Nuts and Bolts

So, those of you who know that we are in the process of adopting a baby asking what's going on with it - in fact, many of you have asked "what's going on with the adoption thing." I am starting to see why many people going through this process have a blog about it, so here goes nothing!

Anyway, here's the deal:

After about 8 months of paperwork and waiting for government stamps and fingerprint checks and Department of Homeland Security background clearance, we were finally approved to adopt on April 3, 2009. At that point we went on to the official waitlist of our agency - Gladney, with an estimated wait time of 8 months for a baby girl (0-12 months). 


On November 4th, right before I left to to pick up Finn from school, our caseworker Sara called to tell us that we had been matched with a baby.  We coordinated with Matt and were all on the phone at the same time when Sara emailed us pictures and documents about Shurube.  It was such a wonderful, emotional experience to see our child's beautiful face for the first time, to read about her life, and to find out what she is like.  At the time of the referral, she was 12 months old and had been living in the Gladney foster home for three months.  During that time, she had been busy growing (she gained 7 pounds in 3 months!), meeting new friends, and bonding with her caregivers.  


Once we were finished exclaiming over how cute and perfect she is, Sara explained that we would now have to wait to be given a court date.  Because Gladney has power of attorney for us over in Ethiopia, they can take care of all the legal aspects of the adoption for us before we travel over.  On December 9th, we got a call that our court date will be January 4th!  We were so excited that there are only two months between our referral and our court date, since many families wait much longer.  Of course, we have to be prepared that something might happen on or before the 4th that would cause a delay, which is not uncommon, but we are all keeping every finger and toe crossed that things go well that day.  If they do, Shurube will legally be our child as of January 4th.

At that point - or whenever the adoption is finalized - we will be assigned a travel date, hopefully in February, when we will all head on over to Addis Ababa to meet her and bring her home.  The mailman just delivered Finn and Gus' passports, so we are all set to go and can't wait for the time to come.