new pictures are here!

AND WE ARE IN LOVE with this beautiful child.

you guys are gonna think i'm crazy for posting any part of her picture after everything that happened with our first referral, but i can't help it because i think she is so beautiful and i am such a proud mama. and i suck at keeping secrets and such, so here is a little itty bitty look at one really adorable little girl!

NEW PICTURES!

and we are IN LOVE with this little cutie. She has changed sooooo much from her initial referral picture (it must have been when she was only a few weeks old).

Some Little things I've noticed:

She lost her hair (or maybe it was shaved, a very common practice in the orphanages)

she's a total little chub! Her cheeks are so chubby and cute

She's really alert, and seems to be enjoying her tummy time!

anyway, cris and I have been looking at her pictures and oooohing and ahhhing over how adorable she is. i just can't wait to bring her home!

no new June-Bug pics

i have to say i was dissapointed today that i didn' have any new email from our agency. i was really hoping to get some new pictures today. The one we have looks like she is maybe only about 6 weeks, and now she is 4 months, so i am really anxious to see how she is changing and growing.

and speaking of changing and growing, here is my 25 week belly! Nova baby is definately growing and moving and kicking. she is really active about this time at night. Everything is still going really smoothly with the pregnancy. I think i still have a while until i start to get uncomfortable and tired of working these 12 hours days, but as of right now I have tons of energy and i am really thankful that i am feeling so great.

no new June-bug pics

i have to say i was dissapointed today that i didn' have any new email from our agency. i was really hoping to get some new pictures today. The one we have looks like she is maybe only about 6 weeks, and now she is 4 months, so i am really anxious to see how she is changing and growing.

and speaking of changing and growing, here is my 25 week belly! Nova baby is definately growing and moving and kicking. she is really active about this time at night. Everything is still going really smoothly with the pregnancy. I think i still have a while until i start to get uncomfortable and tired of working these 12 hours days, but as of right now I have tons of energy and i am really thankful that i am feeling so great.

1/6th of the way done...

one week down, and 5 weeks to go before i head back to my own little house and my awesome husband. This is really a great rotation overall. I've been getting to do lots and lots of surgery, and basically no "busy work" (paperwork, notes, coding etc). so that part is great. I just really miss being away from Cris for so long. BUT i do get to look forward to seeing him, and the whole Stickley and Matus crew in about 2 1/2 weeks, which is really exciting. By then little Nova will be 7 months along!

yesterday i drove over to Nashville to take my yearly OB/GYN Residency exam. It is only administered at sites that have a residency program, and Vanderbilt is the nearest location. It's a 6 or 7 hour test, with lots of crazy and obscure OB related questions. Not really a pass/fail type of thing, just a way to gauge each persons knowledge base compared with all the other OB/GYN residents around the country. it's a little stressful, but really doesn't matter too terribly much. I have never been to nashville, and i didn't really have a chance to check it out at all yesterday, but in a few weeks i am meeting my sister in Nashville for the weekend and to explore a little bit.

Cris has been busy collecting Data for his research project. I think he may be able to be done with his PhD by December, which would be amazing. We are hoping he can get all the Data collection phase completed before we travel to Vietnam. And, he is only a week away from turing 35! Our time in hawaii has just been flying by. it's so hard to believe Cris will turn 35 this year, AND we will be celebrating our 3rd anniversary! We have really been blessed with so many wonderful things in the last few years, and we are so thankful that we have so much to look forward to!

Tagged and more

Today was a great day. It started with sleeping in until like 10 am (which is super late considering i usually get up at 4:30 or 5:00), then bumming around my little apartment. it was awesome to just have the day to do nothing. The Dr. i am working with here is super super nice. it's just that he wants me to hang out with his family like 24/7. which is fine, but i really really like my own time. and i had lots of it today!

i'm still dying with excitement about our referral. i have a feeling it's going to go really smoothly from here. i've spent the whole day feeling like pretty much the luckiest girl in the world. A million gazillion blessings are all around me! I have an awesome husband, a beautiful new daughter in vietnam, and this little life growing in my tum. Not to mention like a million other things i have to be thankful for. I'm hoping for some news and pics from Vietnam in the next few days, since our agency director is in Tam Ky.

Also, I was tagged by Angel over at A Fractured Fairy Tale.

4 Jobs I’ve Had:
1. Newspaper Girl
2. Working on the line in a factory (in the summer between 1st and 2nd year of med school)
3. Veterinarian Assistant
4. OB/GYN resident

4 Movies I’ve Watched Over and Over:
i HATE watching movies more than once. fortunately i have a ridiculously bad memory, so sometimes i end up watching a movie a few times, but forgetting i've seen it before. but i can't remember any move i actually would choose to watch more than once.

4 Places I Have Lived:
1. West Virginia
2. Ohio
3. Hawaii 4. that's it!

4 Shows I Watch:
1. Scrubs 2. Lost
3. Family Guy
4. Simpsons

4 Places I’ve Been:
1. Cuba
2. Pakistan
3. Alaska
4. Italy

4 People Who Email Me Regularly:
1. my hubby
2. the Gyno-Girls (other residents in my class) - tracy, torie, benny, sai
3. my sister
4. the adoption yahoo groups

4 Favorite Things to Eat:
1. anything fried
2. potatoes fixed any way (see #1 especially)
3. sushi
4. chiptole

4 Places I’d Rather Be:
1. Vietnam (Tam Ky to be exact)
2. my own house
3. a cruise ship
4. getting a massage at the spa

4 Thing I Look Forward to this Year:
1&2. Juneau and Nova
3. starting my last year of residency!
4. living it up in my last year of being in my 20's!

there you have it
In honor of my referral i'm tagging the Quang Nam families i know (i'm sure there are a bunch i'm missing!). i know most of you have already been tagged, so if you have you are off the hook!
Kelly from Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds
Kelleyo from Bunny's mom - it's been a while since you posted anyway! Guess you have your hands full with 4 kids now!
Susan of From God's Arms
Laurie of Pho for Four (only a few weeks until it's Five!)
Sherri of Finding Gracie

If you have a kiddo from Quang Nam leave me a comment so i can check out your blog!

It's a match!

On wednesday we got some great news from Vietnam! We wanted to wait a few days before posting to be sure that everything was ok, but we now are excited to announce our NEW REFERRAL!

Our agency director is in vietnam, and has a beautiful baby girl waiting for us at a small orphanage in the Quang Nam Province. Here are some details!

Vietnamese Name: Nguyen Thanh Thi Nga (she is called Baby Nga by her nannies)

New Name: Juneau Iris Stickley (of course!)

Birthday: September 21, 2007

Healthy!

Waiting for us at the Tam Ky Baby Orphanage in the Quang Nam Province of Vietnam

We are told that travel is anticipated somewhere between Apr and June (just about the time we expect little miss Nova to make her appearance!)

And, of course, here is our first glimpse of our beautiful baby girl (strange digital picture frame courtesy of the orphanage photographer in vietnam!):

the pictures are in....

and she is amazing. absolutely perfect and beautiful and sweet.

Here is some info about her:

She is 4 months old
She is in Tam Ky (quang nam province) - which is a surprise since the referral we lost was from Thanh Hoa. But to tell you the truth I am happy to be working in a new province.
She is healthy!
She's really cute when she's asleep (and I'm sure she's cute awake, but i don't have a picture of that one yet)

The emotions of looking at her picture are overwhelming. I remember seeing the picture from our first referral for the first time. Instantly smitten. I didn't know what it would be like to see our new referral pics. I thought it might feel like nothing, or kind of numb. But it is unbelievable.

yeah, so, i'm pretty much beyond elated right now.

Now all the tough stuff starts. For instance, i am the primary petitioner on our I600, so i guess we have to get it re-done to make Cris the primary petitioner since there's like a 95% chance i won't be travelling. only problem is i'm in Kentucky. so we'll have to work on that one. Also new fingerprints, b/c ours expire in March. Right now they are saying travel April-June timeframe. Who really knows, but looks like the little girls will be joining our family right about the same time.

did i mention she's amazing?

i'm dying here!

just got a call from the agency. i almost didn't answer it b/c i didn't know it was them, and i didn't feel like talking to anyone b/c i was right in the middle of an episode of arrested development (with no TV i am restricted to my DVD collection!) Anyway, luckily they were persistent and called back, and i answered.

And YES, WE HAVE A NEW REFERRAL!!!

Now i am waiting anxiously for the email to come through with her pics/medical info. I might die while i am waiting. seriously die. For real. I feel like there is like a butterfly colony in my stomach right this second.

Come on yahoo, don't hold up my email. just let it through, attachments and all.

kentucky...

is cold. and rainy. I got to KY on sunday afternoon for my surgery rotation. i am staying at a small apt one of the Dr's in the practice owns. sunday night was probably about the worst 14 hours of my entire life. well, looking back it wasn't so bad, but at the time i truly thought i might not wake up because i would be a frozen person. it was like 10 degrees outside, and inside this apt there was no heat. i mean, literally none. The thermostat read 48 degrees, and it never moved. i just got in bed and covered up with blankets at like 8:00 p.m., and tried not to move. i thought about turning on the oven, and leaving the oven door open to provide some heat, but i think that might be how people die sometimes. but i survived, and today the heat is fixed, so life is better.

other than that things here are pretty good. the days seem to be dragging along, b/c there isn't anything to look forward to at the end of the day. i don't even have a TV right now, so it's really kind of boring.

as we speak Kristine (agency director) is in Vietnam. maybe she's holding a little girl soon to be our Juneau. i can't stop thinking about what is going on over there right now. i just want to be there, and to hear what the orphanage director is saying. i want to know if i will have a referral by the end of the month. It's now been about 2 months since we lost our original referral, and i have to say that i am starting to feel a little anxious to see what is going to happen.

This weekend i head over to Nashville to take our yearly OB/GYN competency test. every OB/GYN resident in the nation has to take it, just to be sure we aren't falling behind. It's an all day affair, and really not any fun at all.

Then the upcoming weeks should be fun. They involve a trip to Willard, a visit from Cris (and then over to the Stickley Home for a baby shower!!), and a trip to Nashville with my sister. So hopefully the time will go by more quickly than the last 3 days have!

1 kind of cool thing is the OB/GYN's at the practice i am working at have a 4D u/s machine, and the tech is going to do a 4D scan for me! I can't wait to see what our Nova girl is looking like these days. We did a quick "old fashioned" ultrasound just before i left. For an athletic trainer Cris is getting pretty good a running the ultrasound machine. It's so fun to watch her! She's really a wiggly little thing. And I'm sure she's destined to be a regular little buckeye fan, since Cris is already giving her little talks about the Buckeye's. Last week before I left he was telling her all about the Heisman trophy winners.

guess that's it. i'll try to post more regularly now that i have nothing to do but sit around and shiver!

Kentucky....

is cold. and rainy. I got to KY on sunday afternoon for my surgery rotation. i am staying at a small apt one of the Dr's in the practice owns. sunday night was probably about the worst 14 hours of my entire life. well, looking back it wasn't so bad, but at the time i truly thought i might not wake up because i would be a frozen person. it was like 10 degrees outside, and inside this apt there was no heat. i mean, literally none. The thermostat read 48 degrees, and it never moved. i just got in bed and covered up with blankets at like 8:00 p.m., and tried not to move. i thought about turning on the oven, and leaving the oven door open to provide some heat, but i think that might be how people die sometimes.
but i survived, and today the heat is fixed, so life is better.

other than that things here are pretty good. the days seem to be dragging along, b/c there isn't anything to look forward to at the end of the day. i don't even have a TV right now, so it's really kind of boring.

as we speak Kristine (agency director) is in Vietnam. maybe she's holding a little girl soon to be our Juneau. i can't stop thinking about what is going on over there right now. i just want to be there, and to hear what the orphanage director is saying. i want to know if i will have a referral by the end of the month. It's now been about 2 months since we lost our original referral, and i have to say that i am starting to feel a little anxious to see what is going to happen.

guess that's it. i'll try to post more regularly now that i have nothing to do but sit around and shiver!

So excited for this year!

5 days in, and i can already say that 2008 has been going great so far. I'm so excited about pretty much everything this year will bring. Baby Nova is doing awesome. The last month and a half have been a lot different than the first 4 months. The nausea, and fatigue are gone, and everything is just going really smoothly. Cris felt her move for the first time last week. He said it felt kind of like a muscle twitch.


So far pregnancy has proven to be way easier than adoption (I know...i still have the hard part ahead of me!) It's just such a great feeling to have a Due Date. To know that in May at least one of our girls will be here. The last 15 months of waiting for Juneau have had so many many ups and downs (as most of you fellow PAP's have also experienced!). Pretty much everything about our adoption is out of our control. We have had to sit back and be spectators in this terrible experience of getting the referral of the most beautiful baby girl in the world, and 6 months later knowing that she isn't ours after all. Now we have to continue to wait, and start the whole process all over. I know everyone's adoption experience is unique, and everyone's pregnancy experience is unique, but the challenges we have faced with our adoption so far have been really difficult to deal with.
I can't wait until Juneau comes home, and the whole nightmare will suddenly not matter anymore. Just having her home will be such a miracle and blessing that we will probably forget all about the drama and heartbreak.

Anyway, this post started out happy about how awesome this year is going to be, and went downhill pretty quickly.
In AMAZING adoption news, E. (of Looking for George) has I600 approval!
Hopefully that means Laurie, Travis, Jackson, Shane and Belly Baby (of Pho for Four) have approval on the way, and that whole clan will be home soon.

Here is my first belly pic. Sorry, i'm not brave enough to do a Bare Belly pic. Also, i didn't feel like brushing my hair (and trust me, it's pretty scary), so you get the random headless pregnant photo.
5.5 months!

















And just so our other "baby" doesn't feel left out, here is Summit (chillin' out with Cris) in her Hawaii Winter gear. She gets cold at night, and likes to wear this little coat around.

2008, here we come!

We rung in the new year Hawaii style, with some friends and fireworks. Well, actually, i didn't totally ring in the new year, because i fell asleep around 10:30, but Cris joined in the neighborhood fun until after midnight. Hawaii is a crazy place to be on New Year's eve because pretty much every single house in the neighborhood sets off fireworks starting around 7:00, and ending after midnight. The whole neighborhood is filled with smoke.

Baby Nova is doing great! I am really enjoying this part of the pregnancy. the first four months were really no fun, but the last month and a half have been awesome! I can't believe I'm already 5 1/2 months in! After over a year of waiting for Juneau to come home, it is so weird to have an actual "Due Date".

Nova has been moving around like crazy. I felt her first about a month ago, and last week Cris was able to feel her moving also. He said it felt like a muscle twitch, but he could definately tell it was her wiggling around. Her movements have become much more pronounced in the last week, and sometimes she really catches me off guard.

I'm attaching a belly pic to show Nova (and my belly!) growing. At her ultrasound last week she measured in at 14 oz. I imagine she's probably just about a pound by now.
5.5 months

and just so our other "baby" doesn't feel left out, here is Summit in her Hawaii Winter wear. She gets cold at night, and likes to wear this little coat around.