Nursery work officially begun....

Yesterday I got half of the wallpaper off the walls in there, and today i hope to finish removing it. Then sanding and priming...and then paint. I bought a buttery yellow color for the walls. Since I have Monday and Tuesday off, I should be able to get the walls finished this weekend :)
We also got the bedding set (won it off ebay actually) which is sage green with red ladybugs crawling on it. I'll post photos as soon as there is something worth showing off.

Announced pending adoption to our friends and extended family....

We decided to announce the pending adoption to our friends and extended family with our holiday cards this year. It's been pretty exciting hearing all of the encouragement and everyone so far has been very supportive. Many of these folks have no idea about or fertility struggles, but I am sure word will travel fast on that front. Heck, I may even post the link to this blog on our family webpage so everyone can follow along....

Nursery started and looking at clothes....:)

I can't believe I am admitting this, but I have started buying baby clothes :) Started innocently enough as perusing the baby clothes when at Marshalls, then I saw some really cute stuff pretty darned cheap, so I bought a few outfits. Sizes are interesting because Chinese babies tend to run a bit smaller than the standard american baby sizes....We also won't know how old she is until we get our referral, and then we won't have much time. So I have started to by stuff ranging from 6 month to 18 month size assuming we'll get her late fall early winter. This should save us money in the long run if I guess right, but will end up costing more if I guessed wrong.... ah well. We plan on bringing a variety of sizes with us to China and donating anything too small to the orphanage there.
We have also started thinking nursery design. THe previous owners of our house put up wallpaper trim border with animals on it. I am thinking of taking it down and giving the room a fresh coat of a light yellow or beige paint. We are definitely going with oak toned wood for the crib since we already have a dresser that will double as a changing table, and the room has wood trim around the closet and windows. I orders a few pieces of wall art from www.chinasprout.com. I can't wait until they come in :) I also found great crib bedding that I love, so hopefully I'll get that soon.
As far as the paperchase goes, I finally have my doctors appointment scheduled for Tuesday 12/27 for the remaining tests they need for the dossier. Bill has his this Friday. We got all of the paperwork notarized last week. Our homestudy is written but waiting on the Indiana criminal background check and a couple of our references to arrive to be finalized. As soon as that is finalized we can start the last paper work push and get on the official waiting train :)
Hopefully our last holiday season just the two of us!!!!

we've started talking names...

Kinda scary but we spent last night and this morning talking about possible names. Given we have a 98% chance of getting a girl from China, we figured we were pretty safe in sticking to the girl name debate. It's an interesting process trying to name your child. I mean finding a name you both like, that isn't outrageously popular, that goes with your last name well....the add in wanting to honor a family member or two and her Chinese heritage...yipes. But hey, at least we have some time to work on it. We did decide we would not announce anything until after the referral, partly because we think we will incorporate her given Chinese name as a middle name. Plus, that way we can look at her picture and see what fits. We may even wait until we get her to officially announce it, but we haven't decided that one yet.
In other news, I decided to get running again. I had stopped because of the whole trying to conceive thing and my doctors worries that long distance running my be contributing to our problems. Now after fertility treatments and too much comfort food, I have gained 15 lbs and have aches and pains I didn't have before.
SO we joined the Greater Derry Track Club today which seems like a great local running club. We also went out for a morning jog this morning since the roads were clear and it was sunny out. I only went about 2 miles, but it felt good to get out there. I also didn't want to hurt myself by doing too much too soon. So I plan on running a half marathon in the spring and the NH marathon 9/30/2006 if we aren't traveling for the adoption then.
I typed up our official financial statement for the adoption dossier yesterday as well. So now we wait on getting those doctors forms back and our homestudy finalized and we are in business :)

Adoption poem

I found a great poem today while surfing adoption web sites:

"You first came to us in an envelope, with letters, forms and such
A few tiny little pictures, with nothing warm to touch.
You grew in our imagination. In our hearts and in our minds.
You brought us greater joy, than we ever thought we'd find.
A phone call started labor pains, which lasted 'til we met
Strangers brought together, A day we won't forget.
You bloomed as you were planned. In our hearts, our lives, our home.
Our child of chance, of plan, of will, you are our very own."

The paperchasing process is still in full swing. I got my certificate of profession back from my boss yesterday. Bill still needs his frmo work. We have a growing stack of things that need notarizing, but figure we will try to make only one more trip on that front. I found out this week that we need different medical report forms than we needed for our homestudy. And in order to complete those forms we both have to be tested for HIV. So now we wait for the doctors to request the bloodowrk, get the blood drawn, wait for the results and then wait for our doctors to finish with the forms and get them notarized for us to submit them. I also have to see if all of our references made it to the social worker....
ah, but it will all be so worth it when we get that referral....
:)