Baby Shower Pics

I wanted to post a few pics from the shower Doug and Debbie threw for us. Thanks to Deb for taking these! (Brent and I forgot to bring a camera to both of the two baby showers ... we're going to have to get better about remembering to bring our camera with us.)

The food Doug and Debbie made was amazing...

And after the food, there were gifts and gabbing.

Lucy explains how she made this picture frame--so sweet!

Ellie keeping notes for us on the gifts and gift givers. 
(Can you believe how mature this girl is getting?)

What could Janice have been saying to me?

No News on the BT Baby

It's the third week of March and not only are we clearly not going to be traveling before April as we were initially expecting, it is beginning to look unlikely that we'll travel in April either. Bummer.

Even so, things are good. Because we were told (in January) to be ready to travel by March, there has been a flurry of activity around the B-T household. Brent defended his dissertation by the end of January, thereby finishing up his PhD (Yay Brent!). I taught my grad seminar in 8 weeks (rather than the usual 15). We've both been working our tails off turning our guest room into a baby room; we've updated several documents for our dossier; we've been getting everything in place for travel (including purchasing gifts, finding an adoption doctor to advise us, getting travel immunizations, putting finances in order, and I've even been working on learning a little Russian). In addition to all this, we've had a visit from family (Jeff, Janice, and the girls) and we've had two baby showers given for us! All this in 8 weeks time! These have been among the busiest weeks in my life! So, we've been almost too busy to feel the disappointment of having our anticipated travel dates quietly pass by. I must admit, though, now that my class is finished (finished just last Friday) and now that everything is pretty much in place for travel and bringing home the BT baby, I am beginning to feel my impatience a bit more keenly...


Still, I now have time to get some research and writing done--work that needs doing and which has been on the back burner since January. Brent and I are also using the momentum we've built these last few weeks to get things done around the house that have been on the 'to-do list' for years now (me: re-painting kitchen, hallways, ceilings; Brent: hanging crown molding everywhere--the man is a maniac). We've had contractors at work in the house too: we had some new closets put in, and we are currently getting some insulation put in the attic room (we need a new guest room after all...). Also, I'm trying to learn how to use the camera (a digital SLR) that we got for Christmas. So, really, there's plenty to keep us busy while we wait.


Here are some pics of projects underway at the B-T house.

Below you can see the progress we've made on the baby room. First, we had "Handy Jack" (our contractor) put in a small closet (there wasn't one in this room before!). Then the work of priming, painting, and putting up crown molding began...

As you can see, Brent even built window sills! Isn't he handy?!? Geneticist, Cook, Beer-Brewer, and now Carpenter! 

Next, you'll find a before and after shot of the attic (the first is before the insulation, you can still see the rafter, the second is after insulation was blown in and the ceiling closed off.) Too bad I didn't get a picture of the in-between phase just after they sprayed the foam insulation into the rafters but before they covered it. It was very cool, but also very stinky! Clearly, we still have painting to do up there...

                                     

And here are some pictures of the closet Handy Jack built in the Master bedroom. 

                                             

Finally, a picture of Tess, who is not enjoying the racket, the smells, or the commotion of the work going on in the house--and who also does not like being chased around and made to hold still while I practice taking pictures with our new camera. Poor ol' Tess, she's getting old.

We're expecting...

So, the big news--the main story--is this: Brent and I are expecting a baby girl. Yes, you heard it, we're going to be parents! And there's an exciting twist...she's coming to us from Kazakhstan. Actually, we're going to her. But more on that later.

Now, some of you (i.e. family members) have known about this for awhile. But others of you are probably still pulling your jaw off the floor. I know, I know, all the years of us insisting we were on the 'no children' plan. Well, we were on that plan. But then the plan changed (obviously).

The adoption process itself has been going on behind the scenes for some time--a little over a year now. We began researching countries and agencies in January 2007, but the very idea of having kids and the possibility of adoption has been under discussion/negotiation for even longer. Actually, I could name the occasion (date and exact location) where we got together and conceived our child-idea. But let's not go there--it's pretty technical, philosophically speaking.

Instead, let me sketch what the process has involved to this point. (Sorry to those of you who've heard me detail this process a gazillion times over the last months.) As I said, we spent the first months of 2007 reading books, attending information seminars, reading blogs, researching on the web, and much more. By March, we'd settled on a country and an adoption agency. Here's the how things went from there:

• Sent Application to World Partners Adoption (March 23, 2007)
• Home Study (April 7th-April 24th, 2007)
• Assembled dossier (May-August, 2007)
• Requested/Received Apostille (state seal) for all documents (August 10-17th, 2007)
• Sent complete dossier to World Partners (August 25th, 2007)
• Dossier sent to Kazakhstan for translation (August 29th, 2007)
• Translation complete (November 5th, 2007)
• Dossier sent to Kazakhstan Embassy in New York for registration (mid-November)
• Dossier sent to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) in Kazakhstan (early December)

Here's the dossier (in quintuplicate) just before we put it in the mail (yay!) with our "WPA bible". A three-ring binder containing all essential info and instructions.

We're not at all sure about the timing of things from here on out. What we can say, however, is this. At some point in the near future (i.e. next few months) we will receive an invitation to travel to Kazakhstan to meet our daughter. We will spend 6-8 weeks in country. In Kazakhstan, the adoption process begins with a mandatory 15 day visitation period, a period designed to allow for bonding between prospective parents and children. If all goes well at this stage, we will apply for a court date, which usually comes about week later. After the adoption itself is finalized, it can then take another 3-4 weeks for the paperwork, visas, etc. to be processed. Prospective parents have the option to leave after the court date (i.e. at the end of week 3) and come back again 3-4 weeks later to pick up the baby, but we're thinking we'll just stay the whole time. We'll take work with us. (Well, that and we're planning on playing A LOT of Ages of Empire.)

Anyhow, that brings us to the purpose of this blog. According our adoption coordinator, we will "very probably" be traveling to Kazakhstan "before April". (How's that for living in limbo?) Since we're going to be out of the country for something like 2 months we've decided to set up a blog as a way of keeping family and friends up to date on the "B-T baby news" while we're away. (Much cheaper and more convenient than phone calls or mass emails.)

Who knows, though, maybe we'll keep it going when we get back...