Happy Chinese New Year!

新年快乐 Hello everyone and Happy Chinese New Year! This is officially the year of the rat. The first symbol of the Chinese zodiac.

I am under the weather today and thought it would be a great day to catch up on my blog a bit. We have been laying low lately, or at least I have. I have had my share of morning sickness these last several weeks and have felt like doing absolutely nothing. The morning sickness happens in the evenings actually. I think it is finally over now. I haven't felt nauseated in almost a week now. Now however, I have the flu. Since I am pregnant, I don't want to load up on any more medication than necessary so I am just riding it out. It is better today than yesterday but I decided not to go to work anyway and give myself an extra day to recover and not share my germs with the whole office. I am sure they would not appreciate that.

It seems now that this blog has become more of a pregnancy update than an adoption update. Unfortunately, there is nothing new to report on the adoption front. Dwaine and I have thought about changing to the special needs program. We won't do anything until after this baby is born. What that means is that instead of waiting to adopt a healthy baby with no medical condition that we would be considering adopting a child with mild to moderate medical needs. We will have to fill out a checklist of the things that we think we can handle and we will need to do a lot of research into the different medical conditions that we would prepare for. There are some very mild conditions which qualify a child to be considered special needs. For example, children who are born premature are considered special needs. Children who have had surgery already to correct a problem are considered special needs as well. There are many qualifications that we think we could handle other than these. The other thing that has drawn us to that program is this: It is easy to adopt a normal child. They will be adopted. The children who need a little extra attention are the ones who could spend their entire lives in those orphanages because people don't want to take a chance on them. That is what we want to do.

Also, here is a picture of my first ultrasound. It is amazing what you can do with computers! The fact that I was able to scan an upload this picture is a miracle in itself. I am pretty computer illiterate. Anyway, the big melon like thing on top of the body is the head. I say that this child will look just like Dwaine - big head and all. The little white dot in the chest area is the heart. Last time I went to the Dr., the heart rate was 150. He says everything seems to be right on target. I haven't gained any weight yet, but I can sure tell that things are shifting around a lot. My pants don't fit very well anymore and it's a good thing I wear scrubs to work. The drawstring is very forgiving! I can't wait to see that little face in about 6 more months! We will find out in about 7 more weeks if we are having a boy or a girl.

Well, that's about all I know for now. Hope you are all doing well. Take care and God bless!

Kelley