This post is about 3+ years overdue. When you have 3 kids, life gets a bit hectic. Those of you with more kids are probably rolling your eyes at me but I feel like since the parents in this household are officially outnumbered, I can make that statement.

I’ve recapped each of our last adoptions though and I want to do the same for Kallen – both for my own memories, and eventually, for him to be able to read. So, this is the story of Kallen….

I was always the little girl who played with dolls. Yes, I loved sports and crafts and all types of other things, but at heart, I was the girl that always wanted to play house, and to be the mom. I remember at daycare, my friend Jillian and I always played with dolls and we each had our future kids names already picked out. My girl doll was always named Hillary. And for whatever reason, I always felt like 3 kids was the perfect number. I am a kid of the late 80’s to early 90’s and one of “THE” toys of those years was Mattel’s Newborn Magic Nursery Baby. You would open it up to find out if it was a boy or girl (or twins!).  I remember getting TRIPLETS and thinking it was the best thing ever. (Although now, the almost-40 year old version of me is wondering how parents of triplets actually survive.)

But I digress. The point I’m trying to make is that 3 has always been the perfect number for me.

Kevin…. not so much.

After we adopted Karsten, I think Kevin was done. Two kids is a lot. Somehow, you aren’t twice as busy as you were with one kid, you’re 5x as busy. But even still, when I would mention that I wanted one more kid, Kevin would quickly say no. However, when I would occasionally mention that it was time to get rid of the baby stuff, and he would say “Well. Hang onto it just in case.” He was giving me so many mixed signals!

Over the years, we reached out to our adoption agency (Bethany Christian Services) a few times to see if their process had changed, what the fee schedule looked like, etc. We also stayed well connected with Bethany, as we were always willing to attend some of their training sessions and share our stories with potential adoptive parents.

In 2018, we finally reached a point where we were ready to actually start the ball rolling. We got the initial paperwork and signed a contract. And then, about 4 months later, Kevin received a job offer with a church near my home town. We really felt like God was moving us away from our current church and into a new one. So, we put the adoption on hold and moved.

Almost immediately, we realized that this was not the move for us. Looking back, I do think that God was using this to get us to move on from a situation that we probably would have held onto for much too long. We were previously at a church that Kevin’s dad actually founded and because of that, there were lots of emotions involved. For both the church and for our family, it really was time for us to move on.

However, it was very clear once we moved that this was not a good fit for us. For various reasons, which I won’t share because this is the internet and there is no great reason to share the details of the situation, we knew quickly and clearly that this church in my home town was not where God ultimately wanted us. Since we had not yet sold our home in our old town, we just moved back home. For the first time in 30 years, Kevin was without a job. Thankfully, I had kept my job and while we knew we could financially be ok on one salary for a while, we also know that money would be a lot more tight. Because of all of this, the adoption remained on hold.

I will be honest. This time in our lives was not fun. However, looking back, there was a LOT of growth in our faith. As it always seems, when your faith is tested, it grows in leaps and bounds during the trials and struggles. We trusted God that he would show us where He wanted us to be, and He did! His timing was not our timing. Of course, we wanted to know all of the details immediately! Multiple times we thought we knew exactly what He was trying to show us and where He was trying to lead us, and each time it ended up being just another step forward toward His ultimate destination.

In June 2019 we joined a church re-start just a few miles from our house. Kevin ended up being on staff (at first unpaid) as the Associate Pastor and Youth leader. After about 6 months, it turned into a part-time paid position. Again, we thought this was God’s ultimate long-term destination for us. And so, we contacted our adoption agency in January 2020 (pre-COVID) to re-start the adoption process. 

We paid money, we got deep into the paperwork, did our initial background checks, and then… COVID. No surprise, but COVID vastly delayed the process for us to get home study approved. Lots of our meetings were supposed to be in-person and they turned into Zoom meetings. Think about this. How do you do a home study without actually going into someone’s home? Nearly impossible. It was crazy. But eventually we made it through the remaining piles of paperwork, the doctors visits, the background checks, the fingerprinting, etc. and were home-study approved in June 2020.

And then, just like we had done two times before, we waited.

I’ll be honest, there was not a lot going on during the Summer of 2020 as far as recruitment emails went.(These are the emails that agencies would send out to waiting families regarding potential placements.) It just felt like COVID shut literally everything down. I thought we were going to be waiting forever. In the meantime, I did do a little bit of shopping.

Yes – that is a baby BOY outfit. You see, this time around, we did specify that we wanted a boy… just because we could. We love our girls (of course) and I have absolutely NO doubt that God wanted me to be a girl mom first. But this time around, we did specify boy.

Okay back to the story…

In October 2020 (October 13 to be exact), Kevin and I were sitting at home watching the Braves play baseball on a Tuesday night. It was 10:30pm and my cell phone rang. I took a quick look at it and it was a number that I didn’t recognize so I quickly ignored it. We were just a few weeks out from a major election so I was fairly certain it was just some random telemarketer calling.

A few minutes later, Kevin’s cell phone rang and he quickly hit ignore too. These darn telemarketers were just not giving up!

Then Kevin’s phone dinged that he had a message. When he listened to the voicemail, he looked over at me and said “Kelley. That was THE CALL. We’ve been chosen.” I’m pretty sure my heart stopped beating for just a moment. I immediately looked at my phone and realized that I had a voicemail too.

“Kelley. Hey this is Rebecca from Bethany. I’m going to try to call Kevin’s phone as well. We do have a situation we wanted to present to you. If you get this before 10:45, you’re welcome to call me. if not, i will call you in the morning. I only have some cursory information at the moment. The counselor is still writing up everything in the report so I’ll have more information in the morning.” 

Well, you better believe that we called her immediately. We did not wait until morning.

We had been chosen. It was a boy, and he had already been born!

Like with the girls adoptions, there are plenty of parts of their stories that are just for them to know and share if they so choose. So I won’t give you a ton of details here other than to say that Kallen’s birth mom did not know she was pregnant. As a result, his birth was a huge shock to her. She already had 2 small boys at home and she contacted Bethany a few days after his birth. Through her adoption worker, she chose our family to adopt Kallen. We have not met her, although we do have a way to contact her through email. We send emails regularly to her, but our relationship is not as open as it is with our girls birth families because that is what she has chosen for herself.

So, the following day, we did find out a lot more information about Kallen. We pulled down bottles and baby stuff from our attic. We loaded the car seat into the car. We scrambled to get things together. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine we would have a 2nd “stork drop” adoption! I thought for sure we’d have some time to prepare this time around!

We found out that he was in the hospital in Columbia, SC and that he was very small but seemed to be doing well. We made plans to come to Columbia to sign paperwork and to pick him up on October 15th… my biggest tax deadline day of the year! I told only ONE person at my work what was going on, because like with any adoption, you never know if it is actually going to happen until all the paperwork is signed.

That night was a whirlwind. I mean I was pulling down things from the attic that we hadn’t seen in over 6 years. We were vacuuming and dusting a room that was literally being used as a home office at that very moment (remember… this was in the middle of COVID!) Here is the room that just a few hours early had been a fully functional home office. Think desk, laptop + keyboard and 2 extra monitors, files, rolling chair, etc. The whole 10 yards!

We were shuffling things around, but some of the sweetest moments came from that night. Here is my 6 year old baby who was about to NOT be the baby anymore. She was ready for Big Sister status!  She was in kindergarten and learning to read and write so she was in a phase of putting words on post-its and leaving them all over the house. For example, she would write “TABLE” on a post it and stick it on the table. This was the post-it note that she decided to leave right above the crib.

Okay one more picture. The girls both have stuffed animals that they have been attached to since they were tiny. Kate loves her small stuffed tiger named Tigey (pronounced TIE-gy). Karsten has been attached to Bunny from birth. When I went to bed that evening, I popped in this room to turn off the light and spotted this inside the crib:

Needless to say, the girls were excited about a baby brother.

On the morning of October 15th, we sent the girls to school (Karsten to K5 and Kate to 3rd grade) and we left before 7am to go pick him up. I was exhausted (mentally and emotionally) before we’d even gotten an hour down the road. Pretty sure I hadn’t slept the night before either. 

We went straight to Bethany’s office in downtown Columbia and got there a little before 9am. We were hopeful that we would get to meet Kallen’s birth mom that morning, but unfortunately that was not the case. She did request that we keep part of his birth name though. She named him Brayden Amir on his original birth certificate. In keeping with our K’s, we changed his name to Brayden Kallen. I always said I would never name a kid something and have them go by their middle name, but here we are. 

There was lots of paperwork to sign, with the plan being for us to finalize all of the paperwork before heading to the hospital where he would be discharged to us and then we would get to leave and go straight home. It took FOREVER at their office. Finally after the last bit of paperwork was filed away, we were on our way to the hospital. 

When we arrived, we put on our masks (COVID policies) and headed up to the NICU. At the nurses station to check in, one of the nurses was holding a sweet baby boy and we realized quickly that it was Kallen! The nurses said they had been fighting over who would get to hold him all week. 

She quickly handed him over to me. He was SO tiny and just 5lb 5oz and 17ish inches long. 

After my turn with him for a bit, I passed him off to Kevin and they finally let us take off our masks to get a few pictures. 

Around 1pm we finally got the go-ahead to leave and head home! Yay! My mother in law, Diane, had the girls with her so we called her around 3pm when we got home and she brought them over to the house. It was so sweet seeing them get to meet their baby brother. Kate wanted to hold him right away. She was in heaven.

Karsten took a little more time to get comfortable with the idea of holding him. Finally, after about an hour, she worked up her courage. 

And then he peed on her. She got a real quick introduction to the world of having a little brother! 

But really, that’s it. That’s how we became a family of 5. It’s been the fastest 3 years of my life and I’ve gotten a crash course in being a boy mom. Kallen is WILD and crazy. He is never still. He is never quiet. But he is the most amazing little boy. He loves sharks and dinosaurs. He likes to destroy the living room. He loves to cuddle and give hugs and kisses. We love him so very much and we can see how God worked in our lives and in his life to bring us together. 

One more quick thing because dates have meanings in our family. 

Kate’s birthday is on August 10th, which is one day before mine and Kevin’s wedding anniversary. We actually got to meet her and bring her home on August 11th, our anniversary. 

Karsten’s birthday is October 6th. This was the day that Kevin and I got engaged in 2006. 

Kallen’s birthday is October 10th. It’s a perfect combination of Karsten’s birth month (October) and Kate’s birth day (10th). We were wondering how God would work that out to make Kallen’s birthday fall on a day that already held significance for our family, and of course He made a way. He always does.

“My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the Lord.
    “And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine.
For just as the heavens are higher than the earth,
    so my ways are higher than your ways
    and my thoughts higher than your thoughts. 

– Isaiah 55:8-9