Homestudy complete, Paperwork collected

We've reached a special spot in this journey. On Friday evening we finished our homestudy. Yahoo. On Monday our social worker will forward our homestudy with his recommends to our agency, who will in turn send it to the Ministry. Then we wait for Ministry approval before forwarding our dossier on to Vietnam.

On Thursday I mailed our paperwork for our dossier to our agency. So... now all the waiting begins. It seems weird that we accomplished so much so quickly. We made our final decision on adopting from Vietnam in April and completed all 4 homestudy appointments from May - beginning of July. The dossier was pretty easy to compile and hopefully everything will continue to roll along.

I find I'm thinking of our daughter in Vietnam more and more now, it is consuming my thoughts at times. Is she already born? So many things to think about. I'm suffering from a bad case of insomnia lately and I think alot of it is due to all these things racing through my mind in the quiet times of night.

Our family has lots to keep us busy while we wait including family reunions, holidays, a trip to DisneyWorld and a Disney cruise, etc. I think it is best to keep as busy as possible. And we are very good at keeping busy around here.

The photo above is a snapshot of our Vietnam applications, etc before I put them in our envelope to mail off on Thursday. :)

Some Thoughts

I've kept our blog fairly positive up 'til this point but lets face it, at times during this process we have been faced with opinions and stereotyped views that have been very disheartening.

I'm at a loss with how to deal with these things but realize that this is only the beginning of what we will face as we become a family that is 'transracial' and 'different'.

The excitement, love and support we've received has been wonderful. I thank all those that have been there for us and continue to be positive and understand our decisions. You know who you are and we appreciate it more than you'll ever know.

For those who feel concerned that we are not sure what we are 'getting into' by adopting a child from another country...

Yes, we are sure. We would not be doing this if we were not.

Yes, we know it won't be easy at times. We also know it will be wonderful. It will be rewarding, challenging, and a joyful experience - just as parenting both our other children has been and continues to be.

Yes, we want to do this.

Yes, we have thought this through (for over 10 years to be exact including research, long conversations, our homestudy, meetings with social workers and a whole lot of soul searching)

Yes, we are doing this and we are very excited about it. This is our journey to our 3rd child, like a long pregnancy and every bit as important, anticipated and thought out as our other 2 children we've been blessed with. Those that share our excitement - we appreciate you and your thoughts.

To those that do not - if you have any concerns as to whether we are sure what we are doing, call us or talk to us. Understand that we are we and that you are you. This is OUR decision. This is our choice. When we hear negative and questioning comments about the plans we have to expand our loving family, it not only hurts... it makes us feel that you do not recognize that this child will be OURS and she deserves the same love and excited anticipation that any biological child would recieve.

There is no room in this for negativeness.

Some important translations

Run your mouse over each word and you will see its meaning below (ie: grandmotherinvn - grandmother in vietnamese)

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Ba - grandmother/nana

Ong - grandfather/poppa

dep - beautiful

chi - sister

anh - brother

me - mommy

Bo - daddy

Be - baby :)

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I have about a year (hopefully less!) to start figuring out some basic Vietnamese words and language. I have never been good with learning other languages so I need to get started soon. When we travel to VN I would like to have a decent grasp on some basic phrases and words to get us through. Perhaps as time goes on we can learn more, we will see.

I found this site at CafePress that has Vietnamese words on clothing. Here are some words that are going to be important to learn :)

My first BABY purchase

Well, Shaune and I finally had to make the decision as to age and gender as we move forward in our adoption and prepare our dossier for Vietnam. I will say it was a very very very hard decision but we've decided we will be welcoming another little girl into our family. I really wish we could welcome a little boy too. I guess never say never. Who knows what our future holds. When she finally comes home, she will share a room with her sister Chloe. Keaton (the adorable brother) is happy that he will have another little sister to play with too.

Now that we have finally made the decision, we begin our wait. Luckily I will not know her age for some time still or it would be really difficult not to start hitting those baby clothing racks I miss buying from. I gave away all of Chloe's clothes (and all of our baby stuff for that matter) as she grew out of them and so we will be starting fresh and needing everything over again.

This pretty Amy Butler fabric diaper bag is my first purchase. I work for this site http://twopeasinabucket.kaboose.com/shop.asp?derMars=1103F92CFB8 , on their design team and although this is a scrapbook tote... some of my friends that have bought it use theirs as a diaper bag instead. It is quite big and has lots of compartments for everything from my cell phone to diapers and bottles, etc. I feel kind of gitty about buying this and cannot wait to get it in the mail and start buying some things to put in it. If I'm going to carry diapers in a bag again, it is going to be a pretty one this time. I will probably buy a secondary one too... for days when I don't feel like being pink and flashy ;)

It comes in these 2 patterns - I went with the solid pink.