On Tuesday, I was walking into work and my phone vibrated in my pocket (never got to hear that song I set for my special ring tone). I took it out and saw this...
I thought for sure they were calling to let me know that one of our documents was needing updating. Nope! As soon as she told me, "I have what I hope is some good news for you" I fell to my knees on the sidewalk and started bawling. I couldn't believe it! She didn't give many details over the phone... Just told me she is a girl, 9 months, and a bit of her story. I was deliriously happy. Happy for us that we have a little girl joining our family. Happy for one more orphan to have a family. SO. very. happy.
I walked in to church, and suddenly, I felt the other half of emotions. Suddenly, I knew that there was a mommy and daddy in Africa missing their little girl. While I am deliriously happy about a little girl I have not yet met, someone else is mourning the loss of a little baby they did get to meet. That is the bitter sweet-ness of adoption...
Thankfully, someone finally came out to bring me down to earth again and I called Jaden to tell him the news. We didn't want to look at the paperwork and pictures of our new girl separate so I went to his work and we got to see her beautiful face together. And let me tell you, she is beautiful. One look at her little face and her big brown eyes and I was in love!! I can not post any pictures of her until we get her home, but take my word for it - she is totally adorable!
As Jaden and I were looking over her paperwork, I kept seeing my b-day - 8/17 on it. I eventually realized, that's her birthday as well. We share a birthday!!! How GODSOME is that? Yep, I just made up a word - Godsome (don't be jealous that I came up with it first; it totally fits).
I called Holt back as soon as I got home and accepted the referral of our sweet baby girl.
The following afternoon, Holt called me back to go over the next steps. They emailed me a long list of papers to sign and get notarized. They also informed me that, in order to be submitted to court, we will need to update a number of forms from our dossier (HUGE stack of papers). This was painful to hear, as some of the papers we needed to update can take a while to be completed by the proper people. I'm not good at waiting in the first place, let alone considering my daughter has been sitting in the orphanage for the past almost 9 months and I'm READY to get her home!! The clock is TICKING! Unfortunately, our homestudy update has to be state certified - so I paid extra to have it overnight-ed to Madison and overnight-ed back to me and for expedited processing while in Madison. The state should have received our document today and I am just hoping that someone signed it today and it will arrive at our house on Monday so I can overnight all of our dossier updates to Holt on Tuesday. Worst case scenario, Holt gets it by Friday -- no matter what, not soon enough for me. But I am doing my best to be patient -- usually unsuccessfully...
So, what's next? Well, once all of our documents are at Holt, they send them off to be state certified in Oregon. Then, they send them off to Ethiopia for them to look over and assign us a court date - that will be our first trip to Ethiopia!! There are a few things that can have a drastic effect on when that court date gets scheduled for...
- paperwork. I have a 3 inch binder FULL of paperwork regarding our adoption. Holt has that same amount of paperwork regarding our case both in Oregon and in Ethiopia. And they are always adding to it as the case necessitates. If one of these papers are late coming in, we wait longer.
- court process in Ethiopia. There are a few court processes/interviews that take place in Ethiopia. If someone doesn't show up, their case need to be rescheduled - thereby delaying ours.
- rainy season. The adoption courts in Ethiopia close from mid-July to mid-September (approximately) every year for rainy season. ;(
Originally, I was praying that our little girl and I could celebrate our birthday together. Nope. Rainy season. UGH. Holt said not to expect to travel until rainy season is over. Thus, I am hoping our first trip will take place in October. This is when we go to court and wait to hear the judge in Ethiopia say, "She is yours." We stay for about a week (I'm hoping to add a few days to our itinerary to see more of my daughter's culture). Then, we return to have the hardest wait time begin. We return about 3 months after our first trip to bring our little girl home - so maybe January or February? Can I just say, I can't wait?! I can't wait to have a little one around the house again. I can't wait for my bio-kids to meet her and to be able to love on her. And pull her in to bed with us at night and smell her and hold her and play with her beautiful black hair. OHHHH I can't wait. ;) Then you will all see how adorable she is!!
Oh and I forgot to tell you, our bio-kids are ECSTATIC. They both walked around with a picture of their new baby sister in their pocket that next day. They both have pictures of her in their room. They are eager to go shopping for her (mostly so she has her own toys to play with and doesn't try to play with theirs, but that still counts as cute, right??). It is great. We even went to McDonalds to celebrate on Tuesday and they got to play in the playland, eat ice cream, and didn't even have to take a bath before bed to wash away the playland germs and grossness!! They are going to be awesome big siblings to our new baby girl!!
1 comment:
I'm very excited for you!!!
Post a Comment