A few little updates:

Moved our ticker to the top, because I thought it would be easier to track our long wait if it was up top.

A few people have asked how long? Rumors are rampant that The Wait will go to between 2 years or even 3 years for NSN. We are also in the SN stream, and while I was going over my blog entries I noticed that I had written that we were waiting for a new batch of SN files to arrive at our agency. Well, a batch did arrive in late April but we were #3 on the wait list, and there were only 2 girls files that arrived. So we missed that batch of babies... which in the end was a good thing. It gave us time to think about and research adopting an older child, still from China. When I say an older child, I mean a child between the ages of 6 to 8 years old. We decided to pursue the adoption of such a child, and we were in principle "approved" by our evaluator after a thorough grilling. However, the Dark Side won a battle and we have since been fighting to exercise our rights. We took a serious blow to our Courage a couple of weeks back, but after a wonderful and inspirational evening of listening to Dr. Maya Angelou and talking with various adoptive mothers, we have decided to continue our battle for our daughter who will be between 6 and 8 years old.

We have notified the Dark Side that we wish to continue, and we got a bit of good luck: we have a new Evaluator who has come highly recommended (professional, trustworthy, honest) by several people. So we have hope again, and my Courage is back up - thanks to the wonderful Rainbows in the Clouds that have been surrounding me and hoisting me up to go back into battle. DH isn't completely there yet, but I have enough Courage for both of us right now. This just feels right, and we are really on the side of the Right - we are following our values, honestly and passionately. Our agency is also very much behind us - the Executive Director has a meeting with the boss of the Dark Side to bring our case and another 2 cases from other families that are having the same problems we are.

I have found our daughter's bedroom furniture, but we are waiting to buy it as it is mucho dollars... which we don't have right now. I have been quite good at not buying any clothing yet either. This has been extremely hard, as I do believe in Retail Therapy (to copy from Doris). My compromise it to buy hair stuff for her and particular dolls/toys that I know are hard to find. Clothing will come when I have a better idea of her size and the season when she will come home!

Tristan's surgery went well on Friday, but he did not react well to the anesthesia so we had a sick boy on our hands for a few hours. He is duly distracted by his new Gameboy and PS2, and I am able to get him away from those games to color from time to time - but it doesn't have the same effect as the games, unfortunately. He is still in pain and it definitely hurts to swallow, and he still has a fever today. It will be a slow march back to health... poor baby.

Zach goes to school tomorrow for the first time! My babies are growing up so fast, I can't believe I will have two in school come September. I also can't believe that I have been out of school for close to 17 years now.. yikes... sighhhhh.