Okay, I’m ready!! Let’s go!

Please meet Sophie Fu Duo…

 

She’s pretty cute, isn’t she? 

Today I went out and pretty much knocked off our entire packing list…at least the stuff for Sophie. I feel so much more confident now that I have her age and size, and that I know she’s still drinking from a bottle, ect. I actually felt more or less like I knew what I was doing in the baby section of the store today, which was nice.

I have all the baby med stuff now, diapers, socks, onesies, and various other paraphernalia. I skipped the formula (because I think we can buy it in China) and the Pedialyte (I’m going to ask if we can buy that in China too…it’s heavy!)

Today I made an appointment with a ped. We didn’t have a ped look over her medical records before we signed the acceptance because, well…frankly, there aren’t a lot of records to look at. What there is all says normal, normal, normal. But who knows? We have to be prepared for things to pop up down the line and we are. Sophie is our daughter no matter what. Period. Both James and I feel that way. But the ped will give us prescriptions for things to take with us to China, ect. When we get back, she’s going to straight to a children’s hospital where they specialize in internationally adopted babies.

I also made an appointment for ME, since…yeah, Chongqing is pretty much not the place for an asthmatic. It’s one of the most polluted places on the planet. I’ll probably have to go on steroids and up my asthma meds. I’ll probably have to buy some air purifiers to take along and I might, just might, have to Michael Jackson it with a face mask. Joy. I already had one doc tell me not to go China at all. YEEEEEAAAH, that ain’t happen’, peoples. My docs just have to get me through a week. I don’t care how we do it.

I haven’t sent the care package yet. I’m going to do it tomorrow. It turns out that Sophie is very close to her crib mate, so we’re sending duplicate toys–so they each have stuff. Since we don’t know which toys will end up with Sophie, we’re sleeping with all them for a few nights. I have our agency on the case of finding out as much as we can about the crib mate. If that little baby is adopted, we’d like to keep in touch with her parents. But it depends on YunYang SWI and how willing they are in giving up info.

So, like, when do we go? I’m ready!! I can be packed in a hour!

BTW…all acceptance letters have been mailed to China! They went last Tuesday. Yeeha! The agency rep we talked to on Saturday says it’s competition between agencies how fast they get TAs (travel approvals) back. Go Our Agency! Go Our Agency!!

 

First Gifts Part Deux

Ordinarily all adoptive parents bring gifts to China for the orphange director and assistant director. They also sometimes bring gifts for the children of the orphange or items that the SWI needs. We planned to bring these things to China with us, but I’ve seen at least one family sending these things with the first care package.

I like this idea a lot…but how to fit everything in that tiny box? I guess I need to talk to my agency about this. Maybe if you’re sending stuff for the SWI director, etc, they allow you a bigger one?

Cut off date rumors are pretty dismal, looks like 10/10/05 or thereabouts. Ouch. It just gets worse and worse. I feel especially for the families who had an LID of 9/27/05 (or something) and, when the last batch arrived, were suddenly told their LID was really 10/24/05 (or something). Yikes.

I think referrals will come the first week of February. That’s my prediction and I’m sticking with it.