Update

Wow! You all are amazing. I cannot believe the responses we have had to our blog. So many people have come up to me and asked if we are going to continue blogging. No wonder things went so smoothly for us. There were friends of friends of friends following our journey and praying for us. We cannot thank you all enough. I will continue to update the blog for sure. Your comments served as a constant source of encouragement when we were anxious, frustrated, and homesick. Your prayers are what helped us through.

Quinton is absolutely coming alive! He is thriving before our very eyes. I don't know what all to say-words just can't describe the joy he had brought to us. His smile lights up the room. It is so special to rock him to sleep at night and to be greeted in the morning with a huge grin. There is really nothing better. He loves the bathtub, rattles, and anything that makes noise. He loves having a mommy and a daddy and a family and friends. He is sitting up on his own now like it's no big deal even though just a few weeks ago he needed help holding his head up. He is not crawling yet but does a great inchworm scoot and is now getting up on all 4's. I think he will be crawling before we know it. It is so fun to see him transform. We have 18 days before I have to return to work and I plan on soaking up every moment with him that I can. Here are some pictures from the past few days. They're not in order and I'm too tired to fix them...sorry ;)

We Are Alive ;)

We had a very long trip home, but we made it and Quinton flew like a champ. Aside from this stomach bug I picked up, we are all doing very well. We are exhausted and still trying to get adjusted to a time change. How do you convince a baby that regardless of what his body thinks, it is not time for bed? Oh well. We will get there.

We were so blessed to have been greeted at the airport by lots of friends and family who even waited around for almost 2 hours after our flight to get out of customs to welcome us home! Thank you all so much. It was so special.

Quinton is doing fantastic. He has changed so much from the first time we met him almost 2 months ago. He is sitting up on his own, bearing weight on his legs, and interacting and smiling all the time. He is loving having a mommy and a daddy and I am sure if he could talk he too, would thank you all for your love and support. We could not have gotten him home without you all.

It is 3:00 am here so I am not going to wake Brian up for him to show me how to get pictures from the camera to my Mac (the camera card won't fit and I think you need a USB cord or something), but I will try my best to have him help me upload some when he wakes up.

Well, since we are home now, our lives as a family of 2 have come to a close and an amazing journey of like as a family of 3 has now begun. We thank you all and thank God for our little boy and for our match made in heaven. We love you all!

Flight Information

We are so busy packing that there's no time to blog right now. I just wanted to share our flight information as many people have asked about meeting us at the airport.

We are flying home on Lufthansa flight LH428, Munich to Charlotte, arrives at 3:25PM.
Please remember that we have to get through customs before we make it to baggage claim.


Thank you all for your support and prayers!

Heading Home

Our journey here in Ukraine is coming to an end and we are slowly but surely making our way home. Last night we took the overnight train from Quinton's region to Kiev. We arrived at 6:40 this morning, picked up another family, took them to their apartment, and went straight to our embassy appointment. After the embassy, we went to the medical clinic for Quinton's medical clearance. Everything went great. He weighs about 9 kilograms now which is close to 20 pounds and is about 29 inches tall. Tomorrow we will return to the embassy for our final appointment and interview at 2:00. We will receive Quinton's visa then we will go back to the apartment and sleep a few hours before we leave to catch our flight HOME! Thank you, Jesus! We are so ready to be home. All things considered, Quinton is doing pretty well. There is so much change for him, I can only imagine how he is feeling. It is overwhelming to us, so it has to be so hard for him. On top of it all, he is teething. I can feel his top front tooth cutting through his gums and he is not feeling too good as a result. I gave him some children't ibuprofen and it seemed to help some. I am thankful that he is sleeping now, but I am sure I will pay for it later tonight. That is when I will hand him over to Brian. He got a nice 3 and a half hour nap today so daddy is on duty tonight!

Here are some pictures of our own little Curious George... He is a cute little monkey :) He was in a room with us, playing on the floor. All of a sudden he noticed a cracked door and went for it. Every few seconds he would look back at us to see who was going to stop him. He finally made it through the doorway and looked around and then decided to come back out where all the fun was. Love him!

Fun at the Park

Today we met Tonya at the bus stop. We rode into the city and then took a tram to a children's park nearby. It was fun to get out and go do something different. I have been stuck inside unable to truly enjoy my little boy since we got him because he was sick and then I was sick. The fresh (if you can call it that) air was nice and we had a really good time. First all 4 of us rode the paddle boats. I swear I think Quinton would have jumped out and into the (green) water if I would have let him. I asked Brian if I could just stick his toes in. He said no because Quinton puts his feet in his mouth LOL. During out boat ride, we were also thoroughly entertained by a girl in a blow up hamster ball trying to walk on the water. I had debated trying it just for funnies, but after watching her never get up off her knees, I am glad I opted not to.

After the boat ride, Tonya talked us into a few amusement park rides. Brian got on those swings that go round and round with her. I said "no way". The last time I got on those things, I was probably 7 years old and smiling so big the first few times around. The next thing you know, my face was green. I will NEVER EVER get on those again. Ask my dad. He will tell you. Next I took Quinton on a Ferris wheel. He cared absolutely nothing about it. Oh well. Can't win them all. The last thing we did was bumper cars. Tonya and I were the only ones riding. It did not take long for me to figure out that these cars go way faster and hit way harder than any bumper cars I had ever been on. It was all fun and laughter until I started going backwards and Tonya ran into me from behind and my neck cracked. I really thought for like a millisecond that I had broken my neck by the sound it made. It feels ok now, but I am dreading waking up in the morning. I don't know if I'm going to be able to move. We would have loved to have stayed longer, but our little guy was sleepy and needed his medicine so we headed back to the house.

As we were walking from the bus stop to the house, it started pouring rain. Yay! Good thing we had the stroller with us. It came with a waterproof cover so Quinton did not get wet. He took a short nap then ate dinner, took some children's benadryl (a test to see if it would help him sleep on the train and plane-it failed by the way), played for a while and then went to sleep.

We have  a busy day ahead of us tomorrow. We have to go get Quinton's passport and clean up and pack up. We leave this region tomorrow night at 10:45 and arrive in the capital on Tuesday at 7:00am. Then we have our embassy appt. at 9:00. In just a few days we will be home. I will post flight information soon so that anyone who would like to come meet us at the airport can do so. We would love to see you all! But for now, if you are planning on coming I would say maybe try to be at the Charlotte Douglas Airport by 3:00 or so. Our flight arrives at 3:25, but we have to get through customs first :P

That's all for now :) I'm not sure if I will get to post tomorrow night because we will be on at train beginning our journey home!!!!!! Goodnight :)

Short and Sweet

Today was a good day for Quinton. He is feeling so much better and seems to be back to his normal happy self. I also think he is really starting to get this mom and dad thing. I feel like he is starting to understand that we are always going to be here for him and that we love him so much. He is such a good kid. He is even patient with me when it takes me 3 tries to make him something for dinner that he will actually eat. I know-some people probably think it is ridiculous to make that many meals, but we are still figuring him out and we can't have him hungry or dehydrated, so we are just feeling our way through everything. There are not many pictures today because I have been sick with a stomach bug for a few days. I think I am finally on the mends though :) We are less than a week away from home!

Sorry if you're tired of seeing the same things over and over again. We are tired of playing the same games over and over again too LOL.

What's In A Name?

I had someone ask in one of the comments if we ever announced Quinton's middle name. I honestly don't remember if we did on the blog or not, but we did on facebook. Sorry-I forget sometimes that we have different readers on different networks. So as most of you know, in the end we decided on the name Quinton Jonathan Miller, but I don't believe I have told the story of how we came about it.

First things first. The name Quinton came from Reece's Rainbow. The children on this site are listed with alias names. We did not realize this until we were already several steps into the process. We came to know him a Quinton and the name just stuck so we kept it. I'ts cute and the nicknames that went with it were too hard to give up.

The hard part for us was picking out a middle name. We had toyed around with Alexander, but we found out that it is a Ukrainian tradition to give each son a patriarchal name. The do this by using the father's first name followed by "ovich" (I think). We found out that Quinton's birth father's name was Alexander and we were not to fond of keeping his father's name since  he decided to give him away (thanks Mr.-your loss, our gain).  We asked for suggestions from friends for fun and got lots of great suggestions. We thought that we had plenty of time to decide, but we were wrong. We were riding in the car and Marina said "ok, I need to know the child's new name." Hmmm...we had about 5 minutes to decide. Brian pulled out his phone that had an app on it about names and meanings. I told him that I had remembered someone suggesting a name that meant "gift from God" which was perfect. He looked it up and both Matthew and Jonathan had the same meaning. So, we said it over and over again and I still could not decide so I left it up to Brian and he chose Jonathan. Just in case you missed it, later we played a joke on facebook. We explained the Ukrainian tradition and announced his name as Quinton Brianovich Miller just for laughs. (If you don't know-Brian is my husband's name). We got a few good laughs. I also toyed with the idea of announcing him as Quinton Oneless Miller (for one less orphan) and Quinton Minusone Miller (for 147 million orphans-minus one). I wanted to do them all, but in the end we went with Brianovich just because it was the most believable.

The last name was a given :)

So there you have it: Quinton Jonathan Miller

Everyday with Quinton gets a little bit better. We are learning more and more about him all the time. I am hoping that soon we will start to recognize what his signals are: when his little grunts mean his tummy hurts or when they mean he is frustrated or hungry, when his cries mean he is scared or when he just needs to be loved on or....when he is just being a booger. I am pretty sure we had a lot of the latter going on today ;) One of the toughest things is figuring out where to draw the line. He is starting to fuss more and more when he wants us or if he is not sitting facing the way he wants, or if he wants something he has dropped. I am so tempted to give into it all because for so long he has been without. I want him to know that we are here for him, but I know he will have to learn that he cannot have everything he wants. Right now we are not giving him lots of "things" we are just showering him with attention and love and I think it is making him rotten LOL!

Tonight Quinton fell asleep in my arms. Brian came in and asked me if I wanted him to lay Quinton in the crib and I told him not yet. I rocked him in my arms for what seemed like forever until my arms burned and then I sat down with  him in my lap and just thanked God for my precious little boy, for Quinton Jonathan Miller-my gift from God-my match made in heaven :)

We have tickets on the overnight train from Quinton's region to the capital. We are working on booking flights for Thursday of next week. If we get the flight we want, we will be in Charlotte at 3:25 pm! Yay!