Some photos

First bath at home (9/11/2009): Mommy "snugging" Ella-Anne at the DFW Grand Hyatt (9/9/2009): A few photos from the DFW Grand Hyatt (9/9/2009):

Dinner at the DFW Grand Hyatt (9/9/2009):

Just before dinner at the DFW Grand Hyatt (9/9/2009):

Alex feeding Ella-Anne at the Crescent Court (9/8/2009):

Asleep in the rental car seat in the Crescent Court (9/8/2009):

Alex, "Mamaw Peggy" Jones, and Ella-Anne at Gladney as we sign the papers (9/8/2009):

The bow is because she's a gift. Now she's unwrapped. At the Fort Worth Olive Garden (9/8/2009):

Meeting Mommy for the first time. At the Olive Garden (9/8/2009):

On the rental car shuttle at DFW on our way to meet Ella-Anne (9/8/2009):

Our first photos of Ella-Anne, e-mailed to us on 9/1/2009:

Here we go again.

So here we are again.

Not quite a year ago -- October 28, 2008, to be exact -- I pretty much dried up on posting to the old "Raising Alexandra" blog. There were lots of reasons for that. I was getting even busier at work. The time I had at home with Alex was a lot more active -- a lot more interactive. It's one thing to write a daily blog when your daughter is a formula-gulping lump; it's another thing entirely when she's a whirling dervish of words, activity, and tantrums. And the old laptop, on which the proprietary blog software was located, had slowed to a virtual standstill, making the technology of even a single blog post more frustrating than I can express. Facebook and Twitter became attractive alternatives for instantaneous sending of pictures and posting of 140-characters-or-fewer status updates and bons mots.

But Things Have Changed.

So let's tell the story.

A few months back -- about four, to be exact -- we were again approved by our adoption agency for hypothetical child #2. We already had actual child #1, of course, and so we were "in the queue," so to speak, for #2. The conventional wisdom was (and still is) that adopting second, third, etc. children takes more time, because birth parents are generally more interested in helping a couple start a family than in assisting them to add to a family. Notwithstanding that conventional wisdom, because we are nothing if not unconventional, I confidently if cluelessly predicted that this would not be our experience, but that we would most likely end up with a second child born while we were still on our annual Colorado vacation, and that the age distance between the two children would be about the same three-plus-years' difference between my younger brother and me. My bride scoffed. So our Colorado vacation came on July 11, and went on July 31. No new baby. No rushed flight home. No Joyce, the evil US Airways counter agent who made Jane cry. Just radio silence.

But the week we got back (the first week in August), we got a call from Gladney, asking us if we wanted to be considered by a birth mother who had recently given birth. We said something along the lines of "Does the Pontiff wear a funny hat?" Or something like that. So we said"yes," and that was it for the time being. More radio silence ensued.

Then, on Thursday, August 27, I came home from work, and, as we were getting ready for bed, I asked Jane, "Did we ever hear from Gladney about that situation?" Jane said, "No. I was thinking about calling Melissa [our caseworker], but I just figured they picked somebody else. I said in response, "But last time, when a birth mother picked somebody else, we always got a phone call giving us the bad news." (Trust me. I remember. The first time around, every time a birth mother picked another couple other than us, it was a bad day at the ranch.) So Jane said, "Maybe I'll call Melissa."

Well, maybe Jane didn't call Melissa. In fact, let's assume for the sake of discussion -- mostly because it's true -- that Jane didn't call Melissa. But that's understandable: Having a three-year-old Alex, hyper-verbal and uber-active, isn't conducive to getting anything much done besides the bare essentials. Anyway, even if we did have time, why would we be motivated to call so that we could get the inevitably bad news that we had not been picked. Plus, Jane was in the throes of planning a RESOLVE conference, which is going on today as I write this.

So: On the evening of Monday, August 31, I was headed out the door of our offices, but I dropped by the office of my partner and friend Edwin Fountain to chat for a couple of minutes. Briefcase over my shoulder, standing in the doorway of his office, my cell phone rang at 7:16 p.m.

It was Jane; I have a special ring for her, so I snapped the phone open and said, "Hello there."

"We have a new daughter."

(Pause.)

(More pause.)

"Uhhh, what?"

"Melissa just called. We have a new daughter."

"Wha --. How --? Was this the same one we got a call about several weeks ago?"

"Yep. She picked us. Melissa said that the page in our book about Alex was the one that sealed the deal. We can go get her next week, and the birth mother wants to meet Alex."

"Uhhh . . . okay. I'm leaving here in a couple of minutes. I'll call you from the car. Love you."

And that was that.

As I clacked the phone shut, I realized that I was using my non-phone-holding hand to hold myself up, using Edwin's bookcases as support. And Edwin, ever proper, stood up from his desk, offered a handshake, and said, "Congratulations, Dad." I shook his hand, muttered a few words of goodbye, and headed for the garage, my head swimming.

From the car, I called Jane back. By the time I was halfway home, we had agreed on the name Gabriella-Anne Kristen Castanias, and that she would be called Ella-Anne. Gabriella (a) because we liked the name, and (b) because its shortened form, Ella, honored Jane's late grandmother. Anne, because that is Jane's Mom's name. Kristen, in honor of Ella-Anne's birth mother (just as Alex's middle name, Rachel, honors her birth mother). Castanias -- well, that was my contribution.

When I got home, we told Alex about the news. Here's that discussion:

J: We're going to have a little baby girl in the house. Her name is going to be Ella-Anne."

G: "You're going to be a big sister! What do you think about that?"

A: (Pausing for a moment) "Can we watch Mickey Mouse?"

(Alex's excitement was more palpable after that. Every night at bedtime, she would ask me, "Will you tell me a story about Alex and Baby Ella-Anne?" Sometimes, "Will you tell me a story about Alex, Baby Ella-Anne, the Princesses and the Diggers?" A jointly made-up story about Alex, her new sister, Cinderella, and heavy road-construction equipment would ensue. And, after we got Ella-Anne, and were at the DFW Grand Hyatt, Alex and I got on an elevator along with another woman, and Alex marched right up to her and said, "I have a new baby sister. Her name is Ella-Anne." This from the girl whose usual response to strangers is to hang her head silently, before burying her face in my leg.)

So after we got Alex informed, and settled in to watch Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, we called our parents -- Jane's folks and my Dad -- to tell them the good news. Then we called or left messages for the brothers, sister, and sisters-in-law. We also got quite the outpouring of love and happiness from our friends via Facebook, where we first e-announced our news.

Back to our chronology in a moment, but first, some vital statistics. Ella-Anne Kristen Castanias was born July 28, 2009, at 5:20 p.m. CDT. 5 lbs., 4.5 oz. 17-7/8 inches long. She was six weeks old to the day when we picked her up, on September 8, 2009.

And these facts and figures allow me to brag that I was right. Ella-Anne was in fact born during our Colorado vacation (three days before we left), and the three years and nine days between Alex's birth and her birth matches, to the day, the age difference between my younger brother and me. Go figure.

Now, back to the chronology of the last couple of weeks. A couple of days after we got the news about Ella-Anne, we learned that we had won an across-the-board victory in a big biotech case for Martek Biosciences that I had argued on April 21 of this year. The case, ironically, involved four Martek patents covering ways of making vegetarian-based DHA food additives -- Martek's commercial product, called "Life's DHA (TM)," is added to the Horizon Organic Whole Milk that we buy for Alex (and soon, for Ella-Anne) to promote brain development and general growth as we raise her; I call this milk "Liquid Gold,"owing to its $4.69/half-gallon price tag. (I even referred to Alex in the oral argument.) The case got a fair amount of press in the legal trades -- here is the opinion; and press coverage is here (Jones Day press release), here (Martek press release), here (IP360), here (The American Lawyer), and here and here (the "Patently Obvious" blog). This would have been the crowning glory of about any other week, but this time, it was just icing on the cake. As one of my partners wrote me after reading the news of the Martek victory in one of the trade papers, having already heard about Ella-Anne's arrival, "Boy oh boy someone is having a GOOD week - congrats!"

Long before we got the news about Ella-Anne, we had scheduled a Labor Day weekend (September 4-7) beach trip to Rehoboth with our friends the Firscheins (parents of Alex's buddy "Jenny-Jenny"). So we went, on our last trip as a family of three. Lots of fun, lots of sun, and Alex -- who went equipped with what is called (I am not making this up) a "swim sweater" -- demonstrated that she could swim the length of the hotel pool without assistance with the assistance of that swim sweater, which was of course decorated with Disney princesses.

We got back home from Rehoboth on Monday night, unpacked, repacked, and headed to the airport at 6:15 a.m. Tuesday morning. We got into DFW about 10:30 a.m., picked up our rental car (equipped with two car seats, one infant and one toddler), and headed over to Fort Worth to have lunch with Ella-Anne's birth mother, Melissa, Rachel (the birth mother's caseworker).

One realization I had at that lunch was that I would now always have a warm spot in my heart for the Olive Garden. The more significant realization was that I was now fated to be surrounded by women for the rest of my life. (I hear that women are better at taking care of their old decrepit Dads later in life, so I've got that going for me.) Along with Ella-Anne's birth mother, there was Jane, Melissa, Rachel, and Alex. Four women, and me. Then we found out that there was going to be a schedule change -- Ella-Anne was coming to the Olive Garden with Donna (her primary transitional-care provider). So when lunch was over, a parade of additional women joined our table: Donna, carrying Ella-Anne, came first. And about ten minutes later, Mamaw Peggy, Alex's transitional-care provider -- who also cared for Ella-Anne for several days while Donna and Ward (her husband) were out of town. So along with our beautiful new daughter came my own realization that I was now outnumbered seven to one. As I have put it in the vernacular so many times over the last several days, "I'm screwed."

We stayed at the Crescent Court that evening and had a bit of an open house in our hotel suite. We were joined at various times by Cason, Tonia, and Lanham Piliod (the best part of that was reading a Thomas the Tank Engine book with Lanham on one knee and Alex on the other, both in rapt attention to the drama of Mr. Topham Hatt), Debbie Eberts and her boys, Laurie Lang, Jill Tananbaum and one of her boys, Joan Jarosek, David Schenck, David Horan, and Peggy and Donna. We had some wine, some champagne, and some soft drinks for the assembled throngs. A room service dinner and an early bedtime followed. All of the reports were correct -- Ella-Anne is a great sleeper, even though she peeps in the night. And boy, can that girl suck down a bottle of formula.

Wednesday morning was a room-service breakfast and a conference call for Daddy, followed by checkout and a trip back to Fort Worth to visit Donna and Ward's ranch. We picked up some sandwiches, ate with Donna (and another of her house guests, an adoptive Dad from Richmond, Virginia and his two-year-old daughter). After lunch, Alex got to ride a horse for the first time! Then, so as not to have a dramatic rush to the airport, we headed out to DFW so that we could have a leisurely trip through security for our 4:10 p.m. flight home.

Oops. It can't be an adoption story without a little airport drama. As we were driving to DFW, I mentioned to Jane that we had not yet received word that our Interstate Child Placement Compact paperwork had been approved by the Commonwealth of Virginia. Without that approval, leaving on an airplane with Ella-Anne would, in effect, constitute kidnapping. And, since the court finalization of our adoption won't take place for about six months, I'm guessing that the authorities might frown on approving an adoption by an admitted kidnapper and felon.

So, when it was apparent that we weren't going to get our papers, we decided to stay the night at the DFW airport Grand Hyatt -- the same hotel where Jane, Alex, and I had spent our first night as a family of three back in August 2006. Seemed only fitting. In fact, it also seemed only fitting that we return to the same hotel restaurant where we dined that first night. And wouldn't you know that they seated us in the very same booth where we ate back in 2006. We had a lovely dinner; Alex's stir-craziness was offset by the excitement of being able to help feed her baby sister; and we were off to another early bedtime, excited by the promise of our 11:30 a.m. flight home the next day.

But wait . . . there's more. 11:30 a.m. on Thursday wouldn't work, either, because the fricking paperwork still wasn't back from Virginia. My mind wandered . . . would it be a felony if we didn't get caught? Should we divide up our reservation and have me go home with Alex? Is Joyce somehow involved in this? (In truth, the US Airways counter agent in Dallas, Kathy, was awesome -- she moved us to the next day's flight at no charge, even though the policy should have been to charge me $700 more per ticket for the privilege.)

Unfortunately, the gate agent wasn't nearly as helpful as Kathy when I asked about moving us from the 11:30 a.m. to the 4:10 p.m. on Thursday. He was only too willing to charge me $2100 for the privilege, which I politely declined, preferring instead to take our chances with standby, hoping that my "Platinum" status (which got me nothing but a kick in the pants in Denver back in 2006) would leapfrog us to the top of the list. After a quick lunch at T.G.I. Friday's (and a waiter who kept saying "cool" to all of our menu choices), a grumpy bride, a sleeping baby, and a tantruming (is that a word? it should be) Alex, I spent the rest of the afternoon calling Virginia's Department of Social Services (a black hole of unreturned voicemails), Melissa at Gladney (more voicemails), and, finally, Reuben at the Texas interstate compact administration office, who answered his own phone and immediately said he was familiar with our file -- it was sitting in front of him on his desk -- and said that he would call his cohort in Virginia, who was the holdup.

That said, 4:10 p.m. on Thursday was approaching, and no approval was in hand. So Jane and I agreed (me, very reluctantly) that we'd split the reservation and I would take Alex home, leaving Jane and the baby girl (a/k/a the "anchor") to come back on Friday. At 3:09 p.m. CDT, just as the gate agent was getting ready to divide the reservation (experience teaches that this dividing-the-reservation thing is a major-league pain in the behind, and leads to all sorts of logistical nightmares going forward), Jane called with the news that Melissa had just called with news of the ICPC approval. I threw my hands in the air and shouted at the gate agent, "STOP WHATEVER IT IS YOU'RE DOING -- WE'RE ALL GOING HOME."

The rest, as they say, is history. We got home Thursday night (Nana, Jane's mom Anne, had already arrived and was in the house thanks to the garage-door code), I went to work Friday (instead of going to Indiana with Alex, as I had planned), and here I sit on Saturday, writing the first new blog entry while Jane runs the RESOLVE conference out at the Tysons Corner Hilton. Nana just brought Alex back from a walk, Ella-Anne, who I have taken to calling "Bug-lette" (Alex, after all, is "The Bug") has been snoozing in the baby papesan, and we are all headed out to dinner with Mommy at the conclusion of her conference.

Life's been good to me so far.