Baby Predictions!

We've officially been in the pool for over a week now!  It's been a great week as there hasn't been any adoption homework or need to obsessively keep tabs on our pool entry process.  I know eventually that I will get anxious about a placement, but for now it's really nice just to settle in and to wait for things to happen.

While we're settling in, it's time to repeat something we did for our first adoption!  We put up a prediction thread letting everyone guess some basic things about our placement.  There was even one guess that got Dominic's exact birth month and year right!

Last time around, it was really fun with tons of predictions, so we're going to do it again here!  Just leave a comment here on the blog with your guesses for each of the entries below.  Whoever gets the closest wins a massive Super Deluxe Luxurious Grand Prize*!

Prediction Categories

• Placement Time:  Month and year
• Gender: Boy or Girl
• Birthfamily's Location: Washington, Oregon, Other, or a state/region of your choice

*Super Deluxe Luxurious Grand Prize may include a mention on the blog and a contractual obligation to provide 18 full years of babysitting.  Thanks in advance!  :)

It's a (Death) Trap!

In preparations for last week's homestudy interviews, I realized one super important thing that we'd completely forgotten.  Despite filling out or gathering over 32 separate pieces of paperwork for our homestudy documents such as reference letters, autobiographies, contracts, background checks, FBI background checks, birth certificates, marriage license, driver's licenses, self-assessments, tax returns, etc. etc., I realized that one key piece of making sure that our homestudy interviews pass with flying colors was having everything prepared on the homestudy checklist.  (Yet another list!)

This homestudy checklist requires us to have a home evacuation plan posted.   It also has lots of things on it that make sense for Katie to check off.  Basic items that legally need to be confirmed before saying a home is acceptable for a child.  You know, like running water, heat, smoke alarms, and that the house isn't a giant haunted house death trap. 

Back to the evacuation plan, it makes more sense for adopting older children, but it's kind of laughable to have to do one for a newborn baby.  Oh well, we did one last time around in our old house and I threw yet another copy of one together for our new house too.  While I didn't do a fancy version drawn up in CAD software this time around, I still took a little time make some pretty pictures for it in PowerPoint!

The next time any of you are over to visit, this will be conveniently posted next to our patio door.  Be sure to spend 2 minutes getting to know this while our house burns down around you before you take 2 steps evacuate along the golden path to freedom.

Also, since this is being posted after our homestudy interviews, I should probably mention that we passed with flying colors.  Hooray!  We'll likely post more follow up items in the future, but this is just a quick update for now.

Feeding the Cats

A couple friends of ours were out of town this weekend and asked us to take care of their cats. Sounds to me like a perfect opportunity for a Dominic lumberjack photo shoot!

"This is a really comfy bed."

"Um, who's this guy?"

Everyone's a critic.

Dominic tried to mimic the face on the art, with limited success.

Time for a few pull-ups!

Dominic got jealous of the kitties.

Winter's Here!

One of the fun things about having a newborn is that people love to give you baby clothes. Seriously, I don't think we'll have to buy Dominic an outfit for at least 6 months. And with a November birthday, a number of those outfits are winter or Christmas related.

With that in mind, Dominic wanted to do some modelling!

"Yeah, Santa asked me to fill in up north this year."

"No, no, no, the lighting is all wrong!"

"This is much better."

"Who's this guy?"

"No, too close, too close!"

"If I plank some more, will this be over faster?"

"Absolutely not. Mittens? On a onesie? Really?"

"Rawr!!!"

"This is much more to my liking."

"Baby camo time! Can you find me?"

"Pete can't find me, that's for sure."

"Hmm, I think I can make this outfit better..."

"...with a popped collar! Totally going for the preppy look."

"Or do I just look like a baby vampire?"

Dominic's Artistic Side

Dominic was really awake this morning around 7am.  After having most of his breakfast, we went downstairs to play with some toys.  Then I realized that he was really in an artistic mood when I was getting looks like these:

Ugh. Do you have your camera ready yet?

Ok, let's do this.  Here is my 'I'm too cool to care' pose.

Time for a moment of reflection and long-distance thinking.

I'm cute. You know. I know it. PS: Send a copy of this to Summer.

Following Dominic's masterful works of art and a showing of Blue Steel, I decided to take it to the next level to see if he could play the role of Houdini.  My current favorite toy for him (thanks to Brett and Kathleen!) is a fun little elephant with a green ring on one end and a yellow ring on the other which makes for some perfect magic trick handcuffs!

Oh no, I'm trapped!

Must... escape.

 Oh wait, he escaped that easily.  He's so bright and has a great future ahead of him. Also, this might just be proof that I shouldn't get up too early and be left alone with Dominic for too long without adult supervision  :)

Meanwhile, today Andy and I are getting legally married.  It'll be Dominic's biggest outing beyond the house and we'll also get to see Carly again!  We might not get a post up right away, but look for one in the near future.

Dominic's First Football Saturday

Dominic and Alex

As Dominic was lucky enough to be born during the football season, he is now 5 days old and experiencing his first football Saturday!  To start out the morning, Dominic gave us his own present by sleeping 4 straight hours from 3am to 7am.  He might have slept longer, but I got up and made sure he could have his diaper changed and get a feeding in.  After that, we moved downstairs to watch pregame activities.  However, Dominic crashed right away, so I had the joy of cuddling with both Dominic and Alex for a little while which was really nice.

Big boy pants!

Since I'm a big Nebraska fan, it's a guarantee that we would be watching daddy's team at 12:30pm.  Not only that, Grandpa Bill and Grammy Mary sent out a great Husker outfit for Dominic, so he could show some team spirit!  However, the "0-3 Months" outfit was a bit big.  We slipped him into a rather roomie onesie and then brought the pants over just for fun...he might have to grow into those  :)

Once Dominic was all ready to go, we took some fun family pictures in our Nebraska gear before heading downstairs to feed Dominic and do a quick Skype with Andy's mom before the game.

Daddy and Dominic

Papa and Dominic

Is it time for food?

Feeding time!

Baby Pick Em - Results

At the beginning of August, Andy put up a fun post inviting everyone to comment with their guesses on when we would have a placement.  Some brief facts before I list the results below:

• We entered the waiting pool on July 12, 2012
• Average placements per year range from 40-60
• There are currently at least 94 families in the waiting pool
• Assuming no families join the waiting pool, it would take 1 year and 10.5 months for all 94 families to be chosen at a rate of 50 placements/year
• May 29, 2014 is the date that matches a 1 year and 10.5 month waiting period

With that, here's the final tally of the 14 guesses.  We definitely appreciate all of the optimism!
 
Placement Date: (1) 2012, (11) 2013, and (2) 2014

Gender: (8) Boy, (6) Girl

Placement Location: (6) Washington, (4) Oregon, (2) California, (2) N/A

Date	Gender	Location
November, 2012	Girl	Oregon
January 2013	Boy	Washington
February 2013	Girl	California
February 24, 2013	Girl	Washington
March 2013	Girl	Oregon
April 2013	Boy	Washington
April (mid) 2013	Boy	N/A
July 29, 2013	Girl	N/A
August 2013	Boy	Washington
August 2013	Boy	Oregon
September 2013	Girl	Washington
October 2013	Boy	Oregon
January 2014	Boy	California
May 2014	Boy	Washington

Remember that January Snowstorm?

Now that we're in to the month of September, it's fun to think back on one of our major reasons on getting into the waiting pool as soon as we could.  Back in January, we had a giant snowstorm which shut things down around Seattle for a couple of days and also knocked out power.  As we noted in an old post of ours about 'Snowmageddon 2012', there does tend to be slight increase in newborn placements ~9 months following major weather events/power outages.

Even though the odds of that potential baby boom resulting in us being picked between now and mid-October are not high, we've certainly got our fingers crossed!  Also, I'm not a fan of rooting against humanity, but I might be secretly hoping for another snowstorm to come this fall/winter to boost our odds for 2013  :)

Stroller and Car Seat

A while back, we posted about our research and process in picking a car seat.  We ordered one and thought it would be fun to take a few pictures when we pulled everything out of the box.  Enjoy!

I was excited to open the boxes

Andy was excited to have instructions

An assembled stroller!  Without children around, we gave the cats first dibs, but they kept running away.

Alex looking warily at our new acquisition

Baby Pick 'Em

So, now that we're in the pool, it's anybody's guess when we'll get a placement. But if you guess correctly, you win a prize*!

Just leave a blog comment with these guesses. Whoever gets them all closest wins!

• Placement Month and Year
• Boy or Girl
• Birthfamily's state: Washington, Oregon, or Other

Have fun guessing!

*Chances are very high that said prize will be a mention on this blog. But, you know, isn't that awesome in and of itself?

Do You Have a Home Evacuation Plan?

On Monday we have Katie (our counselor from OA&FS) coming to our house for our first home visit. Needless to say, we've been cleaning up like freaks and trying to make sure everything's in tip-top shape! That giant hole our cats clawed out of the sofa? All patched up :)

In addition to just making sure we've cleaned everything up, the agency prepared us by sending along the checklist of things they have to verify for legal reasons. Most are common sense items, such as:

• The home has safe drinking water.
• Smoke alarms are in working order and located in every room in which a child sleeps.
• Swimming pools, wading pools, hot tubs, and other water hazards are inaccessible to children.

All those requirements? We're golden. We had to do a little bit of work for some of them (we didn't actually have a fire extinguisher, for instance), but they generally all made sense. One of them really came out of nowhere, though:

• The home has a posted home evacuation plan. It will be shared with the child or young adult at the time of placement and will be practiced at least one time every 6 months.

I mean... really? Because it's so difficult to just walk out the door? And we're definitely going to make our newborn do fire drills every six months - I'm sure they'll be really useful. Anyway, this is when it's useful that I'm married to a civil engineer. Brian and CAD to the rescue!

He missed a closet in the bedroom...

I can rest easy now that I know where to go in case of emergency!

Saturday Morning

Nothing says "Saturday morning" to me like pancakes, sausage, and filling out adoption homestudy forms!

A week and a half until the pre-adoption seminar, and it's our goal to have as many of these forms done as possible!

Snowmageddon 2012

One of the agency workers we were speaking to recently mentioned* that they tend to see an increase in newborn placements 9 months after any major power outages, major weather events, etc. So... let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!!

View from Our Condo

*Anecdotally, of course; she didn't have official statistics to back this up.