Paper Pregnant

Some people refer to adoption as being "paper pregnant". I guess I will take that term.  We're definitely "expecting" but in a much different way than through a pregnancy.  Ugh, the paperwork.  Yeah, paper pregnant fits.

We are currently waiting for our home study to be approved. Our social worker just emailed it to our social service agency who will approve it and then email it to our adoption agency who will also need to approve it.  Once it has been approved by Holt, it will be signed, notarized, and sent to us.  Then we will send it off to USCIS with our I-800a application and wait for a fingerprint appointment.  This is all for US Immigration to approve us adopting, basically. So anyways, those are the next steps.  While we wait on this, we will be finishing up all of our paperwork for our dossier, getting everything notarized, sent to the state capital to be certified, and then sent off to the Chinese embassy in Houston to be authenticated.  Got all that?! ;-) Ah yes, the paper chase. Such fun! Ha.

In the meantime, we are super blessed in where our little girl is.  She is living in a group foster home  and because it isn't her orphanage, we are able to be in contact with the director of the foster home and she is just wonderful! We are able to ask her questions about Charlotte whenever we want to, ask for pictures, and even VIDEO CHAT! We have gotten so many more pictures in the short time we've known about her than we did of Liana the entire wait.  And this last Monday, we were able to video chat with her!  It was AMAZING!!! She stared at us like, "Who are these weird looking people and what are they so excited about?!" It was so wonderful to see her precious little face! She walked around the home with the director as they showed us where she sleeps and the play room filled with toys and her friends.  In almost all of her pictures, she is on the floor playing or walking around.  It is clear, she isn't stuck in a walker or a crib all day.  She is actually able to be a kid and play!  It's fantastic!  I couldn't ask for a better situation for her while she waits to join her family!

I had said in my last post that I would talk about how the kids reacted to us adopting Charlotte.  Well, before we knew we were going to move forward with adopting, while I was just obsessing over her picture, Liana saw me looking at the picture and commented on the "cute baby".  Then, I saw her looking at her own hair like she was comparing it to Charlotte's and I could tell she was thinking, hey, same color! Then she said something about Charlotte's skin being a different color and I told her that yes, it's paler but hers was the same way when she was little, before we adopted her because she wasn't out in the sunshine all the time back then.  Then we talked about how they both have pretty, brown, almond shaped eyes.  It was cute to see her thinking, that's someone who looks a bit like me.  When we told the kids about her, we were still at South Padre and we showed them her picture and told them we were going to adopt her.  They were sooooo excited! Ethan was so cute because after a few minutes, he had this realization that he would be the only boy with THREE sisters and he kind of groaned and said, "I'll be the only boy!"  He wasn't really upset though.  A few weeks later, I had to take the kids for well visits at the doctor and told them that we would have some papers filled out by the doctor for the adoption to say that they were all healthy enough to have another sibling join the family.  Ethan said, "Thank you, Mommy, for letting us adopt Charlotte!" My heart melted! Sweet, sweet boy! <3 Liana is very happy that she will have a Chinese sister and tells everyone that we are going to China! Her teachers keep asking me about it because she tells them we're going this weekend...every weekend. :-D Silly girl.  Ella is thrilled about Charlotte and just can't wait to go and get her! She likes to text her friends pictures of Charlotte, in true tween fashion. ;-)

Overall, things are going great and we are so pleased to be back on the adoption road with all of it's twists and turns because we know that this sweet face will be waiting at the end for us: