It still feels really surreal that we are "having" another baby. Really surreal, but it is starting to sink in a little bit at a time. We'd go pick him up tomorrow if we could, but it's nice that we have a few months to get used to the idea and to plan and prepare. For instance, what to name him? We have no idea. Chris is sitting next to me at the moment flipping through a book of baby names. Noah thinks we should name him Sampson as in the name of Prince Phillip's horse on Sleeping Beauty. I think we'll skip that one.

So, a lot of people have asked us about the timing. When are we going to get him? Here's a snippet from an email that we got from our caseworker at FTIA telling us what to expect:

"The most recent timeframes have been about 3-10 days for the Pre-Approval, 2-5 months for the Letter of Acceptance, 2-5 weeks for the Travel Approval and then you would travel 4-6 weeks after Travel Approval is received."

To translate, we sent China a document called a "Letter of Intent" telling them we intend/want to adopt this particular child. We then wait for China to approve that request and send us our "Pre-Approval", which we should be getting any day. Then we wait 2-5 months for China to issue us the official approval that we can adopt him, the "Letter of Acceptance". Then we wait 2-5 weeks for them to give us offical approval to be able to travel to China, and then travel 4-6 weeks later. While we are doing that there are some other things we need to do involving getting specific approval from the USCIS immigration people to allow him to immigrate to the US aka, fly home. When we land with him in America he will officially become a US citizen. His adoption will be final in China and we won't need to do anything in our court system to legalize it here. That means we can bless him and seal him to us without any waiting, although I'm sure we'll wait at least long enough for life to settle down a bit after we get back so we can enjoy it.

So, what all of that boils down to is that it's possible that we may have him home in 3 1/2 months to 8 months. That's sometime between November through March. We are hoping for before the end of the year, but I feel so protective of my heart that in reality, I'm not setting my heart on any timeline yet. I'm just thinking about the possibilities, and trying to fit my head around the idea that this is for sure happening and won't fall through.

Chris did some google searches and we're pretty sure this is the orphanage he's at, so that's fun to see!