And we wait again...

Well, after a crazy busy week we are happy to report that all of Claire's acceptance documents are signed, sealed and delivered. Dave and I spent MANY hours filling out immigration paperwork again. I honestly cannot wait for the day to arrive that we never have to deal with US immigration again! I think they purposefully make the forms complicated. Anyway, everything we have to do for now is done. So, we wait some more. Over the weekend we created a "to do before Claire arrives" list. It includes things to get ready for her as well as projects around that house that we want to get out of the way since we know we'll have our hands full at first. Today during Jack's nap I am tackling Claire's closet since it has become the dumping ground in our house during the last year since Jack moved across the hall.

We are also working on a care/thank you package to send to Claire and her foster family. Picking stuff out for Claire was the easy part. I've been dying to go girly shopping so that part was fun. Buying stuff for the foster family, on the other hand, was a challenge. All we know is that the mother is 63 and that her son, daughter-in-law, and grandson live with her. We roamed around the mall yesterday trying to be inspired. It is hard to buy a gift to say thank you to someone for taking care of your child! In the end we got a selection of things that we hope they will like. We have also included a photo album for Claire so she can start to get used to our faces :) We have written a letter to the family also and Dave is having someone at work translate it into Korean for us today. It is handy that he works at such a multi-national company. He was able to send an email out to the Asia club at work and someone responded immediately who is Korean and said he'd be happy to translate for us!

It's a GIRL!!!!!!

We are super excited to announce that we have received the call we have been waiting 18 long months to hear! While we were out of town last week we got a call from our social worker at the adoption agency letting us know that we have been matched with an adorable six month old baby girl. I, Emily, couldn't talk through the tears so Dave had to get the initial details before passing me the phone. As you can imagine we are on cloud nine!

We have named her:

Claire Ji-na Charlton

Her birthday is November 21, 2007

She was 7lb 7oz at birth and 20.5 inches long

(Ji-na is her Korean name given to her by her birth mother - it is pronounced kind of like Gina but with more emphasis placed on the na than the Ji part of the name.)

Claire is currently living with a foster family in Seoul where she will stay until she is escorted to us in Chicago. The next part of the process involves US Immigration issuing her paperwork for her visa. This takes 3-6 months. Recently it has been taking around 4 months so we hope to have her home early to mid-autumn. And now for her pictures...

Here she is...

We think this was taken in April



This is her newborn picture

Listening for the phone to ring...

I (Emily) have been chatting with another woman adopting through our agency who I met on our agency's online forum. She lives in Michigan and is adopting her second Korean child. Her first child's name is Jack and he was born the same week as our Jack. She and her husband decided to go to Korea to pick up their daughter this time. They were there last week. She has been amazing about asking questions about the slow down for us and emailing me the info from Korea. She emailed this morning to say that she spoke to the director who does the matching for our agency and she told her she was sending "many" referrals to our agency this week. She wouldn't be specific on how many that actually will be, but either way it is movement and we should either hear our phone ring soon, or we will be at the top of the list if all the remaining families in front of us get matched. Finally, some action!

My next concern...and I'm trying not to let myself go there yet is that they don't always match in order of the waiting list. Which means that we could pass families in front of us, or families behind us could get matched before us. So, we'll just wait some more and see what happens.

When we get the call I'll post it here, but you'll likely hear screams of relief coming from our house long before you check our blog!