Aaaaackkkkk - overly busy overly excited!

Hey Everyone!

I see my "we have babies" combined with baby names posts over the weekend has stimulated much excitement. Thanks for the emails and comments.

By the way, I've noticed that a lot of you choose to email me privately in general but I just want to say that I read the comment section a LOT, love the comments, and am more than happy to get your thoughts in either format. (Ok, maybe more heavy thoughts by email, but everything cheerful can go on the blog!)

So today I am running around in a chicken with its head cut off sort of way trying to get ready to work from Seattle for the next few days. I leave in a couple of hours and because yesterday was Labor Day of course everything was closed and I couldn't get anything done.

Blah blah blah that is all I see when I look at this post so far.

The BIG News now!

It was a little anticlimatic but still exciting to me. I know those of you who have waited will know exactly what I mean.

AAI called me bright and early (before 9am their time!) to discuss the different special needs we are open to. They have two (ok, so two isn't really "some" in my opinion-I was hoping for 10!) infants with special needs. One has a condition that we are not at all prepared for or open to. But the other one has a suspected heart problem which is something we would be fine with (with more information of course.)

That's it. That's all you get folks. They have to do a lot of tests to see if she can be placed on the healthy infant list or should go to a "special needs" family. Which I suppose we are first in line to be since they called us!

Immediately afterwards I got two fantastic emails.
Email 1: Our homestudy was sent to the state today to be approved. After that it can go to US.CIS so they can invite us to get fingerprinted. Please please keep praying with me, crossing your fingers, whatever, that we can do this before the 24th. Colorado US.CIS moves extremely fast. Sometimes just a week or two!

Email 2: The AAI coordinator for the specific special need that we applied for, that you almost all know about but which I am not yet prepared to mention by name on the blog, emailed to say that we are #4 on the list. NUMBER FOUR!!! That is it!!! And the people ahead of us "mostly are open to older children and siblings as well as infants and toddlers so you may move up quickly"!

Have I used enough exclamation points? This is all good news to leave Denver on and it is actually welcome that I'll be so busy these next few days. I won't even have time to think about it. (But you know I will at least a little.)

I feel like I should write a caveat here that is very important. Just because we are moving quickly, hopefully, towards an actual referral of a child, doesn't mean we are about to get the child, in person, anytime soon. It is hard. AAI tends to refer children early but asks that you be ok waiting even up to 9 months before traveling to get the child. This is because the process of having the dossier approved in Ethiopia, waiting for court dates, receiving visa waivers, and collecting documentation to prove to the court that the child has no relatives able/willing to care for him/her is a very long and involved process. I can't even pretend to know what they go through on the other end as far as legal paperwork.

Additionally, our "specific special need" involves some extra paperwork that will definitely add a delay. If you are curious and want more information I'd be happy to share about the special need by email. Just shoot me an email or facebook me.

Whew, ok, have to do a million other things now. But just feeling a great glow and confidence that we chose the right agency in the end.

Keep those baby name thoughts coming. I'm open to others if you know of any good Amharic names and want to share.

Separate post on the boy name as there has been a lot of requests for it!

~A