Names

No - I'm not giving you names that we are considering (yet). But I will say that I am thinking about them!! We are still convinced that we will wait and see what his or her name is before inflicting our idea of a cool name on another human being. If he or she has a name that would likely avoid being beat up on the playground, we will consider keeping it (or its American counterpart.) However, if it is something hardly prounouncable by others and not easily translated, we will likely explore alternatives. I will say that I am a fan of good old fashioned Catholic names.

Here is an interesting tradition. Wouldn't this just be frustrating to family and friends! This is from a Blog called the Iceland Report:

In Iceland, babies' names usually remain under wraps until the child is christened in church. That's when the name becomes public for the first time. It's a big unveiling, akin to when Rod Roddy used to yell "a new car!" on The Price is Right. Before the baby has her "day in church", the parents use a nickname between each other and with their friends and family. This nickname will be something like "kríle" (small thing) or "stubbur" (stumpy). Last year I made the mistake of asking some friends what was the name of their new baby, and they glowered at me. (She's since been christened Júlía Jökulrós, or Julia Glacier's-Rose.) But to new parents the innocent "What's the name of your baby?" is a question best left unasked in the Land. http://icelandreport.blogspot.com/search?q=stubbur.

Interesting!

Hmmmm....Now What?

OK, so the ball is in their court. Now what do we do? Wait patiently, I suppose. But what if we are not patient? Well, I guess we have to learn!

There are always things we can do around the house, and there is more reading to accomplish on bonding, attachment, parenting, travel, etc. I'll tackle that a little at a time. This is the perfect time to prepare ourselves. I should come up with a list of topics on which to post (i.e. bonding, attachment, language, travel, names, etc.) and then periodically assign myself one of those topics to research and blog. I do essentially research and write for a living.

I know our dossier probably isn't even translated yet, but I am starting to really get excited. There is a child out there somewhere who will be a part of our family, and that is a crazy concept to grasp!

After years of infertility, can this really happen?

We Are Officially Waiting!

Ta-da! Here is a photograph of our Dossier! I know it doesn't look very impressive, but there was a lot of effort put into that stack of papers.

We got confirmation from our Agency that it looks wonderful and that Poland will love us. The affirmation felt good. On Tuesday our Dossier was sent to Poland for translation and authentication. After that we can be matched at any time. We don't anticipate any news for quite a few months. But I suppose anything can happen.

We had our immigration fingerprinting appointment today. It went smoothly and we should have immigration approval some time in the next weeks (or months).

I know friends and family will be eager for news. Believe me, we will give it at soon as we can! In the meantime, I'm thinking we should get shirts that say "no news yet." Although if we did that, we would have to wear them every day. Perhaps we should get just a button or something. :-)

Just because we are in the waiting stage does not mean that this blog will go quiet. It is now that we are finally beginning to believe that we will actually become parents, and I may well be posting more frequently. We are going to be trying to figure out how we should spend the time preparing our home and our hearts, and we are very open to advice and suggestions as to how we do that!

Also, it is the Season of Lent, a time of preparation and sacrifice -- indeed a good time to reflect.

We've Sent Our Dossier!

Last night we sent our Dossier to our Agency! I've got a picture of the stack of papers, I'll try to post that later.

We had received our last authenticated documents back on Wednesday, so on Thursday we piled it all up, copied it and sent the originals to our Agency! It felt a little surreal to let it go. I kept thinking that after all of that work, it comes down to one stack of paper? It didn't even look that big!

Our understanding at this point is that our Agency will be putting it in the proper format and will attach anything else they need to, and then send it to Poland. It will then be translated and we will need to be generally approved by the court as parents who can adopt.

It still feels a little unreal that we have actually sent the Dossier. We still somewhat anticipate that something may still need to be changed. I can't image what though, because our Agency has already looked through it all and we corrected the couple of issues that existed.

I'll report back when I hear from our Agency. But essentially, we are officially waiting!

(P.S. There is another secret meaning to 5150 that I will post soon.)