Whew! Now that my heart rate has returned to within the normal range, time to get busy! I shouldn't even be writing this post, but I'm hoping it will help me get my thoughts in order.  So if you really have nothing better to do, here is my to-do list for your reading enjoyment:

1.   Freak out!! check!

2.   Pray

3.   Apply for visa

4.   Set up appointment with interntional adoption physician upon our return

5.   Pack for V. - this is a problem. What size?! I don't know! I'm going with 2,3,4 and hoping that something will fit and that I still have enough room for our clothes.

6.   Make sure I have appropriate gifts for everyone. I bought these last January when I thought we would be going back soon. So, how long does unopened coffee and cosmetics stay good?  I'm hoping a couple of years. Otherwise, it's money down the drain.

7.   Get our house ready. This is a big one.  Someone else's dust bunnies and soap scum are always grosser than your own.  Yeah, it's just my sister, but still. got to keep up appearances, you know.

8.   Book flights!! 2 seats going over,  3 coming back!!

9.   Pick up x-ray film from lab.

10.  Buy umbrella stroller to take.

11.  Stock pantry.

12.  Help Gabe prepare his speech for court.

13.  Fly to Oklahoma, attend a wedding, fly back.

14.  Prepare our hearts. A new daughter, wow!!

15.  Threaten our kids with eternal loss of Wii privileges if they misbehave in our absence.

16.   Visit the bank to get as many crisp, clean $100 bills as I can get my hands on. If you have any of these just gathering dust at your house, I would be happy to take them off your hands.

17.  Collect care package for the orphanage.

18.  One more visit to ye olde notary and secretary of state.

19.  Trust God.

20.  Decide: to Benadryl or not to Benadryl? That is the question.

21.  Learn Russian. Ha! Right! At least some useful phrases: "We are your mama and papa."  "We love you." "Hungry?" "Time for sleep!"

22. Write some more (BIG) checks.

23.  Try to find something dignified looking to wear to court.

24.  Be still and know that I am God.

That should about do it.  Yeah, right.    At least it's a start. Hang on little girl! We're coming!



The One I've Been Waiting For

This is the post I've waited so long to write.  I really wanted to be funny, profound, clever, something, anything but boring, but as it is, I've got nothing.  Just a heart that won't stop beating so fast and thoughts that won't stop scattering in about a hundred different directions.  So in case you have not yet heard, we have a date!! October 18th!!  We received this news, almost a year to the day we received the referral for our little pumpkin.  Also, we will be traveling a year, minus a week, since our first trip. That's got to be close to some kind of record.

Now that the paperchasing is pretty much over, not to mention the agonizing wait, now my thoughts turn to parenting and being a family. For that is the whole point, isn't it?  Lord willing, Victoria will be our daughter. We will be her mom and dad. She'll have a brother and 2 sisters.  She'll have a big hairy dog that will let her climb all over her. She'll have grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, playmates, and a church family to care for her. She'll learn that Jesus loves her. And she'll teach us a whole lot, too.  We can't wait!

Waaaahhhhh!!

I would be in violation at this moment in time.

I'm at the end of my rope and trying my hardest to hang on.

   We really, really, really want Victoria to come home.

Truth be told, Mom's going a little bit nutso.

We've been waiting so long.  So has Victoria.....

This little girl has been in our thoughts every day for the last 10 months. Hoping and trusting we'll get to play the clapping games she loves again real soon. 

Shamelessly Plagiarized Post

The Waiting Place...

...for people just waiting.

Waiting for a train to go
or a bus to come, or a plane to go
or the mail to come, or the rain to go
or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow
or waiting around for a Yes or a No
or waiting for their hair to grow.
Everyone is just waiting.

Waiting for the fish to bite
or waiting for wind to fly a kite
or waiting around for Friday night
or waiting, perhaps, for their uncle Jake
or a pot to boil, or a Better Break
or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants
or a wig with curls, or Another Chance.
Everyone is just waiting.

NO!
That's not for you! 

Except, apparently, it is.  Acknowledgments to Dr. Seuss

Now, in other news......Due to intense public outry demanding to view my previously mentioned shark wallpaper border (ok, my sister asked), here ya' go:

Here's a close-up, also featuring my son's AWANA poster on the book of Job. Lot of suffering going on there. You can see why we needed to make some serious changes to this room for Little Miss V.



I'm happy to report the sharks and Job are gone and I've picked out a lovely shade of pale green to replace the blue - now we just have to find some time to prime and paint, not easy with Little-Miss-Into-Everything (Millie) around.  A local artist, Amy Leyden, has also offered to donate a couple of her pieces for the room.



One more rather exciting piece of news.  Our friends, the Kramers, are adopting a son from V's same orphanage. They will be going back to the orphanage a week from today, with court the following day! It makes me happy to know that they will actually get to lay eyes on our little girl and maybe get a picture or two for us! Not to mention they will be able to fill us in on what court is like in this region.  They could still use some help with their travel expenses and such. Here's their blog : http://www.thekramerfamilysite.blogspot.com/   Any amount, however small, helps.

We've heard from Dr. Seuss, now let's hear from the Great Physician:

"And the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will Himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. To Him be the power forever and ever. Amen."  I Peter 5:10-11.

Update and Shark Bait

Perhaps not the title you were expecting. Let me just say there is a song (a very classic song, I might add) the kids and I enjoy listening to. When my son, Eli, asks to hear this song, he will refer to it as "Shark Bait".  A gold star for anyone who knows the song I'm talking about, and yes, the word "shark" does come up. Okay, enough foolishness. On to more important matters.

We got a couple of exciting pieces of news yesterday. The first is that our friends adopting from the same baby house as our girl now have a court date for early September. This is wonderful, obviously, for them because they will be bringing their son home soon, but also, for us it is good news in that their court was scheduled so quickly after they submitted all their documents. Maybe this will be true for us as well.

The second piece of news is that all our court documents have been mailed to R. and should have arrived yesterday, or at the latest, today. This is a relief because there was still some question as to whether we were going to have to redo anything else.  The judge, after reviewing our documents, could still ask for something more, but for now, we're good.  So it feels like we're getting really close and we're cautiously optimistic we might see our little one very soon.  But, I haven't lived through this last year-and-a-half for nothing, so I'm trying to lean towards the cautious part. I am learning more and more that this is God's thing and He's going to accomplish it when He chooses. But, still can't help being a bit excited.

And then there's the preparations that need to be made for our absence, for court and for her homecoming. Exactly how does one prepare for an adopted child you haven't seen in 10 months? What size clothes is she wearing now? Where will she be happiest sleeping? There's probably at least a thousand little details that I need to consider in bringing her into our family. And goodness knows, I've had the time to plan for each one of them, but with the months of endless delays, there just wasn't the motivation. But now seems like the time to begin our preparations in earnest.  Which for me can be summed up in two words: "shark border."

Confused? Well, my son's room is definitely a boy's room with bright blue walls and a really cool border with lots of scary-looking sharks running along the top. Only problem, he doesn't sleep in this room. The occupant of this room is none other than our sweet little Millie. The male occupant of this room has long ago decided he was much happier sleeping in a room with his big sister.  He is a social creature through-and-through and can't stand sleeping in a room by himself.  Millie, on the other hand, is perfectly happy where's she at and doesn't seem to mind all the ferocious critters looking down on her. But V?, well, somehow it doesn't seem right to put her down to sleep in such a room.  So the sharks gotta go. Which means I should probably get off the computer at this point and go do something more constructive.  Honest-to-goodness, my eldest, Eva, just told me "why don't you do some housework or something?" When the 7-year-old can see the house needs attention, I should probably listen. 

An update, sort of...

Hello! Well, I guess I'm not really too good at this blogging thing, but people keep asking me if we have any news on our adoption, and it finally came to me, 'Duh!, that's what the blog is supposed to be for.'  Of course, I kind of made a semi-promise to myself that I wouldn't write another entry until I had some really exciting news to share. Unfortunately, that is not the case today. But I can tell you what is happening. So here goes...

About a month ago, Gabe & I had sent off all our court paperwork, again, I might add. We had done all this before, of course, but much of it had expired since it has to be within 3 months of court.  We were all good, we thought. A court date should be forthcoming very shortly. Right.......  We didn't realize that our homestudy agency was still waiting on a paper from the state that has something to do with their being in good standing.  So now the state of Michigan was holding us up. That was a long couple of weeks (3 maybe?, I really can't remember at this point).  But lo and behold! It finally came and was on it's way to Maryland (where our placing agency is).  From there our agency fed-exed the whole kit-and-kaboodle back to Lansing where it is now being apostilled. Don't ask me what this word means. I still have only a vague notion. But I know it must be very important. And judging from the Fed-Ex charges I discovered on our bank statement this morning, it should have gotten there lickety-split!

So I think that's where we're still at. I don't get a minute-by-minute rundown of what's going on.  And of all things, our adoption worker is on vacation this week! Really! The nerve!  Okay, not really, just kidding. She is great and we like her a lot. And I suppose, she is entitled to a life apart from the momentous event we are anticipating in our lives. But sometimes, I wish I could live in her brain and know everything she knows.

When the apostilling is over, our documents will be shipped to that really far-off place that I'm not supposed to say the name of, where they will be translated. Very soon after this (oh I hope!) we will be scheduled for court.   And that folks, is where we're at.

And Victoria (or Vika, as some of you may know her) is 9 months older than when we left her.  That's getting kind of close to a year. That's huge at her age! I wonder how she's changed. We miss that girl so much! Looking forward to a sweet reunion in the next month or so.

But meanwhile, we are certainly keeping busy around here.  A couple of big issues we're dealing with have to do with Millie, our almost-3-year-old-going-on-18 girl.  Those of you who know us and our kids, as in face-to-face, actually talking kind of know, probably are aware that Millie doesn't speak.  She only has a couple of words that she can say pretty reliably: Momma & Dadda.  The last few months we were able to get her into speech therapy and they feel she most likely has a condition called verbal apraxia.  With verbal apraxia, the child may come out with a new word once and never say it again. Basically, Millie might say a word once in a blue moon, but she is unable to repeat it.  She is unable to get her tongue, lips, jaws, etc. to make the necessary movements to form sounds and words. She is simply unable to at this point. From what I've read, significant progress can be made once the child receives pretty intensive therapy, so we're expecting that Millie will one day be able to communicate like anyone else, but for now, she's making do with her limited repertoire of signs.

Millie is also scheduled to undergo surgery on her right eye, which is what's commonly known as a "lazy eye."  She has recently decided that she's about had it with the patch thing and simply refuses to wear it. It gets pretty tiring for Mom, too. Without consistent patching or surgery, her vision will start to deteriorate. So, she'll have surgery in Sept. to correct the muscles in this eye to make them stronger.  So this little lady has a few problems to overcome, but she definitely makes up for them with a very strong spirit. Oh my, does she have a strong spirit! This makes it difficult for Mom most days, but I trust this will serve her well when she's older.

We're so thankful for the professionals who are helping us with these needs and especially for those who lift up our family in prayer and support us in other ways. We can't wait to introduce Vika to everyone of you. And we praise God for His faithfulness and grace throughout our adoption process and beyond.

Some Good News!!!!

Finally! Something good to report. Let me go back a few days. As some of you know, there was another Reece's Rainbow family visiting their son who also lives in Victoria's baby house. They had graciously offered to try to get some information about her for us. I certainly didn't expect that they would be so successful!


Last Thursday, I was about as down as I could be. I could see other families proceeding with their adoptions and being blessed with their children.  It seemed like it would never be our turn. All I saw ahead was more months of waiting and uncertainty.  Was this God's will? Were we even supposed to be doing this?  Then....

Friday morning I woke up to a Facebook message from my friend Karen who said that day, while they were at the orphanage,  the social worker came in and said the hospital had just called and said they were expecting to send Victoria back to the orphanage at the beginning of July!!!  My friend asked about the TB, since we had just been told the prior week she was still testing positive. The social worker replied they would not be sending her back if she still had it.  I could hardly get this through my still sleep-fogged brain, but the more I thought about it the more excited I got.  I couldn't believe it. I certainly didn't understand it and I still don't.  But, finally, finally, something good. Words can't really express my happiness and relief at this news.  Now, to confirm this with our agency.

When I received this bit of information, it was the end of the work week there, so we had to wait through the weekend to find out if this was really true.  I am happy to say that just an hour ago, our agency called and said, "yes, she will be released later this week!"   We should also be receiving a medical report that will hopefully help fill in some of the missing pieces for us next week.  Our agency is as puzzled as we are. It truly makes no sense.

I would like to understand why things happened like this and why we were told what we were told.  But if we never understand, it really doesn't matter.  We are a big step closer to bringing our girl home and I'm so happy about that, I can live with the rest. 

If I had to say what has allowed us to get to this point today, without a doubt it would be because so many of God's people have been praying for us.  I can't say thank you enough to those of you who have.  So, hopefully the next time you hear from us, I will be announcing our court date.  Now, to schedule our dr's appointments (again, more bloodwork, yay!),  and get our police clearances (again). 

Oh, one more little thing.  We also found out that V. has started walking during her time in the hospital.  Now that makes this momma happy!