Christine's random thoughts today

I have some random thought here.

If a pregnant woman is expected to gain around 30 lbs when she is expecting, how much are adopting woman expected to gain? I hope the same because I think I have gained at least five pounds since we started.

Since a pregnant woman is known to be emotional, can't I be extra emotional too?

Why does nesting come in waves? One day I'm all gung-ho to clean the house and like today, I could barely get myself to wash two loads of laundry. I didn't even feel like cooking dinner.

Do you take diapers with you or do you buy them over there?

Russian Names

I have been thinking. I keep trying to guess what the name of our little guy will be. Misha, Sasha, Ivan, Artom, Danil, Dimas..... it is so fun going through the list of Russian names.

This time around, we are open to changing his name because he will be so young, but I don't know if we even want to. We certainly don't have a name picked out for him ahead of time. I guess if his name was one that I didn't like, well then maybe, but I can't even think of a name that I wouldn't care for. Oh well, it's kind of early to be worrying about the name game anyways.

But, out of curiosity, what is or was the name of your child when you first met him or her?

New Blogs

I just added a bunch of new blogs to my sidebar. If I forgot to add yours, please let me know.

Progress

Today we got fingerprinted. I sure hope our I-600A approval letter comes soon.

Meanwhile, I am going to finish up three more documents that we need for our dossier. Thankfully, I can apostille the remaining documents locally.

One of the forms that I need to do is the "application to adopt." I am still stumped on how to word this particular sentence. For families that have filled out this form, I would love to hear how you finished this sentence.

We would like to adopt ___________.

Remember, this sentence is where you describe the type of child(ren) that you would like to adopt.

What inspires you?

I was recently asked why I am inspired to adopt yet again, and with the same enthusiasm as a first time parent. I guess I just love children, think they add so much to this world, and feel that each child deserves as much enthusiasm as let's say, a first child would get. Where some parents feel exhausted at the end of the day, my children literally energize me. My adopted children, complete with whatever issues they may have, energize me even more.

I seriously welcome whatever challenges they bring, because everything is a learning experience. If I could learn to become more compassionate, patient, forgiving, loving....... and a better teacher and servant to the Lord, and in the process be giving a deserving child a family and home, I don't know why I wouldn't be inspired to keep doing what I am doing.

I look at it this way. I....... I mean we, are raising the future generation of our country, and there are not many things that I can think of doing that trump that.

We are not rich, but we live more extravagant than most of the people on this earth do, and adoption is a wonderful way of sharing what we have with another precious living person. When I think of adoption costs, yeah sure I wish they were free, and I can't quite understand why adoptions cost so much, but what better thing to spend our money on? Others might say, a nicer car, bigger house, fancier vacations, and such, but I just don't think those are the treasures that God is talking about storing up in heaven.

Matthew 6:19-20 "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal.

As of now, I am storing up 10 precious lives in heaven, well worth their weight in gold. Pretty soon it will be eleven. If all of us could spread the word, and touch people's hearts enough to put the desire in their heart to want to adopt too, then just think of how much gold would be stored up in heaven.

YEAH!!!!!

It came! It really came!

Now we can be fingerprinted.

Things are finally moving along, and I am thankful.

Dreaming of our SDA appointment

Had another dream last night. This time it was of our SDA appointment. We were showed five files. They laid out all of the files at one time for us to go through. The first was for a three year old little boy with Down's Syndrome. The second was for two boys ages four and six who were relatively healthy. The third and fourth I can't remember, and the last one was for a little boy who was 17 months old, and diagnosed with mild cerebral palsy. Just when we were about to choose, I woke up.

Oh how I wish, I could have finished my dream. :)

I wonder how the real appointment will go.

Count..there's 11 of them :)

This came in the mail today! And yes, I am smiling. (I thought this was appropriate since we just got back from Caleb's orthodontist appointment.)

From over at SmilesandTrials

Not much to update you with. Nothing in the mail.... still.

But, I did post on my other blog, and rather than repost it here, I just thought I'd give you the link. Why? You might be wondering. As I was writing about my little boy Jonny when he was six months old, I kept thinking about our soon to be new son, and how since he will be so much younger than our girls at the time of adoption, I will be able to do a lot of the things that I didn't get to do with them. Anyways, just thought I'd share, that's all.

Only one?

Well for those of you that are following along, remember how I mailed off our documents for apostilling back on Dec 17th? Well, I hadn't' seen a check clear and had no idea whether or not they even got my documents, so I spent the day (off and on) calling the Sacramento Notary Office to check on things.

After my 20th call or so late in the afternoon, I finally got through to someone who nearly scared the dickens out of me by saying that only one of my documents had been apostilled and they were mailing everything back to me. I was really nervous and asked her to please find the person who actually handled my documents to see if they could verify this. This just didn't make sense. Why would I send a check for $220 if I only wanted one apostille?

After what seemed like forever, the woman came back on the phone and calmed my nerves. Her mistake, she had read the computer info wrong, and all 11 of our apostilled docs were mailed back to us on the 31st. We should be getting them back any day.

I must have thanked her 10 times before I got off the phone with her.

Has anyone ever told you how stressful international adoptions can be?