Super Quick Update

Okay Malakai is waking up so here goes...Malakai started to sit up all by himself yesterday and is already a pro at it. He has also started rice cereal and tired squash with little success. He is still having a hard time with the sleep thing and naps are completely unpredictable if they even happen. He has gotten much better with his eye-hand coordination is grabing for toys much more now. He has even started to grow a little patch of hair on the left side of his head. It cracks me up since all the other hair is still fuzz but he has one long curl lol! If I have time I'll try to post some pictures of these events later.

Saving Grace

Okay, the kids are sleeping...for now...type fast...very fast. I wanted to post a much overdue post about our first week home. We arrived home very late on a Friday and came home to a wonderful welcome (as I posted before). Our nights were upside down, we were tired, stressed and disoriented, but thank the Lord, Grandma was here. The first day home we were so tired that we ended up sleeping from 11-4pm during the day and poor Aspen had to wait for us to wake up, I don't now what we would have done if she wasn't here to watch her. We were so blessed by all her hard work she cleaned, did ALL of my laundry, mopped my floor twice, played with and spoiled Aspen, took me shopping and out to eat for my birthday, and best of all washed bottles for us several times a day so that we were never out of clean ones. As I'm sure you can see why I was very anxious about this week knowing that she was going home and Jared was going back to work. I didn't know if I could handle the house work, two kids and myself on little or no sleep. I've pulled through, and actually God has blessed me and given me a fairly easy week (daylight hours at least). We will be forever grateful for the time Grandma was here while in ET and home, yep that makes it almost 4 weeks! It is so great to have someone to help like this, she even did the same for us when we had Aspen 3 years ago. I bet she's hoping were done with kids now hehe just kidding I don't think she could ever have too many grand kids:)

King Size Bed

Last night I was thanking the Lord for our king size bed. We have never been the type to have kids or pets in the bed with us, but last night we broke all the rules and had the whole family sleeping in the same bed...including the cat. Malakai has been having a very hard time staying asleep he wakes up a lot and still wants to be awake for a while. It seemed like he was sleeping better when was held or laying with Jared so he just slept on Daddy's belly. Sometime in the middle of the night Aspen came up and was upset so she climbed in too. I fear this might become a habit because Aspen has been waking up every night one or two times for a few months now. Before she has always gone back to her room and we cuddle, she goes back to sleep and then I come back to bed...well, we'll see how long that lasts now that she's had a night in our bed. I don't know how long I can take the the tag-team-waking that the kids have been doing. Night before last I got 3 hours of sleep when I finally got to sleep from 4:30-7:30 and then had to get up for Malakai's doctor's appointment. All I can think is "this too shall pass"

On a happier note, at his doctor's appointment my doctor told me that our orphanage staff must have done a great job of picking him up and holding him because she was sup prised that his head was not flat. What a great compliment for Hannah's Hope! He was healthy and has good growth percentiles so that made me happy too.

Happy 1/2 Birthday Malakai!

So Malakai is now 6 months old. I've waited to do the classic blog thing of listing 6 things I love about him until I actually had him in my arms so here goes.

1. I love your beautiful huge dark eyes
2. I love that I got to hear your wonderful baby giggle for the first time two days ago
3. I love how smiley you are
4. I love your sweet personality
5. I love the way you kick like crazy in the bath
6. I love that you are HOME!

Our New Complete Family

Sleep Deprivation

Okay, I never expected jet lag and switching back to MT time to be SO hard and take SO long. We are still not there yet. I think we'd be okay if we didn't have to get Malakai switched over too. Our schedule for the past 5 days has looked something like this:

Bed at 8:00 or 9:00pm
Wake at 10pm for feeding
Wake between 12-2am for diaper, feeding, and several hours of loud awake time. Not crying but loud high pitched screeching excited sounds. Those of you who were in ET with us know what I mean.
half hour nap somewhere between 4am and 6am
Awake all day
Repeat

So basically we have been running on about 4 hours of sleep each day. The first day we were home he did sleep during the day so Jared and I took a nap with him. I thought we'd sleep for about 2 hours, but we laid down at 11am and woke up at 4pm. Poor Aspen had just gotten us home and then had to wait all day to see us. Grandma was great and kept her entertained while we rested. I really hope we can get this ironed out soon and get a schedule going before Jared has to go back to work.

Other than the sleeping everything has been great! He is such a sweet little boy and seems to be adjusting very well. He is so smiley and is working on learning to laugh. Bonding is going well, and we even noticed signs of this in Ethiopia. The first day when we went back to the orphanage he was jumping out of his skin excited and just talking up a storm when he saw the special mothers and other kids, but when we went back on the last day his attitude was so different. One of the special mothers came and kissed him and was trying to get his attention, but he just snuggled into my chest and was much calmer and quieter. He only cried once for about 1/2 an hour this first morning when he realized he had no idea where he was. He seems very content and happy now which is so nice. I had an exciting moment when I thought he might be showing signs of being attached to me when Jared said "he cried when you left for the store" but they were soon shattered when he said "but then he puked and seemed better" haha.

Aspen has been doing great with him and wants to take a bath with "brother Malakai" all the time (at least twice a day). She is her normal self though and is still very independent. Recently she has been getting a little sad because of the split attention, but other than that she's taking it all in stride.

This was the nice welcome table and cake we came home to on Friday night. The last picture is a sweet one of Daddy and his two kiddos reading a story.

We're Home

Jared, Malakai Mussie, and I made it home at 11:30pm last night. It was a LONG 40 hour trip start to finish and we are still very tired. We woke up to our little ones this morning and only got about 4-5 hours each. Hopefully we can nap some today. I'll be posting when I can about the trip, but first I need rest and time to finish up my journaling. To hold you over here are some pics from our trip. Thank you all for the wonderful prayers and support! We felt so covered in prayer and God's provision was over and above for the whole time...more on that later.

Introducing Mr. Malakai Mussie Blake Murphy

Packed and on our way!

Our bags are packed and we are headed out tomorrow at 12:50pm!

These are photos of all the donations we were able to collect except for the 10+ outfits which are not pictured! This is such a God thing, and I have to tell the neat story. So, we have been collecting donations since the beginning of January. We had people from our church, our old church, MOPS, family, friends and even some people down in Colorado helping us collect thing for the orphanage. We had a limited amount of space to Carry donations over even by purchasing an extra two checked bags. We got so much stuff that we thought there was no way we would be able to bring it all even with our four tubs and 1 suit case we designated for them. When we were looking at it all I said "okay this is going to have to be God math in order to get this all in the tubs at 50lbs or less each." Well, guess what? God did some amazing math. We got everything in first try and each tub is between 46 & 48 lbs! We were so excited!! Below is a list of all the things we got. We are so blessed to have such generous people around us. Thank you to all how contributed, the kids at Hannah's Hope will be so blessed by these gifts.

Donations List

Formula 35 cans
Diaper cream 13 tubes
Toothbrushes 78
Tooth paste 11 tubes
Diapers 14 packages
Baby Shampoo 7 bottles
Baby wash 9 bottles
Baby Oil 5 bottles
Lotion 11 bottles
Wipes 22 packs
Stuffed animals 3
Vitamins 8 bottles
Flax seed oil 2 bottles
Flax seed 2.4 lbs
Sippy cups 4
Blankets 5
Scrubs 2
Infant Cereal 2
Baby Towel/wash clothes 8
Onesiess 3
Bibs 3
scrubs 2
Baby Cereal 2
thermometer cover 2
Pacifiers 2
Socks 1
Surgical masks 10
spoons 12
Clothes 10+ older girls outfits

#23 and 9 months of "pregnancy"

You may recognize this number from our wait list post. So as I started thinking back over our adoption process I realized that 23 has been our number through out the whole thing. I'll show you:

23rd of October '07 we Received Application for AGCI
23rd of April '08 we got on the wait list
23 was our first number on the boy's wait list
23rd of December '08 we had our 1st and only court date
23rd of January '09 we leave for Ethiopia to bring home our son

I thought that was pretty cool. Then I started counting our time from wait list to travel and it is exactly 9 months! Nine months to the day and then I start my "labor pains" by getting on a VERY long flight.

Travel Games!

Oh, the little prayers that God answers, well and the big ones too (more on that in a minute):) I have been nervous about the flight 24+ hours...not because I'm afraid of flying but because I hate sitting still for more than an hour long movie. Mostly I have been worried about my poor husband who has to deal with my moodiness during the whole thing. Well thanks to a blast from my hubby's past, or rather childhood closet, we have a solution to at least four hours of the flight. That's right folks TRAVEL GAMES. Before I met Jared I was not much of a game person, but now that they have grown on me I welcome the distraction that pocket sized chess, checkers, battle ship, guess who, and word searches will bring. I suppose they will be good for the hotel too. So bring on the 24 four hours of gaming fun accompanied by fantastic air plane food (vegetarian of course...even better right?) Oh boy, I really am sorry honey...

Okay so for the big prayer answered. Some wonderful, wonderful, fantastic, caring, beautiful friends of ours just helped out with about 3/4 of our plane ticket fees!!! We have been SO blessed between people helping with travel fees, donations, and baggage fees I just can't say thank you enough to all these people. For the first time in this whole adoption journey I can say that we have enough to cover ALL of this step in the process...our travel fees! This feels so good. Thank you LORD for this answer to our prayers!

This was the verse of the day on my homepage this morning, I love it:

Learn to do right! Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow.

Isaiah 1:17

5 Months Old!

Our little Malakai is 5 months old and I'm so happy to be able to say that he will be home before his 6 month birthday!

Nice Shower and Awsome Cake

Our shower was very nice, and we got some nice things. I only had to play one game which was great! The best part was the amazing cake that two of my friends made. Not only did it look good, but it tasted great. Here is a picture of it half eaten, but with the best part still intact. Thanks guys!

Baby Shower

My friend Melissa is having a baby shower for us on Saturday. I'm excited to get boy things this time:) Since we have a lot of baby stuff already from our daughter I'm hoping to get lots of diapers, wipes and formula. Hopefully I can organize and put away all of the gifts while still packing and getting ready to travel. Should be a fun day.

Restless Heart

Dad Here
Now that we have our travel dates and our plane tickets are booked and all of the endless amounts of paperwork and countless hours of conversation we have arrived at our travel date. I have been asked by several people if I am excited. I respond with a typical answer of yes we are so excited or something like that. But today I was looking at some blogs of families that have come home with their children and I realized just how much my heart is connected to Malakai. As I looked at all the pictures of the other children home with their families it hit me that I view Malakai just like I view pictures of my daughter. I think the other kids are cute but there is just that parental infatuation with your own children. It almost took me by surprise that even though I have not met my son, I can still look at his picture and know that I feel the same way about him as I do with my daughter. After this revelation I began to realize how anxious I really am to bring our son home. Up to this point the waiting has never really bothered me but as these three weeks leading up to travel are getting under way I already want them to be over. With all the things that we have to get done I know that the time will pass quickly. I just cannot wait to get on the plane and know that we will finally be on our way!


Also with knowing who we are going travel with I look forward to meeting the other families and talking with the other dads in our group. Well, I was inspired by Mike to share my own thoughts. I certainly enjoyed getting to know a little bit about him before we meet and travel. I look to all the new things that this trip will bring. My personal prayer for this trip comes from Psalm 46:10
"Be still, and know that I am God;
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth."
Among all the busyness of the trip I want to be still and see God exalted!

Formula!

We have already been able to collect 52 lbs of formula to take over to our orphanage, and we still have three weeks left. We are so thankful for the generous people around us.