I had plans to update this site at least once a week but have been slackin’ big time! A lot of travel for work has kept me busy, and baby preparations have kept us both busy.

The baby room is coming along nicely and we can’t wait to show it off to everyone. I installed some chair railing which I must say turned out pretty good. It’s definitely not perfect but for a first timer it looks nice. When our little guy gets older we’ll tell him all about how his daddy worked out in the 110 degree heat for hours because he wanted to get everything just right. And had to walk to the hardware store in the snow uphill both ways.

Chanin has been working on a mural on the wall and it looks really nice. She’s quite the artiste! It’s turning out to be more work than we both thought but I know the end result will be worth it.

In other news, we’ll be going on a little vacation pretty soon and we’re really excited about that. We figure it’s going to be a while before we have another big vacation so we’re getting it out of our systems. Chanin read that it’s called a “baby moon” but I’m too embarrassed to call it that.

Shortly after we get back from vacation we’ll be much closer to the baby arrival time! We don’t want to wait any longer for his arrival but at least that give us some time to get everything ready.

We’ll try to update again soon!

So, now that we have the baby furniture out of the way we’re getting ready to start decorating the room. We agreed on a jungle theme and Chanin found a really cute bedding set called Jungle Babies by NoJo. We have some lofty plans for the room and are really excited to get it going.

Here’s a picture of the NoJo Jungle Baby products:

We’re planning on:

• A wall mural (by Chanin)
• Chair railing (by James)
• More Jungle Babies stuff to adorn the room
• A few surprises!

Here are some links to a few of the Jungle Babies things. We already purchased the bedding set and we have a lot of the other things on the ol’ baby registry.

NoJo Jungle Babies Hamper

NoJo Jungle Babies Milton The Monkey - Stuffed Animal

NoJo Jungle Babies Night Light

NoJo Jungle Babies Musical Mobile

NoJo Jungle Babies Lamp and Shade

NoJo Jungle Babies Freddie The Frog - Stuffed Animal

NoJo Jungle Babies Wall Hanging

NoJo Jungle Babies Rug - Rectangular

NoJo Jungle Babies Luxury Plush Throw Blanket

OK, I think that’s about it. I know, I know, it may seem like we’re going overboard but, hey, it’s our first baby. At the last ultrasound he was doing little monkey moves and roaring like a lion so we’re pretty sure that was his way of telling us that he wants a jungle theme in his room.

The baby room is coming along nicely and the furniture is all built. And, since we recently found out we’re having a boy we can start the decorating!

Here’s a shot of the room. I stitched the photos together so you may notice some odd angles.

A bigger shot of the crib:

A bigger shot of the dresser and changing table:

We’re looking at the bedding set next which will guide us with the rest of the room. We should have that picked by this weekend so we’ll post that when we’re all set.

First let’s see if you can guess what we’re having!

And here’s a little video:

And now for the big news…

It’s a BOY!

As a part of the adoption process, and to make everything legal, we need to satisfy some Arizona state requirements. The biggest and most stressful requirement is the home study. Basically, the home study is a process that all adoptive families need to complete before they’re allowed to legally adopt.

Here are the basic steps:

1. Contact an organization/person for help! Our lawyer recommended someone she’s worked with many times before. The home study has to be completed by a state licensed social worker.
2. They send us a packet of information which contains a list of things we need to supply. We had to provide things like family information, financial information, medical reports, fingerprints, references, urine samples, etc. OK OK, we didn’t need to provide urine samples, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if we did.
3. Our references are sent a questionnaire to fill out and return. We’ve done everything up to this point so far.
4. We schedule a home visit with the social worker. From what we understand she’ll come out and talk to us about adoption, family life, etc. She’ll also take a look at our house and just make sure we can provide a nice and safe environment for our child.
5. Then, she’ll write up a report with all of her findings.
6. At last, she’ll APPROVE us for adoption!!

We’re not too worried about the process but it is causing a little stress because the end result will determine whether or not we can adopt. We’ve been told that everything we’ll run smooth and we won’t have any issues so we’re pretty confident that’s how it’ll work out.

This is one of those things that makes adoption expensive. Typically, when you have biological kids you start paying AFTER the birth for all of the goodies. But, we’re very thankful and grateful about the whole thing and just happy that we’ll be starting our family soon.

We’re not the type to ask for help but if anyone would like to contribute to the baby fund we won’t stop you! Between this and the lawyer adoption is not cheap. And after all, we need to start saving for college!! You do want your grandchild, niece/nephew, cute baby you don’t know, friend to go to college don’t you?

Our baby has grown so much! He or she now weighs approximately 10 ounces and measures about 9-10 inches long from head to toe. A size described as the perfect fit for laying comfortably in the palm of one’s cupped hand. Additionally, our baby no longer resembles an alien as its limbs have now reached their relative proportions.

Our little one now has teeth buds and hair growing from its head, as well as fingerprints and lips that have become more fully developed. He or she has become a little listener, listening to the sounds of the world now that his or her ears have become fully operational. It has also started practicing breathing through its not yet fully mature lungs, and will even start getting the hiccups at times. Our baby’s growth rate will begin to slow down a bit at this point to allow for its lungs, digestive and immune systems to mature.

So much development has taken place in the last 4 1/2 months and our baby now really looks like a miniature human being. Even more exciting, on Monday, July 7th, we will get to see our little cutie through an ultrasound and find out if our little one is a boy or girl!! We will keep you all updated!!

We haven’t posted much yet about the actual adoption process so here it goes!

Chanin and I started talking about adoption pretty early on in our relationship, before we were married, and we’ve both always been open to the idea. Since the beginning we knew our medical histories could potentially cause problems when having a child naturally, so we kept our options open. Chanin and I have both always wanted to build a little family together so about a year ago we started looking into it more seriously. We requested adoption packets and did some research online and were pretty shocked at the cost. Using a private agency the cost was up to $40,000!!! There were some that were cheaper at around $25,000 but that’s still a lot of money for us (hard to believe right?!).

We also talked to our doctors and they explained all of the risks and we just didn’t think it was worth it. In order to start our little family we knew we’d have to be healthy and we wanted the highest chance of having a healthy baby. So, we were lucky enough to have a loving brother and sister-in-law, who offered to be a surrogate mother for us and we’re so grateful!

Now, we’re expecting our little baby in November and we’re really excited. In one of my next posts I’ll write a little bit more about the home study process we’re currently going through. Thanks for reading!

In just over 3 weeks we’ll be finding out if we’re having a boy or a girl. We’re super-duper excited and can hardly wait! We’ve heard a few opinions and the general consensus is that we’ll be having a girl.

What do you think?

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Hi it’s Chanin, or Mommy! Since we found out that we were expecting, I have been keeping an “old school” diary here at home. You know, the kind you write in with a pen using your hand muscles. However, because James has set up this really cool website, I have decided to start becoming high-tech and “type” a weekly log of our baby’s development. Well here goes my first post…

Week 17

This week our baby will have a big growth spurt. In addition, our baby will also start to plump up a bit. This new fat will be a source of energy and important for our baby’s metabolism. It will also help our baby to produce and retain body heat and pad its spine. Our fetus now measures up to 6.8 inches and weighs nearly 5 ounces!

Our little girl or guy has been working on two basic reflexes for a few weeks now: sucking and swallowing. Our baby has even began smiling and reacting to light. By the time our baby is born, it’ll have nearly all the reflexes that we do.

Our baby’s lungs are beginning to exhale amniotic fluid, and the circulatory and urinary systems are working. Hair on head, eyebrows and eyelashes are filling in.

We finally cleared out one of our rooms which will now be known as the baby room! We had to get rid of a few pieces of old furniture, and we were lucky to be able to sell them locally. So the next step was to build the baby room furniture. We bought a crib, dresser, and changing table a little while ago but had some issues with the quality. Some had some missing pieces and scratches so we had to get them replaced (but still waiting on a couple things). Once built the quality seems great but we’re disappointed that every single thing we ordered had at least one thing wrong, but oh well.

I built everything I had parts for and it all looks really nice. Below is a quick picture of me building. Yeah, I know I could’ve combed my hair but it was the weekend and I didn’t feel like it. We’ll take some more pictures of the final product but just ran out of time to take them.

Now, we’re just waiting to find out if we’re having a boy or a girl so we can finalize our decoration plans. That’s when it’ll get fun!

Here are some links to the products we got:

Graco Sarah 4-in-1 Convertible Crib

Graco Sarah Dressing Table

Graco Christon Combo