And then there were FOUR

Lars David Christian

      

Arrived on June 13th at 1:20 p.m.

Pushing the scales at 6lbs 2oz and reaching 18 inches long.

He arrived a little early in great health and an easy delivery.

His birth mom is so sweet. She thanked us, can you imagine!, over and over again for allowing Lars to join our family. We were overcome by her kind words and so grateful for the choice she made to carry this beautiful boy and place him in our arms.

We were matched with Lars’s birth mom on June 2nd and the plan was for her to be induced on June 23rd. You can imagine our excitement once we learned we would soon be adopting another baby boy. And so soon!! Lyla turned 1 on June 2nd and Masie won’t be 2 for another couple of weeks. 3 kids under the age of 2. I don’t know why we have been so blessed to have our kids join us so quick. We’re a little of an anomaly in the adoption community. We have so many friends that have been searching for their kids for years while we’ve been placed with 4 in the last 4 years. I’m overcome with joy for our beautiful spirits and their courageous birth moms. I know that these children were meant to find us. I know that we never stopped working to find them. I also have the faith that you will find yours if you continue to search for them.

Ok, so how did we so speedily adopt again??!! It was good timing, a little miscommunication, and a special feeling overcome by Lars’s birth mom. I called our agency (A Guardian Angel Adoptions located in South Jordan, UT) a few weeks before I again filled out their application. Just to get a feel for how adoptions were moving and if the “professionals” thought there’d be a chance we’d be lucky enough to be placed with a 4th. I was assured that it happens and please quickly get our application and profile to them. It took me a couple of weeks to prepare things. I mean, I do have 3 kids keeping me busy. My final step was to add our new and amazing family photos to our profile (see previous post). Right before I mailed our profile and application on Friday May 28th I called and left a message with our agency, “Hey, it’s Emrie. Just wanted to let you know I’m sending you our stuff. Super excited to start looking again! Um, yeah, so call me back if you want.” Ha! What a little phone call can do.

Chris from A Guardian called me on Wednesday morning leaving a message, “I’m going to be presenting profiles to S* today wondering if you want yours included.” I got the voicemail and raced to check the delivery status of our application on ups.com… It wouldn’t be delivered until Thursday! WHY-OH-WHY didn’t I overnight it??!!! I called Chris back and said YES, please present us to S*, but what would you show her? Chris thought that the agency already had our goods. She quickly called the director to ask if it would still be ok for us to be presented if we could somehow get our profile to them. Yvonne said it would be fine since we’d worked with them through 2 previous adoptions, they knew our application would be legit. Chris offered to pick up our profile from a FedEx office in South Jordan if I could download it and pay to have it printed in UT. Quick! Have to say I’m in love with FedEx printing. Awesome service!! Our profile was ready for Chris by 2p.m. and she picked it up and added it to her pile of other hopeful adoptive families.

It was around 3:30 that day that I heard back from Chris. Could we have a phone interview with S* that evening?

Yikes! and Yes!

I asked if we were the only family S* had asked to talk to. Yep.

Because of a miscommunication with the time difference between UT and AZ, our caseworker, Jen, called at 6:30 when we thought she’d be calling at 7:30… We weren’t ready to talk because we had 3 crazy hungry kids climbing the walls around us. Can you believe I asked her to call back in another hour?? I just had to give S* my full attention. Thank goodness no one minded, and we had the girls down for bed and Miles snuggled in the couch watching cartoons when we finally talked with S*.

Her first words, “Congratulations! It’s a boy!”

We learned later that S* was given 8 family profiles to start. She sort of thumbed through them thinking, nope, nah, no, until she saw our family photo on the front page of my lengthy 13 page profile. She said she just “knew” her baby needed to be a part of our crew. She hadn't even read our profile and she chose us. We looked like the “nicest” family. Ha! I think now of all the hours I spent preparing those words, and they didn’t even matter. Oh well. S* said a weight had been lifted off her shoulders to have found the family that would take such great care of her baby. I’m so grateful she continued to feel that way even after meeting us.

It was Sunday morning a week and a half later that our caseworker called me to say S* had gone into labor. I booked the next flight I could catch, but missed the delivery by a couple of hours. I’ll post more about our stay in UT a little later.

It is the most amazing feeling to hold your baby for the first time. I don’t have to or get to carry my babies and there is an instant connection that this is right. We found each other. We are so blessed.

I’m just realizing as I’m getting to the end of my post that many of you wouldn’t think of 4 kids this close together as a “blessing.” I’ve always wanted twins and this is as close as I’m going to get. I wouldn’t want it any other way.

Love it!

I have to give a shout out to our friends and family who jumped right to the task of completing a reference letter. Also, my stay in the hospital could not have happened without the amazing support from my husband and my mother-in-law. More later about their good works.