Shea!!! I wish you could read this right now!!
Eventually you will, but by then you will know quite a bit more overall of the process we went to get you home. This is a great milestone nonetheless. We have recieved on good authority that CCAA is about to send us your Pre-Approval notice. Which means, they(CCAA) has accepted us as becoming your parents-to-be!! We are just thrilled, it was a power of 3 day, and you were the 3rd!
We were just talking about wanting to hear a bit of progress, help us figure out just when we are going to be able to bring you home! Meanwhile we ARE just about finished with the home study...This one is the home/room tour!! woo woo! Otherwise we are waiting for certifications of documents to finish off the dossier. Then again with another bit of waiting for the TA (Travel Approval).
Hang in there Shae HongQi we going and pushing through the red sea of tape as fast as we can. Soon we will be able to even try to get you some pictures of us, your home, room, cousins and even pets.
For Fathers day weekend, you and momma and dadee decided to accompany the auntie and cousins and go swimming. Daddees got in free that day too. Though momma bought a family pass this year.
Boy, Aubree BiXiu you sure do enjoy swimming. We got you a little putter around pfd(personal floatation device). It has a collar and handle so we can scoop you up and practically pull you right out of the water if need be. You also liked it when we pull you through the water on your back. At Max's b-day you liked it, but I think there was jjust way too much excitement abound that you were much rather walk around and explorer every bit of the clive water park. Momma would float you slowly out into 2-3 feet of water and you would chime, "Dowwnn", "Dowwn" because your poor widdle wouldn't touch.
Meanwhile the cousins were wandering around too, BY was much like you Aubree, but MC being the oldest of the girls was very eager to try to float and swim the best she could figure out how. I think your favorite was the water fountains that streamed near the edge of the water shore.
Double meanwhile, when you dadee wasn't watching you bob around, he was trying to keep track of TQ. It seems he is just tall enough this year that he could go down the big slides. Last year he was about 1/2 too short, but is a good 1/2 over the limit. So after a bit a encouragement and ditching of the goggles that seemed to leak like sieves anyway, it was off up the latter and down our respective sides of slides. I went down the fast/dark tunnel, while TQ went down the bit slower but open air chute. After a few tries he was comng out right behind me, and ready for another turn.
So for most of the day we alternated between the slides, and the lazy river. He was also big/brave enough this year to have his own tube. I let him be in front most of the time. Sometimes he would get 3-4 tubes ahead. I would eventually float up behind him, and pass for a bit.. I just kept tellng him its not a race, just lay back and enjoy.
Everyone had a great time, but wouldn't you know it--I was the only one to walk out with a bit of a sunburn on my shoulders and chest. It was the only places I had not gotten spf on me. Geeesh...
Only one more left - thank god! Its not that I mind them... because I do!... its that they are just one more thing standing in the way of Shae. We've had really good visits so far - the one on June 29 will be the house tour.
House tour? House tour? What have I been deep cleaning for every weekend before a visit if its not until the last one that we have the house tour?!?!? I've been agonizing over getting home quick enough for the last 2 visits in order to clean up a random projectile pook hairball missle and its not until the LAST visit?!?!? I feel jibbited!!!
The one question that made me laugh out loud this time was this jewel: ' have I worked through the overwelming sadness that goes along with being infertile?'
WHAT?!?!? Overwelming sadness? Infertile? Oh! Are you talking to me? Honey, we had a party the day the utey came out! Confetti was strung from here to kindom come you silly naive girl! Overwelming sadness my ass! (OH girls... Mama cussed on your blog! Bad Mama bad!!)
Nope - no sadness for this Mama... nary a look back and only good, mess-free vacations to look forward to from here on out!!! God and I both know where my children are and they are NOT in my tummy :) The only thing bothering me is that the social worker wants to put the hysterectomy in the home study and I told her NO. CHI and HOLT both say in their documents that you should only list life threatening surgeries - I dont consider it a life threatening surgery... I didnt barf up a lung, my ticker wasnt worked on, and my brain is still in one piece so NO, dont put it in the homestudy. Mama's worrying about that just now - if they insist, its going to be more screwing around that doesnt need to be done.
OMG! Aubree BiXiu is sitting here at the dinner table grinding her teeth together and laughing at Mama squirm! I CANT TAKE THE TEETH GRINDING!!! AGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!! Make it stop! Make it stop!!
If anyone ever tells an adoptive mother that she doesnt know anything about how a pregnant woman feels, that mama should bust that person in the chops! We mamas who's children are born in our hearts have just as good/bad 'pregnancies' as those who have children born of their tummies.
The paperchase is a painful process when all a mama wants to do is have her little one home. Why must we gather 6 personal references when other mamas dont? Why must we be fingerprinted when they will let any Lolita walk out of a hospital with her newborn child? Why must we endure criminal and abuse background checks when we see mamas everyday abusing the children they gave birth to? Why must there be a mountain of paperwork and a bottomless sea of red-tape.
Why? Because thats our path to our children! I would suffer a hundred times over a hundred pregnancies just to bring my children home. The process is confusing, backwards, paved with worries, and senseless waiting... but there is a little child at the end of all this that needs her mama!
Hang in there Shae HongQi.... Dadee and Mama are fighting our way to you as fast as we're allowed! Love you and Aubree BiXiu always... :* [ ]