Happy First Birthday, Jonathan!!!

The Lord has blessed us in AMAZING ways so Jonathan was HOME for his first birthday!  He turned ONE last week.  So awesome!  It is pretty rare an orphaned child in Ukraine is in their forever home before they turn one. We count this as an incredible miracle. Thinking back over the past 3 1/2 months, it blows my mind how the Lord worked to get him home so quickly. Our court hearing naming us as Jonathan's legal parents was exactly one day shy of 3 months from the day we found out that we lost Noah. 3 months...when the Lord wants to move, HE MOVES!

Let's review how HE did this - not how we did it. God gets all the glory for this! (I know you want to see birthday photos, just scroll down and come back - this is important! :-))

The timing of Elijah's post-placement report on the day we found out about Noah, working with our new facilitator that was willing to keep up with the speed at which we wanted to go, awesome support from our homestudy agency for a speedy quick homestudy update, favor in obtaining dossier documents, Luke fetching our apostilled documents from the Sec of State office in Madison, Max hand carrying our dossier over, a travel date issued from the SDA a shocking week "early", being able to visit Jonathan for the first time on a Saturday, the city social worker coming back to the office 2 days early, court on a Saturday instead of waiting out the holiday until the following Wednesday, red one-day passport and everything else that needed to happen on Gotcha Day (oh ya, I still need to post about that, don't I??? LOL), and smooth sailing at the embassy.  Whew! TO GOD BE THE GLORY!!! We were home with 5 days to spare before his birthday. :-)

Ok, on to the photos! The lucky boy got 2 little birthday parties. One on his birthday, and the second one after church with the Gibsons (other family and friends couldn't make it).

On his birthday:

His shirt says "I'm the Birthday Boy" :-)
Yes, Elijah and Rachel still adore him. Praise God for that!

 

He loves his oatmeal baby cereal! He improves with his eating each and every day. I'm finding out  his "ability to move the food to the back of his mouth and swallow is directly dependent on if he likes the taste of it or not...hmmmm....

Elijah sat well on my lap while I fed him. But look where Little Miss Monkey is....

Yes, this is the same bowl I'm feeding Jonathan out of!

Guess she still likes the baby cereal!!!  Lil' turkey!

"Happy Birthday to me!"

"Yep, I'm total cuteness!"

And yes, Rebekah has as much personality as it looks like here. :-)

Oh, remember this cute guy? :-)
He now says "CHEEZZZE" when we say smile!

Elijah wasn't diggin' the cake and ice cream though. I ate it for him. LOL

Jonathan is simply adored by all of his siblings.

Second birthday party!

Ben practicing to be an uncle! :-)

Jake practicing to be a DAD! He'll be an awesome one!

Elijah enjoyed the very delicious cherry cheesecake from Jake and Ashley's benefit much more than the other cake. Don't blame him! It was wonderful!

Jonathan checking out his very first birthday present from Auntie Debbie and Pastor Dan. Thank you so much!!!

But there is something else VERY significant about this last photo. Can you tell what it is? Go ahead and look, I'll wait. :-) Don't see it? Really, it's what you don't see that is significant. Nothing is holding him up while he is sitting there!!! Anna was very close to catch him in case he toppled, and he did eventually. But this is HUGE!  Just one month ago, he still had head control problems and was not anywhere close to being able to sit even with minimal support. Truly amazing what love, stimulation and not laying on a hard wooden playpen day in and day out can do for a little guy. Hmmm...imagine that....

And just to leave you with a little Elijah fun! Auntie Debbie had put of those (I can't remember what they are called) things that you blow into to make the paper unroll on top of Jonathan's present. We gave it to Elijah to try. At first he sucked it like a straw, but after we showed him to blow out, he was doing well with it!  WAy too cute!!! Well, pretty quick the end got pretty mushy, as it didn't have a plastic tip on it. Here he is trying to blow it with a mushy end. :-)

Daddy trimmed the end off for him. Success!!!!