Catching You Up-Part One

We have much to catch up on! While I won't bore you with the minutia detail of the last seven months, I do want to share a few pictures of our first months with our little man.

Na'Im joined us on January 12, 4 days before Michael's birthday. I received a call from DYFS while at work asking us to consider taking him in. We had put those calls on hold while we sorted ourselves out, but had just been saying we should contact our caseworker again. I was told there was a one year old boy who was on the adoption list and needed to be placed immediately into a new foster home. Usually, DYFS doesn't tell you the child's name until you agree to take them, for privacy reasons, but for some reason this lady told me his name...and I knew he was our boy. Michael and I had settled on the female version of his name, Naimah (means peace, calm), if we ever had the chance to have a daughter who we could name ourselves, so when I heard his name was Na'Im, my heart leapt. We went right into hyper planning mode, getting the portable crib out of storage, setting it up in our 1-bedroom apartment, which meant moving our bed closer to the wall to fit the crib, etc. I rushed home from work as did Mike, and at about 7:00pm, our doorbell rang and there was our 19-month old baby. The caseworker handed me this little bundle of hair and winter jacket and he snuggled right up to me. While Michael helped her bring in his stuff (he came with clothes and toys, which our last foster kids didn't) I woke Na'Im up and we began to introduce ourselves. I'll never forget the first time he looked in my eyes and we just sat there staring at each other. We'll never know what he was thinking, but I was so overwhelmed with joy and in awe of this perfect little human being, who had just been handed over into our care. The caseworker checked to make sure we had everything set up for him and as she left, I was holding Na'Im and Mike was standing close to us and we were all three of us just looking at each other and smiling. She commented "It's like he already knows you.". That was the start of our seven month long love affair with our little bundle of joy.

We've learned a lot about his situation since then, and come to find out, he wasn't on the adoption list when he joined us, he has two older brothers who are in foster care, and there are many other complicating factors going into our adoption process with Na'Im. But, through God's grace, we have started the adoption process! More on that later.


(The pictures above are from his first 3 days with us. Poor baby had never had a haircut and it was so matted and dry and had a ragtail in the back, I had to give him a series of three haircuts to get it down to where it was manageable.)