officially ours

Reggie is officially a Wedan! What a special day it was yesterday to have the court formally declare "Baby Boy ***" as "Reginald David Wedan".

Bryan's mom and dad, my mom, and two of my nieces came to celebrate the occasion with us.

We continued our celebration with a trip to the Mall of America, went on a couple of rides, and ate the the Rainforest Cafe. It was a wonderful day!

In Our Arms...

...where he belongs.

nesting in under two weeks

How do you get ready for a baby in less than 2 weeks? Well, when it is your third one in less than two years, you walk out to the garage, find the bin that is labeled "0-12 months boy", and throw it's contents into the wash machine (even though you know everything was clean when you put it away). Then you go to the basement, and don't have to dig very deep for the bassinet, swing and bouncy seat. Throw the covers in the wash machine and reassemble. Brett gets a new car seat, Lydia moves into Brett's seat turned backward, and Reggie gets the carrier seat.

Ready!

Reggie's little corner of the house

We've made a couple small purchases, too. We have bought each kid a ceramic piggy bank, a security blanket, and a baby book. I'm happy that all the kids have the same baby book.

With Brett, I sewed everything for the nursery including sheets, blanket, valances, dust ruffle, rocking chair seat cushions, and a diaper bag. With Lydia, I made a quilt and my mom made sheets. I still have fabric for a dust ruffle and diaper bag waiting in a closet. With Reggie, I'm just hoping I'll get a chance to whip up his little security blanket tomorrow.

Bryan doing paperwork - what he does best and I don't.

making progress

It's interesting doing things in reverse order with this adoption. Usually, you do your homestudy, then you wait for your child. Our child is waiting for us to do our homestudy!

Our homestudy agency (Summit, in MN) and our placement agency (An Open Door, in GA) have been working hard to push things through since we came to our decision on Friday. Some friends took our kids off our hands for a few hours on Saturday so we could fill out all our paperwork. It was a lot easier this time because we basically just copied our answers from our first homestudy. We needed new letters of reference and our friends were so kind and generous to get them to us the same day we asked. We all needed physicals. Bryan got his yesterday, and Brett, Lydia and I did ours all at once today (that was not a fun appointment). Our social worker came to interview us yesterday afternoon. Our background checks were submitted yesterday, and that is what we will probably end up waiting on. We have also been working on grant applications in the midst of all this! With Brett's adoption, our homestudy took about 2 months. It looks like with Reggie, our homestudy will take about 8 days!

The price of airline tickets go up so drastically if you book just a day or two out, so we decided to take an educated guess and book our flight to Georgia for a week from today (August 26th). Bryan is planning to come home to be with Brett and Lydia Friday the 28th, and I will stay in Georgia until all the paperwork clears (which will hopefully not take more than a week, since we booked my flight back for Wednesday, Sept. 2).

We have talked with Reggie's foster mom a couple times over the last few days. It sounds like Reggie is a content baby. Ms. Donna says she keeps trying to get pictures of him with his eyes open. What a nice problem to have. It was hard for me to get pictures of Lydia not screaming when she was that age! Reggie's one week check-up went well; he has another check-up on Friday.

Reggie, we are so excited about meeting you and bringing you home!

Bryan and Joy plus three

Thursday, August 6th at 7:49 am in St. Paul, MN, Bryan was packing some last minute items into the family car. I was scrambling to get the kids dressed and Grandma Julie was tag teaming with me to get them fed. It was the much anticipated day of the year that we would caravan over to Green Bay, WI to participate in the 25-year-old Wedan Family tradition of attending Packer's Training Camp.

Thursday, August 6th at 7:49 am in Augusta, GA, our third child was born.

It wasn't until Saturday around 10 am that I discovered I had missed a phone call from An Open Door. Odd. We hadn't heard from them since Brett's adoption was finalized. There was a voice mail, but I couldn't retrieve it due to being out of my area. My mind raced. Was something wrong with Brett's birth mom? Was she interested in more contact? Was she pregnant? It took us an hour to figure out how to retrieve the message, and when it was from the director of the program telling us to call her on her cell phone over the weekend, our sense of urgency heightened. Bryan got ahold of Debbie at An Open Door and she informed us that Ms. April had given birth to another baby boy and chosen to place the baby for adoption. Would we be interested in adopting him?

Wow...at that exact moment we were trying to juggle feeding our 20 month old and 8 month old in a restaurant without being too disruptive and also eat ourselves (eating is only a means to an end, we stopped enjoying it a while ago).

How could we? But then, how could we not?

The rest of the vacation was pretty much a blur as our hearts were heavy with the decision we had to make. The kids had fun at the water park and in the arcade. Brett had his first experience at Chuck E. Cheese and riding a horse. Lydia rode a merry-go-round. And the whole time we were thinking, "How could we do this with three?"

We returned home on Monday. By Wednesday, we pretty much convinced ourselves to say "no". But something stopped us from making that call.

Matthew 14:29-31 says:

"Come," [Jesus] said. Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, "Lord, save me!" Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. "You of little faith," he said, "why did you doubt?"

I recall a message I once heard on this passage. The speaker shared that when we take our eyes off Jesus and focus on our circumstances, we begin to sink. Our anxiety gets the best of us and our faith is squelched.

Thursday morning, I woke up to an email from Bryan that said, "What is God leading us to do?" and an e-devotional:

Psalm 121:1-2
I lift up my eyes to the hills—where does my help come from?
My help comes from the LORD

I took the kids for a long walk around the neighborhood and this time instead of trying to figure out an equation with too many variables (How important is biology? How do I go to the store with 3 babies? What kind of crazy configuration is two bio adopted brothers with one bio daughter? etc.), I just prayed, "Lord, is this baby our son?"

No, the clouds didn't open up and a voice from the heavens did not boom, "YES". But I began to realize that our fear was not a good enough reason to say "no".

Philippians 4:6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.

1 Peter 5:7
Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.

Thursday evening, we attended a dinner for a missionary our church supports. Walking out of the dinner to go pick up our kids from the nursery, Bryan grabbed my hand, and said, "Let's do it." And Friday morning Bryan called Debbie.

I used to believe in coincidences. Now I mostly just believe in miracles.

We have three of them.

Introducing

Reginald David Wedan

Born: August 6, 2009, 7:49 am

7 pounds 1 ounce

20.5 inches long

Waiting for him to be in our arms!

All the ways of the Lord are loving and faithful - Psalm 25:10

Just over a week ago, we learned Brett's "brother from the same mother" needed a forever family. God has blessed us with another son - Reggie!