Pics from Zoe’s Birthday Party

Zoe’s birthday party was yesterday.   She certainly seemed to enjoy herself!  We timed the party so that we would have it in the middle of the day.  We decided to do an all-dessert party, so we had a huge dessert table set up. Our theme was cupcakes and the colors hot pink, orange, yellow, and lime green.   My family made lots of yummy things to eat – cookies, brownies, chocolate covered pretzels, chocolate covered marshmallows – you name it!  My friend and I made lots of desserts, too – cookies that looked like cupcakes and lollipops, chocolate covered oreos, cheesecake pops, Bumpy-cake cupcakes (if you’re from this area, Bumpy cakes are very popular), and vanilla cupcakes with lemon frosting.  (I know I posted a lot of food pics below, but everyone worked so hard on everything, so I wanted to show it all off…hope you don’t mind!)

Zoe had fun playing with everyone, especially her little cousin who is close to her age.  She also got to spend the afternoon with her birthmom, Z, her birth grandparents, and her birth uncles.  They made the trip to my parents’ house for Zoe’s big day.  It meant SO much to us that they were able to do that.  We had a wonderful visit with them, and it was great for them to meet our family and for our family to meet them. 

Here are a few pictures from Zoe’s day:

Above:  Zoe in the morning at home before the party (I love how excited she looks!)

Above:  Paper flowers made by my sister, Tracy, and a 12 month banner made by me

Above:  The dessert table

    

Above:  Cookies and chocolate covered pretzels made my my sister, Janice

Above:  Another view of the table 

 

  

Above:  Brownies made my sister, Tracy

 

Marshmallows from my cousins Karen and Alicia plus Forgotten Cookies and Ricotta Cookies that my mom made!

 

    She wasn’t too sure about the cupcake but she did like making a mess out of it!

  

Above:  A gift from Steve’s mom – Steve’s family are huge football fans!

 

   

 

My parents and Zoe Zoe opening a gift from her birthmom and her family

That’s one way to open a gift!

 

Looking fancy in a sparkly top from Mom-Mom Cheryl!

Phone calls, birth names, and adoptive names

I’m going to just write a short post --  I really need to be writing my lesson plans for next week!  I seem to run out of time when I’m at school, so I brought my plan book home with me.  I wanted to answer a couple of questions that were asked in the comments from my last post, though.

Patti asked if we’ll get to talk to Zoe’s birthmom (Z) over the next few days.  We hope to possibly talk to her tomorrow, but in case she’s not home/or busy, we’re sending her a bouquet of flowers.  We added a note that we’ll be thinking of her.  We also invited them to Zoe’s birthday party on Saturday and Z said that they are planning on attending.  We’re very excited for them to see how much Zoe has grown since our trip to the zoo with them in June!

Anonymous wrote:  “I didn’t realize Zoe had a "birth name" and an "adoptive name". Can you please explain?”  Before Zoe was born, her birthmom asked us if we had thought of any names for the baby.  We had thought of 2 girl names and 2 boy names.  She said she liked them all, but she mentioned that of the girl names, she preferred Zoe.  We liked “Zoe” before we had ever met Z (her name is not Zoe, by the way.)  We loved that she liked the name, and we loved that it started with the same letter as her name.  Her middle name is also in honor of her birthmom and her birthgrandma.

As far as her birthname is concerned, Zoe’s birthmom chose a name that she wanted to give to her.  At the hospital all of the paperwork for the original birth certificate is filled out by the birthmom or birthparents, and the name that she/they want to give the baby is filled out by them.  Sometimes a birthparent will choose to name the baby the same name that the adoptive parents chose and that name will be on the original birth certificate.  Sometimes adoptive parents choose to not change the child’s name (I think this probably happens a lot in the case of adoptions of older children, in particular.)

Zoe’s original birth certificate has her birth name (this includes her birthmom’s last name) on it.  Her more recent birth certificate that we got after her adoption was finalized has her adoptive name on it (including our last name.)  We are in the process of changing things over and filing paperwork to include her adoptive name (such as health insurance and social security.)

Hope that all makes sense.  I’m not working on much sleep at the moment! 

It’s almost been a year…getting the call that it was almost time!

One year ago today, I was telling my classes that Steve and I were adopting a baby.  I had just told them that I would be taking the year off from teaching and staying home.  Here’s the link:  http://wendy-steve-andg3.blogspot.com/2009/09/6-days.html. 

I can’t believe that…it feels like it was such a short time ago.  Just today some of my 5th graders were asking me about adoption.  They wanted to know why Zoe’s birthmom chose adoption and what her birth name was.  They wanted to know why we chose her adoptive name.  They asked a lot of questions, and I got to talk a little bit about what an open adoption means.   They were so interested – it was really nice. 

Tomorrow is a year ago that we got the call that Zoe’s birthmom was at the hospital because her water had broken.  What an exciting phone call that was – we were hoping and praying that everything would be okay with her (which we didn’t know at the time she was a she!) and her birthmom.  We waited all night long for a phone call to tell us that she had had Zoe at 4:35am on Sept. 16th.  What a looooonnnnnng night!