "Letting Go". This is the part I know I'm going to have the hardest time with. New memories are made each day yet I wish could just stop time and hold on to the moment a bit longer.

Letting Go
Watching your toddler become more independent each day can be bittersweet for most moms. He’s growing up faster than you ever thought possible. Just remember that learning to take care of himself is an important part of your little one’s personal and social development. And even though you won’t always be able to mother him, you’ll always be his mom. No matter how big he gets!

Adoption changed my life –

For the longest time I’ve wanted to put on paper how our adoption has changed my life but I just didn’t know how. The feelings that I have reside deep within my soul and are hard to put into words. I look back at our journey and I’m just in awe of what God has done in my life and how He has blessed me.

When Michelle first talked to me about adoption I didn’t want to have anything to do with it. I had many reasons why I would never go to some other country and adopt a child. At the time my reasons seemed so logical. Michelle continued to research adoption and one day told me about a country I had never heard of called Kazikston or something like that. A few days later I decided to look up the country online to see what I could find out. I figured out how to spell it K-a-z-a-k-h-s-t-a-n and read on the U.S. State Department’s website a travel alert for Americans stating unsafe to travel there. There were reports of Americans being robbed by both airport officials and taxi drivers. After finding this out I told Michelle we would never be going to that country!

I remember begging and pleading with God for many months to let me be a father. I had it all planned out and I just needed God to follow the perfect plan that I thought I had.

Some time passed and I continued to pray. God was working slowly in my heart and I didn’t even know it. He had the absolute perfect plan all laid out. He knew the exact timing that everything would come together but I didn’t know that at the time.

After many months I felt God very clearly tell me He wanted us to adopt a child from Kazakhstan. Specifically Kazakhstan! From there our journey to adoption began.

We went through many months of paperwork, fingerprints, government forms, and waiting for what felt like forever! On March 23, 2010 our adoption agency told us about a 10 week old baby boy that might be available for adoption in a few months. They even emailed us two pictures of him at 7 weeks old. The moment I saw his pictures I knew for certain – that was my son! It was 4 months later that we were invited to come to Kazakhstan and begin bonding with the most precious little boy in the world.

During our time in Kaz I noticed many things that have remained with me, things that continue to burden my heart. Some of them I still can’t wrap my mind around.

I recall seeing so many little beautiful children in the baby house. Sometimes they would be outside in a group of 12 to 15 all walking hand in hand escorted by one or two caregivers. They would be taken to very dusty little playground with nothing to play with. They would be at the playground for about 30 minutes before being escorted back inside. Many times they would look at us as we held the baby we were bonding with. The look in their eyes was priceless. They each looked as if they wondered “Is that my mama or papa who is here to take me home?”

There are two little boys that I will never forget and I wish we could have brought home. They were both 2 to 3 years old. One had some physical deformities that made it hard for him to walk, talk and possibly hear. He would always smile and wave to us as he walked around the baby house with one of the caregivers. The other little boy that always caught my eye had brown curly hair and dark eyes. He always had on a sweatshirt with a teddy bear on the front and a baseball hat. He looked very shy. He would look deep into my eyes if only for a moment. To this day I often wonder what has become of these precious little boys.

There were times that we would be going in the baby house and a group of toddlers would be going up the stairs with one of the caregivers. One time a little girl that looked at Michelle and said “Ma ma?” with a question in her voice.

During our time at the baby house we only saw one man who would come and visit a little girl who we believe was his daughter. He would bring her little treats to eat and sit with her on the bench outside.

Over the months since our time in Kazakhstan I’ve often questioned my faith and wondered how God could let so many precious children be orphans and not have a parent to hold them and love them.

I wondered how a woman could give birth to a baby and then give it up to be adopted. What I now know was best said by a Christian musician who was adopted as a baby. He said that his mother had three choices. First, she could terminate the pregnancy. Second, she could decide to keep him even if she couldn’t afford to take care of him and try to give him the best life that she could. Third, she could do the most unselfish thing – she could carry him to term, give birth to him and then allow him to be adopted by a family who would love him and be able to care for him forever. Wow! I never thought of it that way. Now that’s real love!

I know that the young woman who gave birth to our son loves him and she did the most unselfish thing in this world for him! I pray that God gives her comfort in her heart to know that we love him more than anything in the world. I love Matthew so much – He’s the air that I breathe!

I know for certain that God’s plan was for us to adopt Matthew. I also believe His plan goes much, much deeper than that. He knew that I would be changed forever. The compassion He has put in my heart for orphans consumes me!

I believe that until a person has been on this side of the fence where they actually see these children with their own eyes it’s hard to understand. Seeing what I did it has changed me forever! I wonder about the stories of each of the little faces that I saw.

Being back at home in America at times it’s hard for me to understand a lot of what I see around me. It seems that most people are deaf to the needs of this world – to the 147 million orphans that will go to bed tonight without the hug or kiss of a mom or dad! This really hurts my heart when I think about it! I wish I could stand atop the highest mountain and scream out what is in my heart and make people see what I see. If God can convince me to adopt, He can convince anyone!

A friend of ours posted this verse on her blog. It clearly states the changes that have occurred within my heart –
"Once our eyes are opened we cannot pretend we do not know what to do. God, who weighs our hearts and keeps our souls knows we know and holds us responsible to act." Proverbs 24:12

Each night before I tuck Matthew into bed we say a prayer. In every prayer I thank God for blessing us and allowing me to be Matthew’s dad, I ask Him to work in the hearts of Christians to adopt orphans across the world, and I ask Him to use me to make a difference in the life of many more orphans. - I would love to have a career where I can be part of the solution to help orphans find forever families.

I pray that God will give me His direction and the courage to step outside of my comfort zone to make the difference in the lives orphans.

The one thing I know for sure is that Matthew will grow up knowing how much his mom and I love him. He will know that we were the ones that were blessed by God allowing us to adopt him. I pray that through the things we share that he might some day want to adopt a child too.

Adopting Matthew is the best thing that has ever happened to me. It has opened up my eyes and heart to the orphans in this world.

Matthew is my #1 little guy and always will be!

He just loves to brush his teeth

I have never known a child who likes to have his/her teeth brushed, let alone one who actually requests to brush his teeth multiple times per day.

He says "Da Da Teeff" and points toward his toothbrush.

Let's hope he continues on this path and never gets any cavities - like his father who didn't get his first until I was 43.

Big boy bicycle

Matthew got a big boy bicycle for his Christmas. I finally got around to putting it together this past weekend.

Needless to say he loves it. I can't wait till we get to go outside this summer and ride it.

A walk down memory lane

Tonight someone on Facebook posted the question "Were you scared when you went to court in Kazakhstan to adopt your child?"

Well that question made me want to go back to our old blog and read all my posts around that time period. Not only did I read the post about going to court I also decided to read the posts about our journey (trip #2) back to get our little Matthew. All I can say is WOW! What a journey! How exciting!

I will never forget the day that we went back to the baby house and got Matthew. It still about brings tears (happy ones) to my eyes. Our little boy was finally in my arms forever! That was almost 16 months ago. Boy the time sure has flow by and little Matthew is sure growing up fast.

I love Friday afternoons when I get out of work and get to pick up Matthew from the babysitters. I know that for the rest of the day and the two days following I'll get to spend all the time with him. It's so much fun!!!!

Matthew was the hit today at the Asian Buffet –

Michelle and I went for lunch today at the Asian Buffet. This is a restaurant that we visit about once per month because of all the great tasting food including the Mongolian Grill that they have.

Today was totally different from any other visit. Matthew was just being himself, saying “Hi” to everyone and smiling at the waitresses. All of the staff were people of Asian decent. Today there were two waitresses (young ladies in their early 20’s) that were just captivated with Matthew. One of them pretty much stood by me at our table the entire time and kept touching, tickling, and smiling at Matthew. It sort of felt weird since we were there to enjoy lunch and not have someone actually standing over us. The waitress mentioned how cute he was so I said “He’s from Kazakhstan”. She (and the other waitress who was there at the time) looked at my weird and said “Where’s that?” I said it’s just north-west of China. Once again they looked at me weird so I took out my Ipod touch that I have a picture of the country of Kazakhstan on (and you can see the China border along the south-east) and I showed them. The one young lady said “We are from China” then asked “Why is he here?” so I said that we adopted him. It seemed odd to me that they didn’t know where Kazakhstan was since it shares the border with China.

Anyway it seemed that he was the hit of the restaurant. We had a couple other people mention how cute he is and the manager even came over and asked us where he was from and mentioned how beautiful his eyes are.

February 4th - Playing outside

As part of the country is in a blizzard we are having one of the warmest winters in decades. Today Matthew was able to go outside and play for a little while. He had fun with his little lawn mower.

Look how big Matthew is getting

This is a picture of Matthew last night when I went into his room to check on him before I went to bed. Look how big he is getting.

25 months ago...........

....... this cute little boy was born.

We are so blessed to be your mommy and daddy. We love you!