My Turn

Ok, many of you might be wondering where is Nate during all of this. Well I am here and it takes me a little longer to get my emotions and feelings in order.
First, I want to thank Kristi for everything she has done to bring Kobe home. Kobe as no idea that he is going to have the best mom a person can ask for! I am truly lucky to be married to such a caring and loving person. I love you Kristi! You are the best.
I am truly excited to be a father. I can not wait to bring Kobe home and be able to spend all of my energy and love on my baby boy! I will not lie to you I am scared and nervous about being a father. I want to be the best father I can be. I am looking forward to reading to Kobe before bed, and I can not wait to take him fishing and hunting.
Kobe, I can not wait until you come home and complete our family.

A little something for Kobe...

We are so excited. We "met" (if you can call typing to someone on the C4C forum) meeting, a couple from Bozeman, Montana that is adopting a little boy that is a month younger than Kobe and sharing the same room. They are visiting the creche next week and have agreed to take a little package down for him! Woohoo an excuse for me to shop the baby stuff at Target!!! We are sending a small square cuddle blanket, a little crib toy, and a baby photo album that says "Who Loves Baby?" and we put our photos in it. They are going to take "bunches" of photos and give him lots of hugs and cuddles for us! I am so excited. I just wish they had enough room for ME in their suitcase.

Crèche de l'Enfant Jesus

Quickly I want to thank everyone who helped us with our mountains of paperwork that started last July. Our friends and family who wrote reference letters and are still working on getting the notary statements just right (sorry) are the best!

Ok on to fun stuff. I just thought while I am waiting (very impatiently) for an update I thought I would catch everyone up on my research. (imagine that, me, research, no way)

Kobe Loudince is at the Crèche de l'Enfant Jesus, lovingly referred to as the creche from this point forward for obvious reasons. They speak Creole and French in Haiti. I am learning Creole. The creche has a preschool program in English for all the children, except the babies. I mentioned before we sent a photo page down to the creche to hang above Kobe's bed. The nannies point at our photos and tell the children who we are. They do wonderful things to prepare the children for their adoption, as much as one can for such an event. If anyone is interested in learning more about the creche their website is: www.chances4children.org

Which brings me to the Chances for Children organization. Chances for Children (C4C) is based in Scottsdale, Arizona. C4C is set up to support the creche. They have many objectives to better the lives of people in Haiti. Although I don't have much experience with international adoption I have been "researching" my brain out and C4C along with the staff of the creche seem to be extremely competent and provide excellent care for the children. It's actually very comforting.

We are working with Heritage Adoption Services based in Oregon and licensed in Oregon, Washington, and Montana (possibly Alaska as well). They are also awesome. After much "research" (do we see a pattern?) I decided on Heritage because of my first contact, Vivian. Who also just so happens to be our social worker and the coordinator for the Haiti and Guatamala programs. Vivian is quite simply really really good.

Ok thats all for now, this has turned into a novel.

A little More About Kobe!

Kobe was born in Abricot, Jeremie in the Department of Grand’Anse in Haiti on January 9, 2007. In Haiti the "Department" is similar to our states. Grand' Anse is known as one of the most beautiful provinces in Haiti. Check it out on the map here:

One more thing...

I forgot to mention the caregivers at the orphanage are called "Aunties" and they say that Kobe is a sweet baby boy who is often found cooing and babbling in his crib. They also say he is curious and once he is put down can be found crawling all over the place. Right now he is trying to pull himself up on his feet. Ok that's all for today, I think!

Catching up...

Ok so in order to get this blog off to a good start I better catch it up to now...

On October 15th we got "the call" to anyone involved in adoption you know that feeling. It's the same feeling I had when I was eight years old and we got "the call" that my brother was born. Our social worker called us at 6:21pm...PM!!! I had been waiting all day (actually longer) for that call. Nate was at a CPR class...haha!! To make a long story short I called him, he came home.

We stared at Loudince's photo and got excited and get this... we even held his photo up between us and looked at our little family in the mirror....we are a *cute* family, let me tell ya.

We had a couple of cute boy names we liked but they just didn't fit little Loudince. So we started over it didn't take us long to decide Kobe fit him perfect and so that is how we named him Kobe Loudince.

We called people, we called the grandma's and grandpa's and everyone we could find numbers to. Then, we looked for more people to call. Finally, we didn't know who else to call so we went to bed.

On October 16th, we accepted our "referral." We sent off the paper work and made a little poster of photos of us to hang above his crib. I sent his one little photo to Costco so I could frame his adorable face!

That pretty much catches us up to now. So now we wait, we wait for more photos, we wait for an update, we wait to see a video, we wait to visit him, and we wait to bring him home. You get the point.

Baby Blog!!!

I have started this blog to let everyone know where we are in adopting our new baby boy! The process for adopting from Haiti takes some time and patience. The patience part I'm not so good at. We hope this will be an easy place to post photos and information about our son as we received updates from his EXCELLENT orphanage in TiMache, Haiti. Although we have not been there we have seen photos and heard numerous accounts of how immaculately clean the facility is. We know that our baby boy is receiving lots of love and great care while we are working through the paperwork to bring him home.