6 Weeks

Today marks 6 weeks waiting for travel. It is getting harder with the more time that passes. There are certainly people who have waited much longer than this and I don't envy their wait. A travel group was announced for the first week of November. It is so exciting and nice to see movement for anyone. This also means that we will get PICTURES!!! We are so anxious to see how much our baby boy is changing and are looking forward to having a new picture to stare at! We still have no idea when our court date is. Based off of my parent's paperwork and knowing ours was there as soon as courts opened, I am pretty confident we must have a court date in November. Unfortunately we will not know until that date has come and gone. Right now we are praying that whenever our court date is, we pass the first time around. If this happens I am hopeful we can still travel by the end of the year. For now we are passing the time as best we can by focusing our hopes on photo updates and trying to keep our minds off of the unknown court date.

3 Months

Elias is 3 months old! So, in proper adoption blog fashion I am going to tell you all 3 things I LOVE about Elias:

1) I love his piercing brown eyes
2) I love all 10 of his LONG toes
3) I love his very serious scrunched eyebrow look

And here are 3 things I can't wait to find out about Elias:

1) What it feels like to hold him
2) What he looks like when he smiles (since he has that serious scrunched eyebrow look in most of the pictures we have)
3) What his personality is like - is he content? a screamer? happy?


**My parents got their court dates - December 9th! We can't wait to find out if that will be the day 2 more boys are added to the family!

Our Baby Boy's Name

We had a great time at the showers and one of the most exciting parts was sharing our baby boy's name with all of our family and friends. You should have heard the cheers and clapping when Brian said we were going to finally share the name we have picked! The night we got our referral I made Brian sit down and we made a list of all the names we liked. We narrowed it down from 20ish to 4... here they are: Lucas, Micah, Elias, Isaac. And the winner is -

ELIAS

Elias is a common Ethiopian name and is the Greek version of Elijah meaning Jehovah is God. Two of my favorites were Eli and Silas and then we came across this Ethiopian combo. We waited until we saw pictures of our little boy and it just seemed to fit. Since we wanted to keep his Ethiopian birthname as his middle name, we also wanted to find something that sounded good together. We (no actually just Brian) decided we needed a few days of discussion to make sure nothing better came up. Then we received some strange coincidences (I think not) and we knew Elias had to be it! These strange coincidences were when Brian was walking around on a break and saw this sign

Notice it is called the Elias Salon. He e-mailed me this "I was seriously thinking of getting back to my desk and looking up names, when I looked up and saw this. A sign?" Well, yes, Brian, it is a sign. What's really freaky though is I was looking at a junk mail letter from a lady with the last name Elias at the very same instant. Woah.

Unfortunately we can't disclose his full name until he is legally ours but it will be

Elias [insert birthname here] Gossett

More Referrals!

Congrats to Whitney and Jared on their referral of a baby BOY! AND since 2 referrals is better than 1, congrats to Matt and Emily on their referral of a baby GIRL! We are so excited for all of you!

Tagged

I have been tagged by my friends Amy and Leann. I guess multiple tags mean I must do my best to share seven random/weird things about myself.

1. I love the seat warmers in my car. I don't get to use them that often since it is usually warm in San Diego. Sometimes though I just want the comfort of a warm back so I turn the AC on and the seat warmer at the same time.

2. I crave salad. Not just any salad. Dave and Buster's Southwestern Chicken salad. We go out to lunch every day at work (rough, I know...) and I usually insist we go there at least once a week. There have been a couple times though that my cravings have been so bad over the weekend that Brian and I go there because I can't wait until Monday.

3. Although it took me 6 years and 4 schools to get my degree, I never changed my mind about what I wanted to do as a career and therefore never changed my major.

4. My feet are always dry. I think it is because I wear flip flops or sandles every single day. Luckily I have a husband who loves to rub my feet and actually does so, with lotion, every single night before bed.

5. I have to wash my face every night before bed. I am mildly allergic to make-up. If I fall asleep on the couch Brian has to wake me up to make sure I wash my face. If not, I wake up about 2 am with burning, itching, watery eyes and have to go do it then. I have recently decided maybe I should invest in some biore wipes so Brian can bring my face wash to me on the couch.

6. In high school I was in choir. We went on a trip to France. My Mom was there as a chaperone and my sister was also there. We were touring Versailles and it was time to get back on the bus. My Mom, sister and I were slacking and were definitely in the back of the group. As we were walking quickly to catch the bus, we passed a group of school children on a field trip. My Mom told the little boys I was an American movie star. They swarmed me asking for pictures. There were tons of kids all around me and we are all dying laughing (especially my Mom) who was taking pictures for these kids of them with the "American movie star." I gave the last boy a kiss on the cheek and all his friends thought he was SO cool. I wonder if any of them jumped online to try to figure out who I was...

7. Brian calls me curly toes. The reason why is because when I am really relaxed and sitting down I curl my toes under my feet. I don't even realize I do it but he always likes to point it out.

Now I am going to tag:

Sarah

Nellann

Dawn

Renee

DeeDee

Erin

Emily

Now I have some really exciting adoption news!!! My Mom found out that yesterday their paperwork was submitted to court. AND they were told they should be getting a court date assigned today!! We are guessing it will be sometime the end of November/beginning of December. I will let you know as soon as we find out. For those of you wondering how long it takes to get assigned a court date after your paperwork is submitted, there you go - 1 day!

Presents for the BABY

We are allowed to send the baby presents. Whatever we can squeeze into a gallon ziploc bag. Here's what we chose: a lovey made by Mimi, a lion stuffed animal, 2 outfits from Mimi (which won't fit by time he is home :(, a rattle/teether/squeeky toy, and a photo album. Obviously we don't expect the baby to be lying down staring at our pictures so we bought a fabric album that has a little mirror and all the photos are placed into shapes. If nothing else it will be a nice toy to slobber on. All of the items have the baby's name on them. My really shifty sewing job on the lion and lovey name tags will give the special mothers at HH a good laugh at my expense. After I was basically done, Mr. Boy Scout offered to "help" his wife out. Thanks, but no thanks. I'm the Mom here. Please don't embarrass me by showing me you can do a better whip stitch.Here is everything shoved into the gallon bag! It took a couple of attempts to get everything rolled properly. Brian didn't understand why I felt like we had to zip the ziploc bag. He insisted that they just told us we had to put stuff in there not actually close it. We managed to get it zipped, whew. Look what we got in the mail for the baby?! These fabulous burp cloths came from Nellann. I have to admit my favorite though is the CUTE tie onesie. I can see him now rolling up to church in his jeans, converse, and tie onesie! THANK YOU NELLANN! We love it!

Weekend Forecast - Showers Ahead!

Brian and I are super excited about this weekend!! Although it will be 80 degrees, this weekend will be full of showers! We are lucky enough to have amazing friends and family who want to help us celebrate the soon-to-be arrival of our little boy. (That "soon" is all relative of course, since nothing in this process feels "soon"). My sister, Mom, and aunt have been working hard planning a very special day which happens to be this Saturday!! We will be graced with the presence of family and close friends on a day to honor our little boy and our passage into the realm of parenthood. As if that isn't cool enough, we get to have a second shower on Sunday after church for all of our church family. We are both really looking forward to a weekend all about this little boy whom we already deeply love and whose arrival is so very highly anticipated. Yeah for babies!!!

*And yes, you read correctly. We are both really excited for this weekend. A few months ago Brian asked if he "had" to go to the shower. I said no. When it actually came time for the shower and he found out we weren't planning it around his soccer schedule he was bummed because he thought he would "get" to go. I know some of you are probably on the verge of passing out thinking that a *perfectly normal* man wants to go to a baby shower. The thing is, it isn't just any baby shower. It's our baby shower. When baby Gossett was just a unknown baby the shower wasn't such an exciting idea for Brian. I am pleased to announce though that Brian is smitten and after seeing the photos of his son and taking in the reality of the situation, he doesn't want to miss a single part of this experience and (to the chargrin of my father who would rather be at the dentist :)) this includes the shower. So, if you see him there don't gwak like you are seeing an odd species at the zoo. He's a sensitive fellow :) and I'd like to encourage him to remain just the way he is!

Monthly Update

Well we got our monthly update call on Friday. I had a list of questions ready for Christy despite the fact we were touring a winery. We found out a lot - some good, some bad. First of all, because of his family history (which we are choosing to keep the sharing of this to a minimum) we had questions as to whether or not our son's birthmother named him or if someone at HH named him. We found out that the staff at HH did not name him and his birthmother did in fact choose his name. Both Brian and I were really hoping this was the case as we feel anything he has that came from his birthfamily is so special and will someday be of a lot of importance to him.
I also asked about the court process. Here's a rundown - as soon as we accepted our referral, our paperwork was sent to MOWA (Ministry of Women's Affairs). It is simultaneously taken to the Federal Courts. We are assigned a court date. MOWA reviews our dossier and then it is sent to the Federal Courts. A few days after we pass court we are issued a court decree and will receive a travel call (usually 2-4 weeks out) with our visa appointment date (when we must be in Ethiopia). I did confirm that we do have a court date scheduled although AGCI will not tell us when it is set for. I asked for a vague clue (like maybe which month) and was given the polite "not our policy" speech. Ugh. At this point my gut feeling is that our court date is scheduled for December although there is a chance it is sometime in November. I was also given a list of reasons why so many people do not pass court the first time around. We are really hoping to be some of the lucky few who pass with flying colors at our first court date.
We also talked about pictures. The last picture we have of our son was taken 7 weeks ago. For some reason I was under the impression that AGCI would send us new photos once a month. I guess I got this "child update" mixed up with "monthly updates." Apparently we only get one child update and it is right before travel. The families who had their referrals during the court closure got photo updates at the end of September but this was a special circumstance. Our only chance of receiving photos of our little guy is from travel groups of families going to pick up their children. Unfortunately, it still might be a while before the next travel group. I had my expectations set really high. I thought since we knew right where he was and they have a digital camera that getting photos once a month wouldn't be too hard and even though we aren't together we would still get to see how our son is growing and changing. I am already trying to imagine how much he has changed in the last 7 weeks of his 12 week life... Above all I am trying to be thankful for the 15 photos we do have at the tender ages of 3 weeks and 5 weeks. Many countries only give out one referral photo so I am working of being grateful for the photos of a beautiful and healthy baby boy rather than focusing on what we don't have. I guess I will just have to try and make up for it with thousands of pictures once we are together!We have a travel call on the 22nd where we will discuss the travel group plans. We probably received our travel packet with all of this information while we were gone this weekend so we look forward to going through that. It will be fun to start planning the details of the BEST TRIP OF OUR LIVES!!!

And We're OFF!

No not to Ethiopia. Although that would be nice. We are headed to Napa Valley for a long weekend! Now I could be really melodramatic and tell you we are on one last get-away before our lives change forever and only God knows when we will ever get a chance to be alone again, but I won't. Brian and I have always wanted to go to Napa and we thought it would be the perfect gift to celebrate the fact that we are both done with me being in school. Now there was a time when we were too scared to plan anything in July for fear of having to cancel if we passed court and quickly had to rush to Ethiopia. We now look back and laugh. Oh July would have been way too easy. Things have changed. They slowed way down after the lightening paced paperwork phase. I am even dreading the fact the we might be able to plan a valentine weekend away. Hopefully that is just pure pessimism with no hint of reality but with international adoption you just never know. We have been told not to hope for Christmas, probably January for travel, but a slight possibility of February...ugh. Of all the things we have learned it is that we are so far from being in control it isn't even funny. Really not funny.

So, back to our trip! We are taking off for a long weekend since we really don't know when the next time we will have an "adults only" weekend will be. After forced separation the first (most-likely) 6 months of our baby's life, I can't imagine we would be ready to drop him off with a sitter and take off for a romantic get-away anytime soon. All you seasoned parents might laugh at that statement but it is hard to imagine ever leaving our little guy when we want so badly to be with him now. We are both really excited for a time to relax, enjoy each others company away from the hustle and bustle and fall back in love. Whenever we go away for a couple days we come back so much more in love and ready to face whatever life brings us. Since we are closing in on potentially the most trying part of the adoption process (waiting to pass court) I think it is the perfect time for rejuvenation.

**Side note: Today is exactly 9 months since we first turned in our application to AGCI. I can see why God thought 9 months would be the perfect term to carry a baby. I am definitely ready TODAY to "have" this baby!! We will continue to wait on God's time to be united (and not just because we really don't have a choice:)) but because we know His time is perfect!

Congratulations Amy

Congratulations Amy and Jason!! Their family just received the referral of a sweet baby girl. We are thrilled for all of you - including the new big sister and brother! We are so excited for you and hope we all get to travel soon.

Shannon, we are thinking of you and hoping you hear wonderful news soon.