Funny or Sarcastic? You Be The Judge...

My dear, sweet teenager has been feeling a bit left out lately. We have a blog for Carson, a blog for Molly, and she feels like I never talk about her on either of them. (It's SO not true, but you know how dramatic teenaged girls can be!)

Again today, Meggie has decided to leave me a message on Carson's dry erase board. Get a load of this...Isn't that hysterical??!! OK, I admit...I've got B.A.D. and I've got it bad!! Any other sufferers out there?? Maybe we could start a support group...of course, it'll have to be online...

When Things Are Good, They Are REALLY Good!

My physical form is fixed...and I DIDN'T have to go back to my doctor's office or scalp a sweet (but incompetent) assistant! Do I have magical, mystical powers? Well...

I looked at the physical form and saw that I had written "see attached list" under the surgeries...but there was room to write more. So I added "on back of this page," then handwrote my list of surgeries on the back. Since the Notary had signed my physical on the back, CCAI was OK with the list being there. After all, it had a signature right above it! I did all this fixing on Sunday and e-mailed it to CCAI...got the e-mail Monday that everything would be fine! Whew!!

Now that that's fixed -- and at the command of my dear, sweet teenager -- I have begun to paperchase in earnest.

Yesterday, I went to the bank to get a money order for two certified copies of our marriage license. Typically, money orders cost $3 -- and the money order was only in the amount of $4! (Why our County won't take a check for $4 is beyond me.) The cashier was so sweet and said she would waive the money order fee "just this once." Hey, it's only $3...but that just saved us $3 on our paperchase!! (Every little bit counts...)

Later, the kids and I were out running errands and stopped at our local Sheriff's department to request the required police clearance letters. The woman working the desk (who was heading off to fingerprint the person ahead of me in line) told me to wait for her, that she would be right back. After she completed the fingerprinting, she came back to me and quietly told me that she wanted me to wait for her because the other people would have charged me for the letters, but she would do it for free since it was for an adoption! Cha-ching...saved us another $8!

An approved homestudy, getting things done, AND saving us money...ahhhh, things are certainly looking up!

Interesting...

As I sit here in Meggie's room, playing around on the laptop while I watch her try to organize the masses of junk she has collected over the years (what a pack rat!!), I decided to do a Google search on the meaning of names. (Hey, gimme a break, I'm bored here!)

Let me tell you, we were both shocked to find that Molly means "wished-for child" and Jayne means "gift from God"!

How awesome is that?

P.S. There were websites on baby names where I found Molly to mean "bitter" or "rebellion," but I prefer the "wished-for child" meaning -- don't you?

Oh, The Comedy And Tragedy Of It All...

After reporting that nothing was going on in our paperchase, I got TWO e-mails from CCAI today! Of course, true to our luck, there was a mix of good and bad in those e-mails.

First, the comedy...our homestudy is completed and approved! It is ABOUT TIME!! (OK, it's not really comedy, but it surely made me smile!)

Then came the tragedy...through the homestudy paperwork, they realized that on my physical form I had written "see attached list" on my surgical history and provided a neatly organized, typed list of all of my past surgeries. That was not a problem for the dossier we prepared for Carson's adoption...suddenly, it's a problem. They fear that a separate listing of surgeries that has not been signed by my doctor may be questioned. So I have to get a NEW physical form and only write 3 or 4 of the surgeries. They were all in the distant past and CCAI doesn't feel that they all need to be on the list. This way, it will show that my doctor saw the list...not that I added the attachment at a later date. (Yes, I know, that sounds ridiculously petty and utterly unnecessary...welcome to the world of international adoption!)

Yes, I have to go back to my doctor's office AGAIN and beg his sweet yet incompetent staff to kindly...just one more time...have the doctor sign a physical form for me. I don't plan for that to go smoothly and I expect to leave the office with a handful of some sweet assistant's hair if I must.

It just makes me laugh out loud when people say that adopting is the "easy" way to have kids...

We Needed to Feel That SOMETHING Was Progressing...

After rushing to get documents dated before June 12th (and now waiting over two months with no end in sight on the homestudy front) we had a family meeting the other night and decided we wanted to do something -- ANYTHING -- that felt like we were making progress on this paperchase. I ended up going through my files and figuring out what documents are still needed. I have gotten all the documents together except for one (which I'm hopefully going to be able to handle tomorrow).

However, the family meeting couldn't end 'til we had...the debate. The name debate. It was a lengthy process.

Meggie put a bunch of cute girl names on Carson's marker board and we discussed 'em and voted on 'em. (Meggie's friend, Sarah, was also part of this process. Thanks for your help, girl!)

The debate was funny at times, ridiculously funny at other times, but eventually we came to a decision on a name we all could agree on. And that name is...drumroll please...
We picked Molly because it's a cute name and we all like it. My Mom's name is Jane and my sister and I were discussing a few weeks ago how none of our siblings has named a child after Mom. (OK, so it's spelled differently, but it still sounds the same!) We think Molly Jayne has a cute ring to it! When we get a referral, we will add the child's Chinese name as a second middle name like we did for Carson.

Maybe it's stupid to make a big deal about this so early in the process, but it really helps me to plan (and pray) specifically. Besides it was a decision that needed to be made eventually...and at least we accomplished SOMETHING on this adoption this week.

I Think That Pretty Much Says it All!

As I have regained my life after graduating, my time has been filled with picking up hours at work and catching up on little projects around the house. The other day, I found this message on Carson's dry erase board.

Think Meggie is trying to refocus me??

We're still waiting on our approved homestudy update...according to our social worker, CCAI is requiring some very specific changes but we are in the home stretch on that.

OK, Meggie, I promise I'll start working on dossier paperwork tomorrow!!