We've accepted the referral!

We have officially accepted the referral. We are praying that we will have the baby home with us as soon as possible. Right now he is in a city other than the capitol city of Ethiopia. I believe he will be able to stay there in that orphanage for the remainder of his time in Ethiopia. This is great, in my opinion, b/c he has probably attached to those nannies and it would be bad for him to have to leave there to go to Addis with new surroundings and caretaker and THEN we would come and uproot him again. This is new, them processing the "stuff" where he is now, so hopefully it will actually make things smoother and quicker.
There are 3 more things that have to happen:
1-he needs a 2nd medical evaluation. The results of these tests take 1 week to 30 days to come back. After we get the results and we tell them we still want him, they apply for......
2-a court date. It takes 2 or 3 weeks I think to get the court date. The great thing about him being in another city is that they are going to start having court dates there instead of Addis. My case manager is trying to see if they can go ahead and apply for a court date while they are waiting for the medical results to come back. Usually they have to wait, but it would be great if we could go ahead and get a court date sooner.
3-Embassy Date-at court we will be given an Embassy date. That's when we travel. The embassy date is like 3-4 weeks after the court date.
I think it will be about 8 weeks. BUT if he is able to get his medical done quickly AND apply for a court date before the medical results are in, it could be sooner.......His new pictures look GREAT. It's obvious that he's gaining weight and he looks much "brighter". He's even smiling in one picture! OK. Here's the thing about posting the photos. I can't. So many people have asked about that but the Ethiopian government is apparently becoming more strict about that and have said that if they find out about someone posting photos they will take the referral away. I don't want to risk that.
Love to everyone! thanks for your encouragement and prayers.

He's getting better

I only have a minute before I need to start getting ready to go to work. (plus I left the lights on inside my car last night and now the battery's dead, so my neighbor's coming over in a minute)
Well, we talked to the pediatrician and she thought that the medical information looked OK. Her main concern for him was that he had lost so much weight. So we decided to wait and have the orphanage send some new measurements and photos. We received them last night and he looks SO much better! He's even smiling in one picture. Eric and I agree that he doesn't even look like the same baby. Even though he was so skinny, my dr. said that his head circumfrance, height and weight were all below the 3rd %....so it's good that he is proportional.
We're very excited and will call the agency today to accept the referral!
Thank you for all your emails! I've read each one of them even if I haven't had a chance to respond to everyone.
Yesterday we swapped Caleb for his cousin, Aidan. The kids are in heaven! Currently Audrey and Aidan (also 4) are "crafting" and I'm sure Caleb's on the farm with Asher this morning wrestling some baby goats.
Off to teach some piano lessons!

One more thing

The kids don't know about this yet, so if you see them, just remember that. We want to wait until it's "official" before they get excited about the baby.

Referral!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yesterday afternoon we received a voice mail from our case manager at CWA (Christian World Adoption-the agency we're with) saying that she had a possible referral for us to consider. We immediatly wanted to call her back and hear more. Thankfully, I was working yesterday so eric and I were both at the church together. We talked to her on speaker and then she sent us the description, pictures and medical info for a beautiful 3 1/2 month old boy. We were so overwhelmed and SHOCKED because we JUST sent in our dossier. We totally didn't expect this so soon. He has been very sick with E. Coli and other intestinal problems and was just released from the hospital. At 3 1//2 months, he only weighs about 6 1/2 pounds. (To date, my lightest baby at BIRTH was 7 lb. 9 oz!)
We've faxed the information to our pediatrician and I think we both feel like as long as he's well enough to make the trip over to the US, we'll accept the referral. I'm anxious about talking to my pediatrician so I'm fighting the desire to call every hour to find out why she isn't calling.
Right now, I don't know our timeline. We thought we had not recieved our CIS approval form yet (which has to be in our hands when we travel and takes 2-4 months to get) but then I found it! From talking to my case manager, it seemed like that was the big obsticle so now since I already have it, I hope that means we can travel soon.
I'm not allowed to post his pictures because he's still an Ethiopian citizen and apparently that's a big "no no".....but if you could see him.......he's got amazing beautiful brown eyes and he has more hair than any of my other kids had on their 1st birthday. The hardest thing for me to see in the picture is his expression. These pictures were taken before he went into the hospital. He's grimmacing and looks like he's been crying. It's obvious he's uncomfortable. Our agency has asked them to send new pictures so we can see if he looks like he's in better health. They say he's putting on weight. That's the other thing. His tiny little leg is showing in the picture and he's so thin. But he has on a little white button up collared shirt. A little man. I can't stop looking at the pictures... I've gotten hardly anything done today and had to run to Publix and get frozen pizza for dinner b/c I just couldn't think of anything to make. My heart is in Africa.

Start the clock....

Our Dossier was sent yesterday to Ethiopia! The Dossier is-in case you didn't know-a large stack of paperwork that is required for all international adoptions. It includes the homestudy, birth and marraige certificates of the parents, medical reports for the whole family, financial statements, reference letters, and much more. They all have to be individually notarized and sometimes sealed at the county and THEN the state level. Then after it is all complete, it is sent to the Ethiopian Embassy by a courier in DC. (there it's sealed with a "golden grommet" and tied with a gold ribbon?) Then it is sent back to the agency and NOW it's OFF to Ethiopia. Now we just wait. The approximate wait is about 2-3 months. Then we will receive a "referral". That's the picture, discription and whatever medical history they have of the child they have matched with us. Once we accept the referral, we get to make travel plans. We'll travel about 4-6 weeks after receiving the referral. And that's all I know. :) I'm trying so hard to just take it one step at a time. Don't tell me what I need to do in 6 weeks, tell me what I need to do now. We've requested a boy, age 6-12 months. It's a very strange, exciting, terrifying, sad feeling to know he really is out there somewhere. I can't wait to get him home.