5 months waiting update...

Newest adoption news as of today's e-mail from CHSFS...

Well, not really anything to tell but lots of people have been asking so thought I would tell you all where we are in regards to baby E.

Families most recently matched with a child under 12 months of age with few known health concerns began their wait in June 2008. We began our wait in June 5, 2009. Although it appears to be only one more year for our turn, it is impossible to know how many families turned in their dossiers during that time. So, we could be waiting one year for a referral or even 2 years. We just don't know. Our agency does not give those numbers out because they believe it is difficult to tell you where you are since everyone's situation in different. Some people might be open to some things that people that are logged in before them aren't, giving them the referral before the person with the earlier log in date.

So while we wait, we are trying to stay busy and we hope to be putting our house on the market within the next few months. We are hoping and praying that everything falls into place in the near future and we move to the Walnut Grove/Tracy area. We've wanted to live closer to where I work and where Allie (and baby E) will go to school for a while now. We are planning on possibly renting a farm site until the house that's just right for us falls into our laps.

That's all I know about baby E for now, hopefully everyone is having a great beginning to the week and have a happy Halloween!!!

More from this weekend...

I thought these were too cute not to share. Allie just loves to clean, scrub, and vacuum with us. Whenever our vacuum comes out, she needs to get hers out too! I just want to freeze time and keep her this age for a while longer!!!

Weekend with mommy!

Since Cory was hunting this weekend, Allie and I had the weekend pretty much to ourselves. Most weekends it seems as though we are running here and running there, but this weekend Allie and I just hung out at home. It snowed some on Friday night, so on Saturday the neighbors made a snowman and thought that Allie needed her picture next to it. She really wasn't too excited about how cold it was outside....so we spent most of the weekend inside. We played with babies, read TONS of books, and played dress up. Allie seems to always want a baby with her at all times. She brings one with her to eat, sleep and even when she sits on the potty! She's also getting into playing dress up. There's nothing she loves more than to carry mommy's purse around the house. She's such a girl!!!

18 months

Allie had her 18 month doctor's appointment tonight and I'm happy to announce that her ears looked good! She has had two ear infections since the end of July and we were concerned that she might have one again, but the doctor said they looked great. Hopefully they continue to look good (keep your fingers crossed)!

On the lighter note, Allie continues to "make her own growth chart." She is 36 1/2 inches tall and 33 lbs 15 oz! She wears a size 8 shoe, she's meeting all of her milestones and her speech is EXPLODING!!! I can't get over how fun she is to be around!

Update on "baby E"...

Not too much new. The Ethiopian courts close down during the rainy season (sometime in August until sometime in October) and should be opening back up in the next week or so. For a while there weren't many/any referrals going through (babies matched with parents), however it seems as though that's picking up which is a good thing. We've now been waiting 4 months officially. In the grand scheme of things, 4 months isn't much but we're looking at it as we are now 4 months closer to our baby "E". Our agency is still saying that our wait time until referral is between 12-18 months, so how long we have left is pretty much a shot in the dark.

I'm hoping that this weather warms up sometime this weekend so that I can get some pictures of Allie outside before it starts to get REALLY cold! Take care everyone!!!

My first pigtails!!!

Today I decided that it was time to put pigtails in Allie's hair and she LOVED them! Right away she said, "I pretty!" Words can't describe how much fun this is having a girl!!!