Joined at last. Miriam Orit is home!!!

We are so thankful to have Miriam home!!  She is thriving!!  Her brothers are loving her and Mark and I are adjusting to the added wonderful chaos! 

Thank you for your continued support, thoughts, and prayers.  We need them now more than ever!

We Passed Court!

We are home from beautiful Ethiopia and are getting back on California time! 

The boys did so well at home thanks to Grandma (Chrissy's Mom, newly married and beautiful bride Tia Jenny, and Grandpa (Chrissy's Dad).  

We hope to have Orit home in early 2012.  We are still working on her official name.

Thanks to everyone for your support, thoughts and prayers!!!

The Boys are Growing

Nicco has been home over a year and what a blessing he is!! He is thriving! He is almost 2 and loves to climb, run, and dance.

Lucca is an awesome big brother! He is 4 years old, attends preschool, and loves to play batman.

Mark and Chrissy are trying to keep up with the boys!

We are growing our family once more through adoption.

Our paper chase is over and our paper work is in Ethiopia. We will keep you posted on our progress. Thank you for your continued love, support, and prayers.

We are home!

We are thrilled to be home with our precious son Nicco!! Hooray! Our trip to Ethiopia was amazing and another life changing adventure. How truly blessed we are to have two beautiful sons through adoption! Thank you all for your thoughts, prayers, and support.

Our Family and Hearts are Growing

We are overjoyed to announce the near arrival of our son from Ethiopia:

Nicco Ravera

We will be traveling mid February to bring him home! Lucca (almost 3 years old) continues to fill our lives with joy and happiness. We thank everyone for your thoughts, prayers, and support as we continue our journey to grow our family.

US Re-adoption. Hooray!

Hello friends and family. Thank you for your continued thoughts, prayers, and support. Today we officially completed Lucca's adoption. Hooray! We underwent a US re-adoption at the San Luis Obispo County courthouse. Lucca is growing and doing very well. Our attachment with him continues to deepen. It is such a blessing and joy to be parents. Again we thank you for all of your support!

Settling In

Thank you for your continued thoughts, prayers, and support! We are thrilled to be home with Lucca. He has learned to crawl and is exploring the ground level world. We find the life altering change Lucca is going through inconceivable. He may not consciously remember the events of the last month, yet is experiencing immense loss including feelings of trauma and grief. He is struggling with feeling safe and secure and developing his trust in us.

We need your support now more than ever to promote our attachment with Lucca. We as parents are currently disposable to him. He has no healthy stranger anxiety and seems to be looking for his next Mommy to come take him away. Until he has learned that we are his parents, we will need to be his primary caretakers at all times. It is essential that we always hold him, feed him, and do all of the nurturing. It may appear that we are spoiling him, but have been advised that we need to meet every need quickly and consistently. We are unsure of how long this will take.

You can support our attachment work by doing the following:

• Do Not pick up, carry, or hold Lucca
• Do Not: nurture him, baby talk, cooo-chee-cooo, or engage him in games like peek-a-boo(hard not to do, he is so darn cute!)
• Do not try to establish a special personal relationship with Lucca
• Disrupt long periods of direct eye contact or gazes with him
• Redirect Lucca back to his Mom and Dad if he is overly friendly, waving at you, smiling for long periods, reaching out to you, trying to be cute and entertaining. This is likely to occur with other women. You can say, “Where is your Mommy? Oh. There she is”…

We have waited excitedly for the arrival of Lucca but he has not been waiting for us. We trust that you as our family and friends will help us to do what is best for our son. We thank you for your support and understanding and apologize if we have offended anyone. We can’t wait to achieve attachment so Lucca can establish loving relationships with all of you who make our lives so rich! Please let us know if you have questions or would like additional information regarding our attachment work.

Happy New Year!