Three Things (x 3)

I have no pictures to share.
No stories to regale.
Well, actually, I probably have both. But you aren't getting any today.

I just wanted to let you know 3 things:

1. I have not fallen off the face of the earth.

2. I have been spending every possible minute outside, being infatuated with this spring weather. (Who cares if my Macbook has a thin film of pollen covering it? Wearing sunglasses while you work is "the life!")

3. We are still waiting. We are excited. And happy. And I'm about to go radio silent about the adoption for awhile. But first I'll tell you this...

We found out three pieces of information on the same day last week:

1. Due to some recent unfortunate events, there has been a new mandate saying we (and all adoptive parents) will be required to travel to Ethiopia twice. The first visit will be to appear for our court date (previously, someone represented us at this appointment) and the second visit will be to appear for our embassy appointment and to bring our child home. The first visit will occur about 6 weeks after referral and the second visit will occur about 6 weeks after that. Crazy stuff! We had heard rumors about this, but we had thought it wouldn't affect us. Alas, it does.

• Pro: We will get to meet our child sooner.
• Con: We will have to say goodbye to our child and come home before going back to get him/her on a later trip.
• Pro: We will get a "trial run" of our trip sans parenting responsibilities before the second visit when we will have the child with us most of the time. More time to soak up the culture!
  
• Con: Extra cost. There are some things I can't talk about on the internet--that is one of them.
• Pro: Our time-line will not be affected by this. It does not delay the time between referral and when we come home with our child--we just have to travel twice as much in the same original period of time.

2. Our social worker gave us an updated time-line--there has been some shuffling of people on our list. Instead of "any day now" until a referral, it looks like it will be more like 1-5 months until referral.

3. We received our approved i-171H in the mail! What? You don't know what this means? It is an official government document saying we are approved to adopt a child from Ethiopia. It's official!

So what does all of this mean for you, bloggie friends? Why, three things of course...

1. Radio silence on the adoption. Waiting is just waiting. I'm not going to whine about it--who wants that? In fact, I'm probably going to go ahead and start decorating my gender-neutral nursery and purchasing my long-coveted running stroller. But you won't hear about it for a while.

2. If you see me in person, PLEASE assume no news is good news. I know you are excited, and I am too, but it really starts wearing out my heart to say "No news," to everyone I know. For the next 1-5 months. Ha! Listen, I guarantee I'll be bellowing out your name and chasing you down in Target with news if I have something exciting to share!

3. Speaking of knowing me in person, you will get a little treat around the time of referral! I am not allowed to post photos of our child online before we've passed court. So I will be happy to spread the news in person, but the blog-world will only get general info until we've passed court (AKA made our first trip to Ethiopia!). Until then, "your mom's blog" goes back to regularly scheduled programming. And that's ok, because this is not an adoption blog...just a blog about little, ole, narcissistic ME! ;)

We just took a trip to Charlotte for a dear friend's wedding. Nick graduates from seminary next weekend. We have been fixing up our back yard so we can enjoy this spring and summer outside. The Memphis Farmers' Market just opened for a new season. Great things happening, and I'll tell you all about them soon!