2 Years!

It is our second year anniversary!! The cotton anniversary. We exchanged cotton sheets, cotton bath sheets and an Al Clad Sauce Pan (stuffed with cotton apron). We also celebrated at Bistro Montage last night. Thank you to all who sent cards and gifts! We cannot believe how time flies....

Our Education...

Well, we have finished most of the paperwork. I finished a book on attachment issues. Have read a couple of magazines that we ordered: Adoption Today and Adoptive Families...both of which had great articles...

We also need to start focusing on our education requirements (we had to commit to a certain amount of education). We have VHS tapes on transracial families, attachment disorders, and life books (but they are taped lectures of fuzzy video quality so we have not made it through them). The agency also gave us websites where we can go for additional training (like an interactive web course that you take multiple times...each time looking at adoption from the perspective of different demographics...like people of different generations etc.) So, I will have to go find those additional courses.

As we complete each stage in our process, we can go to our agency web site and fill out info on that stage. They then send a certificate for the child's life book. Education is one of the stages we must complete.

So, we keep on reading...:)

On a side note...We did take time off reading to go vote. And, we are thrilled with the results! We celebrated Nate's birthday (belated) and the election results last night with friends.

Permission to Shop...

Our social worker gave me permission to shop. In other words, she told us that we should start to think about acquiring baby stuff, so that by the time we travel we will have all the baby stuff (nursery etc.) and will not have to buy stuff at the last minute. This does make some sense since most of the adoption costs come at the end of the process, so that is when we will have the least cash on hand.
Therefore, I am cautiously starting to look for baby stuff. The books that I am reading about promoting attachment between the baby and parents recommend that you get baby carriers that strap to you (the slings or backpacks). This way the baby gets used to you, your smell, your voice etc. better. There are ton of types of carriers out there. I think that the ones at this website are really cute, because you can pick the fabric etc. Baby Hawk
Seriously, though, we are not going to dive right in and decorate the entire nursery before we even get documents to Vietnam, but it is fun to start looking:)

Also, note that in our timeline (at the right) we got Nate's passport back with the correct spelling! So, we are finishing up!

Approved!

Yesterday, on Halloween, Nate's 31st Birthday, we had our final home study visit, and we were told that we are approved and will be recommended as parents!
Now, we wait 2-3 weeks for our social worker to write our home study. Then, the home study goes to CIS and we wait to get fingerprinted and then to get our approval from the U.S. government. After that, the documents go to get authenticated and translated, and then, they are shipped to Vietnam! (Our social worker told us it would probably take 3-4 months to go through those steps, which would mean things should go to Vietnam in February....)