He's here!

This update is way, way late.   I sat down to write this post several times, and the words were just not coming out.  How can you put into words an experience that changed your life forever?  For Emily and I, the experience of the day was completely different.  While I was having a normal morning going to church, Emily was about to fly into Chicago with my sister and Rogi.  But where we were similar was that we were both incredibly anxious.  Emily was anxious to get off a plane with a baby, and I was anxious to get to see both her and Rogi again!

Finally, it got to mid-afternoon and it was time to leave for the airport.  My heart started to flutter.  We got there and had plenty of family ready to meet our wonderful son.  It looked like it might storm, but the plane was going to get down before it started.  Suddenly we saw the plane that must be theirs.  It got close to the gate and then just stopped.  What was going on?  It turns out that their gate was blocked by another plane, and they had to wait for it to get out of there.  I was suddenly close enough to my wife and son to be able to run out to them and had to wait even longer!  After an excruciating 20 minutes, they finally moved into the gate and then the wait was on to see them walk up.  After a few minutes, I suddenly saw Emily walk down the hall with Rogi.  It was all I could do to not run past the security line!

But soon enough, they were there.  I grabbed Rogi as quickly as I could and gave him a big hug.  Our family was finally together again!

  Family started to say hello to him one by one and Rogi did amazingly well!    After we had introduced him to everyone, we quickly started to all head back to our house.  Our families had made a dinner for us so that especially Emily could easily eat because she was exhausted from having to bounce Rogi on the plane.  Rogi took to the carseat like a champ.  He spent the entire car ride either smiling at Emily or me or looking out the window.  And this was him being exhausted!  When I went to get him out of the car, his joy made it an amazing moment!

We still had family here so we decided to keep Rogi up a little while longer and put him to bed early.  Some friends had generously given us a jumperoo because we had noticed on our first trip that Rogi's legs were just not developing as quickly as his arms and chest.  So we decided to see if he'd like it.  Our answer came very quickly!  Rogi loves it and bounces and hams it up whenever he's in there.

After that it was time for dinner and then for some family photos before bed!

So we have been together all three of us for the last 10 days.  And it's been more and more amazing every day.  All the stress, all the pain, all the waiting of the adoption, it's all worth it when we hold our wonderful Rogi in our arms.  Thank you God for giving us the opportunity to be in his life and for the blessing of him being in ours.