The good, the bad, hopefully no ugly.

Today was my last meeting with my SW for my homestudy. She said it will take about 10-14 days to finalize the homestudy; that is if she gets the rest of my references and my state police clearance before then. The meeting went fine, she asked some tough questions, very much like a job interview only closer to a "life" interview. But luckily, this was friendly and casual, so it didn't matter that it took me three hours to come up with some of the answers...just kidding.

On the dossier front, things are not going as smoothly. I have to redo several documents (see previous post) and I am still struggling with my letter to Ethiopia. I am supposed to put in some "personal experiences" I have with Ethiopia...which are extremely limited. Given time, that will change but I'm working on it. There is an Ethiopian restaurant in Harrisonburg (the Blue Nile) that I am planning to visit if anyone is interested in experimenting...Dad, we better start developing a liking for this so we don't starve when we go. So overall, the paperwork is not going badly, just not as quickly as I want. It is hard to read other blogs with people finishing their dossiers (Congrats to Stacie and Kevin for finishing theirs) but I have to keep in mind that I only started this process about 8 weeks ago and things are actually moving at lightning speed...most people have a lot more time invested in the process already. I am also at a great disadvantage because I do not live anywhere close to my adoption agency branch. I am working out of the Tennessee branch (which covers most of the SouthEast) so it takes a little longer to get my stuff done because I can't just walk in and get it reviewed. But they say patience is a virtue...I just wish you could buy it somewhere, cause I'm good at shopping.

On that note, I'm doing better with the shopping spree. I have only bought 2 baby items this week...a pair of lime green pants with pink embroidery (sounds like strange colors to go together but it's really cute!) and a pair of jeans with a butterfly on the leg. Still sticking to nonseasonal clearance items. I read a great article in Parenting magazine (thanks Leisa @ work) about traveling on airlines with babies/toddlers. Things about guidelines on formula/baby food, how to change diapers in tiny bathrooms, how to "con" the airlines into an extra seat without paying for it, and had lists of what to take on board and what to check. I'm going to tear out the article and put it in my "travel" section of my big BINDER (read Stacie's blog to understand the binder joke) and hopefully I'll remember it when the time comes.

So that is all that's new here and none of it's really new. The next few weeks will just be papers and waiting. Did I mention papers? Deborah, I'm not sure how you did it because I've heard that China has like 2-3 times more paperwork than most of the other countries...but when I look at Kaili, I can't help but get so excited that I can forget all about the journey to get there.