Month: January 2011

What’s Next?

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I don’t have anything knew too say about the adoption but thought I would outline what we can expect in the next few months…

Even though we know who Sofie is, we don’t yet have the legal proposal. Our Bulgarian and Canadian agencies have her file exclusively, so she can’t be taken by any other family. We are currently waiting for the official proposal to come through all the legal channels of the Hague Convention. Once we accept it we are then waiting for a court date.

Court will take place in Bulgaria. Our Bulgarian agency will go on our behalf and there the Judge will hopefully finalize the adoption and issue an adoption order! She will then be ours! I think I can then publicly share her picture 🙂 Anido then applies for her new Bulgarian birth certificate, passport and Canadian Citizenship. There will be a transit visa to go in her passport to get her to Canada. After this is all approved we can go get her!

The exact timeline is very dependent on how fast the Bulgarian MOJ act in getting our proposal through the Convention and how soon we get a court date. Pray that it is soon!!! The birth certificate, passport and Citizenship “shouldn’t” take too long, but a little extra prayers for those would be great too 🙂 We’ve been told 3-6 months altogether. I’m trying to gear myself up for the 6 month wait because nothing has been on the short side of the estimates yet. I can’t help but hope that there is a first time for everything!

In other news… There is not really any news. We are just maintaining our routine. I think Livi is getting a little board with me since we haven’t had many play dates or seen any non-family members. We have a few planned in the next month so that will be good for her. It is so hard when we don’t have a car and live so far away from everyone!

I have been trying new dinner recipes and loving it! I’m not good at meal planning but have really been making an effort. We have definitely been saving money and are using up all the beans, rice and meat sitting in our cupboard and freezer. I’m also trying to eat a lot more vegetarian meals and loving it! It is much cheaper and we don’t need to eat as much meat as our culture does regularly. I’m also loving all the spices I’m discovering. Jon is a little wary of my skills, especially when I venture from the recipe. I don’t know what his problem is. I maintain that it usually works out 🙂 If you have any fabulous recipes you’d like to share, send them over this way! Preferably easy and not too many ingredients.

More on Sofie

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We got video and some new pictures of Sofie on Friday! I can not get over how incredibly cute she is. Unimaginably cute! Beautiful! ADORABLE! I want to squish her! Okay, maybe I’m a little biased but, seriously, I don’t know how anyone couldn’t think she is gorgeous 🙂

We got about five thirty second videos of her playing with toys and I keep watching my favorites over and over. My favorite of all is where they have her in a little rolling walker and keep giving her a little rubber duck. She keeps throwing it and they keep giving it back. Then they try to give her a ball and she whips that out of camera view too, then lays back in her chair triumphantly! I think we have a thrower coming!

The orphanage visit report from our Anido, our Bulgarian agency, gave us a lot of personal information too! She can’t quite walk alone yet but she can when she is holding an adults hand or sturdy furniture. She will walk soon but her little legs are so skinny right now! I think she needs some fattening up and increased muscle tone yet. Selfishly, I am kind of hoping that she doesn’t walk until she is with us. I would love to be there to see her take her first steps!

She apparently LOVES music. Whenever she hears her body starts “shaking”! I love this 🙂 I think we are going to take her to Kindermusic or something of the like in September. That is something I could take both girls too without too much trouble and it is really good for development as well. She grabs and bangs toys together, puts them in her mouth or throws and can clap her hands. I think our initial guess of her development being around the 12 month mark is pretty accurate.

I laughed when they described her personality. Sofie “is quiet, gentle, likes to be pampered and to be center of the attention of the people around her.” Identical to her Auntie Maggy! They are meant to be related! She can also wave hello, pronounce some syllables (like da, ba, ma I think) and likes to explore her reflection. She is curious, maintains concentration on something for a long period of time, shares really well and is not aggressive.

I’m not assuming that all this information is completely accurate but it sure is promising! You know how people always say you get your angel birth child first and then your second is extremely difficult? Does that work for adoptions too? Our first birth child was a breeze. From this description, our first adopted child sounds pretty “easy” as well. Is this a tease to keep us adopting?! Maybe we should just stop while we are ahead! I doubt it….

Scatter Brained

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I think this is going to be a bit of a scattered post…

Livi is doing well… sometimes a little too well for her own good! She is such a character these days and knows just how to make us laugh even when we are trying to be serious. It is not good for our parenting skills! For example: We told her to lay down in bed… so she lay down, on top of her blankets, upside down, tummy down. We told her to turn around… so she flipped on to her back. This repeated through her turning sideways on the bed too. Then it was time for kisses… so she stuck her tongue out for us to kiss! When we told her to put her tongue in back in she pulled it all back in but the tip and curled it! I lost it then and couldn’t keep a straight face. She wasn’t being a complete brat. She was giggling the entire time… and by the end she had me and Jon rolling over too!

 
Goofball.
 
On our only snow day I took Livi out on a “poor man’s sled” (a storage lid and an old belt!)
So much fun!

For the past four months we’ve had Livi in gymnastics and it is pretty much the best thing ever for her! She LOVES it! She has become less clumsy… because lets face it, her fine motor skills where not her strongest point. When Jon was off for Christmas break he got to come and see her in all her glory! She was quite excited to show off her moves to Daddy…

 Showing off her balancing skills.
 On the balance beam all by herself!
 Somersault over the bar!

When the Spring Leisure Guide came out and I found a dance studio that offered ballet classes to 2 year olds! I asked Livi if she would like to go and she literally started doing flips! The day before the class, Livi told every person who looked at her in the grocery store that she was going to ballet. That night she didn’t sleep until 10:30pm! She was way to excited! It was quite cute actually. When she finally got to her first class I think she was a little over stimulated with the expectation. She did really good though! It was perfectly adorable.

 
They were being butterflies!
She looks much to old in this picture.
 
Ring around the Rosie 🙂

Jon is of course very busy at work. A little too busy for my liking some times… but he loves his job. I think there is still some balancing that we need to work out between work and family time but things are falling in to place. He has quite a high stress job and with all the extra cut backs that he has to implement this year (government has to pay for the Olympics some how!) he has been stretched quite thin.

He still makes time to read Livi a bed time story almost every night he is home. 

Because of the cut backs, I am now officially un-employed. I was working for Communitas in a group home. I only worked one day a week or so. We were not depending on the money but it did get banked in to our adoption fund. It was more a way for me to get out of the house. Now it is a joke around the house that Jon got me fired 🙂 It is a weird feeling to officially be a stay-at-home mom, not on maternity leave, just at home. That is now my job. It has changed my outlook on what I do with my day, which is a good thing. The house is cleaner and I’ve been putting more effort in to meal planning… which I have never been good at. I knew this was coming, it was not a surprise or unwanted, it is just a weird feeling to officially be a stay-at-home mom. Don’t get me wrong, it is one of the best jobs on earth… I just never thought it would be me.

Letting Livi paint my nails.

I don’t think it is much of a secret that I am a planner. I think about things exhaustively and make decisions well in advance. I take comfort in having things organized and planned out well. I generally have a back-up plan or two as well, in case things don’t go according to my original plan. I consider it a positive trait… mostly 🙂 I get things done, am always prepared, and am generally pretty efficient because of the planning. It becomes a bit of a detriment when I am agonizing over something I have no control over or is still very uncertain. Take this case in point…

We have no idea how much longer it will take to bring Sofie home. We have been told anywhere from 3-6 months. Jon and I decided to get a second car when Sofie is home so that I can take her to different doctor appointments and therapies. The question is what kind of car? Basically we are wanting to get either a compact SUV or a mini-van. A compact SUV would be totally adequate for our family of four. If everything goes wonderfully with the adoption, though, a third child may be in our near-ish future. We might as well save the energy and extra money and just get a mini-van. But what if we don’t have a third child? Then there is no need for a mini-van. This feels like a huge decision! I know that I’m getting a little ahead of myself and I’m a little crazy. Either way, we’ll make it work.

We are still waiting for video of Sofie. It is taking forever. The Bulgarian MOJ apparently takes a long time to grant permissions for things. I am dying to have her home. Pray that we get her home really, really soon! I feel so helpless.