You are cordially invited...

Finallly! Today we received our TA's from China saying we can come pick up Hope. We will be leaving on the 8th, but as of tonight, we are unsure of when we'll return -either July 23,24 or 25th. We are just waiting for the appointment from the Counsulate as to when that will be. It's just so surreal that two weekends from now we will be in Hong Kong, two weeks from Monday (July 14th) we will have our baby! To say we are excited, scared, nervous and just plain overwhelmed is an understatment. It's one of those situations that you have a million things to get done, but suddenly organizing your shoes in your closet becomes an easier task to conquer. I walk around at work with a grin on my face and inside my head I just keep hearing "I'm going to China in 10 days" and wonder if anyone can figure out my secret. I guess I gave everyone a clue yesterday that I'm really starting to lose it when at about 11:00am I looked down and realized for the first time that day that I had two completely different shoes on! One was blue, one was black. Who does that!??
We are going to paint the nursery this weekend with the help of some friends, and put the crib up, pack, make lists, and more lists. Tick tock, tick tock our time has come.

Labor Groans

I've been walking around in quite a daze/fog lately, and it occurred to me that although I am well aware that we will have a baby in a few short weeks, I am not getting the proper sympathy that is afforded to most pregnant women in my shape. I've worked around plenty of 9 month prego women, and man, they really can milk it if they try. I mean, just because I'm not "showing" on the outside, I still feel a lot of the same things they do: insomnia, cravings (especially red wine), hormonal breakdowns (OK, that one is probably PMS), forgetfulness, clumsiness (which would explain my four hour visit to the ER last Sunday for almost chopping off my finger with a food processor), and if you want to talk about labor pains, what do you call flying coach for 17 hours - and then again two weeks later with a baby on your lap!? I'd gladly take an epidural for that! I said this when we were waiting for Claire and I'll say it again. I think adoptive moms should be allowed to wear something that indicates we are about to embark on parenthood very soon and everyone in our path should look out, or at the very least supply the chocolate and rub our feet.

On news about the adoption, we have nothing new to report. Only that we received our Visa's today, so we are ready and able to go as soon as China says we can. We are still thinking that we will go the second week of July or around there, but it's any one's guess really. Maybe we'll have more news later this week as Thursday will be three weeks since we were officially Matched.

A Flurry of Paperwork - and refried beans

Ok, we can breathe for a while. We got the paperwork completed for our Visa's, a small portion of the travel paperwork for our agency done, and made sure our passports and vital info is completed. Still no official word of when we will leave, but we are going by the 4 - 7 week average, which, is now the middle of July. Which we understand is about the worst weather-wise time to be in Hunan China. They say it's about 100 temp, 110 humidity. David thinks he will melt, and as for me, do not plan on seeing many pictures of me on the blog! I can only imagine the classic hair days to follow. Not that any of that matters anyway, but I thought it would be fun to add just one more darn thing to worry about! ha ha
I'm already starting to have "nesting" urges, last night at about 2:00 am I had a burning, I mean seething desire to get up and clean my pantry and my closet out. I did do it, and it's amazing how many cans of refried beans we have. I don't even like refried beans!!
Hopefully I'll have more pictures or info to report about Hope soon. Until then, stay tuned!