Court Date!

We just found out our court date is October 19! This will be a very short 3-4 day trip. We will meet our daughter and go to court to accept the referral and fly home. We are traveling with four other families so it will be fun to share the experience with them. If we pass court on the 19th then we will return a few weeks later to pick her up, process her visa and bring her home. That trip will be a little longer, probably about a week.

Last night we had the visit from our social worker to update our homestudy report. The best part of the evening was when she asked the boys if they are excited to have a baby sister. Nick responded with "yeah, now mom won't be the only one wearing a shirt at the dinner table." It's possible we've gotten a little lax with our dining dress code during the warmer summer months...

Next Steps

We can't believe it's been three weeks since we got our referral! With our referral we only received two pictures of our baby girl but yesterday we received nine more pictures. With each new picture we feel closer to her and like we can see more of her personality. This whole process can be very confusing so I will attempt to answer the question, what happens next?

The courts in Ethiopia close for the rainy season which is usually the beginning of August until the end of September. We do not anticipate receiving a court date before the courts close.

For the meantime, the baby is at the transition home run by our agency. We have asked other families who are traveling to pick up their children to take pictures for us.

Hopefully in the next month we will find out what our scheduled court date is for when the courts reopen in October.

Once we have our court date we will travel to Ethiopia, meet our daughter and go to court. We are only in Ethiopia for 3-4 days. Hopefully all goes well with court and the adoption is approved. If not, court gets rescheduled but we do not have to appear again.

A few weeks after we "pass court", we will travel back to Ethiopia to pick up our daughter, process her visa and bring her home! That trip will be approximately 7 days long.

So for now there isn't much we can do except for wait. We are also reading books about parenting adopted children and specifically on bonding. I just read the section on sleeping and how the bedtime routine is so important. We've always had a fairly consistent bedtime routine in our house and it makes me wonder what her bedtime routine has been? I can't wait to be able to hold her and read her stories and comfort her when she is upset. Basically to have those special little bonding moments that we have with our children every day.